Sameer Unhale
The current status of urban knowledge development, in form of accumulated knowledge, so recorded and accorded a formal status, in the syllabus of recognised courses or diploma and masters degress, of institutions of formal educations, like universities, is the bed rock of knowledge in any discipline.
The research conducted, by way of PhDs or post Docs, work done in dedicated research institutes, either under the universities or elsewhere, dynamically develop the knowledge repository. The emergence of think tanks, management or specialised consultancies , philanthropies and International city networks along with multilateral development institutions, Multilateral development banks and multiple UN agencies, work on issues related with cities.
various multi national companies, the transnational organizations , Big tech Firms, routinely work in both research and knowledge dissimentation area for various institution , stake holders , city governments and mayor’s and bureaucracy, community based organizations.
The conferencing-forums-tradefairs-workshop-webinars-online courses routes are significant activites in the multi faceted dynamics and interplay of creation and distribution of knowledge in the domain of urban experiences.
“Singularities” of #citytech requires nuanced understanding of premises and the multicausal matrix, again in a relativist and probabilistic framework, of issues of city and metropolitan ontology, with foundational consequence for epistemology.
Current state of knowledge in city /urban/metropolitan/city-regions pedagogy in academic institutions are mostly from the discipline of “economic geography”, or what we popularly know as land -use planning , and the traditional “political sciences” in the European traditions or now “public policy” in the American University.
The lack of having dedicated discipline, for cities and urban issues, or a global consensus, is major limitation and failings from the global ” knowledge fraternity “
In matters of Technological applications from various fields, or such functional expertise, in the urban or metropolitan “territories ” leads to either a “pick and chose” or blind “copy and paste” application of such concepts onto city institutions and processes, giving an alien feel. The issue is more acute with traditional and emerging technology sectors for cities like AI, Quantum etc
This fundamental crisis of “city ” ontology and epistemology, and it’s implications on the pedagogy or discipline of “city studies”, deserves priority.
We urgently need a permanent global efforts to bring coherent framework for developing and dissimentation of urban knowledge and issues related with city/town/metropolitan living, ideally anchored by UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme) and academics.
Sameer Unhale, Joint Commissioner, Department of Municipal Administration, Government of Maharashtra; Urban Practitioner & Visiting Senior Fellow, IMPRI.
This article was first published on Linked In by Sameer Unhale on December 06, 2024.
Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.
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Acknowledgment: This article was posted by Shivashish Narayan, a research intern at IMPRI.
