Urban Cosmopolitics ─ Agencements, Assemblies, Atmospheres

Bringing together cutting-edge studies into a range of contemporary sites of urban concern, this volume unfolds the collective research agenda of urban cosmopolitics in three directions: the relational constitution and political effects of urban technologies, infrastructures, and other material-semiotic agencies (agencements); the coming together of new urban concerns, constituencies, and publics (assemblies); and the coalescing of urban practices into shared spaces of co-existence, life-support, and survival (atmospheres). Together, we assert, this exploration of urban cosmopolitics amounts to a ‘strong program’ of urban studies, allowing us to shed new light on key topics of contemporary research, including urban planning and citizen publics; economic dynamics and constraints; street life and the everyday; built environment dynamics and differentiations; and disasters, risks, and sustainable transitions.

Anders Blok is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and co-author ofBruno Latour: Hybrid Thoughts in a Hybrid World (Routledge, 2011).

Ignacio Farias is Assistant Professor in the Munich Center for Technology in Society and the Faculty of Architecture at the Technische Universitat, Munchen, Germany. He is co-editor ofUrban Assemblages: How Actor-Network Changes Urban Studies (Routledge, 2009).