Ordinary Entanglements in the World City

Abstract

The term ordinary city has been used by scholars of such strikingly different persuasions and commitments over the last decade that in academic exchange today ordinary city functions more like a trope than like an analytical term. In this commentary I argue that an attempt to isolate strands from this and critiquing them for their failure to engage with the another, decidedly more influential research programme—global and world city research—is to misread the very productive strands of research that the ordinary city has already spawned and to ignore the need to innovate and pursue newer research agendas that are suggested by contemporary global urban realities.