ABSTRACT
The international process has been enshrined in a number of global frameworks like the Paris Agreement on climate, the Shanghai Declaration on health and sustainable development, the United Nations (UN) new urban agenda and of course the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. As J. Robinson rightly argues that a thorough understanding of the production of cities' global political agency must start from a better appreciation of the 'diversity of circuits and processes through which a territorialized urban agency is configured'. As global agendas embrace the 'urban', it is not just intergovernmental organizations, or indeed academia, that are betting on cities and issuing influential 'thinking' on the urban age. In order to prevent the possibly catastrophic path-dependencies, and to enhance the repertoire of frames for understanding global urban governance, urban and international relations, scholars certainly need to engage critically with the 'pro-urban' literature.
