Toward change in the uneven geographies of urban knowledge production

Many theories and concepts in urban research have emerged from the experiences of cities in the Global North (hereafter, North) and are attuned to their needs and specificities. The Chicago and Los Angeles Schools have shaped theoretical vocabularies and empirical interests over decades, orienting thinking around ideas of communities and neighborhoods, urban structure, land rent models, suburbanization, segregation and post-Fordism. Research in a handful of cities such as New York, Los Angeles and London has contributed much to the conceptual grammar of urban studies today—from gentrification and revanchist urbanism to the rent gap theory—and big cities in the North continue to be the reference point for urban narratives^1,2.

In recent years, however, an increasing number of scholars from both the North and the Global South and East (hereafter, South and East) have challenged this situation. They have pushed for a decentering of knowledge in urban studies, underscoring the need to challenge dominant urban narratives beyond Northern metropolises^3,4,5,6. Scholars have variously argued for theorizing from the South and East, for global comparisons between cities and for taking seriously the lifeworlds of people in ordinary cities that are not among the global command-and-control centers^{5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}. Against theoretical universalism, contributions have sought to grasp the ‘pluriversal nature’^13,14 of urbanization, arguing in particular for a ‘comparative gesture’^15,16 and calling for a rethinking of conventional methods and modes of urban research¹⁷.

This movement in urban studies echoes larger academic debates in subaltern, postcolonial and decolonial studies that seek to dislocate Western modernity and epistemic hegemony. To understand the coloniality of knowledge, decolonial scholars argue for the need to recognize the ‘locus of enunciation’¹⁸ from which knowledge is produced. Debates have challenged the validity of several of the key concepts of urban studies, stemming from Northern bodies of knowledge, for cities elsewhere in the world. Literature has questioned, for example, the usefulness of the concept of gentrification, originating from studying neighborhoods in inner London in the 1950 and 1960s¹⁹, for cities around the world with very different economic, social and political conditions^{20,21,22,23,24,25}. New research centers and journals, often based in the East and South, have sought to bring new voices into urban knowledge production^{26,27,28,29,30,31}. In this vein, this scholarship complements other literature that has highlighted how the production of knowledge is traversed by intersectional power dynamics of gender, race and ethnicity and social class^{32,33,34,35,36}.

This article asks to what degree the recent push to decenter urban knowledge production is reflected in the geographies of urban knowledge production. It maps where in the world academic knowledge about cities is produced and curated by analyzing, in a first step, the geographical distribution of the affiliations of authors, editors and board members of 25 leading generalist journals and nine generalist urban studies and planning handbooks. In a second step, it examines the different factors for a higher presence of knowledge from scholars based outside Northern institutions. In so doing, this article examines the extent to which knowledge production happens from and in the South and East. Based on this analysis, it proposes an agenda for making the geographies of urban knowledge more inclusive and more diverse.

We defined ‘urban knowledge’ as articles in academic journals and edited handbooks. Journals publish original knowledge, and handbooks survey the state of the art and are important in defining a canon. Articles and handbooks are key components in a wider ecology of urban teaching, action, practice and politics, as shown in Fig. 1. We distinguished between ‘authors’ as knowledge creators and ‘gatekeepers’ (editors and, for journals, board members and reviewers) who curate the content of journals and handbooks.

Authors (orange) write manuscripts that undergo a process of selection and reshaping by gatekeepers (blue: publishers, editors, board members, reviewers) before passing through diverse mediators to become ‘urban knowledge’. This knowledge can then inform urban teaching, action and policies. Orange and blue colors indicate the focus of this article.

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We focused on the fields of urban studies and planning. The inclusion of planning was important given that it operates at the interface of knowledge and action³⁷. Finally, we only included English-language journals and handbooks, as other languages do not have a similar international reach for urban knowledge production³¹ (see Methods for limitations). Our study focused on ‘leading’ generalist journals (n = 25; Supplementary Table 1) and handbooks (n = 9; Supplementary Table 2)³⁸ (see Methods for a definition and Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 for sample delimitation), as these are most likely to shape debates for the field as a whole. In the (controversial) turn toward metrics-based assessments of scholarship in many countries, publication in these outlets is often essential for scholars’ careers^39,40.

Using the country of their main institutional affiliation as a proxy, we classified authors and gatekeepers as based inside or outside the North. We refer here to the North not as a geographical entity but as those countries that have historically shaped modern forms of governance, economic domination and cultural hegemony⁴¹ (see Methods for limitations). This distinction, however, does not consider the internal heterogeneities and inequalities within countries and regions that complicate this North–South divide. Although current affiliation is an easily available proxy that allows conducting this analysis at a large scale, it simplifies sometimes complex epistemic locations and does not take into account scholars’ potentially complex biographies³². For example, researchers may have grown up in the South or East, been trained in a Southern or Eastern institution but then moved to a Northern institution for a permanent post. In this case, our research design would count them as ‘Northern’, although their epistemic location is likely more ambiguous. To address this limitation of our research design, we also traced the academic trajectories and countries of education of all journal editors in our sample (n = 123).

Finally, to inform our analysis of the barriers and challenges to diversifying urban knowledge production, we conducted six semistructured interviews with seven editors of Anglophone journals that were critical cases for our study. Interviews explored issues related to editorial practices, barriers and challenges in diversifying knowledge and setting an agenda.

Geographical distribution of knowledge production

Figure 2 shows that the presence of the South and East in urban knowledge production in our sample does not match its urban population. Although 84% of the world’s urban population lived in the South and East in 2018, only 42% of journal authors, 18% of journal board members and 15% of journal editors were based there. The more powerful the role in shaping urban knowledge, the fewer scholars based outside the North were represented.

The proportion of authors based in the South and East is below the world urban population for both journals and handbooks. Handbooks have a much poorer representation of authors based in the South and East than journals. As the power to shape knowledge increases from authors to editors, the proportion of scholars from the South and East declines. (Flags of countries with a share of at least 4% of the total are shown.)

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This disparity was even more pronounced for handbooks. Only 17% of handbook authors were based in the South and East and only two handbook editors. This means that the proportion of non-Northern authors in journals is over two times higher than in handbooks. Handbooks with a Southern or comparative perspective perform better: the two editors with Southern affiliations are concentrated in these three handbooks. Their contributors are both less Anglophone (46% compared to 78% for the other handbooks) and more often affiliated with universities in the South and East (31% compared to 8%). The principle of inviting authors to contribute, as is typical of handbooks, risks reproducing a strong Northern bias. The largely open submission process of journals results in a much higher proportion of non-Northern authors.

The warped world maps in Fig. 3 show the geographical distribution of authors and gatekeepers at the country level in relation to the urban population and to the location of the world’s 30 largest cities. Although most of the world’s largest cities are located in the South and East, authors based in the South and East are considerably underrepresented in our sample of leading journals. The proportions of authors from countries with major urban populations, such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico and Nigeria, are all below 2%. The UK, on the other hand, has a share of 11% among authors but represents only 1.3% of the global urban population.

a–d, Country size is proportional to the proportion of urban population (a), authors (b), board members (c) and editors (d). Countries with large urban populations, such as India, Brazil and Indonesia, are heavily underrepresented among authors and gatekeepers. Although China’s share of authors roughly corresponds to its share of the world’s urban population, its importance declines sharply among gatekeepers. (Data from World Bank 2018 World Urban Population Database; Demographia 2022 World Urban Areas database; own data.)

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Although most countries in Western Europe are overrepresented among authors relative to their share of the world’s urban population, this Western European center disappears to become an Anglo-American core when considering gatekeepers. Only two countries (United States and UK) account for half of the editors. In contrast, only two of the world’s 30 most populous cities (New York and Los Angeles) are located in these two countries.

China is the only country from the South and East whose share of authors is proportional to its share of urban population. This finding is in line with other studies that have observed a growing presence of Chinese cases in urban studies and of China-based authors in English-language journals⁴². In our sample of 25 journals, four journals account for 87% of all Chinese affiliations (Sustainable Cities and Society, Land Use Policy, Cities, Habitat International). The presence of scholarship from China was therefore not broadly distributed but rather clustered in specific journals with specific topics. Factors such as the attractiveness of certain journals to meet career advancement expectations of China-based scholars or the Chinese translation of abstracts (E4, E6) as well as the attractiveness of China-related papers to increase citation scores (E2) are also key in explaining this clustering.

As the current affiliation of a scholar simplifies their epistemic location, we traced the academic biographies of editors in more detail. We were particularly interested in whether there was mobility of scholars between Northern and non-Northern affiliations, which would point to the presence of diasporic scholarship³². Figure 4 shows that editors with purely non-Northern academic trajectories are extremely rare, with only 6% of editors both having studied and currently working in the South or East. Conversely, the majority (72%) of editors completed their studies in the North and remained affiliated with Northern institutions. Northern training, often a PhD, is almost always a prerequisite for becoming a gatekeeper (91% of gatekeepers have a Northern PhD), with this training frequently leading to a Northern professional affiliation (83%). Interviews suggested that the academic mobility of editors has the potential to enhance epistemic diversity (E7) by understanding multiple academic traditions, multilingual theoretical schools and research contexts (E1, E3, E5, E7).

Although close to one quarter (24%) of editors completed their Bachelor’s degree in the South or East, this proportion declines to 8% for the PhD degree. This finding indicates that a Northern PhD is still an important point of passage for occupying positions in knowledge gatekeeping. Some editors with Northern PhDs then move back to a Southern or Eastern affiliation (15%), although moving with a non-Northern PhD to a Northern institution is very rare. (Percentages exceeding 100% are due to rounding.)

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Distribution by journal

Examining the geography of authors and gatekeepers by journal provides a more nuanced picture. Only two of the 25 journals had more non-Northern than Northern-based authors (Sustainable Cities and Society, Habitat International), and none of the journal boards had more non-Northern than Northern board members. Interviewees (E3, E5, E6) pointed to the tradition of leading journals being published in the North and often tied to Northern institutions as a major reason for this situation. This is the case, for example, for the journal Planning Theory and Practice, still associated with the Royal Town Planning Institute, and the Journal of the American Planning Association, published by the American Planning Association. As stressed by an editor, “the problematic thing is that you claim to be global, but then you’re talking about the world from a certain position” (E2).

Figure 5a shows a strong and significant correlation between the share of board members based in the North and the share of authors based in the North (r = 0.62, P = 0.001). About 40% of journals clustered in the small top-righthand corner of the matrix, which we have termed (provocatively) ‘Northern Navel-Gazers’, with percentages of both Northern authors and Northern board members above the sample mean. Four journals were ‘Cosmopolitan Eurocentrics’, with a relatively non-Northern board but an above-average proportion of Northern authors. These journals signal a greater openness to the world through their board than they demonstrate in their authorship. Countering efforts to diversify the origin of knowledge produced, journal editors mentioned barriers related to writing traditions that do not always meet journal standards (E1, E2, E5). Regional structural constraints arising from career evaluation systems or the transition to open access further influence the preferred types of publication of authors in different locations. These regional patterns escape the efforts of journals to increase diversity (E1, E5).

a, By affiliation of board members. The more Northern board members a journal has and the more theory oriented it is, the less likely it is to have a high proportion of authors based outside the North. b, By mission statement. Only two journals have more authors based outside the North than in the North. The content of the mission statement, by contrast, does not correlate with the proportion of authors based outside the North. **P = 0.001 (two-tailed). EP, Enviornment and Planning; DISP, disP–The Planning Review; IJURR, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research; JAPA, Journal of the American Planning Association.

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Although by far the largest quadrant in terms of area, ‘Anti-Imperialist’ journals were fewer in number than Northern Navel-Gazers (Fig. 5a). These journals were among the largest of the 25 journals, which increases their weight in the sample of articles. In this quadrant, an important proportion of non-Northern authors for many journals came from China (65% for Habitat International, 56% for Sustainable Cities and Society, 50% for Cities). Not a single journal, however, occupied the bottom-lefthand corner, which would reflect the true share of the North in the world’s urban population. Interviews suggested that the large size of these journals, their high impact factor and citation scores are also more valued in academic contexts with a stronger metric orientation: for instance, for career progression (E2, E4). Another possible explanation is that these journals are less theory oriented (E3) and could potentially attract more diverse authors, such as researchers with more practical experience. However, these interpretations risk obscuring internal power relations and subordinate positions: for example, within international research teams or with local research assistants^43,44. Interviewees also cautioned that critical research will be difficult in authoritarian or conflict-affected regions, therefore limiting the potential for transformative research, as scholars may not be able to freely choose their research and express their findings (E2, E4). Non-Northern institutional affiliations therefore need to be carefully contextualized.

Figure 5b shows that the mission statement of a journal did not correlate with the presence of authors based outside the North (r = −0.28, P = 0.169). Journals with a decolonial or postcolonial agenda or that seek to include more non-Northern knowledge did not publish more authors based outside the North. These mission statements are then best understood as aspirations to diversify the geography of knowledge rather than as achieved facts. Editors explained this discrepancy with reference to mobile academic communities that are affiliated with a university in the North but with strong ties in the South and East (E1, E2). The editors also pointed out that much less time and fewer resources for publishing were available to many scholars outside the North (E1, E2). An editor explained, “Sometimes priorities are not the same. […] [There are] some scholars [in the South] I know whose priority is not so much on publishing but is on creating impact in the real world. And that’s absolutely fine. […] But then we don’t get their writings because that’s not what their priority is. […] The very concept of publication and the value given to it is Western too” (E5).

Journals that emphasize theoretical work had a higher proportion of Northern authors (90.0%, standard error (s.e.) = 2.04%) than other journals (74.6%, s.e. = 3.87%) (t = −3.52, F = 5.05, P = 0.002). This result indicates that theorizing remains a prerogative of Northern-based researchers. Editors evoked concern in relation to the dominance of Western theory and its inadequacy for understanding different conditions and circumstances of urban realities in the South and East (E2–E4): “We need to know more about different traditions of thought. We don’t know what other conceptual orientations exist. […] Even if your case is from one of the countries that are not in the core of Western knowledge producers, you still use the conceptual tools from the West to make sense of it” (E5).

Beyond what individual journals can do, journal editors emphasized their limited room to maneuver, constrained by the imperatives of a profit-oriented publishing industry (E1–E7). However, to encourage submissions from more diverse authors, some journals have opened new spaces to attract scholars based in different places by diversifying the venues, type of publications and formats accepted and by making space for non-academic submissions and the voices of activist scholars or practitioners (E1, E4–E7).

Paths toward more non-Northern urban knowledge

If urban knowledge is to become more Southern and Eastern, knowing more about the predictors of the proportion of authors based outside the North may provide guidance for policy interventions. We specified a total of four models (Table 1) based on initial hypotheses detailed in Supplementary Table 3.

Model 1, ‘Board’, tested whether the country of affiliation of board members was associated with the presence of authors based in the South and the East. We found a strong association: a more Northern board predicted a lower proportion of authors based in the South and East. This finding suggests the important signaling effect of having non-Northern board members. It emerged from the interviews that some journals already recruit board members with regard to diversifying geographical spread to enhance diversity in submissions and publications, as explained by an editor: “People bring in their own networks. […] they just know the landscape of different disciplines and areas” (E6). However, although board members’ diverse geographical expertise or background has allowed for more diversity in terms of submissions, it does not always intersect with an affiliation in the South and East (E1, E7).

Model 2, ‘Journal’, fitted three journal-related predictors: the impact factor, age and size of the journal. Only the size of the journal contributed positively to explaining a higher proportion of authors based outside the North. Larger journals may be better able to publish a variety of papers that do not follow a specific journal line. They may also have higher acceptance rates, which could make it easier for authors based outside the North to get published. Model fit, however, was not significant (P = 0.056).

Model 3, ‘Remit’, estimated the mission statement, home discipline and theory orientation of journals as potential explanatory factors and found significant associations for all three of them. A journal’s mission statement regarding its commitment to international knowledge or to decentering knowledge hierarchies is associated with a higher presence of non-Northern knowledge. Planning journals showed a more diverse geography of knowledge, as did journals that were not strongly theory oriented.

In a consolidated model (Model 4), we estimated the five significant predictors from the previous models in a single model. Four of them remained significant. Results of the regression analysis remain robust when excluding the two journals with more non-Northern than Northern authors (Supplementary Data 3).

Our research shows that the geography of urban knowledge production is far from reflecting the geography of the world’s urban population, despite important efforts to change this situation^{5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}. There remain important knowledge gaps in alternative, non-Northern ways of making sense of urban change. The dominance of the North is particularly strong in the powerful gatekeeping positions in knowledge production that allow for the shaping of the canon. Furthermore, edited handbooks are much more biased toward Northern authors than journals, suggesting that the curated knowledge of handbooks is more likely to reproduce a Northern bias. Journals with a more theoretical orientation had a significantly lower presence of non-Northern authors, indicating that theory remains a domain of Northern-based authors.

If we want (more and different) knowledge from the South and East, we need to revise our knowledge structures, not just our discourses^45,46,47,48. Expanding our understanding of what counts as modes of theorizing needs to make room for “modest, revisable and more localized concepts”⁴⁹. This openness to new modes of theorizing would do well to recognize diversity in forms of writing and knowledge production^50,51. Making journal editors and boards less Northern is an important first step likely to attract more non-Northern authors, as our analysis shows, and can open up to new forms of theorizing. Allowing submissions in languages other than English and encouraging translation would reduce the linguistic barriers that prevent many non-Northern authors from publishing in English-language journals. Handbook editors need to include more non-Northern scholars and be aware of their responsibility to avoid reproducing North-centered ego networks. To improve transparency on diversity, publishers and journals should also systematically collect and show data on the composition of journal boards. Institutional affiliation, as used in this article, is, however, not a perfect representation of epistemic location and should not be taken as such. There are North-based scholars contributing to an emancipatory knowledge agenda and, inversely, scholars outside the North reproducing or compelled to reproduce Northern-dominated bodies of scholarship.

Beyond the need for journals to become more inclusive of non-Northern knowledge, urban scholars can experiment with forms of dissidence, such as favouring alternative publication channels, lesser-known journals and languages other than English. Forms of dissidence would support existing efforts in the South and East to lead the way in diversifying forms of urban knowledge and sites of epistemic locations^{4,17,29,30,52}. Beyond North–South divides, collective forms of ‘defiant scholarship’, defined as “the pursuit of scholarly activity in the name of epistemic disobedience and epistemic justice”⁵³, are essential in effecting change. This should also involve structural changes in a profit-driven publishing industry, in the evaluation criteria for career progression and in the value placed on forms of knowledge production other than publishing in leading Anglophone journals³⁹.

Finally, there is a powerful practice available to every scholar: the choice of what to cite. This politics of citation can diversify the geography of knowledge by being conscious of whom and in what language to cite⁵⁴. It can thus valorize knowledge that would otherwise be less visible and less noticed. After all, the urban pluriverse resides as much in Lusaka, Vilnius, São Paulo and Guangzhou and all the countless but often unnamed smaller cities as it does in the big metropolises of the North.

The study followed the guidelines of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences and the University of Lausanne with respect to ethics and scientific integrity. Research complies with the relevant laws (Vaud Canton Data Protection Act LPrD). In Switzerland, projects not related to health and hence not subject to the Federal Law on Research on Human Beings, such as the present one, are not required to be approved by an ethics committee. No personal data were collected that were not already publicly available. All interviewees gave prior, informed consent and were guaranteed anonymity.

Defining urban knowledge

The aim of this study was to assess where and by whom knowledge in the fields of urban studies and planning is produced. To do this, we focused on academic journals and handbooks. As obligatory passage points for urban knowledge (Fig. 1), academic journals are dominant channels of academic canon constitution. Handbooks (sometimes also called ‘companions’) are reference works that offer concise overviews of the state of the art of a field. By highlighting and including certain debates and literature, they shape a canon. For both journals and handbooks, we analyzed the provenance of authors of published content.

Roles in knowledge production

We distinguish four main roles in urban knowledge production: authors, editors, board members and reviewers. Authors are all researchers in urban studies and planning who produce urban knowledge. Their production takes the form of articles and contributions to journals and handbooks. Authors belong to epistemic communities that vary in their theoretical prisms and empirical focus.

Before publication, knowledge produced by authors is filtered through a rigorous gatekeeping process, predominantly overseen by editors, reviewers and, to a lesser degree, editorial board members, who collectively play a crucial role in curating and shaping scholarly content. The editors of journals and handbooks decide on the merits, potential revisions and final acceptance or rejection of a publication. They shape the overall line and direction of a journal or handbook. In the case of journals, editors are often supported by an editorial board. The function of board members varies by journal, but they often serve as preferred reviewers and as a sounding board for strategic decisions and, more generally, represent the themes, debates and approaches a journal seeks to engage in. Reviewers critically evaluate submitted manuscripts, providing feedback on their quality, rigor and relevance, to help editors determine whether the work should be published, revised or rejected.

Geography of knowledge

The geography of knowledge refers to the epistemic locations of knowledge production. Knowledge production is typically not distributed evenly, reflecting intertwined histories of economic and political power and the dominance of English as a lingua franca. To map the geography of urban knowledge, we collected the countries for the institutional affiliations of authors, editors and board members for our knowledge corpus^55,56. We also conducted semistructured interviews with editors with institutional affiliations in the North and South, with diverse linguistic backgrounds and academic trajectories, to better understand editorial practices. Due to the lack of public data, reviewers are not included in our study. As previous studies have already studied citation patterns^31,42, finding a strong bias in favor of authors located in the North, we chose not to focus on citations.

The aggregation of countries in geopolitical (North/South and East) and linguistic (Anglophone/non-Anglophone) categories aimed to offer insights into the global disparities in knowledge production and dissemination in terms of epistemic location and language. This speaks to the wider theme of the uneven geopolitics of knowledge, according to which knowledge is accorded different weight depending on where in the world and by whom it has been produced⁵⁷.

Sample selection

Journals

Our first step consisted of pre-selecting 25 leading generalist journals in urban studies and planning. We considered as ‘generalist’ journals publishing a wide selection of knowledge across the discipline, not only on special topics (such as technology) or in one subdiscipline (such as urban economics). We identified as leading journals those that are most read, most respected and most cited and therefore most capable of shaping the canon. To operationalize this definition, we started from a comprehensive list of 909 journals in urban studies and planning provided by the Scimago Journal Rank website⁵⁸. We ranked the journals by Scimago Journal Rank score, a measure from network theory that incorporates citations to articles in a journal and the origin of those citations to arrive at a journal ranking.

Recognizing the limits of this quantitative operationalization, we complemented it with a qualitative validation. We sent the shortlist of journals to 17 established researchers in the fields of urban studies and planning in 14 different countries and asked about both potential additions and potential removals. The large number of different countries helped reduce national biases in journal selection. We added or removed a journal if at least two researchers made the same suggestion for the same journal. Altogether, nine journals were added to and seven removed from our selection. From the corrected list of 27 journals, two were removed due to unavailability of the required data: City and Urban Planning. Our study is based on this final list of 25 journals: 13 of them are more associated with urban studies, and 12 of them come from the planning field. Supplementary Table 1 shows key characteristics of each journal. The initial and final list as well as the different steps of the selection process are available for download and further use in tabular form³⁸.

Handbooks

These may be referred to by different names (handbook, companion, manual, and so on), but they all share the objective of outlining the state of the art in a field and therefore contribute to setting a knowledge canon. As with journals, we selected generalist handbooks aiming to provide an overview of the field as a whole. We proceeded in two steps. We first searched for all handbooks published in the 15 years between January 2008 and July 2024 on the Web of Science and Google Scholar browsers. As handbooks are published infrequently, this long period aimed to capture a higher number of them. Only search results containing one of the following words in the title were selected: Handbook (or) Companion (or) Manual (and) Urban (or) City (or) Cities (or) Town (or) Planning. This produced a list of 29 titles. In a second step, we excluded those with a focus on one particular approach, theme or world region. This process resulted in nine generalist handbooks: six (unmarked) Northern and three Southern or comparative, six in urban studies and three in planning (Supplementary Table 2). The final list is available for download and further use³⁸.

Interviewees

We established a list of editors of journals that were critical cases across both urban studies and planning journals. Our selection strategy was to interview editors of journals with a strong agenda of decentering knowledge or with special policies or different ownership structures to understand why certain journals performed better than others in our sample. We contacted five editors from the list of the 25 leading journals. Three gave a favorable answer, and two did not respond. In addition, we contacted three editors of journals that were not considered in our list of leading journals but that had a strong international focus and/or were located in the South.

Data collection

Journals

• Gatekeepers: We gathered names and countries of affiliations for all editors and editorial board members from the journal website in October 2023. We found a total of 123 editors and 851 board members. Where an editorial board was not clearly discernible, we asked journal editors for clarification. For editors, we also collected the countries where they studied (undergraduate, Master’s, PhD) to trace their academic trajectories.

• Authors: We collected the country of affiliation of authors of research articles, identifying 14,582 authors from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2022. We chose a three-year period to reduce fluctuations, and this was the most recent period with complete data available.

• Journals: A set of metrics and information was collected about each journal that included its impact factor, age, mission statement, number of articles published per year, number of gatekeepers and field (either urban studies or planning).

Handbooks

• Editors: We counted a total of 20 editors in the handbooks selected. Their names and countries of affiliation were collected.

• Authors: We counted 252 authors, for whom we also collected their names and countries of affiliation.

Interviews

Six semistructured interviews were conducted online with seven editors between 19 August and 12 September 2024, lasting between 55 minutes and 2 hours. The semistructured interviews were organized around three main themes to explore (1) editorial practices, (2) barriers and challenges in diversifying knowledge and (3) ways forward in setting an agenda. Informed consent regarding anonymity and recording was obtained with all the interviewees. The interviews were recorded and the audio files stored securely on a server maintained by the University of Lausanne. The detailed interview guide can be found in Supplementary Data 4 (ref. ⁵⁹).

Data preparation and scoring

Affiliation countries were assigned to either the North or the South and East according to the following criteria.

North/South and East

North countries were categorized following a dual-criteria approach including both their economic status and their positions within the broader context of Western dominance. We first identified advanced economies according to the International Monetary Fund classification⁶⁰. From this list, we removed countries that were not aligned with Western dominance⁶¹. The final list of North countries comprised the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, 29 countries and dependencies in Europe plus six microstates^61,62. Liminal cases such as Israel, which aligns politically and economically with the West, were included in the North, whereas countries like Japan, despite their economic power, were categorized in the South and East due to their different historical and geopolitical positioning, distancing themselves from the Western sphere of influence.

Although useful as a heuristic and for statistical operationalization, we note that the North/South distinction by country disguises important differences within countries: for example, privileged cities and institutions in countries classified as ‘Southern’ and poorer cities and underfunded institutions in some countries classified as ‘Northern’.

Academic trajectories

We categorized editors into North and South and East affiliations based on the countries in which they completed their Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD. When no Bachelor’s affiliation was found online, we referred to the Master’s. When no Master’s affiliation was found, we referred to the Bachelor’s and then to the PhD. When no information about their PhD was available online, we contacted editors via email.

Mission statement

We classified journals across four categories representing increasing degrees to which they included the decentering of knowledge in their mission statements. This classification was based on their mission statements regarding inclusivity toward non-Northern scholars, cases or epistemes. The categories were coded as follows:

• Category ‘Not Concerned’ (score 0): This category includes journals with no specific statement on inclusivity or diversity.

• Category ‘Wannabe International’ (score 1): Journals describe themselves as ‘international’ but lack explicit goals for diversifying beyond Northern-based scholarship.

• Category ‘South Inclusive’ (score 2): Journals state a specific aim to include Southern or Eastern authors or case studies but do not address theoretical issues related to the politics of knowledge production.

• Category ‘De-/Postcolonial’ (Score 3): Journals explicitly address the politics of knowledge production with commitments to decolonizing or decentering urban knowledge and theories, with objectives focused on Southern epistemics or similar initiatives.

Rather than reflecting concrete outcomes in terms of inclusivity or diversity, these categories are intended to capture the different aspirations of journals regarding inclusivity and diversity to test whether stated intentions have a measurable association with outcomes.

Northern association

We classified journals as North if they were associated with an institution in the North (such as the American Sociological Association) or if their regional focus was on the North (such as European Planning Studies).

Theory orientation

Journals were coded as theory oriented when mission statements accorded an important weight to conceptual and theoretical work and when the title of the journal explicitly mentioned ‘theory’.

The final list of North countries as well as journal data and scoring is available for download and further use⁶³.

Data analysis, statistics and reproducibility

Descriptive statistics

Based on the data collected, processed and synthesized, we carried out an initial descriptive statistical study on the total population of authors, editors and board members. We ran frequency analyses of the affiliations of authors, board members and gatekeepers for journals and handbooks, comparing them to the distribution of the world urban population. Supplementary Table 4 reports full descriptive statistics. We then plotted the percentage of Northern authors against other key variables, including board affiliation, theory orientation and mission statement of journals in the form of scatterplots.

Inferential statistics

We ran two-tailed independent sample t-tests with P < 0.05 as a threshold and unequal variances assumed to test for mean differences. To prepare for regression analysis, we checked our data for outliers and assumptions of normality, linearity, homoscedasticity and absence of multicollinearity. Analysis of standard residuals showed no outliers (standard residual minimum =−1.86, standard residual maximum = 2.58). The assumption of independent errors was met (Durbin–Watson = 2.29). We applied a log₁₀ transformation to the share of Northern authors to correct for skewness. After transformation, an examination of standardized residuals and normal P-plots indicated that assumptions were met for close to normally distributed errors, linearity and homoscedasticity. Multicollinearity is not a concern (tolerance > 0.1 and variance inflation factor < 2 for all variables). Values for all tests are in Supplementary Data 3 (ref. ⁶⁴). In addition to analyzing the affiliation of journals and handbooks actors, we tested a range of potential predictors to better understand potential drivers of a more diverse knowledge geography. The predictor variables were selected based on simple assumptions as shown in Supplementary Table 3.

Interviews

We transcribed and subsequently coded the interviews using the Atlas.ti software. We developed deductive codes in a first phase based on the research design and quantitative results. Following a grounded theory approach, we then developed inductive codes, using open coding, in the course of the analysis⁶⁵. We accompanied our qualitative data collection and analysis process with ‘memoing’ on the meaning of the data⁶⁶. We anonymized the quotes presented in the paper and removed any information that could identify individuals and/or journals. We analyzed the data using inductive analytic strategies, as well as deductive, by triangulating the qualitative data with the quantitative results⁶⁶: for instance, bringing a nuanced understanding of why journals performed better than others in terms of diversity of knowledge production in the discussion. The qualitative analysis provided us with an in-depth understanding of the barriers and challenges faced by journal editors to enhance diversity and the associated outcomes.

Limitations and further research

Our analysis is subject to several limitations, three of which we would like to discuss here. First, operationalizing epistemic location in terms of ‘institutional affiliation’ and in binary form (North/non-North) simplifies often more complex epistemic terrains. As Fig. 4 shows, some scholars move between Northern and non-Northern institutions. Our data show that such mobile researchers are not (yet) very common in the overall sample and are unlikely to have, in purely statistical terms, a major impact on the overall results. Yet our analysis cannot fully take into account the complex epistemic location of, say, scholars from the South who moved to the North to obtain a PhD and took on a faculty position there. These scholars may have to submit to Northern norms of knowledge production—for example, publication expectations as required by their institutions—but are equally able to challenge those norms from within: for example, by bringing in new material, new languages and new research practices. We note, however, that some scholars consider a decentering from the North as problematic or even impossible, calling for a more radical change in the structures and loci of knowledge production^45,46,47,48.

Second, our exclusive focus on English ignores the potential of epistemic communities in other languages, such as French, Spanish or Chinese, some of which operate within alternative publication circuits. Although these languages may be less influential in global research, they have the potential to create disruptive knowledge. Consider, for example, the postcolonial writings of Frantz Fanon in French⁶⁷ and the emergence of decolonial thought from Latin America in Spanish^68,69. Our own positions as authors based in the North, but steeped in the German, French and Spanish language traditions, for example, come with the potential, but also the burden, to bring literatures from multiple languages into dialogue. We have sought to do this by citing literature in languages other than English.

Third and last, language and epistemic location are just two vectors of inequality and marginalization in urban knowledge production. A more comprehensive study would have to consider, at a minimum, the intersection with gender³³, race and ethnicity³⁵ and social class³². Further research could usefully extend to qualitative interviews with scholars to understand the intersectional dynamics of marginalization and inclusion and the complex trajectories of interstitial epistemic positions. It could also bring the content of research more into view to see whether there are considerable differences in terms of theory, method or citations depending on epistemic location.

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.