Urban research should pair empirical study with skepticism about representation.

Evidence

If the premise that racial categorization seeps into writing and thinking about cities has a degree of validity, it may be worth developing the outlines of a synthesis of empirical and theoretical analyses of the contemporary city. Such a stance might take as its starting point the possibility of combining the rigorous empirical exploration of the forms of racialized newness that come into the world through the continuously mutating urban landscape alongside a more rigorous skepticism about the plurality of representational practices that are used to capture such diversity in print and in film. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2286

Categorization

• DEFINE: The ‘racialized newness’ of the city is defined here as the object that a synthesis of empirical and skeptical analysis would investigate.
• XREF: connects to: Field researchers studying the unemployed must embed themselves usefully in local life — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 680