Theorising from where? Reflections on de-centring global (Southern) urbanism

One of the major contributions of the postcolonial critique of urbanism is the call for de-centring knowledge production, especially the emphasis on the need for ‘theorising’ from the Global South so that urban processes embedded therein are not rendered simply as variants of the Global North. De-centring the production of knowledge on global urbanism involves moving away from over-reliance on Western cities as sources of theoretical inspiration and treating all cities across the globe as ‘ordinary cities’ placed on the level-playing field. The rise of East and South-East Asia, to some extent, provides an opportunity to disrupt the North-South binaries, which do not capture the more complex web of spatial connectedness.