New publication: Dossier on Creative Urban Methods

We, the [urban interfaces] editorial team, are thrilled to announce the recent publication of our dossier on Creative Urban Methods by Mediapolis! The dossier will be published by Mediapolis over the following days, with the introduction and first article now live on the Mediapolis website.

With this collection of articles, the editorial team, consisting of Sigrid Merx, Coco Kanters, Michiel de Lange, and Nanna Verhoeff, aims to explore the merits of creative methods for researching contemporary cities and urban culture. A growing catalog of new and innovative creative methods for urban inquiries demonstrates a wide array of theoretical approaches, critical concepts, and scholarly techniques. This dossier presents seven articles that think through the epistemological and ethical grounding of specific creative methods developed in direct response to particular, situated inquiries that are all, in their specific ways, related to, and responding to various (inter-)local, urban realities.

This collection of essays on creative urban methods has been written by researchers from various academic disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and geosciences. The researchers were invited to describe and reflect on their own innovative, experimental, and generative practices of “doing theory” about the city, within the city, and for the city. The essays aim to emphasize the importance of these characteristics and connect them with underlying methodological ambitions and research ethics. While this dossier can only present a selective foray into this field, we hope that the sketched routes inspire methodological exploration, didactic experimentation, and stimulating debates about the design and practices of creative methods in academic, educational, artistic, and other research contexts—specifically about the merits, limitations, and implications of such tools for research, teaching, design, or debate.

Intrigued? Continue reading the dossier’s introduction at Mediapolis.