Thinkers
Urban thinkers are the authors —geographers, sociologists, architects, economists, journalists— whose ideas explain the city: from Engels and Howard to Jacobs, Lefebvre, Harvey, Sassen or Gehl. Every piece on this site that starts from one of them carries this tag and links to their profile.
Reading the city through its thinkers has one advantage: each formulated a question that remains open. Lefebvre, who has the right to the city; Jacobs, what makes a neighbourhood alive; Sassen, who runs the global economy; Ostrom, how the commons are governed. The thinkers directory orders them by section.
Videos on this term (280)
- Urban geopolitics
How do cities intertwine in a globalized world?
A bus stop brings together strangers, a screen, cables, vehicles, noise and expectations for a few minutes. None of…
3 min read - Urban form
Learn how invisible borders define life in the neighborhoods
Two people pass each other on a street and take only seconds to decide how to behave. A glance can communicate…
3 min read - Urban AI
Michael Batty: How Models Reveal the Hidden Essence of Cities
Michael Batty explains the city as a complex system emerging from millions of decisions: fractals, scaling laws,…
Michael Batty 3 min read - Infrastructure
Brian Berry: Cities as an Invisible System of Connections
Brian J. L. Berry showed that cities form systems ranked by flows of goods, people and information: central places,…
Brian Berry 3 min read - Urban history
Christine Boyer: How the City Turns Memory into a Tool of Power
M. Christine Boyer shows in The City of Collective Memory that heritage and urban images are selected and…
Christine Boyer 3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Neil Brenner: Global Urbanization Goes Beyond City Borders
Neil Brenner argues that urbanization does not fit administrative boundaries: scale, state restructuring, extended…
Neil Brenner 3 min read - Surveillance / data
Urbanized Fear: Security, Segregation and Resistance in the City
Teresa Caldeira explains how fear designs the city: the talk of crime, fortified enclaves in São Paulo, the paradox…
3 min read - Urban economy
Castells: From Collective Consumption to the Space of Flows
Manuel Castells's urban thought moved from collective consumption and urban social movements to the network society…
Manuel Castells 3 min read - Housing
Jason Corburn and Street Science: Planning with the Neighbourhood
Jason Corburn proposes in Street Science combining technical knowledge with neighbourhood knowledge to plan healthy…
Jason Corburn 3 min read - Housing
Mike Davis: Risk Is Not Natural but a Construct of Power
Mike Davis argued that urban disasters are built before the emergency through segregation, speculation and unequal…
Mike Davis 3 min read - Infrastructure
Bent Flyvbjerg: Why Megaprojects Fail Despite a Rational Plan
Bent Flyvbjerg explains why megaprojects run over budget and time: power versus rationality in Aalborg, optimism…
Bent Flyvbjerg 3 min read - Urban ecology
Matthew Gandy: Urban Nature Reveals Power in the City
Matthew Gandy shows that water, waste, parks and expressways are nature produced by political decisions: urban…
Matthew Gandy 3 min read - Public space
Why Walking Makes Cities Livelier and Safer: Jan Gehl's Evidence
Walking is the basis of public life and safety. What Jan Gehl measured in Cities for People, his twelve quality…
Jan Gehl 3 min read - Urban AI
Proximity Transforms: Edward Glaeser on Productive Cities
Edward Glaeser explains why concentrating people and firms makes cities more productive: agglomeration, human…
Edward Glaeser 3 min read - Urban ecology
Unequal Connection: Stephen Graham and Technology in the City
Stephen Graham shows that transport, energy and data networks are a geography of power: fragmentation, bypass,…
Stephen Graham 3 min read - Urban economy
Capitalist Accumulation in Space: David Harvey and the Urban Struggle
David Harvey explains why capital keeps remaking the city: spatial fix, uneven development and housing as an asset.
David Harvey 3 min read - Urban psychology
Dolores Hayden: Transform Spaces, Transform Gender
Dolores Hayden shows how homes, suburbs and public memory reproduce gender inequality and how design can undo it.…
Dolores Hayden 3 min read - Urban economy
Jane Jacobs: How Life on the Streets Builds Safe and Vibrant Cities
Jane Jacobs argued that mixed uses, small blocks, old buildings and density keep streets alive and safe through…
Jane Jacobs 3 min read - Housing
Natalie Jeremijenko: The City as a Participatory Ecology Lab
Natalie Jeremijenko's devices make pollution and urban biodiversity visible so citizens can investigate and act.…
Natalie Jeremijenko 3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Rem Koolhaas: Manhattanism, Bigness and the Generic City
Rem Koolhaas explains what happens when the city grows faster than the planner's control: Manhattanism, Bigness,…
Rem Koolhaas 3 min read - Urban form
How Five Elements Make a City Legible and Accessible
Kevin Lynch's five elements, paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks, explain how people read a city, and…
3 min read - Urban AI
William J. Mitchell: The Future City, Information and Connection
William J. Mitchell anticipated in City of Bits, e-topia and Me++ the hybrid city of matter and information: the…
William J. Mitchell 3 min read - Public space
Why Cities Should Not Be Identical Models: Jennifer Robinson
Jennifer Robinson argues in Ordinary Cities that every city can produce theory and that judging them by the…
Jennifer Robinson 3 min read - Urban economy
Ananya Roy: The State Can Also Be Informal
Ananya Roy shows that urban informality is produced by the state as it tolerates, authorises or demolishes…
Ananya Roy 3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Why Cities Are the Key Nodes of Globalization: Saskia Sassen
Saskia Sassen explains why a dispersed economy needs global cities to coordinate it: command functions, social…
Saskia Sassen 3 min read - Public space
Richard Sennett's Open City: Open or Close the Public Space?
Richard Sennett defends the open city, designed for encounters with strangers, against closed enclosures. Ville and…
Richard Sennett 3 min read - Urban economy
AbdouMaliq Simone: People as the Infrastructure of the City
AbdouMaliq Simone shows that informal networks sustain urban life in the Global South: people as infrastructure,…
AbdouMaliq Simone 3 min read - Housing
The Rent Gap: How It Reveals When Gentrification Has Already Begun
Neil Smith's rent gap measures the difference between current and potential land rent and shows that gentrification…
3 min read - Urban economy
Why Some Cities Innovate and Others Do Not: Michael Storper
Michael Storper explains why some cities innovate and others do not: organisations, technologies and territories,…
Michael Storper 3 min read - Urban form
Mariana Valverde: How Small Rules Order Our City
Mariana Valverde shows that licences, zoning, regulations and policing produce urban order decision by decision.…
Mariana Valverde 3 min read - Housing
Wacquant: Advanced Urban Marginality and Territorial Stigma
Loïc Wacquant explains how precarisation, social retreat and the penal state produce advanced urban marginality,…
3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Fulong Wu: The Chinese State Still Leads Urban Transformation
Fulong Wu explains how China's shift to a market economy changed urban production without removing the state: land,…
Fulong Wu 3 min read - Housing
Sharon Zukin: How Culture Turns a Neighbourhood into a Product
Sharon Zukin explains how the symbolic economy raises a neighbourhood's value before prices rise: the sequence of…
Sharon Zukin 3 min read - Urban economy
Closed Shutters Close Businesses and Communities: The Ground Floor
Why a street full of homes can feel empty: Jacobs's eyes on the street, Klinenberg's Chicago heatwave, thousands of…
3 min read - Housing
What a Housing Bubble Is and Why It Is a Problem for the City
A housing bubble appears when price detaches from rents and wages and is sustained by credit and resale…
3 min read - Housing
The Real Cost of Living Away: More Than Rent
Cheap housing on the outskirts is paid in bus hours, fuel, care and lost opportunities: the H+T index, Carlos…
3 min read
