Commentary on Current Trends in Urban Description After the 2000s

Abstract

The boom in critical urban studies declined in the 2000s, and there has been an increase in the number of empirical urban sociological studies focusing on the interaction between multiple social actors in a local area. This is a shift of the perspective from that focusing on ‘the city’ as a whole system to one that addresses urban local areas. With regard to this shift, the following three points are indicated in the paper. 1) ANT and the infrastructural point of view are now referred to in critical urban studies. 2) Each local area as an object of urban sociological studies contains a particular social issue, such that the objects of the study are turning into workshop-type interactions. 3) As urban planning is beginning to utilize workshops, the logic of workshops is now incorporated into the built environment.