This book engages with the thorny question of global urban political agency. It critically assesses the now popular statement that in the context of paralysed and failing nation state governments, cities can and will provide leadership in addressing global challenges. Cities can act politically on the global scale, but the analysis of global urban political agency needs to be firmly embedded in the field of urban studies. Collectively, the chapters in this volume contextualize urban agency in time and space and pluralize it by looking at how urban agency is nurtured through coalitions between a wide range of public and private actors. The authors develop and critically assess the conceptual underpinnings of the notion of global urban political agency from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. The second part contains several (theoretically informed) empirical analyses of global urban political agency in cities around the globe. This book geographically expands analysis by looking beyond global cities in diverse contexts. It is highly recommended reading for scholars in the fields of international relations and urban studies who are looking for an interdisciplinary and empirically grounded understanding of global urban political agency, in a diversity of contexts and a plurality of forms.

Disclosing elite ecologies: Methodologies for "Doing" Urban Elite Research offers a set of methodologies to chart urban elites. Whereas most research has focused on the global super-rich, this book pays specific attention to the multidimensional urban geographies of elite reproduction and transformation, as elites depend on urban contexts for capital accumulation, consumption and leisure, and housing. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach to the topic, contributing authors discuss various theoretical and methodological antecedents in urban studies and related areas of research that have investigated economic elites. Building on, but also moving beyond these bodies of literature, the book rejects a-priori definitions of the size and shape of this social group and instead pursues relational, place specific conceptualizations of elite composition and behavior. In particular, the contributions to the volume show that urban elite research benefits from paying more attention to: (i) boundary work between elites and non-elites; (ii) intra-elite competition and distinction; (iii) national state spaces in determining elite composition; and (iv) the urban sense of belonging of economic elites. This extensive volume provides readers with various empirical inroads into the study of urban elites drawing on research set in Brussels, Fez, London, Lyon, Madrid, Manchester, Milan, New York City, Paris, and Porto Alegre. Taking inspiration from urban and economic geography, elite theory and urban sociology, cultural sociology, political economy, anthropology, criminology, architecture, and migration studies, this book aims to open up the opportunity for methodological cross-fertilization. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Urban Geography.

Disclosing elite ecologies: Methodologies for "Doing" Urban Elite Research offers a set of methodologies to chart urban elites. Whereas most research has focused on the global super-rich, this book pays specific attention to the multidimensional urban geographies of elite reproduction and transformation, as elites depend on urban contexts for capital accumulation, consumption and leisure, and housing. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach to the topic, contributing authors discuss various theoretical and methodological antecedents in urban studies and related areas of research that have investigated economic elites. Building on, but also moving beyond these bodies of literature, the book rejects a-priori definitions of the size and shape of this social group and instead pursues relational, place specific conceptualizations of elite composition and behavior. In particular, the contributions to the volume show that urban elite research benefits from paying more attention to: (i) boundary work between elites and non-elites; (ii) intra-elite competition and distinction; (iii) national state spaces in determining elite composition; and (iv) the urban sense of belonging of economic elites. This extensive volume provides readers with various empirical inroads into the study of urban elites drawing on research set in Brussels, Fez, London, Lyon, Madrid, Manchester, Milan, New York City, Paris, and Porto Alegre. Taking inspiration from urban and economic geography, elite theory and urban sociology, cultural sociology, political economy, anthropology, criminology, architecture, and migration studies, this book aims to open up the opportunity for methodological cross-fertilization. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Urban Geography.

This book engages with the thorny question of global urban political agency. It critically assesses the now popular statement that in the context of paralysed and failing nation state governments, cities can and will provide leadership in addressing global challenges. Cities can act politically on the global scale, but the analysis of global urban political agency needs to be firmly embedded in the field of urban studies. Collectively, the chapters in this volume contextualize urban agency in time and space and pluralize it by looking at how urban agency is nurtured through coalitions between a wide range of public and private actors. The authors develop and critically assess the conceptual underpinnings of the notion of global urban political agency from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. The second part contains several (theoretically informed) empirical analyses of global urban political agency in cities around the globe. This book geographically expands analysis by looking beyond global cities in diverse contexts. It is highly recommended reading for scholars in the fields of international relations and urban studies who are looking for an interdisciplinary and empirically grounded understanding of global urban political agency, in a diversity of contexts and a plurality of forms.