European Cities

Modernity, Race and Colonialism

European cities: Modernity, race and colonialism is a collection of empirical and theoretical scholarly analyses of multiple urban processes across the East-West European divide, inviting the reader to reimagine urban Europe from non-Eurocentric perspectives, and to engage active thought and thoughtful action.

This multidisciplinary collection of scholarship rethinks European urban modernity from a race-conscious perspective, being aware of (post)colonial entanglements. The twelve original contributions empirically focus on such varied cities as Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Cottbus, Genoa, Hamburg, Madrid, Mitrovica, Naples, Paris, Sheffield, and Thessaloniki, engaging multiple combinations of global urban studies, from various historical perspectives, with postcolonial, decolonial and critical race studies. Inspired by Dipesh Chakrabarty's notion of 'provincializing Europe', the collection interrogates dominant, Eurocentric theories, representations and models of European cities across the East-West divide, offering the reader alternative perspectives to understand and imagine urban life and politics. With its focus on Europe, it ultimately contributes to decades of rigorous critical race scholarship on varied global urban regions.