Studying Obduracy in the City: Toward a Productive Fusion between Technology Studies and Urban Studies

This article draws the city into the limelight of social studies of technology. Considering that cities consist of a wide range of technologies, it is remarkable that cities as an object of research have so far have been relatively neglected in the field of technology studies. This article focuses on the role of obduracy in urban sociotechnical change, an issue that, it is argued, has considerable importance for both students of the cities and the daily practice of town planners and architects, and, at the same time, forms an important theoretical debate in science, technology, and society (STS) studies. The article provides an overview of theoretical conceptions of obduracy in both technology studies and urban studies and proposes a heuristic model for the analysis of this phenomenon. In this way, this article aims to contribute to the establishment of a common interdisciplinary playground for these disciplines.