The limits of neoliberalism: is the concept of neoliberalism helpful in the study of urban policy?

Neoliberal urbanism has thrown up opportunities as well as constraints for the political and analytical work of those who challenge it. While scholarship has made some advances analyzing the continuing adaptations of the neoliberal regime, different theoretical perspectives have largely remained in unproductive isolation from each other. This volume brings a plurality of approaches – from political economic/regulationist to Foucauldian governmentality and post-operatist subject theories – to bear on the broad range of contestations around urban neoliberalism. With both cutting-edge theoretical accounts and empirical case studies of urban restructuring and conflict in the Global North and South, the contributors make the case that an understanding of micro and macro effects of power is necessary for an effective critique of the heterogeneity of intersecting power relations that movements are mobilizing against – and rarely free from themselves.