Introduction to the Special Issue: Cities and Universities. Discourses, spatialities, and material infrastructures of university-driven urban change.

This paper introduces a collection of articles variously aiming at addressing the complex interconnection between contemporary Higher Education institutions and processes of urban change. During the last years, the multiple intricacies between cities and universities have been unpacked by various streams of research. Recent research has further enriched the investigation of universities as spatial actors, paying attention to how the heterogeneous transformative power of universities intercepts global dynamics of capitalist urbanization that function as a backdrop for local university-city relations. The Special Issue situates within this line of investigation, specifically offering readings of university-driven urban change which situate the latter on the backdrop of some of the most visible trends of urban transformation. Among these, the articles look closely at the entanglement between the global knowledge-based economy and urbanization, processes of transnational gentrification, the increased financialization of housing, and the growth of infrastructures for transient populations. Taken together, the papers of this Special Issue suggest that the investigation of the multiple ways through which universities and cities are entangled could act as a useful analytical prism to understand different dynamics of contemporary urban change.