On method, and the present and future of “doing” urban geography
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Based on a survey of research articles published in Urban Geography between 2020 and 2024, I identify a tepidness in qualitative urban geographers’ relationship with method. This tepidness is marked by agnosticism towards detailing methods with specificity in research outputs; and hesitancy in branching out beyond familiar, stalwart methods. As the subdiscipline looks forward upon the journal marking its 45th anniversary, I encourage urban geographers to engage with speculative experimentalism in their approach to methods, and to include greater method-ological detail in research articles. I argue that methods matter for the actionability of qualitative urban geography research both within and beyond academia; for urban geography in a highly politicized research climate; and for urban geographers’ ability to address urban challenges and chart uncertain urban futures.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.172 | 0.139 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.127 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.027 | 0.035 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.013 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.009 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".