Retheorizing urban geography: mutual relationships between English- and German-speaking communities

This paper takes a comparative look at urban geography in the German- and English-speaking academic communities, based on a critical reflection of publication activities, sub-disciplinary discourses and conceptual developments. It is argued that Anglophone dis-courses tend to embed urban research into a broad range of conceptual and theoretical frameworks, whereas many writings in German-speaking urban geography are committed to pursuing empirical studies and applied research, thereby producing planning studies and policy recommendations; only recently, studies inspired by the cultural turn have evolved that are also addressing urban topics. In both language communities, a certain body of geo-graphical work can be detected that deals with core urban themes without evolving from a distinct ‘urban geography’ community. In this context, a mutual trans-national dialogue be-tween cultural, social, and urban geographies is considered helpful for better linking the two different language and academic communities. Accordingly, the paper provides suggestions on how to re-conceptualize urban geography at the intersections of recent debates in both language contexts by highlighting specific theoretical approaches, policy linkages, and methodologies.