Cities Rethought

A new Urban Disposition: Gautam Bhan | Michael Keith | Susan Parnell | Edgar Pieterse

The recently published book titled “Cities Rethought: A new Urban Disposition” by Gautam Bhan, Michael Keith, Susan Parnell, Edgar Pieterse offers an approach that moves away from a prescribed idea of “the city” as a central object and incisive exploration of contemporary urban transformation, with a specific approach to the intersections with fresh thoughts. This collective work emphasizes the multifaceted nature of cities as sites of opportunity and detriment, underlining the pressing need for a critical examination of urban policies that shape social relations within urban landscapes (Bhan, Keith, Parnell and Pietarse, 2024).

The book contains four chapters, An Urban Disposition, Normative Locations, Analytical Redescriptions, Operational moves. The urban disposition seeking for an orientation towards being in and understanding the world either instinctively or cultivated which allows shift ways of perception and action. The building of urban knowledge and practice through urban disposition. The normative location brings the central question of “why do I do what I do?” It reorients the “why” in terms of values and approaches that lie behind it. The normative locations bring various sources individual to collective, social to economic realities, geographical to historical which are not static or fixed when challenged against the norms of other cities. The analytical re-description attempts to describe “how we know”, and takes on urban problem and considers it from different angles, through different eyes. The operational moves turn to broad sense of what is variously called doing, practice or ways of moving. It is not seeking solution, rather it attempts to articulate and orient our relationship to our own practice over time i:e “ how should one think about what to do”.

The book attempts to challenge pre-conceived notions of “what we know” and critically reflect on the very idea of “the urban.” It engages in a broad theoretical debate on urbanism, examining both Northern and Southern cities in a generous yet insightful manner. The discourse is shaped through collaborative, critical, committed, and inventive approaches.

Image Credit: Manoj Parmar Architects