ABSTRACT

The notion of ‘untamed urbanisms’ is a subtle theme that pervades many recent contributions to urban theory. It resonates with Harvey’s (2012) reading of the untameability of capitalist urbanization; Brenner, Marcuse and Mayer’s (2011) call to recentre critical urban theory on the production of cities for people, not for profit; Brenner’s most recent Lefebvrian reading of the uneven implosions and explosions of planetary urbanization (2013); Edensor and Jayne’s invitation to challenge the universal application of theories of Western cities to a world of cities (2012); Robinson’s call to examine the heterogeneity of practices that make cities and urban life (2006); McFarlane’s exploration of urban learning as a political and practical, yet neglected, domain and how different environments facilitate or inhibit learning (2011); and Tonkiss, who argues that the social life of cities is shaped by ‘actors [who] engage creatively in the logistics and politics of urban life in ways that go beyond the masterplan, the design commission and the competition entry, and which confuse any easy distinction between the expert and the ordinary, the technical and the amateur, the formal and the informal’ (2013: 10).