The introduction to this Special Issue considers how literary and cultural representations of cities in transition contribute to interdisciplinary vocabularies for describing urban change beyond gentrification. By ‘urban change’ we refer to shifts in city and regional planning and real estate development, but also to environmental events, patterns of migration and informal uses of the city that shape how urban places transform. The introduction frames scholarship about what gentrification can and should describe as a debate about language and representation. We revisit critical discussions of gentrification and turn to areas of urbanist scholarship that have effectively modelled more specific approaches to describing urban change. We introduce the five articles in the Special Issue and contextualize how their engagement with representations of urban change in London, metropolitan Delhi, Lubumbashi, New York and Manchester intervene in interdisciplinary urban scholarship by offering new tools for describing urban change amid neo-liberal globalization.

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• DOI: 10.3390/smartcities6040086 2023

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  Andrzej Kubik

• DOI: 10.1177/15356841231188968 2023

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  John R. Logan, Elisabeta Minca, Benjamin Bellman, Amory Kisch

• DOI: 10.3390/smartcities6040085 2023

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• DOI: 10.1177/23998083231190974 2023

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  Rohan L Aras, Nicholas T Ouellette, Rishee K Jain

• DOI: 10.2478/aup-2023-0008 2023

  Defining the Urban Greenspaces in the Indian Context

  Akanksha Sangwan, Nand Kumar, Ashwani Kumar

• DOI: 10.1177/00131245231187370 2023

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  Dorothy L. Espelage, Anjali Forber-Pratt, Chad A. Rose, Katherine A. Graves, Rachel A. Hanebutt, America El Sheikh, Ashley Woolweaver, Tracey Kenyon Milarsky, Katherine M. Ingram, Luz Robinson, Angelica M. Gomez, Pam K. Chalfant, Christine Salama, Phil Poekert

• DOI: 10.1386/jucs_00062_2 2023

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  Hanna Henryson, Davy Knittle

• DOI: 10.1386/jucs_00064_1 2023

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  Rudrani Gangopadhyay

• DOI: 10.1386/jucs_00066_1 2023

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  Maria Sulimma

• DOI: 10.1386/jucs_00065_1 2023

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