📚 Friday Reads from IJURR

This week’s review spotlights City of Desire by Tanzil Shafique.

🔍 Reviewer Ihnji Jon (Cardiff University)

📝 Read the full review:
www.ijurr.org/book_review/...

📢 Now in Early View:

The Aesthetics of Urban Metabolism: Landscape, Design and the Politics of In/Visibility

By Ben Platt & Zuhri James

👉 www.ijurr.org/article/the-...

📢 Now in Early View:

What Does It Take to ‘Accept’ Urban Shrinkage? A Comparative Analysis of Discursive Pathways to Policy and Action on Shrinking Cities in the Netherlands and Finland

By Marjan Marjanović & Johanna Lilius

👉 www.ijurr.org/article/what...

📢 Now in Early View:

Integrating Urban Land Use Planning with Food Systems in Australia: Policy Integration Challenges and Opportunities

By Lijun Summerhayes & Douglas Baker

👉 www.ijurr.org/article/inte...

📢 Now in Early View:

Plotting New Middle-Class Aspirations: ‘Outlaw’ Builders of Market-Rate Affordable Homes in Chennai’s Agrarian Urban Frontier

By Ramya Ramanath & K.P. Manikandan

👉 www.ijurr.org/article/plot...

🌍 What’s happening in your city right now? The Urban Now is open for contributions

We’re inviting short, sharp reflections on urgent urban issues. Send us your ideas and join the conversation shaping cities today.

👉 www.ijurr.org/the-urban-now/

Intervention:

In The Power of Critical Engagement, María José Álvarez reflects on research amid inequality, arguing for knowledge from the South—especially problem-solving knowledge—as foundational to urban theory.

By @majoalriv.bsky.social

📖 ijurr.org/article/the-...

Intervention:

Infrastructural Extensions shows how infrastructure now reaches into care, ecology, technology and even cognition—reshaping urban life and governance in times of crisis.

By Simon Marvin, Colin McFarlane & Jonathan Rutherford

📖 ijurr.org/article/infr...

Are cities good or bad for the climate?

In Planet at the End of the City, Kian Goh rethinks urban theory through planetary boundaries, climate change, and socio-natural transformation.

📖 www.ijurr.org/article/plan...

Motivations of Citizens and Environmental NGOs examines how values, responsibility and agency drive the co-production of urban greenspaces in Beijing.

By Luquan Liang, Jennifer Day & Sun Sheng Han

📖 www.ijurr.org/article/moti...

See how Chinese central government did to enable the public capture land value increase and fund urban infrastructure delivery.

By Nannan Xu

📖 www.ijurr.org/article/chin...

“Industrial District Transitions” analyzes how zoning shapes agglomeration and industrial gentrification in changing urban industrial zones, drawing on comparative research in Melbourne.

By Carl Grodach, Elizabeth Taylor, Joe Hurley & Declan Martin

📖 www.ijurr.org/article/indu...

🎉 2025 IJURR Best Article goes to Expert Fixers: Bureaucratic Informality, Brokerage and the Politics of Land in Mumbai by Sangeeta Banerji.

👉 www.ijurr.org/best-article...

The article examines how the sponsorship of temporary art at Berlin construction sites advances land speculation and gentrification while rebranding the real estate sector amid the city’s housing crisis.

By Claudia Seldin

📖 www.ijurr.org/article/temp...

🌍🏘️📍 Check out Gatekeepers of the Urban Margin, a new Urban Now contribution.

By Divine M Asafo, Austin Dziwornu Ablo, Godwin Odikro & Pln. Abubakar Mohammed-Mubeen

🔗 www.ijurr.org/the-urban-no...

“The Potential of Archives in Informal Placemaking” explores how commons-based archival practices can regenerate former mental asylums as living urban spaces and sites of collective memory.

By Gozde Yildiz & Francesca Bianchi

📖 www.ijurr.org/article/the-...

“Force and Aspiration” examines how mobility—rather than income or tenure alone—shapes class formation on the rapidly changing peripheries of Addis Ababa.

By Tom Goodfellow, Metadel Sileshi Belihu & Zhengli Huang

📖 www.ijurr.org/article/forc...

“Narratives of Smart Urbanism” examines how storytelling is used to legitimize the digitalization of urban public services and advance political agendas in Polish cities.

By Mateusz Trochymiak, Anna Domaradzka, Monika Berdys & Celina Strzelecka

📖 www.ijurr.org/article/narr...

“Smart Cities Beyond Methodological Cityism” analyzes how smart city agendas in Southeast Asia operate as national development strategies, rescaling the ‘urban’ through branding and scalar flexing.

By Prerona Das, Orlando Woods & Lily Kong

📖 www.ijurr.org/article/smar...

“How Non-Residents Derail Defensive Development” examines how school choice and non-resident attachments can disrupt community-led efforts to resist gentrification in Coral Gables, Florida.

By Aarti Mehta-Kroll

📖 www.ijurr.org/article/how-...

“The Construction State Unbound?” presents an analysis of greenbelt deregulation and real estate–led urbanization in Seoul, highlighting the role of the construction state and social struggle.

By Laam Hae & Jamie Doucette

📖 www.ijurr.org/article/the-...

Surface Tensions presents an ethnographic analysis of how roads and potholes shape political subjectivities, inequality, and everyday driving in urban India.

By Sneha Annavarapu

📖 www.ijurr.org/article/surf...

The Contested Urbanism of Abandonment offers a comparative analysis of how abandonment shapes divergent social and spatial trajectories in two deindustrializing Detroit neighborhoods.

By Martin J. Murray, María Arquero de Alarcón & Olaia Chivite Amigo

📖 www.ijurr.org/article/the-...

📢 Explore the new January issue — now available online!

👉 www.ijurr.org/issue/vol-50...

📚 Friday Reads from IJURR 🎉

This week’s intraview features Das Ende rechter Räume (The End of Right-Wing Spaces) by Autor*innenkollektiv Terra-R.

🔍 Reviewer: Stefan Kipfer (York University, Toronto)

📝 Read the full intraview:
www.ijurr.org/book_review/...

📢 Also available in Early View:

Relational Politics of Urban Metabolism: The Solidarity of City and Non-City Inhabitants in Java, Indonesia

By Isnu Putra Pratama, Delik Hudalah, Haryo Winarso, Tim Bunnell

👉 www.ijurr.org/article/rela...

📢 Now in Early View:

Smart City Control Rooms: The Rewiring of Local Governance Landscapes in India

By Devika Prakash, Andrew Karvonen & Jonathan Metzger

👉 www.ijurr.org/article/smar...

📢 Now in Early View:

Force and Aspiration: Mobility and Class Formation on the Peripheries of Addis Ababa

By Tom Goodfellow, Metadel Sileshi Belihu & Zhengli Huang

👉 www.ijurr.org/article/forc...

📢 Now in Early View:

Industrial District Transitions: Agglomeration and Gentrification in Urban Industrial Zones

By Carl Grodach, Elizabeth Taylor, Joe Hurley & Declan Martin

👉 www.ijurr.org/article/indu...

📢 Now in Early View:

Temporary Artwashing at the Construction Site: Curating Gentrification through Real Estate Marketing in Berlin

By Claudia Seldin

👉 www.ijurr.org/article/temp...