Publishers respond to growing need for collaboration by offering an open access home for interdisciplinary research.

The new journal Palgrave Communications aims to support interdisciplinary development by offering a high-quality outlet for research in the humanities, the social sciences and business, hoping to foster interaction, creativity and reflection within and between disciplines. Sam Burridge provides an initial overview of the new outlet. But developing truly collaborative research takes time, a feature with little appreciation in funding and policy demands, and dialogue. Editorial board member Michele Acuto finds that as we strive for truly interdisciplinary research, between social and natural sciences, and for truly global research, as a balanced dialogue between north and south, the issue of how and where we publish is an important facet of interdisciplinary development

The Foreign Policy of Cities

Over the last decade, cities have gained increasing prominence on the world stage. Simon Curtis and Michele Acuto show how and why cities are increasingly flexing their economic and political muscles, and discuss some of the constraints cities face in developing their own foreign policies, as well as the differences between city-based diplomatic activity and traditional state foreign policy. Finally, they discuss the significance of city diplomacy trends for thinking about the international system

Leading Cities

Leading Cities is a global review of the state of city leadership and urban governance today. Drawing on research into 202 cities in 100 countries, the book provides a broad, international evidence base grounded in the experiences of all types of cities. It offers a scholarly but also practical assessment of how cities are led, what challenges their leaders face, and the ways in which this leadership is increasingly connected to global affairs. Arguing that effective leadership is not just something created by an individual, Elizabeth Rapoport, Michele Acuto and Leonora Grcheva focus on three elements of city leadership: leaders, the structures and institutions that underpin them, and the tools used to drive change. Each of these elements are examined in turn, as are the major urban policy issues that leaders confront today on the ground. The book also takes a deep dive into one particular example of tool or instrument of city leadership – the strategic urban plan

Special Issue: Transcending (in)formal urbanism

In this introduction to the special issue ‘Transcending (in)formal urbanism’ we outline the important place that informal urbanism has acquired in urban theorising, and an agenda to further this standing towards an even more explicit role in defining how we research cities. We note how informality has frequently been perceived as the formal’s ‘other’ implying a necessary ‘othering’ of informality that creates dualisms between formal and informal, a localised informal and a globalising formal, or an informal resistance and a formal neoliberal control, that this special issue seeks to challenge. The introduction, and the issue, aim to prompt a dialogue across a diversity of disciplinary approaches still rarely in communication, with the goal of going beyond (‘transcending’) the othering of informality for the benefit of a more inclusive urban theory contribution. The introduction suggests three related steps that could help with transcending dualisms in the understanding of informality: first, to transcend the disciplinary boundaries that limit informal urbanism to the study of housing or the labour market; second, to transcend the way in which informality is understood as separate from the domain of the formal (processes, institutions, mechanisms); and, third, to transcend the way in which informality is so tightly held in relation to understandings of neoliberalism. Challenging where the confines of urban studies might be, we argue for informality to better serve and broaden the community of urban research towards a more global urban theorising, starting from situated experiences and including cross-disciplinary experimentation

Perspectives on the 21st Century Urban University from Singapore – A viewpoint forum

In this Cities viewpoint forum, we argue that there is a need to rethink U.S./U.K.-centric approaches to the urban university in policy and practice. Gathering three critical commentaries by practitioners from within the Singaporean higher education system, the forum responds to the challenges of: (1) broadened expectation placed on higher education institutions; (2) the pressures and possibilities of global urbanization; and (3) the provocation to theorize the urban, and thus the urban university, from beyond the ‘Global North’. Following an introduction detailing the history and relevance of the Singaporean case, the three viewpoints seek to illustrate the various dimensions of university urbanism in the ‘Lion City’. Each address what the idea of being an urban university means, and how it is operationalized in Singapore. Key policy and conceptual insights illuminate a higher education regime negotiating the tensions between national developmentalist agendas and the opportunities opened by global urban connectivity. Significantly, and in contrast to current urban university paradigms, we find Singapore\u27s university sector internalizing and operating with a particular technocratic urban ontology that, while partial, helps collapses the distinction between universities being ‘in’, ‘of’, or ‘for’ the city and opens new avenues to analyze and mobilize universities in urban(izing) society

Tacit networks, crucial care: Informal networks and disaster response in Nepal’s 2015 Gorkha earthquake

It is often reiterated that a better understanding of local networks and needs is key to risk reduction. Nevertheless, the crucial role of informal social networks and actors in the catering for human needs in disaster circumstances remains largely under-explored. If we have to rethink the ‘work’ that informality does for our understanding of urban areas, its contribution to resilience, and take it seriously in the ‘full spectrum of risk’ in urban and peri-urban centres, better and more balanced methods are needed. This paper attends to this gap. Examining the mechanisms of aid provision in the aftermath of the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake in Nepal, it details an experimental set of quantitative research methods to explore the role of informal social networks in the provision of critical human needs in natural disasters. Relying on a sample of 160 households across four districts and 16 villages in the built environment affected by the Gorkha earthquake, the paper reveals that, overall, a wide disparity exists in the comparative importance of organisations in the provision of aid and resources. Much crucial after-disaster care is catered for by a mix of relatives, temples, friends, neighbours and local clubs. It highlights the importance of informal networks in understanding, and theorising, governance (of disaster and of the ‘urban’ more in general), and calls for greater attention to its role. It is time, it argues, to revalue informal disaster governance networks as a crucial, not tacit, component of disaster response

Exorcising Malthusian ghosts: Vaccinating the Nexus to advance integrated water, energy and food resource resilience

Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus interactions vary from seemingly negative and intractable wicked problems to opportunities for enhanced sustainability. The aim of this paper is to review the current state of understanding on WEF resource interactions and to provide a roadmap to enhance integrated resource management. A qualitative perspective based on expert insight and experience was supported by a more quantitative systematic analysis of the literature to define Nexus interactions, describe the nature of different challenges, and explore the factors that influence them. We found that Nexus challenges, and associated interactions (e.g. trade-offs and synergies), vary with complexity and spatial and temporal scale, and biases in research and culture act as barriers to progress. An interdisciplinary approach is needed to develop technical solutions employed through the use of orchestrated shocks (e.g. historic analogues, predictive modelling, experimentation, and scenario planning) to “Vaccinate the Nexus” and improve system resilience. To achieve this, multidisciplinary capability should be developed to solve interdisciplinary challenges, while protecting specialism. It is recognised that through embracing complexity and “Nexus (or Systems) Thinking”, future integration of resource management may be facilitated through holistic education, informed by interdisciplinary research, and ingrained in cross-sector policy and governance

Promoting a healthy cities agenda through indicators: development of a global urban environment and health index

There is a growing awareness among city leaders and policy-makers of the impact of the urban environment on health outcomes and inequalities. Increasingly, practitioners in built environment city departments, such as housing, planning, transport and regeneration, seek new tools and guidance to understand how their respective policies and decisions can support the creation of healthier cities. This paper presents the development of a global index to help city leaders and practitioners understand their role in delivering health outcomes through urban environment policies and programmes. The Building Research Establishment’s international Healthy Cities Index (BRE HCI) contains 10 environment categories and 58 indicators, supported by a causal pathways framework. This was achieved through an iterative process including: stakeholder engagement, evaluating research evidence, selecting indicators and identifying data sources. We tested the index and causal pathways approach on two case study cities: Dubai and London. We found that they contributed to: raising awareness of the links between the environment and health; identifying shared responsibilities and the need to work across departmental silos; and uncovering the competing demands faced by some departments (and private sector stakeholders) as they seek to deliver health promoting environments alongside other objectives