In Engaged Urbanism: Cities and Methodologies, editors Ben Campkin and Ger Duijzings bring together contributors who are challenging assumptions surrounding urban research methodologies. Exploring questions of authorship, expertise and situated knowledge, this is a well-designed and timely book that showcases an array of creative and critical approaches to urban research, finds Helen Traill

Traill, Helen

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2017-4-3Book Review: Engaged Urbanism: Cities and Methodologiesedited by Ben Campkin and Ger Duijzingsblogs.lse.ac.uk /lsereviewofbooks/2017/04/03/book-review-engaged-urbanism-cities-and-methodologies-edited-by-ben-campkin-and-ger-duijzings/In Engaged Urbanism: Cities and Methodologies, editors Ben Campkin and Ger Duijzings bringtogether contributors who are challenging assumptions surrounding urban research methodologies. Exploringquestions of authorship, expertise and situated knowledge, this is a well-designed and timely book that showcasesan array of creative and critical approaches to urban research, finds Helen Traill. Engaged Urbanism: Cities and Methodologies. Ben Campkin and Ger Duijzings (eds). IB Tauris. 2016.Find this book: Engaged Urbanism: Cities and Methodologies is animaginative foray into rethinking how scholarsapproach the city and challenging assumptionsaround urban research. It mirrors recent academicdebate seeking to innovate in contemporaryuniversity conditions and attempts to make socialresearch more ‘crafty’ (e.g. Les Back and NirmalPuwar). In this, it sits alongside Kirsteen Patonarguing for ‘getting real, going DIY and going live’and also draws on David Beer’s notion of a ‘punksociology’ in pushing social research in noveldirections.The book places at its centre the city (or really,cities), reflecting the prescient need to consider oururban milieu in the face of continued massurbanisation (UN figures suggest 66 per cent of theworld’s population will live in cities by 2050).Engaged Urbanism emerged from the CitiesMethodologies programme at University CollegeLondon, which staged a series of events andexhibitions exploring innovative methodologies forurban research. It engages debates around the roleof the researcher and how we address questions ofexpertise, often problematising simplistic hierarchiesof expert-lay and introducing destabilising methodssuch as participant-led ethnography and theconstruction of ‘smellscapes’ by participants. Eachshort chapter introduces a project from the exhibition, often with a few other related projects, which connects withthe idea of methodological innovation. The book also draws on a broad range of disciplines, from artistic practicesthrough to anthropology and urban design.Ben Campkin and Ger Duijzings have collated chapters that take an approach to urbanism that is deeplyinterventionist; a ‘critical spatial practice’ (Jane Rendell, 4) that challenges the reader to consider what kinds ofurbanism might be possible. The book is well designed, with a great deal of thought having been put into the way it1/3might read: it is intended, like the exhibition, to mimic the style of the street, to be explored in any order. Bound by itsmateriality, it is nonetheless still organised into six major sections: the first, ‘Frames’, asking broad theoretical andmethodological questions, and the following five consisting of thematic groupings of projects around such ideas asparticipation or materiality. Each chapter within these sections has a London A-Z -inspired suggestion of where to gonext and of connections made between chapters around geography or methodology. Many of the chapters also raiseethical and practical dilemmas, two of which I want to explore in more detail: collaboration and a questioning ofexpertise, and a methodology known as ‘site-writing’ that challenges the position of the academic text.Image Credit: (astonishme CC BY 2.0)Concerns about working with and promoting voices that are often not heard in academic discourse (those who areoften spoken for or of) are found throughout the book. This being a methodological excursion, research practice isforegrounded. For example, Andrew Stevenson (Chapter 21) engages in a participatory practice, inviting hisresearch participants to guide the ethnographic exploration of new migrants’ experiences of the city. What resonatesacross accounts of participation in research is the idea of the ambiguity of processes of co-production. For KierenReid (Chapter 29), this is a complex process. He writes of co-producing a workshop space that is also anarchitectural sculpture, and particularly discusses struggles over ceding creative and aesthetic control to others: ‘If Ihand over too much agency to the participants, then my position becomes precarious’ (238). This honesty isrefreshing and recalls feminist advances in thinking through the problems associated with activist research andcollaborative practices (see Alexandra Zavos and Barbara Biglia and discussions of the relation of the academy tothe ‘real world’ in Discovering Society this year).A particularly exciting collaboration is in ‘Hacking London’s Demolition Decisions’ (Chapter Eight). Kate Crawfordand others write of connecting engineers and those with expert knowledge with activists fighting developments.Providing and mediating access to research into environmental studies of buildings, this collaboration created anevidence base from which to push back against technocratic decision-making. In this, the ethos of collaborationshifts power imbalances in favour of lay people, and questions for whom knowledge is created. Here and in othersuch explorations, Engaged Urbanism acknowledges the challenges inherent to this, particularly in destabilisingideas that are presented as accepted scientific consensus.In line with this questioning of authority in urban research comes the provocative work of Jane Rendell (ChapterThree) that interrogates the position of the academic text. In a practice she calls ‘Site-Writing’, she talks of an2/3exhibition of reactions to the urban form that sit between the object of analysis and its usual product (a text). (Anexample of site-writing read by Rendell is here). The chapter explores instances of this in practice, drawn from thework of Masters students at UCL who curated an exhibition of their site-writing in photographs, performance piecesand other responses to the urban. As a methodology, site-writing challenges urban researchers to move outwith thetraditional texts and methods writing of sites, to find a way to express and react to the urban and to admit the‘situatedness of criticism’ (36).Many of the methodological musings in the book contain this kind of site-writing, rather than a writing of sites. It is auseful critique of the academic text, yet a concern arises for me in the production of ‘alternative’ reactions to theurban in that they swap one kind of elite, situated criticism (the academic text) for another (the artistic practice).Rendell notes that site-writing creates ‘new positions of relation between critic and site’ (37), but the newness isworking in the space between ‘analyst and analysand’ (37), not in democratising or widening access to socialknowledge. In this, it rubs up against the previously discussed sensibilities of collaboration and participation.Engaged Urbanism demonstrates an array of creative and critical responses to the urban. It asks questions ofauthorship and expertise, asking who gets to write research agendas and challenging the academic text as a form of‘situated knowledge’. It goes beyond criticism too in offering concrete methodological examples of alternative waysof approaching research and expanding the boundaries of urban knowledge. Reserving some of my concerns aboutthe accessibility of artistic practice as a form of urban critique, this book nevertheless offers a well-presented andprovocative read, and a timely exploration of creative urban research.Helen Traill is a PhD student in the Sociology department at the LSE. Her thesis explores practices of community incommunity gardens and urban green spaces, and the relationship they have with wider urban social processes. Sheis particularly interested in urban commons and land ownership, and the political potential of communal practices.She tweets @traillhelen.Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of theLondon School of Economics. Copyright 2013 LSE Review of Books3/3

Book review: engaged urbanism: cities and methodologies edited by Ben Campkin and Ger Duijzings

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