Critical visual approaches to understand the complexities and contradictions of the city: introduction to the special issue for Visual Studies

The visual and the urban

Visual imagery has long been part of urban scholarship. Geographers, planners and urban studies researchers take a lot of pictures, and feature many in their lectures and publications. However, photographs are typically used as a descriptive illustrator of a place, process or phenomenon. Through this approach, visual imagery accompanies or supports an argument, analysis or conclusion derived from other methodologies. For example, if statistical analysis or interviews with policymakers lead a researcher to conclude that gentrification is happening in a certain neighbourhood, a nice picture of a refurbished old house, or a trendy café or microbrewery will provide a complementary visual example.

However, there is a growing trend in urban research that is shifting the visual away from being an appendage used to support findings towards methodological, theoretical and epistemological approaches that place a variety of visual imagery as the central ‘data’ used to analyse the changes, challenges, conflicts and contradictions of the city (Arnold 2019). Visual dimensions of the urban are highly political and politics and aesthetics are difficult, if not impossible to separate (Arnold 2021).

Visual analysis is well-positioned to play a leading role in critical urban theory, outlined by the late urban planning professor Peter Marcuse (2009). He discussed three pillars of this approach: expose, propose, politicise. Urban photography has a role to play in exposing inequalities and injustices in cities. It can be a central tool to ‘analyse the root of a problem and [to make] clear and [communicate] that analysis to those that need it and can use it’ (Marcuse 2009, 194). Photography can do this by rendering visible what is often invisible, particularly alongside other research methods such as statistics. The added value of visualisation lies in capturing grounded, visceral materiality in non-verbal ways. Rose (2016, 308) argued persuasively that:

images are seen as especially valuable in urban research because they can convey something of the feel of urban places, spaces and landscapes, specifically of course those qualities that are in some way visible: they can suggest the layout, colour, texture, form, volume, size and pattern of the built environment, for example, and can picture people too. Photographs can thus capture something of the sensory richness and human inhabitation of urban environments. (though not all, of course: they cannot convey sound and can only suggest touch)

Not everything is embodied or material in the city, and as such not everything can be visualised or made tangible – photography can reveal inequality, but it is never more than partial and is always situated. But the visual can politicise both the geographies of the everyday city (Burgos-Thorsen, this issue) and the planning process (Cassarin, this issue), necessary steps towards proposing more socially-just alternatives (Strasser, this issue; Doucet and Doucet 2022).

Even when visual imagery becomes the main method of analysis, many urban researchers are less interested in theoretical debates about what photographs are and are more concerned with the possibilities of generating new knowledge through visual analysis. This does not mean that we uncritically accept the visual as an ‘accurate record’ of a place or event. Instead, there is a need to focus on the power and limitations of the visual, as well as our own role in producing, reproducing and analysing urban imagery.

The urban geographer Elvin Wyly (2010) has noted how theoretical debates within critical visual studies were once ‘hostile’ to the power and potential of the visual. But instead of rejecting photography as ‘violence’ (Barthes 1981), a ‘double subjugation’ of poor and neglected people and places victimised first by the social world, and then by the photographer (Solomon-Godeau 1991, 176), or because of its inability to be neutral or objective (Sontag, 1977), Wyly stresses the role that photography can play in both beginning new conversations about urban space and enhancing existing ones. He cautions that if critical urban scholars retreated from the visual world because of its limitations, urban imagery would be far more conservative and stereotypical, a caricature already found in the current ‘Instagram’ version of the city (see also DeVerteuil 2022). He therefore encourages urban researchers to move ‘beyond disillusionment’ and utilise a critical constructive approach that focuses instead on how visual imagery can ‘begin’ conversations about our understanding of urban space and urban change, rather than end them.

Despite this optimistic tone about the power of urban photography, urban researchers still need to be aware of what photographs show, and what they do not show, as well as how and why they were created. Critical visual scholarship is as much about contextualising photographs within the wider social milieu in which they were created, altered and distributed, as it is about analysing the content of the actual images themselves (Rose 2016). Again, Wyly (2010) suggests ways in which urban researchers can do this. He argues that photographs are a debt or a promise, and that this can be repaid by contextualising the image and explaining the conditions that made it possible.

Well-contextualised visual analysis can be used to challenge the logic of capital accumulation, consumption, and privilege in the contemporary city. It can provide fine grained detail (Babin and Doucet, this issue) that moves beyond the ‘hype of revitalization’ through its ability to depict, visualise and structure an analysis of variegated patterns and trajectories that are not evident through statistical analysis (DeVerteuil 2004). Techniques such as repeat photography and juxtaposition can critically examine spatial and temporal patterns of capital investment and disinvestment (Rieger 1996; Vergara 2014). Finally, visual analysis can render visible patterns, processes and people who are often invisible from mainstream debates (Burgos-Thorsen; Singleton, both this issue), thereby drawing attention to inequality, uneven development, and injustice. It can give voice to those who are rarely heard (or visualised).

In this special issue, we build on these important insights. We are particularly interested in urban photography as a visual practice to know the city, in its partiality, but also in a critical way, open to power asymmetries, counter-visual practices and emerging methods. To these points, Hunt (2014, 152) talks about urban photography and ‘visual urbanism’ that ‘describes image-making that engages critically both with the city and with photographic traditions – mainly uniting the inquisitive eye of the documentary photographer with the immediacy of the street photographer’. A critical visual analysis can help understand and interpret the complexities and contradictions of contemporary cities, opening up new ways of analysing, interpreting and imagining cities, urban space and urban life.

This special issue features a combination of full-length articles and visual essays that address these interests, focusing on the everyday materialities of the city and how its fabrics remain unseen, but also interact, impinge upon and are sometimes replaced by more powerful ones. These concerns are framed by a specifically geographical and urban set of concerns, including scale and spatial sampling, but still capture common themes across all visual disciplines that ‘see’ the city: ethics; social context; collaboration; aesthetics; visibility and invisibility; and reflexivity. Visualising the urban involves presenting a certain visual narrative of urban materialities which is especially suited to the visual (photo) essay.

The special issue begins with Anita Strasser’s article ‘Visibilising Gentrification-induced Displacement: a Visual Essay on the Role of a Socially and Politically Engaged Photographic Practice in Housing Activism’, that seeks to highlight and expose gentrification in Southeast London at an intimate scale. This article first looks at how visual analysis can play a role in enhancing our understanding of gentrification-induced displacement. Additionally, it focuses on the role of photography in exposing and politicising the emotional upheaval caused by state-led gentrification Strasser presents research participants not purely as victims of gentrification, but instead emphasises their role as housing activists, stressing how visual methodologies can play a part in collective housing struggles and resistance. Reflecting on Marcuse’s approach to critical urban scholarship, Strasser’s contribution highlights how socially and politically engaged photographic practices can play a major role in exposing housing injustices and proposing alternatives.

The theme of gentrification continues with Caleb Babin and Brian Doucet’s article, ‘Gentrification and Changing Visual Landscapes: a Google Street View Analysis of Residential Upgrading and Class Aesthetics in Hamilton’s Lower City’, which examines fine-grained patterns of gentrification in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, using Google Street View to examine specific changes in residential properties in a variety of neighbourhoods. Within a number of neighbourhoods experiencing different stages of gentrification, they are able to provide a detailed, street-by-street analysis of how the process spreads. Their coding scheme also provides insights into different aspects of gentrification, and they are able to differentiate between capital investment into the built environment and specific aesthetic changes that reflect contemporary middle-class tastes, lifestyles and values. By showing how gentrification spreads far earlier than is evident within an analysis of Census data, Babin and Doucet’s work helps to expose patterns of gentrification and displacement.

In their article ‘What Is an Inclusive City? Reconfiguring Participation in Planning with Geospatial Photovoice to Unpack Experiences of Urban Belonging Among Marginalised Communities’, Sofie Burgos-Thorsen, Sabine Niederer and Anders Koed Madsen expand on the typical methodologies around photovoice by incorporating digital and spatial technologies to bring different, and often under-represented groups together to unpack urban problems. Part of a wider Urban Belonging project, their research helps understand how people from seven different marginalised populations experience the city of Copenhagen. They emphasise differences in feelings of belonging and how participants experience places differently. Their methods, which straddle the visual and the digital analysis highlight how combining qualitative and quantitative approaches can open up new epistemological flexibilities and possibilities.

The theme of centring residents within critical visual analysis continues with Giada Cassarin’s article, ‘Building Internal Reputation in Stigmatised Neighbourhoods: The Use of Remote Participatory Photo Mapping’. It explores the consequences of urban regeneration policies that have demolished neighbourhoods in the name of poverty deconcentration, focusing instead on mixing ethniticities, incomes and tenures. Using examples from Bristol, UK and Milan, Italy, the article outlines how Participatory Photo Mapping (PPM) can provide a detailed understanding of the impacts of these restructuring policies by enabling residents to provide their own narratives and voices. Cassarin also critically reflects on this research approach, emphasising how PPM can be a helpful tool in giving voice to residents, particularly where stigmatisation defines the broader conversations about their community.

Aled Singleton’s article, ‘Urban Research in Film Using Walking Tours and Psychogeographic Approaches’, investigates how a combination of making films, walking tours and psychogeographic techniques can enhance our understanding of what dramatic urban changes mean for older adults who have lived through decades of change in Newport, South Wales, in the UK. Combining these methods reveals long-held memories which are relevant to both understanding the past as well as present and future. By combining filmmaking with walking, Singleton is able to expose the politics of local housing, which represents an empirical manifestation of critical urban theory. The article also stresses how this politicises urban issues through an engaging, artistic and creative way to engage the public in local politics.

Finally, Geoffrey DeVerteuil advances a juxtaposition-based visual approach to understanding the inequalities of the twenty-first century city (see also DeVerteuil 2023). In a visual essay entitled ‘Juxtaposition and Visualising the Middle Ground in the Unequal City’, and as part of a 30-year visual project, DeVerteuil employs juxtaposition as a visual tool to reveal the contrasts of unequal cities via a middle ground between powerful city fabrics and everyday city fabrics. Juxtaposition is therefore shown to be both an empirical reality in cities, and a technique to capture on-the-ground contrasts as city fabrics shift in favour of the powerful.

Finally, the special issue ends with a short reflection by Elvin Wyly on how this collection of articles highlights the enduring tension in urban visualisation, between the documentation of existing urban inequalities versus the imagination of new, more just urban futures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Geoffrey Deverteuil

Geoffrey DeVerteuil (PhD Southern California, 2001) is currently Reader of Social Geography at Cardiff University. He considers himself a social geographer of the city, with over 20 years' academic experience at the University of Manitoba, the University of Southampton and now Cardiff University. With over 50 refereed journal articles, 22 book chapters and 2 books, his research has consistently focused on the processes and outcomes of inequality in cities, whether around homelessness, the voluntary sector, mental health, substance abuse, gentrification, or immigration. More recently he has considered the responses to entrenched inequality, including resilience and the commons. His research is international in scope, focusing on the US, Australia, Canada and the UK.

Brian Doucet

Brian Doucet is the Canada Research Chair in Urban Change and Social Inclusion in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on housing, gentrification and displacement with an emphasis on how transportation shapes patterns and experiences of neighbourhood change. Originally from Toronto, he lived, worked and studied in the Netherlands between 2004 - 2017, where he obtained his PhD from Utrecht University. He is the co-author of Streetcars and the Shifting Geographies of Toronto: a visual analysis of change (2022, University of Toronto Press) and co-editor of the four-volume series Global Reflections on COVID-19 and Urban Inequalities (2021, Bristol University Press).