While cities are expanding, ‘gateways’ into official discourses have narrowed. In response, the contributors to this anthology prise open the urban field, making its complexities explicit, and allowing new and divergent ideas, practices and sites of knowledge to surface. Collectively they suggest the need, and potential of, a transformation in our approaches to new urban realities, through a timely injection of optimism, creativity, rigour and collaboration.
Critical Cities: Ideas, Knowledge and Agitation from Emerging Urbanists Volume 1 is the first in a series of books produced by urban platform, This Is Not A Gateway, in association with independent publisher Myrdle Court Press. It brings together a collection of critical papers, visual essays, transcripts of recorded conversations and actions by emerging urbanists. The publication draws its contributors from a wide variety of fields, including law, architecture, film, community organising, art and academia.