Global Urban Politics

Julie-Anne Boudreau is Associate Professor in the Urbanisation Culture Société Research Centre at the National Institute for Scientific Research (INRS), Montreal.

"This is a major book: one that is set to change the field in important ways. It is brief, challenging, informative, and accessible. There is hardly anyone who has the breadth of knowledge and experience that Julie-Anne Boudreau has, and few indeed who can bring such acute analytical insights to the work at hand. This book is a very important contribution to the literature. I would use it as a principal text for any course on urban politics."—Warren Magnusson, University of Victoria"In Global Urban Politics, Julie-Anne Boudreau has produced a synthesis of theory and observation to provide a strikingly original understanding of the urban. Seeing the urban as demarcated by practices rather than boundaries, she provides important insights into the nature of politics in the present era."—Susan S. Fainstein, Harvard University Graduate School of Design

• Figures xiAcknowledgements xiiIntroduction 1Defining the urban 7Defining the contours of an alternative field of urban political studies 15Organization of the book 191 Where are the Global Urban Politics? 23Where are the urban politics? From municipalism to a new political ontology 25Where are politics? Urban life is political life 33Changing relations to space: bounded and networked political spaces 34Changing relations with time: non-linear conceptions of political change 38La Paz, Bolivia 43Changing relationship with affective rationalities: from calculative decision-making to affective politics 45Where is the global in urban politics? Uneven connections and power relations 53Informalization of the state 58Conclusion 612 Global Urban Social Movements: Emerging Forms of Political Action 65What are global urban social movements? 70Why and how do we become politically engaged? Discordant moments, mobility practices and continuity with everyday life 78Emerging forms of urban political mobilization 90Youthfulness and urban political action 92'Open-ended urbanisms' 96Dégagisme or the politics of anti-power 98Conclusion 1003 Global Diversity Politics: Thinking Citizenship 102Cities as 'difference machines': from managing diversity in cities to difference as constitutive of urbanity 105The routes of undocumented immigrants, the neighbour and the identity card 109The smuggling routes of socio-economic crisis, patriarchy and urbanity 113Rethinking citizenship 116Conclusion 1254 Global Environmental Politics: Multiple Conceptions of Time 127Local environmental conflicts: engaging various conceptions of time 132The temporalities of the 'project': directional trajectory and duration 136The temporalities of financing: pace 137The temporalities of inhabiting new spaces: cycles 139The temporalities of environmental degradation: directional trajectory clashing with circular metabolic cycles 141Alternative temporalities and political action 142Global environmental politics: articulating metabolic flows at various speeds and scales 144A changing conception of time affecting the political process 147Conclusion 1485 Global Urban Security Politics: Re-emerging Rationalities of Action 150Urban nightmares: home security and alien invasions 153Affective micro-politics and re-emerging forms of political action 157Conclusion 167Conclusion: Global Urban Politics and the Informalization of the State 171Critical urban studies: pragmatism between postcolonialism and structuralism 176Political action and moral ambiguity: thinking in terms of stabilizing regimes 179Notes 185Bibliography 191Index 207