2016/10/06 by Eugene McCann · 119 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Engineering · Social Sciences · #Architecture #Citizenship #Civil engineering #Corporate governance #Economic geography #Economic growth #Economics #Engineering #Environmental ethics #Framing (construction) #Geography #Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism #Law #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Sociology #Urban Planning and Governance #Urban planning #Urban studies #Urbanism #Urbanization #Water Governance and Infrastructure
paper · doi:10.1177/0042098016670046
published in Urban Studies 54(2), 312-326 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2016/10/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/27
Governance has been a key concept in urban studies since the late 1980s. This paper reflects on its use and development over the past 25 years and identifies contemporary innovations and concerns that will likely define the future of urban governance studies. The paper argues that to fully understand the impacts of governance approaches on our understanding of cities, urban regions and global urbanism, we must address how urbanism, rather than urbanisation, is governed. An attention to urbanism highlights a wider range of scholarly work on how the mutually constitutive relationships between the development of built environments and the identities, practices, struggles and opportunities of everyday social life are governed. In introducing 15 contributions from the archives of Urban Studies, the paper employs a heuristic framing – urban governance studies (UGS) 1.0, 2.0, and beyond – to show that, while governance as a contemporary critical concept gained prominence through the work of Marxian political economists concerned largely with urbanisation (UGS 1.0), other work, analysing the governance of other aspects of urbanism, including identity and citizenship (UGS 2.0), also has a significant history. The paper then points to ways in which urban governance studies grapple with future-defining challenges, such as climate change, and new framings, such as the ‘smart city’, while extending the scope of their analyses both temporally and spatially. The paper concludes by pointing to gaps and potential topics for ongoing attention.