Abstract

Cities of the Global Souths are the primary sites of urban growth worldwide and they are predicted to remain so into the foreseeable future. However, such trends are not reflected within most urban theories, which are centred on Global North cities. The paper discusses some classic categorisations of policies and sifts them through the example of social policies in Global Souths contexts, challenging the notion of the universal applicability of these categorisations. I then examine more specifically the topic of urban policies and highlight that issues such as limited financial resources, lack of political autonomy and predominantly informal economies affect the extent and implementation of urban policies in Southern urban contexts. In order to contribute to the creation of an alternative body of literature on urban policy focused on Global Souths experiences, the final section sketches an open list of policy themes. The themes include: urban growth; population management; land use management; housing and provision of basic infrastructure/ services; resource management, environmental plans and sustainability; urban mobilities; urban heritage; identification of a competitive role for the city in the global space; creation of networks of cities and urban corridors between cities; relations among different levels of governance. This initial and open list of themes is meant to function as a compass to help situate and develop new urban policy theories and categorisations based on empirical studies and comparisons based on Southern cities experiences.