From Ny-lon to Silk? Shifting Centres of Attention in the World's Urban Fabric

This Interventions essay explores Silk Road urbanism's emergence as a rival to New York and London (NY-LON) for global centre stage in Anglophone urban and regional studies.Through China's Belt and Road Initiative, more attention is being given to urban formations and associated new centralities beyond North Atlantic global/world cities. Equally importantly, this shift in the global urban centre of attention is based on a variety of diverse and decentred spatialities of the urban and is bound up with very different modes of (state) power from those that have underlain the NY-LON axis.Silk Road urbanism thus warrants a re-evaluation of existing ways of doing urban and regional research to address ongoing shifts in the world's urban fabric.