Inside mobile urbanism: Cities and policy mobilities

This chapter explores ‘mobile urbanism’ through the lens of urban policy mobilities. We discuss how scholars understand the movement of policies between cities. In doing so, the chapter focuses on dualisms that underpin the circulation of policies and the people who move them, namely relationality/territoriality, global/local and fixity/mobility to highlight key aspects of urban policy mobility. It then examines the different elements of mobility, such as knowledge, people, materials and politics that mobile policies are dependent upon. Empirically, the chapter starts and ends with visits to two post-war high-rise developments – the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille and the Park Hill estate in Sheffield – to illustrate the dualisms and related mobilities connected to policy mobilization.