The Global Easts in global urbanism: views from beyond North and South

Abstract

Global urbanism tends to think cities in categories of “Global North” and “Global South”. But what about all those cities that escape easy classification into these hemispheric categories? Cities that could be said to belong to the Global Easts. This introduction to the special issue “The Global Easts in Global Urbanism: views from beyond North and South” shines a spotlight on cities in-between North and South. At the risk of being sidelined in debates in global urbanism, these cities have much to contribute to global theorizations of the urban. This introduction presents a group of articles that in different ways illustrate the breadth and depth of current research on urban and geographical knowledge production in and with the Global Easts. We specifically focus on one emergent convergence among urban research concerns, namely, problematizing the unidirectional teleology of a transition to an ideal type free market economy with democracy which is often at work with regard to cities in the Global Easts. The collected papers draw our attention to a number of co-existing temporalities and differing time coordinates and claim that it is high time for the Global Easts to contest their marginalization in the global academe.