Global ideologies and Urban landscapes: Introduction to the special issue

This article introduces the central problematic behind this special edition: the intersection of language and space as reflected in the interplay of global ideologies and urban landscapes. We aim to illuminate and problematise the production of ideologies as both discursive and spatial phenomena by grounding our analyses in cities of the global North and South. We outline our reasons for this focus in relation to the prominence of space in contemporary social theory and in relation to more everyday local-global conditions. Specifically, we point to the declining availability of conventional 'public spaces' as sites of ideological dissent; the proliferation of ideologically embedded metaphors and neologisms that narrow the diverse potentials of spatial transformation; the constraints that disciplinary boundaries place on socio-spatial inquiry; and the normative drive to build heterogeneous futures other than those set out by elites as universally 'global'. We outline the contributions to this special edition in relation to these key themes.