What does it mean to be a (radical) urban scholar-activist, or activist scholar, today?

摘要

This intervention responds to the invitation for an 'agenda-setting contribution' and reference to future urban scholars at a critical point in time for radical activist scholarship or scholar-activism. It does so by, first, sketching the moment we find ourselves in, in 2020-a moment marked by human-made existential threats to the planet and to the ways people have (re)produced societies and their preconditions in heretofore unknown ways. Next it scans some of the critical urban literatures produced over the last couple decades that have analyzed the causes, manifestations and interrelations of the economic, social and biophysical processes generating 'the present crisis'. On the basis of this broad knowledge and given the urgency of the threats, it assesses the spectrum of proposals for how we might create or support the emergence of more sustainable as well as more just alternatives, calling for a politics of mobilization.