Why engaged critical urban research must place scholar policy activism at its core

Abstract

I welcome and endorse Loretta Lees' call for a reconstituted critical urban studies tradition predicated upon polyvocal, intersectoral and co-produced research, dialogues and dialoguing and concurrent and compounding critical intelligences. In this short commentary, I make the case for placing scholar policy activism at the heart of such a tradition. I explore how and why critical urban research has come to view executive power as its arch nemesis. I argue that continued estrangement and jousting between the architects of radical praxis and those of policy practice is indefensible. I scope the contours of a new generation of policy engaged critical scholarship. We can no longer in good conscience fire missiles from inside the ivory tower and outside of the governing tent in the hope that better cities will result. If we are to be serious about ‘shaking up the city’, we will need to work with and on sources of power – to immerse ourselves in the epistemic communities which enjoy dominion over policy registers – and recalibrate the urban ‘partition of the sensible’.