Metropolitan Mosaics: Governing the alchemy

In his lecture, Gerrits warns against treating urban change as a deterministic or purely visionary exercise. Instead, he emphasises that successful transformations arise from a confluence of conditions: flexible governance, entrepreneurial initiative, and timely external pressures, among others. He critiques the prevailing but unimaginative “one‑size‑fits‑all” visions that dominate contemporary urban planning across the globe. They appear in the proliferation of glass‑tower skylines, homogenised river‑front developments, and the ubiquitous “smart‑city” rhetoric. Those visions are symptoms of a deeper cultural convergence— “techno‑logos”—that privileges Western, market‑driven visions of progress. 

To counter this, Gerrits introduces the concept of liminal imagination: a mode of thinking that deliberately occupies the threshold between known practices and unexplored possibilities. Rather than copying templates to fill-out the unknowns, planners should cultivate new cartographies rooted in the distinctive social, cultural, and ecological fabric of each place. Gerrits builds on the work of thinkers such as Yuk Hui, sociologists such as David Byrne and artists like Pauline Oliveros to illustrate how sensory engagement and interdisciplinary dialogue can surface novel pathways for urban governance.

These liminal imaginations then lead to a methodological approach for studying urban transformations that acknowledges the deep complexity that drives those transformations. Gerrits advocates for an approach that blends case‑oriented depth with structure comparison across cities, mapping their rhythms, cycles, and emergent outcomes. By identifying bifurcation points and attractor basins—moments when divergent outcomes become possible—researchers and practitioners can better anticipate where policy interventions will be most effective to create positive urban change. 

Gerrits calls on scholars, policymakers, and citizens to move beyond static, template‑driven visions and embrace a nuanced, comparative, and sensorially grounded understanding of complex urban change. Only through such a balanced, evidence‑based approach can cities navigate the complexities of the 21st century while preserving the unique character that makes each urban landscape work for all.