Michael Dudley

My name is Michael Dudley. In addition to my work as a research associate and librarian here at the Institute of Urban Studies, I maintain the "CityStates" blog, through which I'm commenting on the state of contemporary cities.

The emphasis in CityStates is political: it explores the ways in which cities are being affected by -- and responding to -- dramatic global power shifts in a context of growing resource scarcity. The City and all its attendant elements and institutions is increasingly becoming a site of contestation between potent ideologies, and as such it is where many of the key social, political, economic and environmental issues of our time will be argued and decided.

As a librarian my primary motivation with the blog initially was to be informative -- to link to resources on a range of issues and make connections between those issues. As the site has evolved the entries have become more opinionated; so it should be stressed that the opinions on these pages do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute of Urban Studies or the University of Winnipeg.

But since encouraging debate is an essential function of the academy, this blog is also a forum for discussion -- so please feel free to comment on anything you see here...or to suggest stories we should be following!