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HUMAN GEOGRAPHY  2018, Vol. 33 Issue (1): 8-15,84    DOI: 10.13959/j.issn.1003-2398.2018.01.002
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A REVIEW OF COMPARATIVE URBAN STUDY IN THE EARLIER 21ST CENTURY
QIU Ying-zhi1, LIU Yi1, LIN Sai-nan2, LI Zhi-gang2
1. College of Geographic Science and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China;
2. Urban Design College, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China

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Abstract  Against the context of planetary urbanization, the global landscape restructuring is ongoing, especially in the Global South. This new and diverse urban landscape is beyond the explanatory power of traditional urban theories developed in the West. Accordingly, recent urban studies witness a revival and reorientation of comparative urban studies. Contemporary comparative urban study seeks to develop new epistemologies and methodologies to develop more cosmopolitan urban theories. Using the methods of text interpretation, inter-literature analysis together with CiteSpace, this paper reviews recent progress of comparative urban studies of the Anglo-Saxon world, to examine the definition and history of comparative urban study, its main research fields and recent developments. In details, we found five main research fields of contemporary comparative studies:urban theory, urban policy, urban development, urban problems and urban environment. While most coming from Anglo-Saxon countries, the number of authors in developing countries is increasing in recent five years. As a critical urban theory, contemporary comparative studies put efforts to make reorientation of urban theorization by criticizing key concepts of traditional urban theories. Firstly, the intertwining of modernity and developmentalism in urban theory has established assumptions about incommensurability of wealthier and poorer cities which are taken for granted. Comparative urban study criticizes such incommensurability of wealthier and poorer cities in terms of knowledge production for cities. Second, scale is conceived of cartographically, a fixed metric as on a map in traditional literature, which neglects the social dimensions of scale and inter-scalar dynamics. The third weakness is the ontological treatment of cities as discrete, self-enclosed and analytically separate objects. Finally, cities have to be theorized as open and relational.
Key wordscomparative urbanism      urban theory      postcolonial urbanism      revitalization      CiteSpace     
Received: 21 December 2016     
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http://rwdl.xisu.edu.cn/EN/10.13959/j.issn.1003-2398.2018.01.002      OR     http://rwdl.xisu.edu.cn/EN/Y2018/V33/I1/8
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