For well over 4 billion people - approximately 60% of all humanity - annual income is less than $1,500. The term "Base of the Pyramid" was first coined by Stuart L. Hart and C.K. Prahalad in 2002 and has become synonymous with both the method by which we can more effectively address poverty and the opportunity that exists in a multi-trillion-dollar market. A whole new lexicon has emerged to describe this phenomenon, including new buzzwords and catch phrases like "inclusive business", "opportunities for the majority", "sustainable livelihoods", "pro-poor business" and "social business", and thousands of new businesses, institutions and investment funds have been set up.In this ground-breaking new book, Stuart L. Hart and Fernando Casado Caneque have worked with members of the BoP Global Network to shake the tree, look objectively at what has happened since 2002, highlight why earlier applications of BoP haven't worked and propose new objectives and ways of working to formulate more sustainable solutions. The book challenges the reader and organizations to think about the mindset and purpose across whole organizations, open innovation rather than simply co-creation, and a complete review of the innovation ecosystem. Through this book, practitioners will gain a clearer insight into which business models can work within different communities to ensure a sustainable transition to improved local economies. Equally, the book is a must-read for researchers and students in the fields of entrepreneurship, innovation, sustainable development and environmental management.

Water scarcity is the next big climate crisis. Water stress – not just scarcity, but also water-quality issues caused by pollution – is already driving the first waves of climate refugees. Rivers are drying out before they meet the oceans, and ancient lakes are disappearing. Fourteen of the world’s twenty megacities are now experiencing water scarcity or drought conditions. It’s increasingly clear that human mismanagement of water is dangerously unsustainable, for both ecological and human survival. And yet in recent years some key countries have been quietly and very successfully addressing water stress. How are Singapore and Israel, for example – both severely water-stressed countries – not in the same predicament as Chennai or California, but now boast surplus water? What can we learn from them and how can we use this knowledge to turn things around for the wider global community? Do we have to stop eating almonds and asparagus grown in the deserts of California and Peru? Could desalination of seawater be the answer? Or rainwater capture? Are some of the wilder ‘solutions’ – such as the plan to tow icebergs to Cape Town – pure madness, or necessary innovation? Award-winning environmental journalist Tim Smedley will travel the world to meet the experts, the victims, the activists and pioneers, to find out how we can mend the water table that our survival depends upon. His book will take an unblinking look at the current situation and how we got there. And then look to the solutions. The Last Drop promises to offer a fascinating, universally relevant account of the environmental and human factors that have led us to this point, and suggests practical ways in which we might address the crisis, before it’s too late.

A classic collection of the New Yorker’s most urgent and groundbreaking reporting from the front lines of the climate emergency In 1989, just one year after climatologist James Hansen first came before a Senate committee and testified that the earth was now warmer than it had ever been in recorded history, thanks to humankind’s heedless consumption of fossil fuels, New Yorker writer Bill McKibben published a deeply reported and considered piece on climate change and what it could mean for the planet. At the time, the piece was to some speculative to the point of alarmist; read now, McKibben’s work is heroically prescient. Since then, the New Yorker has devoted enormous attention to climate change, describing the causes of the crisis, the political and ecological conditions we now find ourselves in, and the scenarios and solutions we face. The Fragile Earth tells the story of climate change – its past, present, and future – taking readers from Greenland to the Great Plains, and into both laboratories and rain forests. It features some of the best writing on global warming from the last three decades, including Bill McKibben’s seminal essay ‘The End of Nature,’ the first piece to popularize both the science and politics of climate change for a general audience, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of Elizabeth Kolbert, as well as Kathryn Schulz, Dexter Filkins, Jonathan Franzen, Ian Frazier, Eric Klinenberg, and others. The result, in its range, depth, and passion, promises to bring light, and sometimes heat, to the great emergency of our age.

'One of the most perceptive and thought-provoking books yet written about the multiple intersecting crises that are now upending our once-familiar world. . . Essential reading for these turbulent times.' Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement Dougald Hine, author and social thinker, has spent most of his life talking to people about climate change. And then one afternoon in the second year of the pandemic, he found he had nothing left to say. Why would someone who cares so deeply about ecological destruction want to stop talking about climate change now? At Work in the Ruins explores that question. 'Climate change asks us questions that climate science cannot answer,' Hine says. Questions like, how did we end up in this mess? Is it just a piece of bad luck with the atmospheric chemistry-or is it the result of a way of approaching the world that would always have brought us to such a pass? How we answer such questions has consequences. According to Hine, our answers shape our understanding and our thinking about what kind of problem we think we're dealing with and, therefore, what kind of responses we go looking for. "But when science is turned into an object of belief and a source of overriding authority," Hine continues, "it becomes hard even to talk about the questions that it cannot answer." In eloquent, deeply researched prose, Hine demonstrates how our over-reliance on the single lens of science has blinded us to the nature of the crises around and ahead of us, leading to 'solutions' that can only make things worse. At Work in the Ruins is his reckoning with the strange years we have been living through and our long history of asking too much of science. It's also about how we find our bearings and what kind of tasks are worth giving our lives to, given all we know or have good grounds to fear about the trouble the world is in. For anyone who has found themselves needing to make sense of the COVID time and how we talk about it, At Work in the Ruins offers guidance by standing firmly forward and facing the depth of the trouble we are in. Hine, ultimately, helps us find the work that is worth doing, even in the ruins. 'A book of rare originality and depth-profound, far-reaching, mind-altering stuff.' Helen Jukes, author of A Honeybee Heart has Five Openings

One of the major innovations of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is the incorporation of local and regional assessmentsu33 in alluin a global portrait of the planetAEs health. It is the first global assessment of ecosystems to include not only a diversity of ecosystems, but to draw on a wide range of cultural orientations and intellectual traditions, including those of indigenous peoples.
The Sub-global Assessments Working Group integrated information from multiple sources and found that biophysical factors such as land-use change, climate change and variability, pollution, and invasive species have a significant effect on human well-being across cultures. For example, in places where there are no other social safety nets, diminished human well-being tends to increase immediate dependence on ecosystem services, which can damage the capacity of those local ecosystems, which in turn appears to increase the probability of natural disaster or conflict.
Representing the baseline and framework for ongoing assessments of ecosystem and human well-being on a variety of scales around the world, Multiscale Assessments provides students, researchers, and policy-makers with the most comprehensive methodology for assessing ecosystems at local, national, and regional scales.

In humanity's more than 100,000 year history, we have evolved from vulnerable creatures wresting sustenance from Earth to a sophisticated global society manipulating every inch of it. In short, we have become the dominant animal. But there's a flip side of this triumphant story of innovation and conquest. As we clear forests to raise crops and build cities, lace the continents with highways, and create chemicals never before seen in nature, we may be undermining our own supremacy.Renowned Stanford scientists Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich believe that intelligently addressing today's great environmental and social challenges requires a clear understanding of how we evolved and how we're changing the planet. "The Dominant Animal" offers readers that knowledge, tracing the interplay between environmental change and genetic and cultural evolution since the dawn of humanity. Tackling the fundamental challenge of the human predicament, Paul and Anne Ehrlich offer a vivid and unique exploration of our origins, our evolution, and our future.

This cutting-edge book invites readers to rethink environmental law and its critical role in ensuring a sustainable future for all. Featuring international narratives, it demonstrates how environmental law can be a potent tool to secure multi-actor engagement, to improve ocean governance and to usher in effective policy reforms. Contributors illustrate narratives of successful historic and contemporary developments in environmental law, setting out innovative approaches to issues such as environmental enforcement and monitoring, effective forest protection, climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Drawing out key lessons and practices for effective reform, this insightful book highlights opportunities by which we can respond to the acute environmental challenges facing the planet. Bringing together perspectives from both established and up-and-coming scholars, this book will be of interest to academics and students of environmental law, as well as researchers of environmental management. Policy makers and practitioners will also find inspiration in fruitful stories of environmental law and policy reform. Contributors include: T.N. Adimazoya, T. Daya-Winterbottom, R.-L. Eisma-Osorio, D. Estrin, A. Foerster, L.L. Heng, E.A. Kirk, Y. Lin, R.V. Percival, F.-K. Phillips, A. Pickering, N. Robinson, J. Steinberg-Albin

History reveals how civilisations can be decimated by changes in climate. More recently modern methods of warfare have exposed the vulnerability of the artefacts of civilisation. Bringing together a range of subjects - from science, energy and sustainability to aesthetics theory and civilization theory - this book uniquely deals with climate change and the ensuing catastrophes in relation to cultural factors, urbanism and architecture. It links the evolution of civilisation, with special emphasis on the dynamics of beauty as displayed in architecture and urbanism, to climate change. It then considers both the historic and predicted impacts of climate change and the threat it poses to the continued viability of human civilisation when survival is the top priority. This book gives students, researchers and professionals in architecture and sustainable design as well as anyone interested in the threat of global warming to civilisation, new insights as to what could be lost if action is not taken at a global level.

Modern society is beginning to re-examine its whole relationship with animals and the natural world. Until recently issues such as animal welfare and environmental protection were considered the domain of small, idealistic minorities. Now, these issues attract vast numbers of articulate supporters who collectively exercise considerable political muscle. Animals, both wild and domestic, form the primary focus of concern in this often acrimonious debate. Yet why do animals evoke such strong and contradictory emotions in people - and do our western attitudes have anything in common with those of other societies and cultures? Bringing together a range of contributions from distinguished experts in the field, Animals and Society explores the importance of animals in society from social, historical and cross-cultural perspectives.

Political elites have been evading the causes of climate change through deceptive fixes. Their market-type instruments such as carbon trading aim to incentivise technological innovation which will supposedly decarbonize or replace dominant high-carbon systems. In practice this techno-market framework has perpetuated climate change and social injustices, thus provoking public controversy. Using this opportunity, social movements have counterposed low-carbon, resource-light, socially just alternatives. Such transformative mobilisations can fulfil the popular slogan, 'System Change Not Climate Change'. This book develops key critical concepts through case studies such as GM crops, biofuels, waste incineration and Green New Deal agendas.

Architecture and the Housing Question examines how the design and provision of housing around the world have become central both to competing political projects and to the architecture profession. How have architects acting as housing experts helped alleviate or enforce class, race, and gender inequality? What are the disciplinary implications of taking on shelter for the multitude as an architectural assignment and responsibility? The book features essays in the historiography of architecture and the housing question, and a collection of historical case studies from Belgium, China, France, Ghana, the Netherlands, Kenya, the Soviet Union, Turkey, and the United States. The thematic organization of the collection, interrogating housing expertise, the state apparatus, segregation and colonialism, highlights the methodological questions that underpin its international outlook. The book will appeal to students and scholars in architecture, architectural history, theory, and urban studies.

Over the past few years, and certainly since the publication of the "Stern Report", there has been increasing recognition that climate change is not only an environmental crisis, but one with important social and economic dimensions. There is now a growing need for multi-disciplinary research and for the science of climate change to be usefully translated for policy-makers.Until very recently, scientific and policy emphasis on climate change has focused almost exclusively on mitigation efforts: mechanisms and regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The success of such efforts to date is debatable. In fact, the impact of ever more stringent emission control programmes could potentially have enormous social consequences. Little effort has been expended on the exploration of a systematic evaluation of climate stabilization benefits or the costs of adapting to a changed climate, let alone attempting to integrate different approaches. There is an increasing recognition that the key actors in the climate crisis also need to be preparing for change that is unavoidable. This has resulted in a greater consideration of vulnerability and adaptation.The book, based on the research programme "Vulnerability, Adaptation and Mitigation" (VAM) which ran from 2004 to 2010, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), presents a cluster of case studies of industries, communities and institutions which each show how vulnerability, adaptation and mitigation analyses can be integrated using social behavioural sciences. Each chapter makes specific recommendations for the studied industry sector, community or institution, analyses the latest research developments of the field and identifies priorities for future research. The book argues that the inherent complexity of climate change will ultimately require a much more integrated response both scientifically - to better understand multiple causes and impacts - as well as at the scientific/policy interface, where new forms of engagement between scientists, policy-makers and wider stakeholder groups can make a valuable contribution to more informed climate policy and practice.The book is particularly timely as the scientific research and policy debate is shifting from one of problem-framing to new agendas that are much more concerned with implementation, the improvement of assessment methodologies from a multi-disciplinary perspective, and the reframing of current scientific understanding towards mitigation, adaptation and vulnerability. A critical element in responding to the climate change challenge will be to ensure the translation of these new scientific insights into innovative policy and practice "on the ground". This book provides some fundamental elements to answer this need.The Social and Behavioural Aspects of Climate Change: Linking Vulnerability, Adaptation and Mitigation will be essential reading for social science researchers and policy managers in the area of climate change, as well as for those who want to know what the social and behavioural sciences can contribute toward coping with climate hazards. NGOs, law firms and businesses in the energy sector or other climate related fields will also find the book of great value.

As progress towards a greater knowledge in sustainability science continues, the question of how better to integrate scientific progress with actual decisions made by practitioners remains paramount. This book aims to help close the gap between science and practice. Based on a two year collaborative project between Harvard and Clark Universities, the book takes as its focus the vulnerability and resilience of people around the world to the effects of environmental change, a mature area of research in which one might expect the gap between science and policy/practice to have been extensively bridged. The book presents analysis of past studies, interviews conducted with the producers and users of scientific knowledge, and case studies performed by leading scholars across a spectrum of international settings and political systems. Crucially, the authors identify new directions and tools for closing the gap between science and policy across a range of situations and societies. The result is an illuminating collection of studies and analyses that suggest to researchers, students, practitioners, and policy-makers alike how best to ensure that high quality environmental research informs good environmental policy and practice. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The editors and authors are grateful to Lu Ann Pacenka, who formatted the text of the book.? The editors also wish to express their appreciation to Bill Clark and Nancy Dickson of Harvard University, who commissioned and provided oversight for the preparation of the volume.? Both editors and authors wish to express their appreciation to the David and Lucile Packard Foundation for providing funds to support the project.? Finally, the editors are grateful for the continuing support of the George Perkins Marsh Institute at Clark University. Published with Science in Society

Our coasts provide a home and livelihoods for millions of people; many of the world's biggest cities are along coastlines. Yet these precious areas face increasing threats from irresponsible development and the potential dangers of climate change. This volume explores the wide spectrum of coastal hazards, from high-magnitude, low-frequency events like tsunamis and hurricanes, to longer-term processes like urban regeneration and changing agricultural practices. International case studies range from mitigation measures in the Azores Archipelago to managing a coastal resort in South Wales, to tsunami early warning systems in the Indian Ocean Region. The resulting collection spans approaches from social science, engineering, planning, geology and biology and presents an integrated approach for assessing the impact of, and response to, coastal hazards. It will be of interest to all those involved in strategies for the environmental management of coastlines.

As the time-scales of natural change accelerate and converge with those of society, Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Society takes the reader into largely uncharted territory in its exploration of anthropogenic climate change. Current material is used to highlight the global impact of this issue, and the necessity for multidisciplinary and global social science research and teaching to address the problem.

The book is multidisciplinary and worldwide in scope, with contributors spanning specialisms including agro-forestry, economics, environmentalism, ethics, human geography, international relations, law, politics, psychology, sociology and theology. Their global knowledge is reflected in the content of the text, which encompasses chapters on American, European and Chinese policies, case studies of responses to disasters and of the new technological and lifestyle alternatives that are being adopted, and the negotiations leading up to the Copenhagen conference alongside a preface assessing its outcomes. Starting with an initial analysis by a leading climatologist, key issues discussed in the text include recent findings of natural scientists, social causation and vulnerability, media and public recognition or scepticism, and the merits and difficulties of actions seeking to mitigate and adapt.

This accessible volume utilizes a wealth of case studies, explains technical terms and minimises the use of acronyms associated with the subject, making it an essential text for advanced undergraduates, postgraduate students and researchers in the social sciences.

The world is moving into a new era which will be dominated by a new range of threats and a new range of priorities. Already headlines tell of storms and droughts, mass emigrations, the danger of old Soviet nuclear reactors and the thinning ozone layer, and with the menaces of global warming, deforestation, pollution and loss of biodiversity, the picture is likely to get bleaker. Unlike traditional threats, these are not made deliberately and standard military responses are usually inappropriate They are threats without enemies and they present quite new and fundamental challenges to the international community which has to find new methods and institutions, as well as the resolve, to tackle them. In this book, eminent experts describe the new threats and the scale of the dangers which they present and set out the political, military and institutional changes needed. Gwyn Prins is Director of the Global Security Programme at the University of Cambridge. He is author of Top guns and Toxic Whales, also published by Earthscan. Progress For A Small Planet Three topics dominate discussions of the global environment: pollution; the consequences of the affluent running ever faster through finite resources; and the growing tensions between rich and poor as a third of humanity continues to live and die in desperate poverty. In this exceptional book Barbara Ward (co-author with Rene Dubos of the bestselling Only One Earth) refused to see these processes as inevitable. It describes new technologies for recycling waste, for energy, for 'getting more for less' ,linking them to ordinary people's working lives. It also suggests a strategy for meeting the basic needs of the disadvantaged, and shows how the vast inequalities between countries can be reduced. This perceptive survey of policies outlines a planetary bargain between the world's nations that would guarantee individual freedom from poverty and keep our shared biosphere in good working order. Originally published in 1993

The issue of 'sustainability' in the developed world is nowhere more critical than in the field of personal travel, which in many countries has become the fastest-growing contributor to global warming. Unless the use of cars can be brought under control, there is little chance of meeting government targets for reducing greenhouse emissions. Personal Transport and the Greenhouse Effect sets out the steps that could be taken to lessen the conflict between personal mobility and long-term environmental security. It provides a detailed analysis of the policy options available for limiting carbon dioxide emissions, and highlights the limitations of technological measures in solving the problem. Instead, the book's 12-point plan for sustainability shows how a significant reduction in emissions requires the use of all the policy measures available. This valuable contribution to a crucial area of debate covering energy, transport policy and the environment will be essential reading for policy makers, planners and students alike. Peter Huges is deputy editor of Local Transport Today, and has contributed to a wide range of publications including The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, New Scientist and Energy Policy. Originally published in 1993

Recent and dramatic flooding in places as far apart as Bangladesh and North Wales are example. of what could become commonplace if sea levels rise. Most scientists are predicting a rise of about one metre and this book, based on research carried out for the Commonwealth governments, describes in simple terms what in. likely to happen as a result and where the worst effects will be.Martin Ince, a well-known scientific journalist, deals with the accuracy of our knowledge and the possible errors in assessment. He considers the different kinds of damage that higher seas could cause, inundation, increased salination, coral damage, increased flood and surge damage and so on. Brief case studies are included covering the UK, the Maldives, North America, Bangladesh, Guyana, Kiribati, The Netherlands, Italy, Egypt and Australasia.The book ends with an examination of the scientific and technical developments which could make the problems easier to deal with and, above all, set. out the policies on which governments must agree.Originally published in 1990

Focusing on so much more than plastic pollution, this ahead-of-the curve book exposes the extensive damage being done to the oceans that most of us don't know about, and what simple, everyday changes we can make to help protect our seas. When we think about climate change, our first thoughts are often of burning rainforests, cities filled with smog, and mammals teetering on the brink of extinction. But what about the effects of our actions off-land? What is really going on out of sight below the surface of the waves? And what more can we do beyond just reducing our plastic usage? This book is a necessary call to act and educate ourselves on the damage human activity is having on our seas, and a guide to how you can help stop it, whether you live on the coastline or hundreds of miles from the ocean. Shocking but enlightening, it illustrates exactly what the problems are, how they impact the ocean, why it is so important to keep our oceans healthy for our own benefit, and what we can do individually and collectively to help save our seas. Oceans cover over 70% of our planet and provide us with more life support than we can comprehend. Learn how to be an ocean hero every day, and do your part to love and protect our planet before it is too late...

Ultrasocial argues that rather than environmental destruction and extreme inequality being due to human nature, they are the result of the adoption of agriculture by our ancestors. Human economy has become an ultrasocial superorganism (similar to an ant or termite colony), with the requirements of superorganism taking precedence over the individuals within it. Human society is now an autonomous, highly integrated network of technologies, institutions, and belief systems dedicated to the expansion of economic production. Recognizing this allows a radically new interpretation of free market and neoliberal ideology which - far from advocating personal freedom - leads to sacrificing the well-being of individuals for the benefit of the global market. Ultrasocial is a fascinating exploration of what this means for the future direction of the humanity: can we forge a better, more egalitarian, and sustainable future by changing this socio-economic - and ultimately destructive - path? Gowdy explores how this might be achieved.

Hundreds of millions of people live and work in forests across the world. A vital, yet largely unexamined, aspect of their lives are the issues and challenges of protecting and enhancing human health in forested areas and the unique relationship between the health of forests and the health of people. This book, written for a broad audience, is the first comprehensive introduction to the issues surrounding the health of people living in and around forests, particularly in Asia, South America and Africa. Part I is a set of synthesis chapters, addressing policy, public health, environmental conservation, and ecological perspectives on health and forests including women and child health, medicinal plants and viral diseases such as Ebola, SARS and Nipah Encephalitis. Part II takes a multi-lens approach to lead the reader to a more concrete and holistic understanding using case studies from around the world that cover issues as important as the links between HIV/AIDs and the forest sector and diet and health. Part III looks at the specific challenges to health care delivery in forested areas including remoteness and the integration of traditional medicine with modern health care. Generous use of boxes with specific examples add layers of depth to the analyses and the book concludes with a synthesis designed for use by practitioners and policymakers to work with forest dwellers to improve their health and their ecosystems. This book a vital addition to the knowledge base of all professionals, academics and students working on forests, natural resources management, health and development world-wide. Published with People and Plants International

Without resolute counteraction, climate change will overstretch many societies' adaptive capacities within the coming decades. This could result in destabilization and violence, jeopardizing national and international security to a new degree. However, climate change could also unite the international community. This is provided that we recognize climate change as a threat to humankind and so set the course for adopting a dynamic and globally coordinated climate policy. If we fail to do so, climate change will draw ever-deeper lines of division and conflict in international relations, triggering numerous conflicts between and within countries over the distribution of resources - especially water and land, and over the management of migration, or over compensation payments between the countries mainly responsible for climate change and those countries most affected by its destructive effects. With Climate Change as a Security Risk, WBGU has compiled a flagship report on an issue that quite rightly is rising rapidly up the international political agenda. The authors pull no punches on the likelihood of increasing tensions and conflicts in a climatically constrained world and spotlight places where possible conflicts may flare up in the 21st century unless climate change is checked. The report makes it clear that climate policy is preventative security policy.

A study of a rural region and plural society, this book is a distinctive contribution to anthropology, in that it brings the conceptual framework of that discipline to bear on a contemporary agrarian society and its historical development, rather than on peasant or tribal peoples; cultural ecology, in that it shows the nature of the adaptations of four distinctive social groups to the environment of the Canadian Great Plains; the study of social and economic change, as it describes cultural patterns and mechanisms that are relevant to agrarian development the world over; and North American studies, in as much as it deals with community life in the classic sequence of settlement of the Western Plains.

The book is, focused throughout on the adaptation of human societies to their environment. Four groups are described: the Cree Indians, the aboriginal inhabitants of the area who have lost all organic relationship to natural resources and who have devised ingenious methods for manipulating the social environment; ranchers, whose specialized production is based upon resources used in their natural state; homestead farmers, whose maladjusted small-farm economy, after initial setbacks, achieved a degree of stability through interventions by government in their adaptations to nature and the market economy; and the Hutterian Brethren, whose adaptation consisted primarily of the introduction to the region of a new kind of social organization.

This book combines the anthropological concept of culture and the framework of ecology in the study of a modern social milieu; it focuses on a region rather than on a single culture, people, or community, so that the interplay of several social groups can be appreciated; and it elaborates contemporary anthropological and ecological theory in a manner that makes it applicable to the understanding of contemporary agrarian societies.

"John W. Bennett" was emeritus professor of anthropology at Washington University, St. Louis. He served as president of the American Ethnological Society and the Society for Applied Anthropology, and was a member of the editorial boards of the "Annual Review of Anthropology" and "Reviews in Anthropology." Among his books are "The Ecological Transition: Cultural Anthropology and Human Adaptation" (1976, 2005), "Classic Anthropology: Critical Essays," 1944-1996 (1997), and "Human Ecology as Human Behavior: Essays in Environmental and Development Anthropology" (1995).

This book contains a collection of cutting-edge chapters that explore various connections between urban living, sexuality and sexual desire around the world. The key themes featured address a number of topical issues including: the controversies and debates raging around the evolution, defining patterns and appropriate regulation of commercial sex zones and markets in the urban landscape how gay public spaces, districts and 'gay villages' emerged and developed in various towns and cities around the world how changing attitudes to, and the usage of urban sexual spaces, as depicted in iconic television series such as Sex and the City and Queer as Folk, reflect the reality of working women's or gay men's changing life experiences. With detailed case studies, and a strong interdisciplinary appeal, this book will be a valuable reference for postgraduates and advanced students in the fields of cultural studies as well as human, urban and social geography. This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Urban Studies.

Kenneth Gardens is Durban’s largest low-income municipal housing estate. Initially built for `poor whites’, Kenneth Gardens today is arguably one of the most socially diverse living spaces in the city. While the estate is significant in terms of its size, history and social make-up, very little has been written about it. This book provides a history of Kenneth Gardens through the oral history stories of its residents. It is a rich tapestry of narratives as told by people who resided in Kenneth Gardens during apartheid, those that moved into the estate when the Group Areas Act began to be defunct, as well as stories from residents who have more recently moved into the estate. Although this book is about Kenneth Gardens itself, it is also about the history of social housing, identity formation and change, urban planning, and state regulation. Many of the story tellers reveal intimate moments of struggle in their lives. But what emerges more strongly than vulnerability and hardship is embedded resilience and adaptability. Through the narratives we come to understand how a subsidised rental apartment becomes home, and how relative strangers can form a neighbourhood based on shared circumstances, proximity and an urban planning design that fosters familiarity and belonging. The narratives are accompanied by a unique photo essay created by acclaimed photographer Cedric Nunn. The authors invite readers to dwell in the everyday lives and memories of the people of Kenneth Gardens, and in so doing unravel the complexities of social housing, local government, regulation, urban identity politics and human agency.