Doing Global Urban Research

In the exciting recent whirl of theorising cities and urbanisation through new globalised and planetary configurations, empirical underpinnings have often struggled to keep pace. This much needed collection addresses this issue head-on offering a carefully assembled and importantly pluralistic set of tools, techniques and insights to guide and inspire new and enhanced routes into global urban research. -- Andrew Harris This agenda-setting volume provides a cohesive, candid, and conceptually rich perspective on global urban research. Emerging and established scholars share insights about their methods, ethics, and research practices. These interdisciplinary perspectives make Doing Global Urban Research a valuable and provocative resource for researchers interested in global urban analysis. -- Michael Glass This is a landmark volume addressing the issue of the cumulative global significance and impacts of the majority of the world's population living in cities. Under Harrison and Hoyler's leadership, Doing Global Urban Research unlocks new intellectual and political territory to reconfigure the debates on why and how cities matter now and into the future. -- Susan Parnell The cities of the world and the world of cities have transformed rather dramatically in the past half century. Instead of offering rather frictionless theorizing on these changes, this volume offers a very useful and highly reflective guide to do actual empirical research on a wide range of topics related to global urban studies. -- Robert C. Kloosterman Although there are myriad texts about cities, very few provide useful guidance on how and why to research them. Harrison and Hoyler's 'Doing Global Urban Research' does just that: it provides novice and seasoned scholars alike with a range of approaches to researching cross-cutting urban themes at the global scale. Highly recommended to those interested in researching cities from geographical, sociological, historical, and/or planning disciplinary lenses, particularly as looking 'across' methodological and theoretical perspectives has great potential to enhance research bridging the global and urban scales. -- Thomas Sigler While globalization has become a common subject of the social sciences, the practice of doing global urban studies has been neglected so far. This book provides a good sense of how to deal with this, both for students and researchers. -- Markus Hesse