Staff profile

My work focusses on the experience and politics of the city. I explore how cities are known, lived and politicised. This includes research on urban living, densities, fragments, and learning across different cities, focussing in particular on the economic margins. My current work seeks to understand:

1: The production, experience and perception of density in cities (https://www.dur.ac.uk/dencity/). This research examines how high urban densities are shaped and lived in different domains, including density and crowds in public space, on the move, and in the neighbourhood and home. This work is supported by a European Research Council Consolidator grant;

2: The making and remaking of urban worlds. I am interested in how urban 'fragments' of different kinds - material bits-and-pieces, forms of knowledge, and styles of expression - become caught up in the experience and politics of being urban. This work closely connects with my interest in densities and is brought together in Fragments of the City: Making and Remaking Urban Worlds (University of California Press, 2021);

3: The relations between sanitation and the city. Much of my work focusses on the growing urban sanitation crisis, including how it unfolds at different intersections of place, density and inequality, and how to respond to it. This work also connects to my research on urban poverty and equality, for example through an ESRC-GCRF project on equality in which I am one of several co-investigators (https://www.urban-know.com).

I am author of 'Learning the City: Knowledge and Translocal Assemblage' (Blackwell), a book focussed on the intersections between urban inequality, politics, and learning, as well as related edited collections, including: 'Global Urbanism: Knowledge, Power and the City' (Routledge, with Michele Lancione), 'Smart Urbanism: Utopian Vision or False Dawn?' (Routledge, with Simon Marvin and Andres Luque-Ayala), 'Infrastructural Lives: Urban Infrastructure in Context' (Earthscan-Routledge, with Steve Graham), 'Urban Navigations: Politics, Space and the City in South Asia' (Routledge, with Jonathan Anjaria), and 'Urban Informalities: Reflections on the Formal and Informal' (Ashgate, with Michael Waibel).

My work has been previously supported by a Leverhulme Prize, an ESRC project on urban sanitation (https://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/everyday_sanitation/, with Stephen Graham and Renu Desai), and an ESRC project on urban social innovation (http://community.dur.ac.uk/pursi/, with Joe Painter, Paul Langley, Sue Lewis, and Antonis Vradis).

Blog: https://cityfragment.wordpress.com 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/ColinMcFarlane3

Authored book

• McFarlane, C. (2023). Waste and the City: The Crisis of Sanitation and the Right to Citylife. Verso
• McFarlane, C. (2021). Fragments of the City: Making and Remaking Urban Worlds. University of California Press
• McFarlane, C. (2011). Learning the city: knowledge and translocal assemblage. Wiley
• McFarlane, C., Desai, R., & Graham, S. (2011). Everyday Sanitation: Informal Settlements in Mumbai. Durham University/AlphaGraphics

Book review

• McFarlane, C. (2011). Book review forum: David Harvey, Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009; 352 pp.: 9780231148467, US$27.50/£19 (hbk). Dialogues in Human Geography, 1(1), 107-110. https://doi.org/10.1177/204382061100100107
• Jeffrey, A., McFarlane, C., & Vasudevan, A. (2007). Spectacle, State, Modernity: A Commentary on Retort's “Afflicted Powers”. Geopolitics, 12(1), 206-222. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650040601031313

Chapter in book

• Lancione, M., & McFarlane, C. (in press). Becoming Infrastructure: Body, Waste and the City. In A. Blok, & I. Farias (Eds.), Urban Cosmopolitics: Agencements, Assemblies, Atmospheres (45-62). Routledge
• McFarlane, C. (in press). Learning cities. In M. Jayne, & K. Ward (Eds.), Urban Theory: New Critical Perspectives. Routledge
• McFarlane, C. Future Densities: Knowledge, Politics and Remaking the City. In A. Amin, & M. Lancione (Eds.), Grammars of the Urban Ground. Duke University Press
• McFarlane, C. (in press). Encountering was it (not) there. In J. Darling, & H. Wilson (Eds.), Encountering the City. Urban Encounters from Accra to New York (229-232). Ashgate Publishing
• McFarlane, C. (in press). Assembling the everyday: incremental urbanism and tactical learning. In R. Burdett, & S. Hall (Eds.), SAGE Handbook of the 21st Century City. SAGE Publications
• Graham, S., Desai, R., & McFarlane, C. (in press). De-Networking the Poor: Revanchist Urbanism and Hydrological Apartheid in Mumbai. In O. Couthard, & J. Rutherford (Eds.), Beyond the Networked City: Infrastructure Reconfigurations and Urban Change in the North and South. Routledge
• McFarlane, C. Fragments. In T. Jazeel, A. Kent, K. McKittirck, & N. Theodroe (Eds.), Keywords in Radical Geographical Thought: Antipode at 50. Wiley
• McFarlane, C. (2019). Urban fragments: a subaltern studies imagination. In T. Jazeel, & S. Legg (Eds.), Subaltern geographies (210-230). Georgia University Press
• McFarlane, C., & Desai, R. (2019). The Urban Metabolic Commons: Rights, Civil Society, and Subaltern Struggle’. In A. Amin, & P. Howell (Eds.), Releasing the Commons: Rethinking the Futures of the Commons (158-173). Routledge
• McFarlane, C. (2019). Learning from the City: a Politics of Urban Learning in Planning. In V. Watson, G. Bhan, & S. Srinivas (Eds.), Companion to Planning in the Global South. Routledge
• McFarlane, C., Desai, R., & Graham, S. (2014). Politics of sanitation: Informality and the constitution of urban metabolic life in Mumbai. In K. Shrestha, H. Ojha, P. McManus, A. Rubbo, & K. Dhote (Eds.), Inclusive Urbanization: Rethinking Policy and Practice in the Age of Climate Change. Guilford Press
• McFarlane, C., & Vasudevan, A. (2014). Informal Infrastructures. In P. Adey, D. Bissell, K. Hannam, P. Merriman, & M. Sheller (Eds.), Handbook of Mobilities (256-264). Routledge
• Luque, A., McFarlane, C., & Marvin, S. (2014). Smart urbanism: cities, grids and alternatives?. In M. Hodson, & S. Marvin (Eds.), After Sustainable Cities? (74-90). Routeldge
• McFarlane, C. (2014). Studies in Comparative Urbanism. In V. Desai, & R. Potter (Eds.), Companion to Development Studies (296-298). (3rd ed.). Hodder Education
• McFarlane, C. (2011). Sanitation in Mumbai's Informal Settlements: Governance, Infrastructure, and Cost Recovery. In K. Bade, B. Lorentz, & L. Pries (Eds.), Migration and Integration: Reflections on Our Common Future (123-136). Europaische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig
• Anjaria, J., & McFarlane, C. (2011). Conceptualising the City in South Asia. In J. Anjaria, & C. McFarlane (Eds.), Urban Navigations: Politics, Space and the City in South Asia (1-22). Routledge
• McFarlane, C. (2010). Everyday interruptions: urban life in the global South. In S. Graham (Ed.), Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructure Fails. Routledge
• McFarlane, C. (2010). Entries for 'Mumbai' and 'Squatter Movements'. In R. Hutchison, M. Aalbers, R. Beauregard, & M. Crang (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Urban Studies. SAGE Publications

Edited book

• Lancione, M., & McFarlane, C. (Eds.). (in press). Global Urbanism: Knowledge, Power and the City. Routledge
• Mcfarlane, C., & Collver, J. (2023). DenCity: Stories of Crowds and Cities. Comic Printing UK
• Marvin, S., Luque-Ayala, A., & McFarlane, C. (Eds.). (2016). Smart Urbanism: Utopian Vision or False Dawn?. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315730554
• Graham, S., & McFarlane, C. (Eds.). (2015). Infrastructural Lives: Politics, Experience and the Urban Fabric. Earthscan-Routledge
• McFarlane, C., & Waibel, M. (Eds.). (2012). Urban Informalities: Reflections on the Formal and Informal. Ashgate Publishing
• Anjaria, J., & McFarlane, C. (Eds.). (2010). Urban Navigations: Politics, Space and the City in South Asia. Routledge

Journal Article

• McFarlane, C. (in press). Urban Geography 1: Conceptualisation with and beyond the global-local dialectic. Progress in Human Geography,
• Bulkeley, H., & McFarlane, C. (online). Changing climate, changing geographies?. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Article e12718. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12718
• Habermehl, V., & McFarlane, C. (in press). The density dialectic: Between hard and gentle densification in London. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
• McFarlane, C., Saguin, K., & Cunanan, K. (online). Density textures: The crowd, everyday life, and urban poverty in Manila. Urban Geography, https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2024.2401715
• Habermehl, V., & McFarlane, C. (in press). In desperate need: Public sanitation in contemporary London. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography,
• Nieuwenhuis, M., & Mcfarlane, C. (2024). “There, seated upon the toilet, apparently in the midst of defecation, was the president of the United States” : Toilets and Elite Politics in the USA and UK. Political Geography, 115, Article 103228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103228
• Chen, H.-Y., McFarlane, C., & Tripathy, P. (2024). Density and pandemic urbanism: Exposure and networked density in Manila and Taipei. Urban Studies, 61(8), 1526-1544. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231211011
• Esson, J., Breines, M., Brickell, K., Hope, J., Yee Koh, S., Lawrence, A. M., Mcfarlane, C., McLean, J., & Sparke, M. (2024). Way-finding agendas through Transactions. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 49(1), Article e12651. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12651
• Joiner, A., McFarlane, C., Rella, L., & Uriarte-Ruiz, M. (2024). Problematising density: COVID-19, the crowd, and urban life. Social and Cultural Geography, 25(2), 181-198. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2022.2143879
• Habermehl, V., & McFarlane, C. (2023). Density as a politics of value: regulation, speculation, and popular urbanism. Progress in Human Geography, 47(5), 664-679. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325231189824
• Guma, P., Hodson, M., Lockhart, A., Marvin, S., McFarlane, C., McGuirk, P., McMeekin, A., Ortiz, C., Simone, A., & Wiig, A. (2023). Post-Pandemic Cities: An Urban Lexicon of Accelerations/Decelerations. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 48(3), 452-473. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12607
• McFarlane, C. (2023). Repopulating density: Covid-19 and the politics of urban value. Urban Studies, 60(9), 1548-1569. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980211014810
• Yap, C., McFarlane, C., Ndezi, T., & Makoba, F. D. (2023). Sanitation challenges in Dar es salaam: the potential of Simplified Sewerage Systems. Environment and Urbanization, 35(1), 12-29. https://doi.org/10.1177/09562478221146722
• Bailey, A. J., Breines, M., Emmerson, P., Esson, J., Halvorsen, S., Hope, J. C., Joronen, M., Koh, S. Y., Krishnan, S., Lai, K., McFarlane, C., McLean, J., Reid, L., & Sparke, M. (2023). Care for Transactions. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 48(1), 2-8. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12592
• McFarlane, C. (2023). Density and the compact city. Dialogues in Human Geography, 13(1), 35-38. https://doi.org/10.1177/20438206221144821
• Lavell, A., McFarlane, C., Moore, H. L., Woodcraft, S., & Yap, C. (2023). Pathways to Urban Equality through the Sustainable Development Goals: Modes of Extreme Poverty, Resilience, and Prosperity. International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development, 15(1), 215-229. https://doi.org/10.1080/19463138.2023.2226099
• McFarlane, C., Langley, P., Lewis, S., Painter, J., & Vradis, A. (2023). Interrogating ‘urban social innovation’: relationality and urban change in Berlin. Urban Geography, 44(2), 337-357. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2021.2003586
• Chen, H.-Y., & Mcfarlane, C. (2023). Density and precarious housing: Overcrowding, sensorial urbanism, and intervention in Hong Kong. Housing Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2023.2280033
• Ruszczyk, H. A., Castán Broto, V., & McFarlane, C. (2022). Urban health challenges: Lessons from COVID-19 responses. Geoforum, 131, 105-115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.03.003
• Chowdhury, R., & McFarlane, C. (2022). The Crowd and Citylife: Materiality, Negotiation, and Inclusivity at Tokyo’s Train Stations. Urban Studies, 59(7), 1353-1371
• Tripathy, P., & McFarlane, C. (2022). Perceptions of atmosphere: air, waste, and narratives of life and work in Mumbai. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 40(4), 664-682. https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758221110574
• Langley, P., Lewis, S., McFarlane, C., Painter, J., & Vradis, A. (2020). Crowdfunding cities: Social entrepreneurship, speculation and solidarity in Berlin. Geoforum, 115, 11-20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.06.014
• McFarlane, C. (2020). The force of density: political crowding and the city. Urban Geography, 41(10), 1310-1317. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2020.1837527
• McFarlane, C. (2020). De/re-densification: a relational geography of urban density. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 24(1-2), 314-324. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2020.1739911
• Heslop, J., McFarlane, C., & Ormerod, E. (2020). Relational Housing Across the North-South Divide: Learning Between Albania, Uganda, and the UK. Housing Studies, 35(9), 1607-1627. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2020.1722801
• Yap, C., & McFarlane, C. (2020). Understanding and Researching Urban Extreme Poverty: A Conceptual-Methodological Approach. Environment and Urbanization, 32(1), 254-274. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247819890829
• Chen, H.-Y., Chowdhury, R., McFarlane, C., & Tripathy, P. (2020). Introduction: rethinking urban density. Urban Geography, 41(10), 1241-1246. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2020.1854531
• McFarlane, C. (2019). The Urbanization of the Sanitation Crisis: Placing Waste in the City. Development and Change, 50(5), 1239-1262. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12533
• McFarlane, C. (2018). Fragment Urbanism: Politics on the Margins of the City. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36(6), 1007-1025. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818777496
• Bulkeley, H., Luque-Ayala, A., McFarlane, C., & MacLeod, G. (2018). Enhancing urban autonomy: towards a new political project for cities. Urban Studies, 55(4), 702-719. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098016663836
• McFarlane, C., Silver, J., & Truelove, Y. (2017). Cities within Cities: Intra-Urban Comparison of Infrastructure in Mumbai, Delhi and Cape Town. Urban Geography, 38(9), 1393-1417. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2016.1243386
• McFarlane, C., & Söderström, O. (2017). On alternative smart cities: from a technology-intensive to a knowledge-intensive smart urbanism. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 21(3-4), 312-328. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2017.1327166
• McFarlane, C., & Silver, J. (2017). Navigating the city: dialectics of everyday urbanism. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42(3), 458-471. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12175
• McFarlane, C., & Silver, J. (2017). The Poolitical City: “Seeing Sanitation” and Making the Urban Political in Cape Town. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 49(1), 125-148. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12264
• Lancione, M., & McFarlane, C. (2016). Life at the urban margins: sanitation infra-making and the potential of experimental comparison. Environment and Planning A, 48(12), 2402-2421. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x16659772
• McFarlane, C. (2016). The Geographies of Urban Density: Topology, Politics and the City. Progress in Human Geography, 40(5), 629-648. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132515608694
• McFarlane, C., & Desai, R. (2015). Sites of entitlement : claim, negotiation and struggle in Mumbai. Environment and Urbanization, 27(2), 441-454. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247815583635
• Desai, R., McFarlane, C., & Graham, S. (2015). The politics of open defecation: informality, body, and infrastructure in Mumbai. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 47(1), 98-120. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12117
• MacLeod, D., & McFarlane, C. (2014). Introduction: Grammars of Urban Injustice. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 46(4), 857-873. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12085
• McFarlane, C., Desai, R., & Graham, S. (2014). Informal Urban Sanitation: Everyday Life, Poverty and Comparison. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 104(5), 989-1011. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2014.923718
• Mizanur, M., Atkins, P., & McFarlane, C. (2014). 'Factors affecting slum sanitation projects in Dhaka City: learning from the dynamics of social-technological-governance systems'. Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, 4(3), 346-358. https://doi.org/10.2166/washdev.2014.081
• McFarlane, C. (2013). From sanitation inequality to malevolent urbanism: the normalisation of suffering in Mumbai. Geoforum, 43(6), 1287-1290. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.08.005
• Graham, S., McFarlane, C., & Desai, R. (2013). Water wars in Mumbai. Public Culture, 25(1_69), 115-141. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-1890486
• Jeffrey, A., McFarlane, C., & Vasudevan, A. (2012). Rethinking enclosure: space, subjectivity, and the commons. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 44(4), 1247-1267. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2011.00954.x
• McFarlane, C. (2012). The entrepreneurial slum: civil society, mobility, and the co-production of urban development. Urban Studies, 49(13), 2926-2947
• McFarlane, C. (2012). Rethinking informality: politics, crisis and the city. Planning Theory & Practice, 13(1), 89-108. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2012.649951
• Anderson, B., Kearnes, M., McFarlane, C., & Swanton, D. (2012). On assemblages and geography. Dialogues in Human Geography, 2(2), 171-189
• McFarlane, C. (2011). The city as a machine for learning. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 36(3), 360-376. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00430.x
• McFarlane, C. (2011). Encountering, describing and transforming urbanism: concluding reflections on assemblage and urban criticality. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 15(6), 731-739
• McFarlane, C. (2011). Assemblage and critical urbanism. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 15(2), 204-224. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2011.595111
• McFarlane, C. (2011). On context: assemblage, political economy and structure. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 15(3-4), 375-388. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2011.632901
• McFarlane, C. (2011). The city as assemblage: dwelling and urban space. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29(4), 649-671. https://doi.org/10.1068/d4710
• McFarlane, C. (2010). The Comparative City: Knowledge, Learning, Urbanism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 34(4), 725-742. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010.00917.x
• Jazeel, T., & McFarlane, C. (2010). The limits of responsibility: a postcolonial politics of academic knowledge production. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35(1), 109-124. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2009.00367.x
• McFarlane, C. (2009). Translocal assemblages: space, power and social movements. Geoforum, 40(4), 561-567. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.05.003
• Jeffrey, A., McFarlane, C., & Vasudevan, A. (2008). Guest Editors Introduction: Debating Capital, Spectacle and Modernity. Public Culture, 20(3), 531-538. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2008-011
• Vasudevan, A., McFarlane, C., & Jeffrey, A. (2008). Spaces of Enclosure. Geoforum, 39(5), 1641-1646. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.03.001
• McFarlane, C. (2008). Governing the contaminated city: infrastructure and sanitation in colonial and postcolonial Bombay. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(2), 415-435. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2008.00793.x
• McFarlane, C. (2008). Urban Shadows: Materiality, the 'Southern city', and Urban Theory. Geography Compass, 2(2), 340-358. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2007.00073.x
• McFarlane, C. (2008). Postcolonial Bombay: decline of a cosmopolitan city?. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3), 480-499. https://doi.org/10.1068/dcos6
• Jazeel, T., & McFarlane, C. (2007). Responsible Learning: Cultures of Knowledge Production and the North-South Divide. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 39(5), 781-789. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2007.00559.x
• McFarlane, C. (2006). Knowledge, learning and development: a post-rationalist approach. Progress in Development Studies, 6(4), 287-305. https://doi.org/10.1191/1464993406ps144oa
• McFarlane, C. (2006). Transnational development networks: bringing development and postcolonial approaches into dialogue. The Geographical Journal, 172(1), 35-49. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4959.2006.00178.x
• McFarlane, C. (2006). Crossing Borders: development, learning and the North-South divide. Third World Quarterly, 27(8), 1413-1437. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590601027271
• McFarlane, C. (2004). Geographical Imaginations and spaces of political engagement: Examples from the Indian Alliance. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 36(5), 890-916. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2004.00460.x