ABSTRACT
In the wake of both post-colonial critiques of urban studies and the emerging realities of “planetary urbanization,” there is a need to revisit theories of urban politics. As urban forms across the globe are becoming fragmented and often extend across vast areas, earlier theoretical analyses of urban politics that focused closely on the municipal institutions and configurations of actors in a North American idiom have become increasingly redundant. Rapid urban growth and extending urban forms give rise to new territories of urban politics, including city-regions, operational landscapes, and large-scale developments. In reconfiguring the spaces of urban politics, attention needs to be directed to the wide range of transnational actors and practices, circulating policies as well as material and financial flows, which are key drivers of urban development and compose the field of urban politics. This chapter reviews accounts of the spatialities of urban politics. It then draws on empirical research on city strategies and on large-scale urban developments to propose ways in which the circuits, territories, and territorializations of the politics of urban development might be conceptualized. At the same time, emergent territories of urban politics provide the justification and grounds for wider comparative analyses and theory-building across diverse, specific urban contexts.
