Global Southern urbanism: Rethinking “south” and “marginality”

With dynamic changes in global politics, Global Southern countries and cities have gradually become important actors and active participants in shaping world order and addressing global issues. Southern urbanism has also become an indispensable source of knowledge and a practical path for globalization development. This article uses CiteSpace, a literature analysis software to conduct statistical and visual analysis of existing research on Global Southern cities and southern urbanism, summarize the characteristics of two topics and analyze their theoretical framework and main issues in Western academic literature. The findings are as follows, 1) The current research on global southern cities include topics such as urban living and spatial competition, daily urban life and urban socio-cultural development, infrastructure and smart city construction. These topics reflect the unique experiences of global southern cities in imbalanced development, residents’ power struggle and negotiation, informality, technological adaptation, lobal governance and social justice; 2) The theory of southern urbanism comes from theoretical discussions on global urbanism, neoliberalism, and postcolonialism, and includes recent topics such as platform urbanism, populism, and everyday urbanism; 3) The application of southern urbanism and its related theories promote the transformation of urban space towards multifunctional and a more inclusive living scenario. In sum, global southern urbanism has expanded urban studies epistemology, providing a new theoretical paradigm for studying Global Southern cites, and also bringing insights for a more balanced development in global urbanization process. It is an important strategic frontier for a healthy and sustainable development of the nation as well as the global urban system.