On the necessity of theory: Pedagogy, practice and politics

Responding to Robert Lake’s call for readers ‘to resist the seductions and distractions of theory’, and to move from ‘knowing’ to ‘doing’, this article underlines the significance and necessity of theory for those addressing urban questions. While agreeing on the problems of some theory-driven research, and on the need to question how urban theory is produced and used, and by whom, it also emphasises how theory itself may be understood as situated, embodied, committed and a site of struggle. The connections between theory and practice are also more complex than the prescription to embrace practical action implies. The answer lies not in abandoning theory, which at its most basic is always part of being reflective about what we do, but in sharpening senses of its purpose and its conditions of possibility with the goal of changing urban conditions and lives for the better.