Recovering the politics of the city

Abstract

This paper uses Jacque Rancière's understanding of politics to ask what makes cities political entities. We review existing urban geography debates to identify some of the defining features of urban politics and then subject them to critical questioning: are they actually political? The paper seeks to develop existing interpretations of Rancière's philosophy within geography to develop his ‘method of equality’ in order to recover the politics of the city. This identifies three necessary components of critical urban scholarship in order that it transcends critique and works towards making democratic politics possible.