IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ijurrs/v45y2021i2p378-380.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

City Benchmarking, Globalized Urban Scholarship and the View from Above: Reflections on a Few Absences

Author

Listed:
  • Enora Robin

Abstract

In this short response I address Acuto et al.’s proposition to engage with the political economy of city benchmarking and rankings in order to show that critical urban scholarship can do better than ‘limiting itself to criticism’. I argue that such engagement would require deeper reflexion on the political economy of critical urban scholarship itself and the style of research needed. I also discuss the extent to which this engagement with cities’ comparative imagination as performed through benchmarks, rankings and indices runs the risk of overlooking other forms of global comparative endeavours happening outside of international urban solutions forums.

Suggested Citation

  • Enora Robin, 2021. "City Benchmarking, Globalized Urban Scholarship and the View from Above: Reflections on a Few Absences," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 378-380, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:45:y:2021:i:2:p:378-380
    DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12976
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12976
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1468-2427.12976?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jenny McArthur & Enora Robin, 2019. "Victims of their own (definition of) success: Urban discourse and expert knowledge production in the Liveable City," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(9), pages 1711-1728, July.
    2. Michele Acuto & Daniel Pejic & Jessie Briggs, 2021. "Taking City Rankings Seriously: Engaging with Benchmarking Practices in Global Urbanism," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 363-377, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michele Acuto & Daniel Pejic & Jessie Briggs, 2021. "Whose City Benchmarks? The Role of the Critical Urbanist in Comparative Urban Measuring," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 389-392, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rachel Bok, 2021. "Wayfinding in the Long Shadow of City Benchmarking: Or How to Manufacture (an Economy of) Comparability in the Global Urban," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 381-384, March.
    2. Bartzokas-Tsiompras, Alexandros & Bakogiannis, Efthimios & Nikitas, Alexandros, 2023. "Global microscale walkability ratings and rankings: A novel composite indicator for 59 European city centres," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    3. Vahid Javidroozi & Claudia Carter & Michael Grace & Hanifa Shah, 2023. "Smart, Sustainable, Green Cities: A State-of-the-Art Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-28, March.
    4. James Merricks White & Rob Kitchin, 2021. "For or Against ‘The Business of Benchmarking’?," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 385-388, March.
    5. Cristina Temenos, 2024. "FROM BUDAPEST TO BRUSSELS: Discursive and Material Failure in Mobile Policy," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 523-538, May.
    6. Katherine Perrott, 2020. "Does New Urbanism “Just Show Up”? Deliberate Process and the Evolving Plan for Markham Centre," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 388-403.
    7. Enora Robin & Laura Nkula-Wenz, 2021. "Beyond the success/failure of travelling urban models: Exploring the politics of time and performance in Cape Town’s East City," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 39(6), pages 1252-1273, September.
    8. Michele Acuto & Daniel Pejic & Jessie Briggs, 2021. "Taking City Rankings Seriously: Engaging with Benchmarking Practices in Global Urbanism," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 363-377, March.
    9. Agnieszka Ptak-Wojciechowska & Anna Januchta-Szostak & Agata Gawlak & Magda Matuszewska, 2021. "The Importance of Water and Climate-Related Aspects in the Quality of Urban Life Assessment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-24, June.
    10. Robert Martin, 2021. "AV futures or futures with AVs? Bridging sociotechnical imaginaries and a multi-level perspective of autonomous vehicle visualisations in praxis," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-15, December.
    11. Angela Pilogallo & Francesco Scorza & Beniamino Murgante, 2024. "Ecosystem Services-Based City Ranking in Italy: A Tool to Enhance Sustainable Thinking in Regeneration Strategies," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-17, June.
    12. Clara Irazábal & Paola Jirón, 2021. "Latin American smart cities: Between worlding infatuation and crawling provincialising," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(3), pages 507-534, February.
    13. Agata Gawlak & Magda Matuszewska & Agnieszka Ptak, 2021. "Inclusiveness of Urban Space and Tools for the Assessment of the Quality of Urban Life—A Critical Approach," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(9), pages 1-13, April.
    14. Katherine Perrott, 2020. "Does New Urbanism “Just Show Up”? Deliberate Process and the Evolving Plan for Markham Centre," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 388-403.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:45:y:2021:i:2:p:378-380. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0309-1317 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.