- Table View
- List View
The United States–South Korea Alliance: Why It May Fail and Why It Must Not (A Council on Foreign Relations Book)
by Scott A. SnyderThe alliance between the United States and South Korea has endured through seven decades of shifting regional and geopolitical security contexts. Yet it now faces challenges from within. Domestic political turmoil, including deepening political polarization and rising nationalism in both countries, has cast doubt on the alliance’s viability—with critical implications for the balance of power in East Asia.Scott A. Snyder provides an authoritative overview of the internal and external pressures on the U.S.–South Korea alliance and explores its future prospects. He argues that nationalist leaders’ accession to power could put past successes at risk and endanger the national security objectives of both countries. In the United States, “America first” nationalism favors self-interest over cooperation and portrays allies as burdens or even free riders. “Korea first” sentiments, in both progressive and conservative forms, present the U.S. military presence in South Korea as an obstacle to Korean reconciliation or a shackle on South Korea’s freedom of action. Snyder also examines North Korea’s attempts to influence South Korean domestic politics and how China’s growing strength has affected the dynamics of the alliance. He considers scenarios in which the U.S.–South Korea relationship weakens or crumbles, emphasizing the consequences for the region and the world. Drawing on this analysis, Snyder offers timely recommendations for stakeholders in both countries on how to preserve and strengthen the alliance.
Universal Basic Income (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
by Karl WiderquistAn accessible introduction to the simple (yet radical) premise that a small cash income, sufficient for basic needs, ought to be provided regularly and unconditionally to every citizen.The growing movement for universal basic income (UBI) has been gaining attention from politics and the media with the audacious idea of a regular, unconditional cash grant for everyone as a right of citizenship. This volume in the Essential Knowledge series presents the first short, solid UBI introduction that is neither academic nor polemic. It takes a position in favor of UBI, but its primary goal remains the provision of essential knowledge by answering the fundamental questions about it: What is UBI? How does it work? What are the arguments for and against it? What is the evidence?Karl Widerquist discusses how UBI functions, showing how it differs from other redistributional approaches. He summarizes the common arguments for and against UBI and presents the reasons for believing it is a tremendously important reform. The book briefly discusses the likely cost of UBI; options for paying for it; the existing evidence on the probable effects of UBI; and the history of UBI from its inception more than two hundred years ago through the two waves of support it received in the twentieth century to the third and largest wave of support it is experiencing now. Now more than ever, conditions in much of the world are ripe for such enthusiasm to keep growing, and there are good reasons to believe that this current wave of support will eventually lead to the adoption of UBI in several countries around the world—making this volume an especially timely and necessary read.
Universities and Non-Governmental Organisations: A Comparative European Study of the Potential for Civil Society Collaboration
by Monika Banaś Franciszek Czech Małgorzata KołaczekIn the opinion of the general public, universities and NGOs would be natural partners for effective collaboration in many fields. They are indeed, but mainly in theory. This book examines the reasons why this is the case and what possible models of cooperation and facilitated dialogue between institutions of higher education system and NGOs could transform this theoretically optimal union into practice. The authors start with Poland and analyse legal, cultural and socio-economic factors, which impact upon the current state of affairs. Subsequently they move on to consider cases from four other European countries: Portugal, Austria, Slovakia and the United Kingdom. Then they propose possible solutions, areas for further research and formulate recommendations for strengthening future cooperation between the two main types of actors which shape education and increase awareness in civil societies. Universities and Non-Governmental Organisations will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in higher education and research, public discourse and civil society.
The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart
by Jeremy CarlAnti-white racism, undisguised and unembarrassed, is now official policy in America.One class of citizens—whites—is openly discriminated against in every sphere of public and private life. The Unprotected Class is a comprehensive explanation of how we got here and what we must do to correct a manifest—and dangerous—injustice. Launched with an appeal to justice for all, the civil rights movement went off the rails even as it achieved its original goals. Soon its excesses and failures were exploited to justify discrimination against whites in business, education, law, entertainment, and even the church. With the death of George Floyd and the shedding of all pretense of racial justice, vindictiveness, resentment, and hatred were unleashed in America.
Unraveling Race, Politics, and Gender in Trinidad and Tobago’s Economic Development
by Jeetendra Khadan Inder Jit RuprahThis book delves into Trinidad and Tobago's development with a fresh lens. It stands as the inaugural empirical exploration of the country's unique attributes, including its diversity, ex-British colony status, small-state categorization by population size, and its dependence on hydrocarbons.Through meticulous empirical analysis, this book scrutinizes the nation's economic, social, and political outcomes within the context of these four distinctive parameters, offering fresh insights into the country's development trajectory.What sets this book apart is its unwavering commitment to a data-driven approach. Drawing upon a vast array of databases from both international and national sources, it provides a thorough examination of development indicators, household welfare metrics, firm-level performance, and individual perspectives on a wide range of political, economic, and social issues.For scholars, policymakers, and anyone with an interest in understanding how unique contextual factors shape a Trinidad and Tobago's development, this book offers an enlightening and data-rich perspective on the nation's journey towards progress and prosperity.
Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education
by Ujju AggarwalHow the Great Recession revealed a system of school choice built on crisis, precarity, and exclusion What do universal rights to public goods like education mean when codified as individual, private choices? Is the &“problem&” of school choice actually not about better choices for all but, rather, about the competition and exclusion that choice engenders—guaranteeing a system of winners and losers? Unsettling Choice addresses such questions through a compelling ethnography that illuminates how one path of neoliberal restructuring in the United States emerged in tandem with, and in response to, the Civil Rights movement. Drawing on ethnographic research in one New York City school district, Unsettling Choice traces the contestations that surfaced when, in the wake of the 2007–2009 Great Recession, public schools navigated austerity by expanding choice-based programs. Ujju Aggarwal argues that this strategy, positioned as &“saving public schools,&” mobilized mechanisms rooted in market logics to recruit families with economic capital on their side, thereby solidifying a public sphere that increasingly resembled the private—where contingency was anticipated and rights for some were marked by intensified precarity for poor and working-class Black and Latinx families. As Unsettling Choice shows, these struggles over public schools—one of the last remaining universal public goods in the United States—were entrapped within neoliberal regimes that exceeded privatization and ensured exclusion even as they were couched in language of equity, diversity, care, and rights. And yet this richly detailed and engaging book also tracks an architecture of expansive rights, care, and belonging built among poor and working-class parents at a Head Start center, whose critique of choice helps us understand how we might struggle for—and reimagine—justice, and a public that remains to be won. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.
Unsustainable: Measurement, Reporting, and the Limits of Corporate Sustainability
by Matthew ArcherA behind-the-scenes look at how corporate and financial actors enforce a business-friendly approach to global sustainabilityIn recent years, companies have felt the pressure to be transparent about their environmental impact. Large documents containing summaries of yearly emissions rates, carbon output, and utilized resources are shared on companies’ social media pages, websites, and employee briefings in a bid for public confidence in corporate responsibility.And yet, Matthew Archer argues, these metrics are often just hollow symbols. Unsustainable contends with the world of big banks and multinational corporations, where sustainability begins and ends with measuring and reporting. Drawing on five years of research among sustainability professionals in the US and Europe, Unsustainable shows how this depoliticizing tendency to frame sustainability as a technical issue enhances and obscures corporate power while doing little, if anything, to address the root causes of the climate crisis and issues of social inequality. Through this obsession with metrics and indicators, the adage that you can’t manage what you can’t measure transforms into a belief that once you’ve measured social and environmental impacts, the market will simply manage them for you.The book draws on diverse sources of evidence—ethnographic fieldwork among a wide array of sustainability professionals, interviews with private bankers, and apocalyptic science fiction—and features analyses of name-brand companies including Volkswagen, Unilever, and Nestlé. Making the case for the limits of measuring and reporting, Archer seeks to mobilize alternative approaches. Through an intersectional lens incorporating Black and Indigenous theories of knowledge, power and value, he offers a vision of sustainability that aims to be more effective and more socially and ecologically just.
Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala
by Rachel NolanThe poignant saga of Guatemala’s adoption industry: an international marketplace for children, built on a foundation of inequality, war, and Indigenous dispossession.In 2009 Dolores Preat went to a small Maya town in Guatemala to find her birth mother. At the address retrieved from her adoption file, she was told that her supposed mother, one Rosario Colop Chim, never gave up a child for adoption—but in 1984 a girl across the street was abducted. At that house, Preat met a woman who strongly resembled her. Colop Chim, it turned out, was not Preat’s mother at all, but a jaladora—a baby broker.Some 40,000 children, many Indigenous, were kidnapped or otherwise coercively parted from families scarred by Guatemala’s civil war or made desperate by unrelenting poverty. Amid the US-backed army’s genocide against Indigenous Maya, children were wrested from their villages and put up for adoption illegally, mostly in the United States. During the war’s second decade, adoption was privatized, overseen by lawyers who made good money matching children to overseas families. Private adoptions skyrocketed to the point where tiny Guatemala overtook giants like China and Russia as a “sender” state. Drawing on government archives, oral histories, and a rare cache of adoption files opened briefly for war crimes investigations, Rachel Nolan explores the human toll of an international industry that thrives on exploitation.Would-be parents in rich countries have fostered a commercial market for children from poor countries, with Guatemala becoming the most extreme case. Until I Find You reckons with the hard truths of a practice that builds loving families in the Global North out of economic exploitation, endemic violence, and dislocation in the Global South.
Unveiling Dynamics, Legitimacy, and Governance in Contemporary States: Power in Fragility
by Ryszard FicekThis book delves into the complex dynamics of legitimizing power in fragile states. With five comprehensive chapters, it analyzes the geopolitical, domestic, and international dimensions of fragile states. The unique contribution lies in unraveling specific forms of legitimization linked to various types of state fragility, providing a nuanced understanding. The book distinguishes between temporary crises and chronic fragility, crucial for shaping effective international support strategies. It addresses the challenges and consequences of weak legitimacy on global security, highlighting its impact on aid interventions and systemic stability. The author's analysis emphasizes the diverse nature of political regimes in fragile states, incorporating considerations of hybrid regimes. Additionally, it explores the dynamics of authoritarian enclaves at the sub-state level, revealing their potential national influence. By scrutinizing the decline of trust in democratic systems, the book addresses contemporary challenges, making it a vital resource for understanding and navigating the complexities of fragile states' political landscapes.
Unveiling Semiotic Codes of Fake News and Misinformation: Contemporary Theories and Practices for Media Professionals
by Tatiana IskanderovaThis book offers a comprehensive exploration of the widespread issue of fake news and misinformation. Using real-life examples and semiotic theory, the author demonstrates how language, images, and symbols are being utilized in media production and distribution with the intention of altering the perception of individuals and shaping their beliefs. The book also addresses how social and cultural factors influence the spread of information and emphasizes the importance of understanding the context in which information is being received and shared. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the impact of fake news and misinformation on society, especially academics, researchers, journalists, policymakers, and media professionals at all levels. The author provides contemporary theories and practical strategies to navigate the complex and ever-changing media landscape.
Up in Arms: How Military Aid Stabilizes—and Destabilizes—Foreign Autocrats
by Adam E CaseyAn &“extraordinary…must-read&” (Steven Levitsky, New York Times–bestselling coauthor of How Democracies Die) look at how support from foreign superpowers propped up—and pulled down—authoritarian regimes during the Cold War, offering lessons for today&’s great power competition Throughout the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union competed to prop up friendly dictatorships abroad. Today, it is commonly assumed that this military aid enabled the survival of allied autocrats, from Taiwan&’s Chiang Kai-shek to Ethiopia&’s Mengistu Haile Mariam. In Up in Arms, political scientist Adam E. Casey rebuts the received wisdom: aid to autocracies often backfired during the Cold War. Casey draws on extensive original research to show that, despite billions poured into friendly regimes, US-backed dictators lasted in power no longer than those without outside help. In fact, American aid often unintentionally destabilized autocratic regimes. The United States encouraged foreign regimes to establish strong, independent armies like its own, but those armies often went on to lead coups themselves. By contrast, the Soviets promoted the subordination of the army to the ruling regime, neutralizing the threat of military takeover. Ultimately, Casey concludes, it is subservient militaries—not outside aid—that help autocrats maintain power. In an era of renewed great power competition, Up in Arms offers invaluable insights into the unforeseen consequences of overseas meddling, revealing how military aid can help pull down dictators as often as it props them up.
The Upcoming Insignificance of the American Presidency: Flouting the Framer's Forewarnings
by Wilbur C. RichThis new text analyzes the development of the presidency as the dominant political institution in the United States and raises questions about its future relevance. In this history of the U.S. executive branch from the framing of the Constitution to the Biden administration, author Wilbur C. Rich illuminates the transformation of the presidential role by a variety of extra-constitutional, non-legal forces, technology, and social changes.The book highlights how some presidents nevertheless have managed to maintain relevancy and dominance by adapting to these changes or by introducing changes of their own. For undergraduate students and researchers of presidential history and American political development, this expansive historical overview of the executive branch in America makes a strong case that the significance of the American presidency has declined dramatically—and perhaps irrevocably—in the modern presidency.
Urban Ecology: An Introduction
by Philip James Ian DouglasThis fully revised second edition reflects the great expansion in urban ecology research, action, and teaching since 2015. Urban ecology provides an understanding of urban ecosystems and uses nature-based techniques to enhance habitats and alleviate poor environmental conditions. Already the home to the majority of the world’s people, urban areas continue to grow, causing ecological changes throughout the world. To help students of all professions caring for urban areas and the people, animals, and plants that live in them, the authors set out the environmental and ecological science of cities, linkages between urban nature and human health, urban food production in cities, and how we can value urban nature. The authors explore our responsibilities for urban nature and greening, ecological management techniques, and the use of nature-based solutions to achieve a better, more sustainable urban future and ensure that cities can climate change and become more beautiful and more sustainable places in which to live. This text provides the student and the practitioner with a critical scientific overview of urban ecology that will be a key source of data and ideas for studies and for sound urban management.
Urban Flood Mitigation Strategies Using Geo Spatial Tools: A Practical Approach for Cities and Towns of Developing World
by Narendar KumarThe disastrous effects of floods in urban areas of various Indian cities have been increasing in severity and extent over the past decade. This book explores flood disasters, their impact in world and Indian contexts, assessing vulnerability and risks involved, and systematic use of (GIS)-enabled platforms to map mitigation measures sustainably, with special reference to the metropolitan flood mitigation endeavors. This book balances the theoretical with empirical approaches to form a unique standpoint on the various challenges and possible solutions to urban flooding in India. Through a study of major urban flood incidents, this book analyzes the factors which contribute to the rising risk of flooding with increasing urbanization, population dynamics, growth, and urban sprawl, with particular focus on the cities of Chennai, Mumbai, and Hyderabad in India. It also examines disaster governance on urban floods and legislative prospects of flood disasters through discussions on standing acts, United Nations (UN) directives, and internationally adopted practices and actions, which are applicable in the Indian context. An interdisciplinary study, this book brings together tools and research from various disciplines including geography, urban and regional planning, and GIS. It will be an invaluable resource for researchers, scholars, engineers, students, planners, academicians, and professionals of cross-disciplines to help them resolve the problem of urban flooding. It will also be of interest to the general reader seeking to learn more about disasters, urban flooding, engineering, and GIS.
Urban Food Mapping: Making Visible the Edible City
by Katrin Bohn Mikey TomkinsWith cities becoming so vast, so entangled and perhaps so critically unsustainable, there is an urgent need for clarity around the subject of how we feed ourselves as an urban species. Urban food mapping becomes the tool to investigate the spatial relationships, gaps, scales and systems that underlie and generate what, where and how we eat, highlighting current and potential ways to (re)connect with our diet, ourselves and our environments.Richly explored, using over 200 mapping images in 25 selected chapters, this book identifies urban food mapping as a distinct activity and area of research that enables a more nuanced way of understanding the multiple issues facing contemporary urbanism and the manyfold roles food spaces play within it. The authors of this multidisciplinary volume extend their approaches to place making, storytelling, in-depth observation and imagining liveable futures and engagement around food systems, thereby providing a comprehensive picture of our daily food flows and intrastructures. Their images and essays combine theoretical, methodological and practical analysis and applications to examine food through innovative map-making that empowers communities and inspires food planning authorities. This first book to systematise urban food mapping showcases and bridges disciplinary boundaries to make theoretical concepts as well as practical experiences and issues accessible and attractive to a wide audience, from the activist to the academic, the professional and the amateur. It will be of interest to those involved in the all-important work around food cultures, food security, urban agriculture, land rights, environmental planning and design who wish to create a more beautiful, equitable and sustainable urban environment.
Urban Freight Analytics: Big Data, Models, and Artificial Intelligence
by Eiichi Taniguchi Russell G. Thompson Ali G. QureshiUrban Freight Analytics examines the key concepts associated with the development and application of decision support tools for evaluating and implementing city logistics solutions. New analytical methods are required for effectively planning and operating emerging technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT), Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). The book provides a comprehensive study of modelling and evaluation approaches to urban freight transport. It includes case studies from Japan, the US, Europe, and Australia that illustrate the experiences of cities that have already implemented city logistics, including analytical methods that address the complex issues associated with adopting advanced technologies such as autonomous vehicles and drones in urban freight transport. Also considered are future directions in urban freight analytics, including hyperconnected city logistics based on the Physical Internet (PI), digital twins, gamification, and emerging technologies such as connected and autonomous vehicles in urban areas. An integrated modelling platform is described that considers multiple stakeholders or agents, including emerging organisations such as PI companies and entities such as crowd-shippers as well as traditional stakeholders such as shippers, receivers, carriers, administrators, and residents. This book Presents procedures for evaluating city logistics technologies and policy measures Provides an overview of advanced modelling approaches, including agent-based model and machine learning Highlights the essential features of optimisation and simulation models applied to city logistics Discusses how models incorporating more uncertainty and dynamic data can be used to improve the sustainability and resilience of urban freight systems The book is ideal for graduate students in civil and environmental engineering and logistics management, urban planners, transport engineers, and logistics specialists.
Urban Infrastructure in Zimbabwe: Departures, Divergences and Convergences (The Urban Book Series)
by Innocent Chirisa Abraham R. MatamandaThe book provides insights into urban infrastructure debates and discourses in Zimbabwe. Through an inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary approach, the book explores the theoretical, conceptual and lived experiences in urban infrastructure. The book focuses on case studies relating to urban transport, public housing, water and sanitation and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) among other substantive issues relating to urban infrastructure and services.
Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America (Routledge Research in Architecture)
by Pablo Meninato Gregory MarinicUrban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America examines intervention initiatives in informal settlements in Latin American cities as social, spatial, architectural, and cultural processes. From the mid-20th century to the present, Latin America and other regions in the Global South have experienced a remarkable demographic trend, with millions of people moving from rural areas to cities in search of work, healthcare, and education. Without other options, these migrants have created self-built settlements mostly located on the periphery of large metropolitan areas. While the initial reaction of governments was to eliminate these communities, since the 1990s, several Latin American cities began to advance new urban intervention approaches for improving quality of life. This book examines informal settlement interventions in five Latin American cities: Rio de Janeiro, Medellín, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Tijuana. It explores the Favela-Bairro Program in Rio de Janeiro during the 1990s which sought to improve living conditions and infrastructure in favelas. It investigates projects propelled by Social Urbanism in Medellín at the beginning of the 2000s, aimed at revitalizing marginalized areas by creating a public transportation network, constructing civic buildings, and creating public spaces. Furthermore, the book examines the long-term initiatives led by SEHAB in São Paulo, which simultaneously addresses favela upgrading works, water pollution remediation strategies, and environmental stewardship. It discusses current intervention initiatives being developed in informal settlements in Buenos Aires and Tijuana, exploring the urban design strategies that address complex challenges faced by these communities. Taken together, the Latin American architects, planners, landscape architects, researchers, and stakeholders involved in these projects confirm that urbanism, architecture, and landscape design can produce positive urban and social transformations for the most underprivileged.This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and professionals in planning, urbanism, architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, urban geography, public policy, as well as other spatial design disciplines.
Urban Mobility Systems in the World
by Gaële LestevenUrban Mobility Systems in the World provides insight into the geographical organization of urban mobility systems around the world. These “systems” consist of infrastructure networks, existing transport services and people’s travel practices. Adopting a comparative approach, the book highlights the geographical diversity of mobility systems, based on case studies from Africa, North and South America, Asia and Europe. This multi-disciplinary book is organized into twelve chapters, divided into four parts. The first part gives an overview of urban mobility, and then examines the factors that determine everyday mobility in cities, revealing different travel practices among populations (poor, elderly and children). Parts 2 and 3, respectively, focus on urban public transport (trains, metros, minibuses) and active modes of transport (walking, cycling), and the related infrastructure policies. The final section examines the circulation of urban mobility analysis tools and public policy models
Urban Planning and its Discontents: Practice in Contemporary India
by Darshini Mahadevia Rutool SharmaThis book, the first of its kind, introduces various aspects of urban planning in India and contributes towards debates on changes required in the current practice. Urban planning in India means many things to city residents and is used generically to include all interventions in the cities, such as public policy design, institutional design, spatial and territorial plans, infrastructure plans, public administration, community participation, and their implementation through programmes, schemes, and projects. While urban planning is expected to meet the global development agendas of equitable and just urbanisation, climate change and sustainable development goals (SDGs), in practice it has largely remained confined to statutory spatial planning represented by ‘Master Plan’ or ‘Comprehensive Plan’. This volume delves into this world of urban planning as critical insiders to see how it works in India, analysing the city level spatial plans, the Master or Development Plans, of select cities to assess whether these are capable of addressing the global agendas and coordinate with all other plans prepared for the city. It examines whether it would work in reference to the contemporary issues, SDGs, and global agendas, and discusses strategies on how to make it work better. It also deals with each of the above stated criticisms of the practice and examines the debates, data, approaches, agendas, plans, and the future of urban planning in India. This book comes in at a time when the urban planners and policy makers have themselves begun to discuss a need to relook at urban planning practices and tools to meet the future requirements of urbanisation in India. It will be a useful reference volume for the students, scholars and practitioners alike, and be of interest to researchers and students of urban planning, architecture, public administration, civil engineering, geography, economics, and sociology. It will also be useful for policy makers and professionals working in the areas of town and country planning.
Urban Private Housing in Nigeria: Understanding Residential Quality and Housing Preference Dynamics in Metropolitan Lagos (The Urban Book Series)
by Ibrahim Rotimi AliuThis book explains the variation and determinants of residential quality and housing preferences in urban private housing markets. It describes the residential characteristics and housing preference dynamics of Lagos urban residents who are majorly sheltered in the city’s private housing markets. Lagos Metropolitan Area (LMA) is a wide region with differentiated informal housing markets. The city private housing markets vary in quantity, quality, and prices which conjointly influence residents housing preferences and choices. Based on positivist philosophical stance, this book addresses the peculiarities of each residential market in Low Residential Density (LRD), Medium Residential Density (MRD), and High Residential Density (HRD) areas in terms of residential quality and housing preferences. With heuristic methods including predictive model and conjoint choice experimentation, this book unravels the level and variability of residential quality (neighborhood and structural) and housing preference (revealed and stated) decisions in Metropolitan Lagos. In addition, the residential quality and housing preferences are mapped to give their spatial patterns across Lagos megacity neighborhoods as segmented residential submarkets. Applying the positivist philosophical stance, the book provides evidence to support residential quality and housing preference variability across the city private housing submarkets. The book is both a guide and reference for students in the built environment, urban planners, urban policy decision makers, housing researchers, property managers, and real estate professionals who are interested in understanding the residential quality and preference dynamics within polarized cities.
Urban Refugees and Digital Technology: Reshaping Social, Political, and Economic Networks (McGill-Queen's Refugee and Forced Migration Studies)
by Charles Martin-ShieldsRefugees and displaced people are increasingly moving to cities around the world, seeking out the social, economic, and political opportunity that urban areas provide. Against this backdrop digital technologies are fundamentally changing how refugees and displaced people engage with urban landscapes and economies where they settle.Urban Refugees and Digital Technology draws on contemporary data gathered from refugee communities in Bogotá, Nairobi, and Kuala Lumpur to build a new theoretical understanding of how technological change influences the ways urban refugees contribute to the social, economic, and political networks in their cities of arrival. This data is presented against the broader history of technological change in urban areas since the start of industrialization, showing how displaced people across time have used technologized urban spaces to shape the societies where they settle. The case studies and history demonstrate how refugees’ interactions with environments that are often hostile to their presence spur novel adaptations to idiosyncratic features of a city’s technological landscape.A wide-ranging study across histories and geographies of urban displacement, Urban Refugees and Digital Technology introduces readers to the myriad ways technological change creates spaces for urban refugees to build rich political, social, and economic lives in cities.
Urban Resilience and Climate Change in the MENA Region (Routledge Focus on Environment and Sustainability)
by Nuha Eltinay Charles EgbuThis book provides an overview of the geopolitical context and climate change risk profile of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region. Mapping existing scientific literature and key reports on MENA climate change impacts and future projections, Nuha Eltinay and Charles Egbu establish links between the Conference of the Parties (from COP26, COP27 to COP28) Glasgow–Sharm el-Sheikh Work Program for Progress on the Global Goal on Adaptation, and regional climate adaptation financing targets, national government investments, and human security in local case studies. They also address gaps in disaster risk reduction institutional governance for sustainable development in the region. The authors move beyond the existing theoretical understanding of urban resilience to investigate how it is being measured and assessed in MENA in alignment with the IPCC’s climate change adaptation indicators. Finally, they explore how disasters and conflict displacement vulnerabilities and fragility affecting the communities most in need are being measured and integrated into cities’ resilience action plans and national disaster risk policies. Providing guidance and policy recommendations based on empirical research and key stakeholder engagement observations, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and professionals who are researching and working in the areas of climate change, urban planning, and environmental policy and governance. As this book comes out just after the closure of The United Nations Climate Change Conference COP28 negotiations, it sets the scene for pre-COP regional context, and paves the way for researchers and practitioners to undertake post-COP28 key takeaways and multi-level government commitments into action, for better climate mitigation and adaptation investments, resilient and sustainable future for all.
Urban Slums and Circular Economy Synergies in the Global South: Theoretical and Policy Imperatives for Sustainable Communities (Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements)
by Seth Asare Okyere Matthew Abunyewah Michael Odei Erdiaw-Kwasie Festival Godwin BoatengThis book takes a theoretical and empirical distance from urban slums/low-income settlements as a threat to environmental sustainability and recast them as places where environmentally rehabilitative and circular practices occur—drawing on the theoretical lens of the circular economy (CE). CE is defined as regenerative system that minimizes waste, emission, and energy leakage by slowing, closing, and narrowing material and energy loops. In principle, CE departs from the traditional linear model of take-make-use-dispose. As conceived in urban contexts, circular cities offer possibilities to regenerate natural systems, design out waste, and keep products in use. While the CE key principles of reduce, repair, and reuse are essential to the sustainable and inclusive interventions in urban slums, there is lack of case studies exploring the role of place and agency, especially the slum living-CE nexus in global south contexts. In inequitable urban transitions, a nuanced understanding of thesynergies between urban slums and the circular economy is not only theoretically relevant for reconceptualizing the slum in urban sustainability discourses but also exert policy and practice ramifications to decidedly figure out how the urban slum phenomenon can foster the sustainable and inclusive development of marginal areas through contextual and people-centered initiatives.
Urban Social Housing: Global Health and Climate Change Mitigation and Redress
by Patrick WakelyThis book proposes operational approaches to public sector support to community-led development of urban low-income group social housing in the prevailing and medium-term. Within the context of mitigating and redressing the existential threats of climate change and global pathogenic transmission, building on current concerns of global heating and the lessons learnt from the 2020-22 COVID-19 pandemic, the book closely examines recent examples from a wide international range of countries and cities from the Sri Lanka experience to Arab States of the Middle East and the Andes. Topics include maintenance and management of public sector housing, poverty alleviation objectives, climate change mitigation, housing density, local land management and planning, land rights, affordable housing markets, and international governance and administration, ultimately pointing to the universal need for institutional, organisational and human skills development and the compilation and dissemination of operationally successful examples of participatory partnerships for affordable social housing. The book will be of interest to researchers, instructors, practitioners, and students of urban development, housing, environmental design, land-use planning, public administration and environmental health engineering.