One fundamental definition that has influenced much of our nowadays world organization is that of “city”. Certain definitions of “city”, tightly linked to land use and property, exist on the basis of the modern organization of societies, economies and the politics of the world. With that also emerged a “cultural divide” between cities and countryside, including a development divide that often supports the maintenance of asymetrical development paths and socio-ecological interactions. Formal, informal, ruled, desired, imagined conceptions of “city” contribute to this process. As the global human population steadily becomes more urbanized; as cities become central to regulate socio-ecological interactions; as the limits, functions and definitions of cities become more blurred it is timely to renovate the understanding of what is “city”. 

We invite scholars from across the world and varied fields to contribute with theoretical or empirical analysis, including case studies from different regions, that will support in the reassessement of established definitions and in the disclosing of new urban definitions. Manuscripts are accepted in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and French.

General aims:

This special edition aims to reframe the notions of the “city” and the “non-city”, through a comprehensive debate about cities, what is beyond cities, and what can be considered a “non-city”. 

Topic lines:

Among others, the following interrogations will contribute to the renovation of the varied intellectual constructs of cities:

• Cities and valuation systems: How is valued what is produced or what exists in cities in relation to what comes from ‘non-cities’? 
• Rural and urban: when, where and how did the conceptual separation between rural and urban emerge? Is this conceptual separation ubiquitous or necessary? Is it possible to envision ruralized cities and urbanized rural areas? Or the total disappearance of this divide?
• Cities’ basis of existence: Which nearby and faraway ecosystems must be exploited to maintain cities? Is it possible to envisage new, alternative, or sustainable basis for cities’ maintenance and organization?
• Cities and agriculture: Was agriculture fundamental for the emergence of cities? Is it possible to envisage urban agriculture as a feasible alternative? 
• Cities and nature: are cities in conflict with nature? Did humans build cities to escape from nature? Can cities find a harmonious existence with nature?
• Cities as living systems: When human-nature interactions are coupled together does it generate an autonomous “living” entity in the form of cities? Is it possible to consider cities as living systems with intrinsic mechanisms of maintenance? Are cities a privileged human habitat?