Teaching urban geography after the southern urban critique

Abstract

This chapter deals with a brief examination of how southern cities are typically represented in urban geography textbooks, mindful that this is a proxy and surely neither a perfect measure of how urban geography is taught nor of how the sub-discipline is conceptualized. Unsurprisingly, the urban geography textbooks we analyzed focus primarily on cities in the global north. The global north is often used as a reference point to which the global south is compared; the inverse is notably absent from all the texts. Explicit attention to calls for greater spatial plurality in urban geography is limited. There are very pragmatic concerns increasing the scope of urban geography by simply adding more text on southern cities. In the spirit of comparative urbanism, similar methodologies and presentation styles might usefully draw attention to the diversity of global urban life.