f Inaugural editorial: Urban cultural studies – a manifesto (part 2)

This two-part editorial launching the first volume of the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies (JUCS) details the need for and significance of an urban cultural studies (UCS) method, broadly conceived. Focusing on two specific areas of interdisciplinary study – the ever-shrinking gap between film studies and geography and the rise of spatial theory in literary studies, this installment of the editorial hopes to tease out the problems and potential that arise with discipline-crossing scholarship. Overall, UCS foments a dialogue between art and society – between textual/representational (humanities) understandings of culture and anthropological, geographical, sociological (social science) approaches. This is ideally accomplished within a reconfigured urban studies paradigm that continues to embrace its characteristic focus on architecture, built environment, city planning, everyday life, identity formation, landscape, space/place and transportation, while venturing further into artistic terrain than ever before – films, literature, music, sequential art, painting, digital humanities approaches and more.