ABSTRACT
Reflecting on the where of urban politics may at first sight seem a slightly odd thing to be doing, if only because the where seems implicit in the label itself. After all, urban politics is presumably simply the politics that takes place in, is shaped by and shapes the experience of those living in urban areas. In practice, the administrative borders of local government have often provided the frames within which politics are explored. Allen Scott and Michael Storper appear to promise an approach rooted in the familiar spaces of the urban but the elision between agglomeration and the urban land nexus generates a narrower definition of urban politics, excluding many of those political movements popularly understood as urban. The chapter looks at attempts that seek to think the urban differently, not in terms of space and place, but rather through a focus on the urban as social process.
