Doing urban geography in times of crisis: introduction to the forum “Urban geography in times of crisis”

Abstract

Crises dominate current political debates. They shift the spaces of possibility for geographical research practice and global theory formation. Our starting point in this forum is the diagnosis of a dual crisis: on the one hand, the epistemological crisis put forth in post- and decolonial scholarship and, on the other hand, the ubiquity of worldly crises – variously described as the pluri-crisis, polycrisis, or socio-ecological crisis. This pervasiveness poses new questions about how the entanglement of these diagnoses operates in the realm of geographical knowledge practice. Clearly, crisis phenomena have always conditioned the production of geographical knowledge. As crises restrict mobility or create precarious working conditions, they have not only shaped the everyday research life of many scholars worldwide, but also defined current knowledge (production) through the absence of certain scholars' voices at international conferences or in international publications. Having patterned global theory formation in this way, crises are firmly embedded in any knowledge canon. This forum discusses the transformation of urban geography in times of multiple crises. In our introductory reflections, we highlight some of the forum contributions' crosscutting insights, weave a common thread through this dialogue, and discuss obstacles to as well as critical resources necessary when rethinking and possibly changing practices of knowledge production.