Kees Terlouw Contact Updated 2-1-2026
Utrecht University, Netherlands
Department of Human Geography & Spatial Planning
My new book is now available in various formats. A
Political Geography of Polarising Identities: Contested Iconic Places
analyses how the polarisation between cosmopolitan and parochial identity
discourses on places links up with political polarisation.
https://www.routledge.com/A-Political-Geography-of-Polarising-Identities-Contested-Iconic-Places/Terlouw/p/book/9781032706665 20% Discount with Code 25AFLY4
Full text also available at Utrecht University Library https://www-taylorfrancis-com.utrechtuniversity.idm.oclc.org/books/mono/10.4324/9781032706689/political-geography-polarising-identities-kees-terlouw
This book builds on the two previous books I published with Routledge. In the first book, Local Identities and Politics: Negotiating the Old and the New, I analysed in detail how in two Dutch amalgamated municipalities, different types of thick and thin local identities were used to support or oppose these amalgamations. In the second book Political Geography of Cities and Regions: Changing Legitimacy and Identity I analysed the shift in dominance and dialectical development of the relational and the territorial perspective on legitimacy applied to the changing governance of cities and regions over the centuries. In this forthcoming book, A Political Geography of Polarising Identities: Contested Iconic Places, I analyse the backgrounds of the current polarisation in politics. I argue that this is driven by a polarisation between identity discourses. The support for cosmopolitan and parochial identity discourses not only differs between cities and the rest of the country, but the different valuation of these spaces is an integral aspect of the polarisation between them. This book analyses how this polarisation takes place in relation to specific iconic places linked to different spatial scales. My recent (2024) paper Regional Identities in a Re-territorialising World: From thinning cosmopolitan to thickening resistance identities is a kind of stepping stone between the 2023 and the 2025 book.
PowerPoint presentation on A Political Geography of Polarising Identities: Contested Iconic Places
The growing importance of identities is widely recognised and linked to political and social polarisation. The changing role of identities is hardly analysed from a geographical perspective. This book analyses the changing role of spaces and places in opposite identity discourses. It goes beyond other books that focus solely on the EU, a particular nation-state, a city, a neighbourhood, or a nature reserve. It analyses the interrelations between the different interpretations and valuations of these iconic places in opposing identity discourses. It shows that the political polarisation exemplified by the growing support and fear for populists in national politics is part of a much broader and deeper polarisation in society.
Some of the arguments I develop in these books form the basis of some blogs:
The current crisis of neoliberalism heralds the resurgence of the territorial perspective: https://theloop.ecpr.eu/neoliberalism-crisis-legitimacy-but-what-is-the-alternative/
On the current polarisations in politics and space: https://legitimacies.blogspot.com/2022/09/polarisation-territorial-versus.html
On how
vertical villagism challenges the cosmopolitan urban future: https://www.regionalstudies.org/news/from-the-triumph-of-the-city-to-the-revenge-of-the-villages/
The
political use of identities
Identities play an important role in politics.
I focus my research on the political use of identity discourses of spatial
communities. These are important to legitimise political choices as beneficial
and appropriate for their community. These identity discourses focus not only
on the community itself – whether local, regional, national, European or
global – but also on the relations with other similar communities, and also
across scales. What defines a community is not fixed, but both the
conceptualisation of its boundaries and its identity are adjusted to changing
circumstances.
The
de-legitimation of neo-liberal discourses on urban competitiveness
The dialectical interaction between the dominant ‘thin’ outward and forward
looking cosmopolitan identity discourses with the ‘thick’ inward and backward
looking provincial or ‘populist’ identity discourses is central in my research.
I try to give a political geographical and regional perspective on the gap
between the global elites and the ‘populist’ movements in the western world. In
done this recently in this lecture on the
different roots and branches of populism.
Metropolitan regions are interesting objects to study these different
perspectives on legitimacy, community and identity, while these are based on
the mix between thin and thick forms of identity discourses, legitimation,
organisation and coordination. Not only the identity discourses
metropolitan regions use to legitimise their policies to strengthen their
global competitiveness are quite thin. Also their organisation based on
voluntary cooperation on specific projects is also much thinner than the
traditional local and regional administrations based on general thick territorial
control and hierarchically coordinated and legitimised by the democratically
controlled government of the nation state. This mixture of thinner and thicker
organisations, coordination and identities complicates the legitimacy of
metropolitan regions, which makes them interesting to study especially in the
shadow of the conflict between national populism and cosmopolitanism which is
mostly played out at the national or European level, but which has its roots at
the regional and local level.
I also work on world-system analysis, border studies, neo-medievalism, place branding.
Urban and regional governance
Spatial planning
Regional planning
Cities and regions
Territory
Borders
google-site-verification=55bABw_O7LUL2AhEP_GvXKwsCt2ItSg0wf5UfqNWN_I
Legitimacy
Identity
Identity discourse
Resistance identity
Regional identity
Local identity
Heritage
Polarisation
Populism
Geographies of discontent
Left behind places
Urban middle class
Vertical villagism
Thick and thin identities
Cosmopolitan
Provincial
Neoliberal
Urban competitiveness
Metropolitan region
Moral systems
Values
Jane Jacobs
Modernity
Early modernity
Industrial modernity
Late modernity
Society of singularities
Circular economy
Ruhr
Duisburg
Amsterdam