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Urban Studies: A Canadian Perspective (Routledge Library Editions: Urban Studies)
by N. H. Lithwick and Gilles PaquetThis study, first published in 1968, was one of the first books on Canada’s urban development, bringing together the viewpoints of professionals who had studied various aspects of city growth – economic, social, geographic, political. The book demonstrates the effectiveness and potential of the cross-disciplinary approach and will prove useful to all those interested in the future of our cities.
Urban Surfaces, Graffiti, and the Right to the City (ISSN)
by Sabina AndronThis book explores the ownersheir authorship and management, and their role in struggles for the right to the city. Includes a critical history of graffiti and street art as contested surface discourses. Interdisciplinary appeal.
Urban Survival Guide: How City Dwellers Can Live Well, and Frugally, Even in Dire Times
by Christopher NyergesPractical Guidelines to Resourceful City Living, Self-reliance, Emergency Preparedness, and Getting More for Less A survival guidebook that reflects the world in which we now find ourselves. The post 9/11 world seems a bit more hostile, as terrorist threats and attacks are no longer a surprise. The Great Tsunami of Christmas 2004 showed us that quick extinctions (like Noah&’s flood) can and do happen without apparent warning. Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy not only told us that it can happen to us, but that it is foolhardy to make no preparations and pretend that the government will take care of you in the post-disaster landscape. The price of gold id rising again. War, rumors of war, famines, political instability, economic instability, global pandemics – all these and more are causes of concern to the average family. Economic survival is also addresses, since this is such a fundamental building block of everything else in modern society. Money cannot be ignored.
Urban Sustainability Through Environmental Design: Approaches to Time-People-Place Responsive Urban Spaces
by Kevin Thwaites Sergio Porta Ombretta Romice Mark GreavesWhat can architects, landscape architects and urban designers do to make urban open spaces, streets and squares, more responsive, lively and safe? Urban Sustainability through Environmental Design answers this question by providing the analytical tools and practical methodologies that can be employed for sustainable solutions to the design and management of urban environments. The book calls into question the capability of ‘quick-fix’ development solutions to provide the establishment of fixed communities and suggests a more time-conscious and evolutionary approach. This is the first significant book to draw together a pan-European view on sustainable urban design with a specific focus on social sustainability. It presents an innovative approach that focuses on the tools of urban analysis rather than the interventions themselves. With its practical approach and wide-ranging discussion, this book will appeal to all those involved in producing communities and spaces for sustainable living, from students to academics through to decision makers and professional leaders.
Urban Sustainability in the US: Cities Take Action
by Lisa Benton-Short Melissa KeeleyCities are stepping forward to address the critical sustainability challenges of the 21st century. Meeting the demands of complex issues requires municipalities to evaluate problems and their solutions in more holistic, integrated, and collaborative ways. Drawn from plans and progress reports from more than fifty US cities, this book examines how urban leaders conceptualize sustainability, plan effective strategies, and take action. Chapters examine various topical themes including equity, the green economy, climate change, energy, transportation, water, green space, and waste. Throughout the text, the authors highlight best practices in innovative solutions, recognizing the multiple benefits of sustainability projects, environmental justice, governance, education and communication.
Urban Sustainability: Policy and Praxis
by Ryan R. Jensen Jay D. Gatrell Mark W. Patterson Nancy Hoalst-PullenThis book explores the environmental, economic, and socio-political dynamics of sustainability from a geographic perspective. The chapters unite the often disparate worlds of environment, economics, and politics by seeking to understand and visualize a range of sustainability practices on the ground and in place. In concert, the book provides an overview of a range of geotechnical applications associated with environmental change (water resources, land use & land cover change); as well as investigates more nuanced and novel examples of local economic development in cities. The diverse collection maps local practices from urban farming to evolving and thriving industries such as metal scrapping and craft beer. Additionally, the book provides an integrated geo-technical framework for understanding and assessing ecosystem services, explores the deployment of unmanned systems to understand urban environmental change, interrogates the spatial politics of urban green movements, examines the implications of revised planning practices, and investigates environmental justice. The book will be of interest to researchers, students, and anyone seeking to better understand sustainability at multiple scales in urban environments.
Urban Systems Development in Central Canada
by L. S. Bourne Ross D. MackinnonThis anthology of research is divided into five sections: definition of the urban system, structural characteristics, distribution of urban growth, transportation networks and interaction between cities, and the impact of growth on urban behaviour and the rural economy. Each section is preceded by the editors' comments. This is an excellent general reference on urbanization in Canada; it complements existing and largely American-based texts and should stimulate the student's interest in research on the unique Canadian urban milieu.(Department of Geography Research Publication 9)
Urban Theory
by Ely ChinoyWhat is the future of the American city? What are the relevant contexts for the analysis of urban problems? Should attention be focused on the metropolitan area, the region, or the megalopolis? Does the changing shape and structure of urban America require new ways of thinking about the urban community? How do national trends and policies affect the future of city life? Until now few sociologists have tried to see what urban America may become. This failure limits their ability to serve the function they claim for themselves, asserts Ely Chinoy, enabling men and women to help shape their own future.Urban Theory examines trends, including social, cultural, and national variables that could affect them; offers explanations of urban problems; and presents a careful review of solutions that have been offered - proposals of planners, politicians, cynics, and even visionaries for remaking our cities and for controlling and directing growth or deterioration. It is a valuable assessment of the state of thinking about urban life during the post-World War II period, with interesting projections of trends and analyses. It includes a comprehensive discussion of many of the more academic questions dealt with in courses in urban sociology and urban planning, as well as a treatment of problems within a larger and more meaningful context.Chinoy states that unless people anticipate alternatives open to them, they will remain captive to forces that they do not understand or have no control over. By examining what the future may hold, we can more readily understand the present, cope with its problems, and deliberately contribute to the shape of the future. This perspective is as appropriate today as it was when the book was originally published in 1973. Included here are pieces by York Willbern, Catherine Bauer Wurster, John Friedman, John Miller, Jean Gottman, Paul N. Ylvisaker, Nathan Glazer, Morton Grodzins, and Russell Baker. This material will continue to be of interest in all sociology, political science, and urban studies courses that deal with crucial problems of the city, as well as to all planners and urban specialists.
Urban Theory Beyond the West: A World of Cities
by Tim Edensor Mark JayneSince the late eighteenth century, academic engagement with political, economic, social, cultural and spatial changes in our cities has been dominated by theoretical frameworks crafted with reference to just a small number of cities. This book offers an important antidote to the continuing focus of urban studies on cities in ‘the Global North’. Urban Theory Beyond the West contains twenty chapters from leading scholars, raising important theoretical issues about cities throughout the world. Past and current conceptual developments are reviewed and organized into four parts: ‘De-centring the City’ offers critical perspectives on re-imagining urban theoretical debates through consideration of the diversity and heterogeneity of city life; ‘Order/Disorder’ focuses on the political, physical and everyday ways in which cities are regulated and used in ways that confound this ordering; ‘Mobilities’ explores the movements of people, ideas and policy in cities and between them and ‘Imaginaries’ investigates how urbanity is differently perceived and experienced. There are three kinds of chapters published in this volume: theories generated about urbanity ‘beyond the West’; critiques, reworking or refining of ‘Western’ urban theory based upon conceptual reflection about cities from around the world and hybrid approaches that develop both of these perspectives. Urban Theory Beyond the West offers a critical and accessible review of theoretical developments, providing an original and groundbreaking contribution to urban theory. It is essential reading for students and practitioners interested in urban studies, development studies and geography.
Urban Theory: A critical introduction to power, cities and urbanism in the 21st century
by Talja Blokland Alan HardingWhat is Urban Theory? How can it be used to understand our urban experiences? Experiences typically defined by enormous inequalities, not just between cities but within cities, in an increasingly interconnected and globalised world. This book explains: Relations between urban theory and modernity in key ideas of the Chicago School, spatial analysis, humanistic urban geography, and ‘radical' approaches like Marxism Cities and the transition to informational economies, globalization, urban growth machine and urban regime theory, the city as an “actor” Spatial expressions of inequality and key ideas like segregation, ghettoization, suburbanization, gentrification Socio-cultural spatial expressions of difference and key concepts like gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and “culturalist” perspectives on identity, lifestyle, subculture How cities should be understood as intersections of horizontal and vertical – of coinciding resources, positions, locations, influencing how we make and understand urban experiences. Critical, interdisciplinary and pedagogically informed - with opening summaries, boxes, questions for discussion and guided further reading - Urban Theory: A Critical Introduction to Power, Cities and Urbanism in the 21st Century provides the tools for any student of the city to understand, even to change, our own urban experiences.
Urban Theory: A critical introduction to power, cities and urbanism in the 21st century
by Talja Blokland Alan HardingWhat is Urban Theory? How can it be used to understand our urban experiences? Experiences typically defined by enormous inequalities, not just between cities but within cities, in an increasingly interconnected and globalised world. This book explains: Relations between urban theory and modernity - the foundational concept in urban studies - in key ideas of the Chicago School, in spatial analysis, humanistic urban geography, and 'radical' approaches like Marxism Cities and the transition from industrial to informational economies, globalization, the importance of urban growth machine and urban regime theory, the city as an "actor" Spatial expressions of inequality - understood horizontally and vertically - and key ideas like segregation, ghettoization, suburbanization, gentrification, and "neighbourhood effects" Socio-cultural spatial expressions of difference and key concepts like gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, age, public space; "culturalist" perspectives on identity, lifestyle, subculture How cities should be understood as intersections of horizontal and vertical - of coinciding resources, positions, locations; of different constellations of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and age, influencing how we make and understand urban experiences. Critical, interdisciplinary and pedagogically informed - with opening summaries, boxes, questions for discussion and guided further reading - Urban Theory: A Critical Introduction to Power, Cities and Urbanism in the 21st Century provides the tools for any student of the city to understand, even to change, our own urban experiences.
Urban Theory: New critical perspectives
by Kevin Ward Mark JayneUrban Theory: New Critical Perspectives provides an introduction to innovative critical contributions to the field of urban studies. Chapters offer easily accessible and digestible reviews, and as a reference text Urban Theory is a comprehensive and integrated primer which covers topics necessary for a full understanding of recent theoretical engagements with cities. The introduction outlines the development of urban theory over the past two hundred years and discusses significant theoretical, methodological and empirical challenges facing the field of urban studies in the context of an increasing globally inter-connected world. The chapters explore twenty-four topics, which are new additions to the urban theoretical debate, highlighting their relationship to long established concerns that continue to have intellectual purchase, and which also engage with rich new and emerging avenues for debate. Each chapter considers the genealogy of the topic at hand and also includes case studies which explain key terms or provide empirical examples to guide the reader to a better understanding of how theory adds to our understanding of the complexities of urban life. This book offers a critical and assessable introduction to original and groundbreaking urban theory and will be essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students in human geography, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, economics, planning, political science and urban studies.
Urban Tomographies (The City in the Twenty-First Century)
by Martin H. KriegerTomography is a method of exploring a phenomenon through a large number of examples or perspectives. In medical tomography, such as a CAT scan, two-dimensional slices or images of a three-dimensional organ are used to envision the organ itself. Urban tomography applies the same approach to the study of city life. To appreciate different aspects of a community, from infrastructure to work to worship, urban planning expert Martin H. Krieger scans the myriad sights and sounds of contemporary Los Angeles. He examines these slices of life in Urban Tomographies.The book begins by introducing tomographic methods and the principles behind them, which are taken from phenomenological philosophy. It draws from the examples of Lee Friedlander and Walker Evans, as well as Denis Diderot, Charles Marville, and Eugène Atget, who documented the many facets of Paris life in three crucial periods. Rather than focus on singular, extraordinary figures and events as do most documentarians, Krieger looks instead at the typical, presenting multiple specific images that call attention to people and activities usually rendered invisible by commonality. He took tens of thousands of photographs of industrial sites, markets, electrical distributing stations, and storefront churches throughout Los Angeles. He also recorded the city's ambient sounds, from the calls of a tamale vendor to the buzz of a workshop saw. Krieger considers these samples from the urban sensorium in this innovative volume, resulting in a thoughtful illumination of the interplay of people with and within the built environment. With numerous maps and photographs, as well as Krieger's unique insights, Urban Tomographies provides an unusually representative and rounded view of the city.
Urban Tourism in the Global South: South African Perspectives (GeoJournal Library)
by Christian M. Rogerson Jayne M. RogersonThis book examines and addresses the particular character of urban tourism occurring in the global South. It presents research essays on tourism in urban areas of South Africa, a country which is associated with big 5 nature tourism but where urban areas are also major tourism destinations. The book contextualizes urban tourism in South Africa as part of ‘the other half of urban tourism’, an overlooked but energetic scholarship which is emerging on urban places in the global South. The volume moves to present a collection of original material variously on national perspectives on urban tourism following by a cluster of city level perspectives. The last three contributions turn to the role of tourism in small towns, the bottom rung in the urban settlement system. Issues of concern include gastronomic tourism, VFR travel, airportscapes, climate change, AirBnb and creative tourism. Finally, as COVID-19 is potentially a defining historical moment for urban tourism, the volume incorporates historical research perspectives in order to address the overwhelming ‘present-mindedness’ of mainstream urban tourism writings. The book highlights the challenges and opportunities for tourism development in the environment of the urban global South and is relevant to scholars of both tourism and urban studies as well as researchers in development studies.
Urban Transformations
by Kerstin Krellenberg Florian Koch Sigrun Kabisch Erik Gawel Annegret Haase Sonja Knapp Jaime Nivala Andreas ZehnsdorfThe book addresses urban transformations towards sustainability in light of challenges of global urbanization processes and the consequences of global environmental change. The aim is to show that urban transformations only succeed if both innovative scientific solutions and practice-oriented governance approaches are developed. This assumption is addressed by providing theoretical insights and empirical evidence pointing particularly at 3 concepts or qualities which are determined here as being central for achieving urban sustainability: resource efficiency, quality of life and resilience. Urban case studies from several international research projects illustrate our conceptual approach of urban transformations towards sustainable development. Thus, the book reaches far beyond a mere additive description of single case studies. It incorporates the results of condensed synthesis, resulting from comparisons and evaluations. It provides, based on cross-cutting reflection of single cases and different scales and methods of analysis, general and transferable findings. They do not only consider the scientific sphere but deliberately go beyond it discussing transferability of knowledge into practice, governance options and the feasibility of policy strategies in order to pave the way for sustainable urban transformations to happen today and in the future.
Urban Transformations: Centres Peripheries And Systems
by Daniel O'DonoghueDefinitions of urban entities and urban typologies are changing constantly to reflect the growing physical extent of cities and their hinterlands. These include suburbs, sprawl, edge cities, gated communities, conurbations and networks of places and such transformations cause conflict between central and peripheral areas at a range of spatial scales. This book explores the role of cities, their influence and the transformations they have undertaken in the recent past. Ways in which cities regenerate, how plans change, how they are governed and how they react to the economic realities of the day are all explored. Concepts such as polycentricity are explored to highlight the fact that cities are part of wider regions and the study of urban geography in the future needs to be cognisant of changing relationships within and between cities. Bringing together studies from around the world at different scales, from small town to megacity, this volume captures a snapshot of some of the changes in city centres, suburbs, and the wider urban region. In doing so, it provides a deeper understanding of the evolving form and function of cities and their associated peripheral regions as well as their impact on modern twenty-first century landscapes.
Urban Transformations: From Liberalism to Corporatism in Greater Berlin, 1871–1933 (German and European Studies)
by Parker D. EverettUrban Transformations is a theoretical and empirical account of the changing nature of urbanization in Germany. Where city planners and municipal administrations had emphasized free markets, the rule of law, and trade in 1871, by the 1930s they favored a quite different integrative, corporate, and productivist vision. Urban Transformations explores the broad-based social transformation connected to these changes and the contemporaneous shifts in the cultural and social history of global capitalism. Dynamic features of modern capitalist life, such as rapid industrialization, working-class radicalism, dramatic population growth, poor quality housing, and regional administrative incoherence significantly influenced the Greater Berlin region. Examining materials on city planning, municipal administration, architecture, political economy, and jurisprudence, Urban Transformations recasts the history of German and European urbanization, as well as that of modernist architecture and city planning.
Urban Undergrounds: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Perspectives
by David Pike Patricia GarcíaResearch in urban development in the social sciences has increasingly emphasized the importance of underground infrastructure for envisaging sustainable cities and for critiquing the economies of extraction. Urban Undergrounds: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Perspectives demonstrates the urgency of integrating a below-ground perspective into the emerging field of the Urban Humanities.The collection is divided into three thematic sections that cluster and revisit different sets of well-known motifs in Underground Studies: “Displaced”, “Buried” and “Wasted”. It showcases the intermedial nature of underground-focused analyses in literature, extending from literary texts to a wider range of cultural forms, including films, graphic novels and videogames. The contributors build on recent scholarship that has expanded the field into new interdisciplinary areas, including intersections with memory studies, ecocriticism and decolonial perspectives. Urban Undergrounds also explores lesser-studied subterranes, including those of Warsaw, Athens, Mexico City, Johannesburg and Santiago de Chile. The book’s substantial introduction offers a guiding theoretical and methodological framework for future scholars working with underground perspectives in literary and cultural studies.This thought-provoking and illuminating collection is a valuable resource for students and scholars in the areas of Literary Urban Studies, Underground Studies and Geocriticism, and more broadly in the Urban Humanities and Spatial Humanities.
Urban Uprisings
by Margit Mayer Catharina Thörn Håkan ThörnThis book analyses the waves of protests, from spontaneous uprisings to well-organized forms of collective action, which have shaken European cities over the last decade. It shows how analysing these protests in connection with the structural context of neoliberal urbanism and its crises is more productive than standard explanations. Processes of neoliberalisation have caused deeply segregated urban landscapes defined by deepening social inequality, rising unemployment, racism, securitization of urban spaces and welfare state withdrawal, particularly from poor peripheral areas, where tensions between marginalized youth and police often manifest in public spaces. Challenging a conventional distinction made in research on protest, the book integrates a structural analysis of processes of large scale urban transformation with analyses of the relationship between 'riots' and social movement action in nine countries: France, Greece, England, Germany, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Sweden and Turkey.
Urban Utopias: The Built and Social Architectures of Alternative Settlements
by Malcolm MilesUtopia tends to generate a bad press - regarded as impracticable, perhaps nostalgic, or contradictory when visions of a perfect world cannot accommodate the change that is necessary to a free and self-organizing society. But people from diverse backgrounds are currently building a new society within the old, balancing literal and metaphorical utopianism, and demonstrating plural possibilities for alternative futures and types of settlement. Thousands of such places exist around the world, including intentional communities, eco-villages, permaculture plots, religious and secular retreats, co-housing projects, self-build schemes, projects for low-impact housing, and activist squats in urban and rural sites. This experience suggests, however, that when planning and design are not integral to alternative social formations, the modern dream to engineer a new society cannot be realized. The book is structured in four parts. In part one, literary and theoretical utopias from the early modern period to the nineteenth-century are reconsidered. Part two investigates twentieth-century urban utopianism and contemporary alternative settlements focusing on social and environmental issues, activism and eco-village living. Part three looks to wider horizons in recent practices in the non-affluent world, and Part four reviews a range of cases from the author’s visits to specific sites. This is followed by a short conclusion in which a discussion of key issues is resumed. This book brings together insights from literary, theoretical and practical utopias, drawing out the characteristics of groups and places that are part of a new society. It links today’s utopian experiments to historical and literary utopias, and to theoretical problems in utopian thought.
Urban Village Redevelopment in Beijing, China: New Housing Opportunities for Migrant Workers
by Ran LiuThe book provides a multi-stage assessment of the changing housing opportunities of migrant workers in the three stages of Beijing’s urban village development (emergence, erasure and preservation). The volume re-theorizes Henry Lefebvre’s notion of the “right to the city” as a largely property-based concept that falls within the city’s hybrid tenure matrix of varying degrees of tenure security and formality that is undergoing entrepreneurialization or gentrification. This is another highly valuable contribution to China studies from the geographical perspective of the “territorial politics” at play in the process of urban village redevelopment, which has fostered a new propertied landowning class as winners, while moving low-wage migrants. The book takes the reader on a fascinating journey from peri-urban villages to IT worker villages to artists’ villages, revealing a restless landscape of urbanism and state-centered governance, as well as bottom-up counterplots. The fieldwork explores the contradictions of urban village redevelopment in Beijing. On the one hand, it is state-dominated and yet creates new housing opportunities for migrants; on the other, it disrupts old orders but also encourages new forms of grassroots alliances. The empirical studies of Beijing’s urban villages enrich Henry Lefebvre’s discourse on “planetary urbanisation,” Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s notion of the “rhizome,” and Elinor Ostrom’s ideas on the wise management of the “commons.”
Urban Village Renovation: The Stories of Yangcheng Village
by Peilin LiThis book addresses the mystery and diversity of urbanization in China, especially with regard to urban villages. The “village in the city” is a unique social phenomenon in the process of Chinese urbanization. A local village society composed of deep-rooted social networks linked by blood, geography, folk beliefs, and folk customs is the outcome of a complex social process, which is accompanied by changes in property rights, restructuring of social networks, and conflicting benefits and values. The end of the village is the epitome of social transformation, and for China as a whole, this change may take a very long time to complete. This book includes various examples of and stories on urban villages, offering readers a wealth of insights into the phenomenon and its significance.
Urban Villager: Life in an Indian Satellite Town
by Vandana VasudevanUrban Villager is a superbly etched and finely detailed representation of the life of an 'urban villager' in a modern satellite town of India. It describes how Delhi, as a city, is growing radially, stretching its way into the rural fringes of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh that border the city to form the National Capital Region. Through the microcosm of Greater Noida, a suburb of New Delhi, the author draws a portrait of life in a semi-urban town, where billion dollar homes and villages with no sewage system share the same pin code. Some farmers sell their land and try to cope with a new found prosperity; others refuse and break into agitations that make newspaper headlines. A builder destroys a wetland to make a township while the middle class in high rises frets about power and security. A few kilometres away, the Formula One event hosts international celebrities amidst bewildered villagers. Living here is being witness to the contradictions and ironies that occur when India is forced to co-exist with Bharat. The author frequently draws parallels with similar kinds of urbanisation on the outskirts of other Indian metros. Across the country, the city gobbles up more and more of what was once the countryside--whether it is Sriperumbudur in Chennai, Belapur in Mumbai, Yelahanka on the outskirts of Bengaluru or Rajarhat New Town in Kolkata. No matter where you live in India, the story of this book could be the story you see in your city.
Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans
by Herbert J. GansProviding a first-hand account of life in an inner city of contemporary sociology, this book is a systematic and sensitive analysis of working-class culture and of the politicians, planners, and other outside professionals who affected it. <p><p> This new edition is unique in that while the original text is intact, the author has added extensive postscripts to the final five chapters and the appendix. Additionally, he updates the study’s findings on American society, adding new material on poverty and inequality.
Urban Villages in the New China
by Da Wei David WangFocusing on Shenzhen as a representation of the general urban village phenomenon in China, this book considers the impact of China's economic reform on urbanization and urban villages over the past three decades. Shenzhen's urban villages are some of the first of their kind in China, unique in their diversity and organizational capacity, but most notably in their ability to protect village culture whilst coexisting with Shenzhen, one of the fastest urbanizing cities on earth. Providing a study of regional contrast of urban villages in China with newly collected fieldwork materials from Guangzhou, Beijing, and Xi'an, this book also considers recent developments within urban villages, including attempts at marketization of the so-called xiao chanquanfang (the quintessential urban village apartment units). It also addresses the corruption scandals that engulfed some urban villages in late 2013. Through cutting edge fieldwork, the author offers a cross-disciplinary study of the history, culture, socio-economic changes, and migration of the villages which arguably embody Chinese social mobility in an urban form.