In This Issue

Struggles over urban commons take various forms, as do attempts to turn them into exclusive and profitable investment schemes. As urban space has increasingly become a site of capital investment and accumulation, many cities in both the global North and South are marked by a process of ongoing uneven development. The diverse practices associated with this process, their devastating effects on the less privileged urban populations, and their manifestations in the built environment are once again documented and conceptualized in the pages of IJURR in this issue. State-led transformation projects, neoliberal rationalities, policy mobilities, rent seeking speculative ventures and austerity policies are some of the factors that contribute to this uneven production of urban space. So are ethnic conflicts, practices of othering and deliberate discursive strategies that divide, mark and stigmatize certain groups by selectively appealing to history, heritage, community or social mixing. Gentrification and displacement, spatial segregation and lack of affordable housing, abandoned public works that were once seen as signs of modernization are some of the manifestations of these practices in the built environment. But these practices also generate unruly ones that resist and contest this form of city making. What are the challenges facing such struggles? How can urban scholars develop theoretical and methodological tools that will help them expose the forces behind ongoing uneven development in cities, their effects on urban populations, and their contestation through various forms of political mobilization?

— Mustafa Dikeç