1 Urban Geography as if Urban Knowledge Matters Bas van Heur Forthcoming in Urban Geography (2020) Abstract This article identifies two main challenges to the future of urban geography. First, the challenge of thinking about urban geography as a more or less coherent discipline in an era of fragmented work histories, with many researchers employed on temporary contracts and moving between countries and institutions, each with its own cultures of work and expectation. Second, the challenge of moving beyond the writing of internalist histories of geography, and instead approaching urban geographic research as if urban knowledge matters, in all its diversity. Keywords Engaged research; urban knowledge; interdisciplinarity; academic biographies; academic labor market Introduction The title of this article refers to the 2003 Urban Geography review paper by Paul L. Knox, “The Sea Change of the 1980s’: Urban Geography as if People and Places Matter” (Knox, 2003), in which the author offers a brief but insightful review of the 1980s’ literature on urban geography. The 1970s was a period during which, according to Knox, the spatial analytical tradition was “challenged by the emergence of behavioral, humanistic, phenomenological, and historical materialist approaches” (p. 273). Subsequently, the 1980s involved a “turn to broader social scientific frameworks”: ranging from new interpretations of Marxian and Weberian theory to the adaptation of the work of French structuralist and post-structuralist authors such