Berkeley Planning Journal

The International Association of Urban Intellectuals, meeting this week for their 112'h global symposium at the Walter Benjamin Conference Center in Paris, announced that forthwith all problems associated with urbanization and metropolitan living would be converted to problem spaces. The change will go into effect on January 1", leading some to specl}late about the challenges faced by cities and their residents in anticipation of the conversion. Discursive shifts of this sort, while not unprecedented, often come with significant epistemological and pecuniary costs, including altering one's outlook on daily urban living and buying lots of new books.