Urban Geography, Relevance, and Resistance to the "Policy Turn"

Abstract

Disquiet about urban geography's alleged lack of policy substance and practical relevance has resurfaced in a range of recent writings. While useful, much of the debate tends to "blame the victim," in this instance, urban geography and geographers, for the inability to generate research of relevance and interest to policy. As the paper will argue, urban geography and geographers are not "free-floating" or able to determine, without constraint, the relevance of urban geographical research to the production of public policy. Urban geographers, and geographers more generally, are, therefore, advised to resist aspects of the "new turn" to policy and practice.