The ivorine tower in the city: Engaging urban studies after The Wire

The Wire has been viewed as a panoptic and institutional dissection of the dysfunctions of late capitalist urbanism. The accomplishment and totality of this vision has perhaps provoked introspection by academics pondering their internal efficacy (engaging students through teaching) and external relevance (through the communication of research around urban problems). On both of these fronts, academic work arguably faces a crisis as new media forms of this kind compete to 'teach’ audiences about the city. We argue that this raises two key implications. First, that The Wire and its ilk represent a more public accessing of many of the social problems that urban studies has traditionally monitored. This suggests a need for more andragogic modes of teaching that lead mature audiences, both inside and outside the academy, toward greater understandings of urban problems. Second, the series can be related to sociological perspectives that have challenged university‐based research to be critical, relevant and of utility to deprived communities (and of a distinct hue from others stemming from government and business). We argue for elongated research and short‐term engagement practices to produce a synthetic, or ivorine, tower that, while appearing distant from public debates, works effectively in both domains.