European cities

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.

Noa K. Ha is Lecturer in Spatial Strategies at the Weissensee Academy of Art and Design Berlin.

Giovanni Picker is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Glasgow.

‘This long overdue conversation between urban studies and postcolonial, decolonial and critical race studies will jolt urban studies beyond its Eurocentric legacy, and into the twenty-first century. Highlighting histories of colonialism, racism and anti-Semitism alongside self-organised movements of resistance, the authors write back against a European City model that is cleansed of race and wedded to developmentalist notions of European superiority. A must-read, paradigm-shifting collection that crucially thinks together histories of colonialism, National Socialism and the Cold War.’
Jin Haritaworn, Associate Professor of Gender, Race and Environment, University of York

‘Timely in its reminder of the historical erasures and spatial amnesia of too much urban thinking, this volume explores powerfully both the hubris and the deeply racialised traces and spaces of the European city.’
Michael Keith, Director of the PEAK Urban Research programme, University of Oxford

'This volume offers an immensely exciting and original intervention into (European) Urban Studies, questioning a number of assumptions around the "modernity" of European cities that tend to erase the history of colonialism and its ongoing impacts, key among them the role of race. The contributions assembled by Ha and Picker provide historical depth and geographical breadth, they deconstruct artificial hierarchies between Europe and the Global South as well as the continent’s East and West, at long last including European Urban Studies in a truly global conversation. The book could not have been published at a better moment: Its insights are urgently needed in a world that is rapidly changing yet continues to be framed through flawed paradigms reiterating an understanding of progress that blocks rather than opens a path to real transformation. The work assembled here suggested alternative models that I will be certain to draw on in my work.'
Fatima El-Tayeb, Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, Yale University

'Overall, the book provides new material on how the prevailing narratives of Europeanization and “European culture” are materialized and challenged in the cities analyzed, as well as ways to decolonially rethink them. It should be especially emphasized that each chapter and each author has his own methodology, which is rare for most modern books. The book is intended for a wide audience, as it provides an analysis of the various opinions about European cities.'
Mirzokhid Askarov, Ethnic and Racial Studies