Comparing apples and oranges: a colloquium on international comparative urban research, Hospitalhof Stuttgart, 15–16 January 2015

Abstract

It is common practice to conduct international comparison in urban research, though anyone who has been involved in such work knows that it faces a number of challenges. To discuss this, a two-day colloquium with presentations and discussions was held in Stuttgart, Germany in January 2015. During the introduction, co-organiser Stefan Siedentop explained that the colloquium was part of ongoing comparative research on reurbanisation in the US and Germany.Kevin Ward (University of Manchester) started the colloquium with a talk titled 'Towards a relational comparative approach to cities'. He argued that over recent years there has been growing awareness amongst local urban policy makers of how their cities and regions compare with other places in the world, leading to a growing interest in international comparison and ranking. He explained this by reference to four very different thematic areas in which ideas have travelled internationally: smart cities, securitisation, drugs policy and waterfront regeneration. Kevin then argued that in addition to the common comparison from above one should also consider comparison with an 'embedded' and 'through' approach referring to work on comparative urban analysis and assumptions about causality (Pickvance, 1986) and comparative urbanisms (Jacobs, 2012). Furthermore one should realise that sometimes one does not get clear answers but rather new questions.The next session, chaired by Thorsten Wiechmann (Technische Universitat, Dortmund), focused on comparing urban patterns. Leo van den Berg (Erasmus Universiteit, Rotterdam) started the session providing an overview of his experience with comparative urban studies in Europe. He first outlined key findings from the CURB (Costs of Urban Growth) project in which the theory of the urban lifecycle and the now well-known term reurbanisation was popularised (Van den Berg et al., 1982). Following this early work Euricur, the European Institute for Comparative Urban Research, was initially established in 1988 providing evidence for the new Eurocities network and for individual cities. While much of Euricur's work continued to focus on the urban lifecycle and understanding functional urban regions, other themes included the impact of high-speed rail, IT, safety/security topics, energy transitions, sustainable urban development and metropolitan governance capacity. The focus of their work is conducting international comparisons for one specific city and most of their projects start with an interesting and challenging problem. Cities are involved as participants, though in case the link with cities is too close there is a danger of bias.Following this, Dagmar Haase (Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin) presented her work on 'land-use patterns and multiple drivers across European cities - concepts, models and findings' based on work within the research network UGEC (Urbanisation and Global Environmental Change) and the urban-rural project PLUREL (Peri-urban Land Use Relationships). One key question of her work is to explore to what extent global urbanisation leads to further urban sprawl or further densification. There is a trend towards further middle class growth in urban areas, while the share of large cities is growing globally. Population decline, often described as shrinkage is mainly a trend observed in parts of Europe and Asia, driven by demographic changes. Land surface modelling suggests that the share of artificial surface might increase in the future. And while urbanisation is the key global trend, it is also important to focus attention on the rural-urban interface, as there is a risk of increasing sprawl in the process. Ageing population and changing sociocultural preferences are powerful drivers of future urbanisation patterns. In addition despite recent price falls, in the long-term rising oil prices and telecommunication are increasingly important factors. Hence there is a growing interest in urban-ness as a new concept beyond traditional land use definitions of urban land (Boone et al. …