Everyday Life and Urban Studies

Moving With Lefebvre Towards the 21st Century

Sabine Knierbein

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Hardback

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English

Routledge
13 October 2025

Social & political philosophy; Public administration; Human geography; Urban & municipal planning; Civil engineering, surveying & building

Everyday Life and Urban Studies revisits the ordinary routines that shape urban life during the crises-ridden last century and early new millennium. Vast parts of Henri Lefebvre’s intellectual work on everyday life however remain underappreciated in urban studies. This book seeks to re-integrate Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life into studies of urbanization. Starting in the 1920s, the book realigns historical insights with contemporary urban phenomena to uncover patterns of capitalist urbanization. By showing the relevance of grasping the minutiae of everyday life to understanding cities, the urban and urbanization today; everyday life, space, and philosophy are brought back in tension. This work combines analytical-methodological exploration, pedagogic mission, and theoretical advances to carve out an everyday-theory-based approach to urban studies situated at the interface of the spatial arts, the humanities, and the social sciences. This book examines the transformative potential that lies hidden in everyday life thereby unravelling a way to nurture hope amid unsettled urban conditions.

The book is essential for students, faculty, and researchers in the fields of urban studies, city planning, urban design, human geography, sociology, cultural studies, and political science.

By: Sabine Knierbein
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9781032828572
ISBN 10: 1032828579
Pages: 270
Publication Date: 13 October 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Part 1. Paving the Ground 1. Everyday Life and Urban Studies. An Introduction Part 2. Studying Space, Understanding the Social 2. Research on Cities, Urbanization and Urban Societies 3. Urban Studies and the Minutiae of Everyday Life 4. Critical Social Perspectives in Spatial Theory Part 3. Revisiting Critiques of Everyday Life throughout the 20th Century 5. Dialectics and Rising Fascism: Everyday Life and Philosophy in Crises 6. Postwar Geographies of Everyday Life and the Question of Scaling the Lived 7. International Critiques of Everyday Life since the 1980s Part 4. Towards Contemporary Critiques of Everyday Life 8. The Uncanny Character of Everyday Life 9. Everyday Life as a Fetishized Form of Colonization, Consumption and Power 10. Feminist Perspectives Beyond Domination and Marginalization Part 5. Worlding the Study of Everyday Life in Urban Studies 11. Post-colonial Everyday Life: Differences, Commonalities and Temporalities 12. Urban Resistance, Street Politics and the Persistence of the Ordinary Part 6. Everyday Life and the Philosophy of Science 13. Studying Everyday Life Beyond Spatial Praxis and Social Action 14. Urban Studies, Everyday Life and the Philosophy of Science Part 7. The Praxis of Urban Studies 15. Urban Field Work: Who Researches How? 16. Which Encounters Take Place during Urban Field Research? 17. Objects of Urban Research: What to Study? 18. Transdisciplinary Paths of Urban Research: How to Study? Part 8. Towards Transformative Epistemologies: An Everyday-Theory Based Approach to Urban Studies 19. Crossovers – Towards Transformative Epistemologies of the Everyday 20. An Everyday-Theory Based Approach to Urban Studies

Sabine Knierbein is an Associate Professor and the Head of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space at the Faculty of Architecture and Planning at Technische Universität Wien in Austria. She holds a Venia in urban studies and a Journey(wo)man’s certificate as a landscape gardener. Sabine has worked as Visiting Professor for Urban Political Geography at the University of Florence.

Reviews for Everyday Life and Urban Studies: Moving With Lefebvre Towards the 21st Century

""This exceptional book tackles the everyday from new and challenging perspectives interweaving theories from across the social sciences, humanities and spatial arts. Drawing insights and knowledges from each of these fields, which are also embedded in a rich historical exploration, this book successfully shifts the study of the everyday from a more micro scale to a large canvas posing important questions of relevance to the contemporary unsettled world."" Sophie Watson, Professor, Sociology Department, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK ""This is a novel critical analysis of Lefebvre interpretations that brings together two perspectives that are usually treated in separate fields of study: the analysis of everyday life and of the production of space. It thus allows us to develop a new understanding of the social world."" Christian Schmid, Professor of Sociology, Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich, Switzerland ""It is more than half a century since Lefebvre published the Critique of Everyday Life, but his ideas continue to be a rich source of inspiration for scholars seeking to understand the city by delving into competing practices in and of everyday life. This book is the latest and perhaps most ambitious of such scholarship. By combining empirical materials, methodological innovations, and theoretical groundings, the book provides new insights into the multiple ways in which everyday life shape our urban conditions."" Simin Davoudi, Professor, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, UK