Becoming Otherwise: Artful Urban Enquiry by Rike Sitas for Urban Forum draws together conceptual threads from public space, public art and public pedagogy literature in order to ‘deepen and widen the analytical and political edge’ of artful forms of urban enquiry as discussed by Pinder International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32(3), 730–736, (Pinder 2008, p. 233). The article argues that in order to transform, de-centre and decolonise spaces requires the same of urban theory. It questions whether urban research is always adequately adept at capturing every facet of cityness, in all its affective murkiness as reported by Simone (2010). This article therefore focuses on unpacking alternative and artful ways of unravelling the human, material and spatial entanglements typical in and of cities, and reflects on ways in which this knowledge can be used in the service of more radical, decolonised and transformative pedagogical projects. It frames this as a transformative, de-colonial project of becoming otherwise as: otherwise as change; otherwising as a processual becoming; otherwise as troubling; and other-wise as building wisdom about others and other ways of knowing.
