The Experimental City by James Evans

The Experimental City by James Evans

This book explores how the concept or urban experimentation is being used to reshape practices of knowledge production in urban debates about resilience, climate change governance, and socio-technical transitions.

With contributions from leading scholars, and case studies from the Global North and South, from small- to large-scale cities, this book suggests that urban experiments offer novel modes of engagement, governance, and politics that both challenge and complement conventional strategies. The book is organized around three cross-cutting themes. Part I explores the logics of urban experimentation, different approaches, and how and why they are deployed. Part II considers how experiments are being staged within cities, by whom, and with what effects. Part III examines how entire cities or groups of cities are constructed as experiments.

This book develops a deeper and more socially and politically nuanced understanding of how urban experiments shape cities and drive wider changes in society, providing a framework to examine the phenomenon of urban experimentation in conceptual and empirical detail.

"If the much talked about politics of green transformations during the post-2009 era is to be more than another fad, it will have to find traction in the world’s cities where the majority of the population now livesThis book convincingly argues that this is starting to happen as ‘urban experiments’ mushroom across the global regions of the world. This first provocative review of the evolutionary potential of these actually existing processes of change starts off in Chapter 2 with a remarkably useful definition of ‘urban experimentation’ that is then explored by people from many different disciplines and perspectives. The analyses emerging from this book raise the possibility that ‘urban experimentation’ may well be the emergent mode of governance that replaces both bureaucratic managerialism and the business-led public-private partnerships that underpinned neo-liberal corporatism and splintered urbanism. Entrepreneurs, innovators and knowledge networks become the new players in a world where cities become laboratories for the future." Professor Mark Swelling, Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development in the School of Public Leadership, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

"Students, researchers and practioners will find inspiration in this text from the extremely clear and succinct theorisations in section one, the illustrative case studies in section two and the insightful reflections in section three. While undoubtedly the collection reveals conceptual and empirical gaps in the field, this in itself is also productive in suggesting new directions for research and understanding." – Robert Shaw, Newcastle University, UK

James Evans is a Professor of Geography at the School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester, UK.

Andrew Karvonen is Assistant Professor in Urban and Regional Studies at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

Rob Raven is Professor of Institutions and Transitions at Utrecht University, the Netherlands.