STS and the city: techno-politics, obduracy and globalisation

This commentary outlines some of the key contributions of this special issue to the field of STS and the city. It highlights the following three issues: (1) the special issue adds to an empirical and theoretical enrichment of the notion of urban techno-politics and (2) it contributes to a broadening of the notion of urban obduracy as a form of resistance to change, by including attention to power dynamics and imaginaries and (3) it includes an interesting plea for studying cities as sites where the local, national and global level intersect or clash. This commentary argues that, by opening up 'the urban' to STS concepts applied in other contexts and fields of research, new innovative research directions come within reach.