The Urban Age

Abstract

An urban age has been widely declared in scholarship, policy, and popular discourse. Two contemporary discussions are to be distinguished in the contemporary “urban age”: first, a popular urban commentary (“urbanology”); and second, currents of scholarship that are widening to embrace other disciplines, where the claims of a global urban age are extended, debated, and contested. Critics doubt the sweeping positivity of much popular urban age commentary as well as its concentration within Global North discourses and outlooks. Furthermore, postpositivist perspectives, despite their internal differences, share an antipathy for universalist accounts of the urban age. Instead, critical emphasis i..