The politics of “urban expertise”: shifting horizons for critical urban scholarship?

ABSTRACT Expertise and experts have been at the heart of the last few years of pandemic crisis. Yet, their role in urban governance is still a broadly uncharted territory. This special issue explores what a research agenda on the politics of urban expertise could look like. Presenting a mix of diverse geographical viewpoints on the challenges of expertise in cities, we argue for moving beyond a fruitful critique, to reflect more deeply on how critical urban scholarship can support progressive knowledge practices. In this introduction, we situate these contributions by discussing the emergence of an “industry” for urban expertise and the rise of “urban age” intellectuals over the past two decades. We highlight how contemporary global discourses on cities are reshaping how urban scholars engage with urban expertise politics, notably through a proliferation of partnerships with non-academic urban actors, aiming to set out possible avenues for future research.