Comparison and community engagement: post-politics meets post-colony and state entrepreneurialism. Introduction to the special feature

Abstract

Rapid urban growth and ubiquitous experiences of extending and dispersed urban forms give rise to new territories of urban politics, including large-scale developments which have significant impacts on communities. Given the commitment that many urban scholars have to community based and social justice-oriented research, the possibility to build understandings of these developments from the perspective of community-based actors is a high priority. But comparative analysis and theory-building across diverse community experiences presents methodological and analytical challenges. This introduction presents a collection of papers which initiated comparative analyses of community engagements in large-scale urban developments on three grounds. Firstly, allowing understandings from one urban context to ‘speak’ to another in an open comparative strategy provided a framework for activist and practitioner-led analysis including direct learning between practitioners. Secondly, new trajectories of reading literature from each context into the others disrupted the hegemony of northern theoretical approaches. And, thirdly, collaborative comparative empirical analyses of community engagement in large-scale urban developments extended the range of more formal insights on urban governance and community-based politics across three diverse contexts. Notably, papers in this collection emphasize consensus-building and collaboration alongside negotiation and contestation, all expanding community-based ‘voice’ and presence within urban politics.