Bücher der Reihe Routledge Studies in Urbanism and the City

This book explores the interconnections between urbanization and capitalism to examine the current condition of cities due to capitalism. It brings together interdisciplinary insights from leading academics, activists and researchers to envision progressive, anti-capitalist changes for the future of cities.

Through analyses of public artworks that have taken the form of blockades and barricades since the 1990s, this book theorises artists' responses to global inequities as cultural manifestations of counter-revanchism in diverse urban centres.This book is the first to analyse artworks as forms of counter-revanchism in the context of the rise of the global city. How do artists channel the global spatial conflicts of the 21st century through their behaviours, actions, and constructions in and on the actually existing conditions of the street? What does it mean for artists-the very symbol of freedom of personal expression-to shut down space? To refuse entry? To block others' passage? The late critical geographer Neil Smith's influential writing on the revanchist city is used as a theoretical frame for understanding how contemporary artists engender the public sphere through their work in public urban spaces. Each chapter is a case study that analyses artworks that have taken the form of walls and barricades in China, USA, UK, Ukraine, and Mexico. In doing so, the author draws upon diverse fields including art history, geography, philosophy, political science, theatre studies, and urban studies to situate the art in a broader context of the humanities with the aim of modelling interdisciplinary research grounded in an ethics of solidarity with global social justice work. Collectively these case studies reveal how artists' local responses to urban revanchism since the end of the Cold War are productive reorientations of social relations and harbingers of worlds to come.By using plain language and avoiding excessive academic jargon, the book is accessible to a wide variety of readers. It will appeal to scholars and graduate students in the fields of studio art, modern and contemporary art history, performance studies, visual culture, and visual studies; especially in relation to those interested in conceptual practices, performance art, site-specificity, public art, political activism, and socially engaged art. Cultural geographers and urban theorists interested in the social and political ramifications of temporary and everyday urbanism will also find the analysis of artworks relevant to their own studies.

Splintering Towers of Babel focuses on and redefines soft infrastructures and critical infrastructure projects. It explores key issues in contemporary urban studies including town planning histories, architecture, heritage, colonialism and postcolonialism, philosophy, and ethics.The book combines transdisciplinary perspectives on the key historical, philosophical, and political issues associated with urban experiences, built forms, and infrastructure networks. It explores uneven dimensions in contemporary urbanisms and develops spatial phenomenological thinking with reference to the northern and southern hemispheres. This book connects the past and the present, in addition to Western and global South geographies, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Its main contribution is to broaden readers' understanding of infrastructure through the lens of the humanities and to engage with political, poetical, and ethical perspectives.This book is tailored to scholars working in the fields of urban planning, urban geography, architectural history, urban design, infrastructure studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, African studies, and philosophy.

Through the lens of political economy, this book positions housing as a key factor in understanding social inequality. It does so by drawing on rich empirical evidence from the case of the Chilean housing market.This book provides insights on the articulation between real estate development, housing provision and social inequality based on applied urban economics analyses that illustrate the contradictions of neoliberal urbanism through the case of Chile. For neoliberal urbanism, the good city is not equal for all, it is based on the principle of profitability and benefits from segregation to make capital investment more efficient. The chapters of this book expose how these processes are generated by a political system that allows them rather than by the invisible hand of the market.The book will be of interest to graduate students in urban studies, urban planning, sociology and urban geography. It will also appeal to decision-makers and also to actors in the real estate market seeking to perfect the social benefits of their professional activities, aspiring to generate more egalitarian and just cities.

The Future of the City Centre: Global Perspectives debates future directions. It looks beyond the post-industrial, post-commercial, and post-retail city centres to examine differing visions of the future form and function of the urban core. This theme and the related sub-topics will assist the development of future city models and help to contextualise urban change.The in-depth research covers not only urban form and the re-use of the built heritage but also the provision for cultural events and different forms of entertainment that will offer vitality, together with visitors and responsible tourism. City authorities are starting to realise that structural changes are happening in city centres, as their influence is declining, and therefore new forms of governance will be needed. The book is based on an international research network hosting four symposia over 24 months. They took place in four cities in four different continents to encompass a world view of developed and developing countries. This book offers theoretical and practical perspectives from leading thinkers, academics, and practitioners, drawing on thematic issues explored across four international cities: Newcastle, UK; Newcastle, Australia; Pretoria-Tshwane, South Africa; and João Pessoa, Brazil. It draws on a wider set of global examples to reveal the shared issues and pressures being brought to bear on city centres and the diversity of responses being undertaken to ensure their long-term future.The book includes illustrations from cities around the world, and it is directed at academics, students, and professionals in architecture, planning, urban design, the built environment, geography, economics, sociology, and cultural studies.

This book offers original interdisciplinary insights into cities as a diachronic creation of urban art. It engages in a sequence of historical perspectives to examine urban space as an object of apparent quasi-cycles and processes of constitution, exaltation, imitation, contestation and redemption through art.¿Urban art transforms the city into a human-made sublime which is explored in the context of the Eastern Mediterranean. The book probes this process primarily through the example of Athens and Byzantine Constantinople, but also Jerusalem, Cyprus and regional cities, revealing how urban space unavoidably encompasses a spatial and temporal palimpsest which is constantly emerging. It presents new ideas for both the theorization and sensuous conception of artistic reality, architecture, and planning attributes. These extend from archaic, classical and Byzantine urban splendour to current urban decline as constitution and attack on the sublime and back. Urban processes of contestation and redemption respond recently to the new 'imperialism of debt' and the positivist, technocratic understandings and demands of Euro-governments and neoliberal institutions, while still evoking older forms of spatial power.Offering fresh notions on art, architecture, space, antiquity, (post)-modernity and politics of the region, this book will appeal to scholars and students of geography, urban studies, art, restoration, and film theory, architecture, landscape design, planning, anthropology, sociology and history.

Planning and Managing Smaller Events: Downsizing the Urban Spectacle explores the role of smaller scale events in contributing to the renewal and development of urban societies.This book adopts a case study approach to examine a diverse range of events taking place in towns and cities in Europe, Asia and North America. This volume begins by defining and classifying these kinds of events and then verifying if and how they can provide opportunities for cities and towns without the disadvantages of world-famous large events. It concludes by discussing the growing regional scale of urban phenomena and their transition in post-metropolitan spaces.Planning and Managing Smaller Events: Downsizing the Urban Spectacle will be of interest to government officials and policy makers involved in economic development, urban planning, parks, arts/culture as well as students and researchers interested in urbanism, event management, tourism and recreation.

This book sheds light on the mega-city region development in China as a new form of urbanization which plays a crucial role in the economic development of the country. It examines the challenges faced by the mega-city regions and opens up avenues for debates and further research.Economic reform of 1978 has led to an unprecedented growth in the population and economic development of China. A large portion of this increased urban population and the corresponding economic growth has been concentrated in the mega-city regions, such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH), Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Pearl River Delta (PRD). These three mega-city regions have less land but more people and thus higher economy, resulting in various issues and challenges faced by these regions. These challenges pertain to the socio-economic development, transport, environment, governance and development strategy, which this book explores through case studies of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Wuhan. This book also explains and analyses the economy, migration processes, transport development, environmental conditions and governance of the mega-city regions of China.With an overview of China's rapid urbanisation and the consequent economic growth, this book provides an essential understanding of related issues in order to establish appropriate strategies and policies to sustain the process of mega-city region development.

This edited volume portrays marketplaces from a mobility perspective as dynamic and open entities consisting of flows of people, goods and ideas.There is a renewed interest in research and policy arenas in marketplaces as the core of cities' spatial and economic development and sociocultural life, as incubators of urban renewal and platforms of alternative consumption models and as source of livelihood for many people worldwide. Contributions of this book draw on notions of movements, representations and practices to illustrate that markets have physical reality but are also culturally and socially encoded, and experienced through practice. It brings together empirically evidenced scholarly and practice-based works from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Bulgaria, Turkey, Lebanon, Peru, Brazil, Vietnam, South Africa and India.This book is primarily intended for scholars and graduate students of urban geography, urban design and planning, sociology, anthropology, who are interested in the relation between place and mobility in general, and markets as 'knots' in the city, in particular. It also informs policy-makers how urban planning policies and design interventions for marketplaces may foster more socially inclusive and environmentally just cities.Chapters 1, 12, and 13 of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. They have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book critically examines 'smart city' discourse in terms of governance initiatives, citizen participation and policies which place emphasis on the 'citizen' as an active recipient and co-producer of technological solutions to urban problems.

This book sheds light on the mega-city region development in China as a new form of urbanization which plays a crucial role in the economic development of the country. It examines the challenges faced by the mega-city regions and opens up avenues for debates and further research.

This book offers original interdisciplinary insights into cities as a diachronic creation of urban art. It engages in a sequence of historical perspectives to examine urban space as an object of apparent quasi-cycles and processes of constitution, exaltation, imitation, contestation and redemption through art.

Overlooked Cities reflects and impacts the changing landscape of urban studies and geography from the perspective of smaller and more regional cities in the urban South. It critically examines the ways in which cities are uniquely positioned within different urban and knowledge hierarchies.

This edited collection brings together scholars who are explicitly and implicitly working on the connections between infrastructure and citizenship.

This book provides a model for the creation of sustainable and healthy cities in the Mediterranean region. It uses the coastal city of L¿Alfàs del Pi in Spain as an example for designing renewable and innovative urban models that offer high standards of living, wellbeing and eco-friendly advantages.

Street trade is a critical and highly visible component of the informal economy, linked to global systems of exchange. Yet policy responses are dismissive and evictions commonplace. Despite being progressively marginalised from public space, street traders in the global south are engaged in spatial and political battlegrounds to reclaim space, and claim de facto property rights over their place of work, through quiet infiltration, union power, or direct action. This book explores ''rebel streets'', the challenges faced by informal economy actors and how organised groups are seeking to reframe legal understandings to create new claims to space and urban rights. The book sets out new thinking and a conceptual framework for improved understanding of the plural relationship between law, rights, and space for the informal economy, the contest between traditional, modernist and rights-based approaches to development, and impacts on the urban working poor. With a focus on street trading, the book seeks to reframe the legal context in which modern informal economies operate, drawing on key areas of academic inquiry and case studies of how vendors are staking claim to urban rights. The book argues for a reconceptualisation of legal instruments to provide a rights-based framework for urban work that recognises the legitimacy of urban informal economies, the scope for collective management of urban resources, and the social value of public space as a site for urban livelihoods. It will be of interest to students and scholars of geography, economics, urban studies, development studies, political studies and law.

This book explores the phenomena of the urban every day and new urban tourism. It provides a systematic framework and draws on a mix of theoretical and empirical work to look at the increasing intermingling of 'tourists' and 'residents'.

With contributions from leading authorities in the field, this book draws on the latest advances in social and urban theory, and original empirical material from North and South, to critically analyse the ongoing shifts in the relations between cities and technical infrastructure systems. It explore the urban condition beyond the realm of large networked infrastructures in globally diverse contexts.

Cities continue to be key sites for the production and contestation of inequalities generated by an ongoing but troubled neoliberal project. Neoliberalism¿s onslaught across the globe now shapes diverse inequalities -- poverty, segregation, racism, social exclusion, homelessness -- as city inhabitants feel the brunt of privatization, state re-organization, and punishing social policy. This book examines the relationship between persistent neoliberalism and the production and contestation of inequalities in cities across the world. Case studies of current city realities reveal a richly place-specific and generalizable neoliberal condition that further deepens the economic, social, and political relations that give rise to diverse inequalities. Diverse cases also show how people struggle against a neoliberal ethos and hence the open-endedness of futures in these cities.

This volume provides a holistic and reflexive account of the role played by automobility in differentiating social, economic and political life in the contemporary city - and the effect of city living on automobility.

With contributions from an international range of established and emerging scholars drawing upon real world examples, this title is the first to use the lens of speed to examine the postcolonial `urban revolution¿. It explores the contradictions between intended and unintended outcomes of fast cities and points to their fault lines between state sovereignty, capital accumulation and citizenship. It presents urban scholars with the theoretical, empirical and methodological challenges of mega-urbanization in the global south, as well as highlighting new theoretical agendas and empirical analyses that these new forms of city-making bring to the fore.

Planning and Managing Smaller Events: Downsizing the Urban Spectacle explores the role of smaller scale events in contributing to the renewal and development of urban societies. This book adopts a case study approach to examine a diverse range of events taking place in towns and cities in Europe, Asia and North America.