Jobs and enterprise are critical to creating viable neighbourhoods. Yet much recent policy activity aimed at the regeneration of deprived neighbourhoods has had only a marginal impact on the economic challenges presented by areas of concentrated disadvantage. This book directly addresses the economic development issues central to neighbourhood renewal, drawing on the authors' original research and wide-ranging analysis of recent academic theory and policy practice. Their critical examination of the economic problems of deprived areas, and the range of employment and enterprise-related policy initiatives and governance arrangements that have attempted to address them, offers informed insights into what does and what does not work. Through its topical focus on issues of work and enterprise in deprived neighbourhoods, "Renewing neighbourhoods" goes to the heart of much current policy practice that seeks to combine concerns of economic competitiveness with those of social exclusion. It will be essential reading for academics, practitioners and policy makers working in the fields of urban regeneration, neighbourhood renewal and local and regional economic development. It will also be a key text for students of urban studies, planning, social policy, human geography and related disciplines.

It is all too easy for the vogue term 'green infrastructure' to be waved around by local authorities and developers like a totem of environmental awareness, while simply meaning 'greenspace' or 'storm water management'. This book provides a welcome corrective, demonstrating the need to plan the natural environment of cities as integral to their effective social, economic, ecological and aesthetic function. The impressive range of topics includes green infrastructure and health, air quality, biodiversity, water and recreation, and the book shows through policy discussion and case study how principles can be converted into practice. It will be an essential source for students, researchers and practitioners.' - Hugh Barton, University of the West of England, UK'Green infrastructure is an essential feature of social, economic and environmental planning for all places. This important and very comprehensive book will be essential reading for all those involved in its provision and promotion. It offers an exceptionally informative contextual review and it is exemplified throughout by a series of domestic and international case studies at a variety of scales. Its methodological discussion and examples will be of considerable value to all those engaged in the delivery of green infrastructure.' - Janice Morphet, University College London, UK Green infrastructure encompasses many features in the built environment. It is widely recognised as a valuable resource in our towns and cities and it is therefore crucial to understand, create, protect and manage this resource. This Handbook sets the context for green infrastructure as a means to make urban environments more resilient, sustainable, liveable and equitable. Including state-of-the-art reviews that summarise the existing knowledge as well as research findings, this Handbook provides current evidence for the beneficial impact of green infrastructure on health, environmental quality and the economy. It discusses the planning and design of green infrastructure as a strategic network down to the individual features in a neighbourhood and looks at the process of green infrastructure implementation, emphasising the importance of collaboration across multiple professions and sectors. This comprehensive volume operates at multiple spatial scales, from strategic networks at the regional level to individual features in neighbourhoods, with international case studies used throughout to illustrate key examples of good practice. This collection of expert contributions will be invaluable to students and academics in the fields of planning, urban studies and geography. Practitioners and policy-makers will also find the policy discussion and examples enlightening. Contributors include: J.H. Amorim, A. Barker, S. Burgess, T. Butlin, T. Butterworth, C. Calfapietra, L. Chawla, N. Collomb, A. Coombs, E. Costa Pinto, C. Dair, V. Derr, K.J. Doick, G. Everett, T. Ferguson, P. Freer-Smith, S. Gill, C. Goncalves, C. Greed, S. Grimmond, S. Kotthaus, J. Lamond, E. Lawson, F. Lemes De Oliveira, M. Lindsey, S. Manley, J. Marques-Da-Cruz, I. Mell, A.I. Miranda, A.J. Moffat, P. Nolan, C. Olver, S. Payne, A. Quintas, A. Rigolon, S. Rolls, M. Short, P. Silva, E. Silveirinha De Oliveira, D. Sinnett, N. Smith, T. Sunderland, M.J. Tallis, P.Toscano, C. Ward Thompson, K. Williams, J. Wilson

Residential segregation is a key issue for good governance in Latin American cities. The isolation of people of different social classes or ethnicities has potential political and social consequences, including differential access to and quality of education, health and other services. This volume uses the recent availability of geo-coded census data and techniques of spatial analysis to conduct the first detailed comparative examination of residential segregation in six major Latin American metropolises, with Austin, Texas, as a US comparison. It demonstrates the high degree of residential segregation of contemporary Latin American cities and discusses implications for the welfare of urban residents.

The agriculture sector around the world has experienced profound changes in recent years. This unique and path-breaking Handbook draws together the best current research in the area of entrepreneurship in agriculture, food production and rural development.Agriculture policy reforms have impacted farm incomes, while demand side changes have required the development of sophisticated market driven strategies. Farmers have demonstrated uneven abilities to adapt and adjust to these ongoing changes. The ability and propensity of farmers to engage in entrepreneurial behaviors is a key explanation of the different patterns of responses within the sector. This book examines these issues through three main themes. The first theme focuses on the firm and the individual entrepreneurs, exploring entrepreneurship within the farm sector. The second takes a sector and industry perspective, exploring new developments in food production and distribution systems. The third theme explores the inter-relationship between agricultural entrepreneurship and its spatial context. Contributions are drawn from international research settings (Scandinavia, Europe, Asia, North America, Australasia) and offer an interdisciplinary approach to the subject.This astute Handbook, which will challenge and enrich the current literature, will appeal to academics in entrepreneurship, small business studies, agriculture, rural studies, rural sociology and agricultural economics, as well as food industry economists, policymakers and all those interested in supporting agricultural and rural businesses.

This book explores and outlines the reference theoretical basis of ecological networks within the international debate, focusing on how protected areas should no longer be considered as the sum of different components but rather as a network. The various European, transnational and national models of ecological networks/connections are analyzed on the basis of a detailed, updated study of relevant documents. The complex picture that emerges shows a wide range of reticular-ecological models within European plans and programs, but also many non-integrated experiences. The book subsequently examines the regulation of ecological networks/connections within planning instruments, explaining the critical points and referring to different ecological network models and specific local realities. Lastly, the book addresses two Italian case studies regarding the different normative and planning frameworks, both at a national and regional level, and demonstrating not only how ecological networks/connections can be structured within plans, but also how these networks/connections represent the core element of territory development and preservation. As such, it provides an essential tool for containing habitat fragmentation, offering a new perspective that integrates theoretical approaches and methods with planning models and the lessons learned from local applications.

This book integrates the theories of complex self-organizing systems with the rich body of discourse and literature developed in what might be called social theory of cities and urbanism . It uses techniques from dynamical complexity and synergetics to successfully tackle open social science questions.

Graham Clarke and Moss Madden 1. 1 Background In the mid 1990s there were a number of papers in regional science that questioned the relevance and purpose of the entire sub-discipline. Bailly and Coffey (1994) for example, talked of 'regional science in crisis'. They argued that there were two fundamental problems. First, regional science was too theoretical in the sense that many of its products were models that could neither be calibrated (too complex) or operationalised (too abstract) in the real world. They suggested that regional science had not sufficiently demonstrated that it can address real-world problems and subsequently lacked a focus on relevant policy issues. Second, they argued that regional science had become too narrow in focus and had moved away too far from real people and their daily concerns or struggles in life. This was not the first time we had witnessed these sorts of arguments, both from outside the discipline and from within. Sayer (1976) was perhaps the first to argue for a shift from a model-based focus in regional science to one based on political economy. Breheny (1984) criticised the 'deep ignorance among regional scientists of the nature of practical policy making and implementation' (see also Rodwin (1987) for similar views in the mid 1980s). Such self-reflection is a feature of many disciplines as they reach maturity. There have been many similar reflections in geography (Johnston 1996, Barnes 1996) and economics (see the collection in the January edition of the Economic Journal 1991).

It is also essential to study the success of technology use in some of the advanced nations in the Asian region that promote a smarter and well-advanced community. A smarter community in these regions can only be materialized by adopting the latest trends in technology to improve quality of life. Some of these regions need a great emphasis on technology adoption for women empowerment and safety, promoting better health with telemedicine facilities, environment, and disaster prevention with IoT technologies, water treatment and sanitation, and addressing food scarcity issues with smarter precision agriculture. Ultimately, there needs to be more research focused on a smarter and secured community in the Asian region in terms of cultural and socioeconomic factors and technology advancements. ICT Solutions for Improving Smart Communities in Asia explores new possibilities using digital solutions and technologies to create collaborative and smarter communities for advancement in agriculture, the health sector, education centers, human resources, and administrative domains, as well as other areas to improve the overall living standards of people at the community level. This book will cover two main areas: the need for technology development in developing nations, mainly focusing on Asia, and the adoption of some of the advanced regions in Asia as role models for the less developed SAARC regions explicitly. This book is ideally intended for researchers, academicians, IT specialists, regional developers, government officials, practitioners, academicians, and students.

Traditional urban planning has progressed greatly thanks to developments in technology. Such technological advancements have created a new form of urban planning referred to as e-planning, which incorporates the traditional elements of urban planning with information communication technologies. Although progressing rapidly into the professional world, research on the use of ICTs in urban planning remains very minimal. The Handbook of Research on E-Planning: ICTs for Urban Development and Monitoring provides relevant theoretical perspectives on the use of ICT in urban planning as well as an account of the most recent developments in the practice of e-planning in different regions of the world. Discussing theories and methods, citizen participation, and innovation in urban management in e-planning, this book is essential for those who want to improve their knowledge about the use of ICT in urban planning, focusing greatly on its strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.

Company towns were the spatial manifestation of a social ideology and an economic rationale. The contributors to this volume show how national politics, social protest, and local culture transformed those founding ideologies by examining the histories of company towns in six countries: Argentina (Firmat), Brazil (Volta Redonda, Santos, Fordlandia), Canada (Sudbury), Chile (El Salvador), Mexico (Santa Rosa, Rio Blanco), and the United States (Anaconda, Kellogg, and Sunflower City). Company towns across the Americas played similar economic and social roles. They advanced the frontiers of industrial capitalism and became powerful symbols of modernity. They expanded national economies by supporting extractive industries on thinly settled frontiers and, as a result, brought more land, natural resources, and people under the control of corporations. U.S. multinational companies exported ideas about work discipline, race, and gender to Latin America as they established company towns there to extend their economic reach. Employers indeed shaped social relations in these company towns through education, welfare, and leisure programs, but these essays also show how working-class communities reshaped these programs to serve their needs. The editors' introduction and a theoretical essay by labor geographer Andrew Herod provide the context for the case studies and illuminate how the company town serves as a window into both the comparative and transnational histories of labor under industrial capitalism.

The book gives an outline of prevailing hydrogeologic conditions in the Arab Middle East together with the geologic background. Emphasis is given to relationships between the main features influencing the hydrogeologic conditions - regional geologic developments, paleogeographic conditions, morphology, climate and paleo-climate - and the resulting hydrogeologic features: formation of aquifers, distribution of major aquifers, main groundwater flow systems, occurrence of renewable and fossil groundwater. Reported data on hydraulic aquifer parameters, recharge rates and groundwater flow volumes are evaluated with a view to arrive at characteristic values under the specific hydrogeologic and climatic conditions. The area considered covers approximately the Arabian Plate. Information on the following countries is included: Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, West Bank and Gaza, Yemen.

The Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region is highly vulnerable to earthquakes and water-induced disasters. This fragile mountain region is under tremendous stress from climate change and land-use degradation that has accelerated flash floods, river-line floods, erosion, and wet mass movements during the monsoon period and drought in the non-monsoon period. Against the backdrop of intensifying disasters and in the absence of a focused documentation of disaster risk reduction issues in the HKH region, this volume presents a comprehensive body of knowledge. The main purpose and objective of this publication is to connect existing data, research, conceptual work, and practical cases on risk, resilience, and risk reduction from the HKH region under a common analytical umbrella. The result is a contribution to advancing disaster resilience and risk reduction in the HKH region. The book will be of special interest to policy makers, donors, and researchers concerned with the disaster issues in the region.

This book analyzes the social capital of the growing knowledge economy, from both theoretical and empirical points of view. The theoretical section discusses social capital as an economic concept, developing a theory of the social capital of the enterprise. The empirical section compares aspects of the social capital of three different socio-economic systems: the US, Japan and Sweden. The book discusses a number of issues for further research.

The research category of the landscape ecology, which researches the structure, functions, and the spatio-temporal changes of the ecological landscapes, has now been contributing to the human life and the shifts of the socio-economic paradigm. Global warming has been influencing the universal life patterns of the mankind which have been maintained in the past several hundreds of years. And it has been having the influences on the international social problems and economic problems. Although the diverse plans for adapting to the climate changes have been the topics of the conservations among the ecologists internationally, it is the reality that the speed of the changes of the environment has been quicker than the time it takes to complete the solutions. In order to maintain the sustainable earth and the sustainable society, the role of the landscape ecology has been coming to the fore. Especially, the theories and the methodologies of the landscape ecology have been applied to the multidisciplinary researches by going beyond the research category of ecology, including the maximization of the efficiencies of the land spaces, the management of the ecological space (habitats) in which the biological diversity can be maintained, the utilization of the resources that are absolutely needed by the human beings (Here, it is compressed to water, energy, and food), etc. and until reaching the human society. It is considered that, to that extent, the utilizations and the applications of the landscape ecology are very much needed for the diagnoses and the evaluations of the global environmental problems which have been proceeded with rapidly in the modernity. This book is not comprised of any general remarks that explain the theories and the methods of the landscape ecology. Already, based on the basic theories of the landscape ecology, the writers have conducted the investigations on the farm villages, the cities, and the coastal ecosystems. And, through the space analyses and interpretations, the structure and functions of the landscapes were analyzed. Of course, in this book, too, the diverse ecosystems and the landscape ecological methodologies regarding the land use have been presented. However, the core of this book focuses more on what role the landscape ecology must play for the materialization of a sustainable society in the future. At the farm villages, the sustainable agriculture will be presented, and, at the cities, the discussions on the green networks and the energies will be proceeded with. Also, regarding the coasts and the seas, a thesis on the safety of the life zones of the residents adjacent to the sea and on the conservation of the island ecosystems will be presented. The sustainable society is a system that is formed by having the sustainable development as a basis. It is considered to be one aspect within a kind of a sustainable process with regard to which the natural world and the human world coexist and are in a symbiotic relationship harmoniously. In order to maintain the biodiversity, the reasonable adjustments of the human activities, like the use of the resources, are absolutely needed. Without the biological resources, the cultural diversity of the human beings, too, cannot exist. Consequentially, recently and internationally, there are a lot of the case examples that express the biocultural diversity by linking the biological diversity with the cultural diversity. In this book, the role of the landscape ecology as an academic link which can connect the two possible, if possible, is highly expected. It is, indeed, the biocultural landscape. It can be said that this concept, also, is the interconnection of the multidisciplinary spaces that must be dealt with in the modern landscape ecology. Through this book, it is intended to present a new directionality which can contribute to the sustainable society at the same time as the organization of the theories and the methods of the landscape ecology.

"This book provides a rigorous and comprehensive coverage of transportation models and planning methods and is a must-have to anyone in the transportation community, including students, teachers, and practitioners." Moshe Ben-Akiva, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This book was written with the aim of showing that even in the era of globalization developments appearing in cities are not subject to almost unconditional global forces. Rather, universal forces are decisive eventualities in the process of urban restructuring, often influencing its course and speed, yet developments and particularities within a city strongly influence the course of events and the extent to which negative characteristics of globalization might occur. Local forces are central in the process of change and they may influence the perceived unstoppable process of globalization, leading to considerable qualitative and quantitative differences in the urban development processes of the globalization era. It thus challenges Sassena (TM)s hypothesis that globalization as a process forces uniformity upon individual regions or cities and imprints macro-cultural structural patterns onto local forms. It focuses on the interplay between local and global forces whose influence is strongly affected by the very different spatial and temporal local constellations and development factors which give globalization a local flavour.

Berlin, Brussels, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sarajevo and Vienna: Using these important cities the special relationship between global and local/regional forces is analyzed. The case studies were selected based on their political and cultural context and the fact that their social and political fabric was subject to major changes in the recent past. How global processes manifest themselves locally depends to a great extent on how development processes and endogenic potentials are initiated locallyin order to cope with the new global economic and societal conditions.

This volume embodies a problem-driven and theoretically informed approach to bridging frontier research in urban economics and urban/regional planning. The authors focus on the interface between these two subdisciplines that have historically had an uneasy relationship.
Although economists were among the early contributors to the literature on urban planning, many economists have been dismissive of a discipline whose leading scholars frequently favor regulations over market institutions,
equity over efficiency, and normative prescriptions over positive analysis. Planners, meanwhile, even as they draw upon economic principles, often view the work of economists as abstract, not sensitive to institutional contexts, and communicated in a formal language spoken by few with decision making authority. Not surprisingly, papers in the leading economic journals rarely cite clearly pertinent papers in planning journals, and vice versa.
Despite the historical divergence in perspectives and methods, urban economics and urban planning share an intense interest in many topic areas: the nature of cities, the prosperity of urban economies, the efficient provision of urban services, efficient systems of transportation, and the proper allocation of land between urban and
environmental uses. In bridging this gap, the book highlights the best scholarship in planning and economics that address the most pressing urban problems of our day and stimulates further dialog between scholars in urban planning and urban economics.

Portland is a young city founded on a river bank in a virgin forest less than 200 years ago. Shaping Portland: Anatomy of a Healthy City is about the values engendered by the place, and how those values have influenced the growing city. It examines how and why the public realm supports or obstructs the health-forward lifestyles of those who choose to live there. This book explores the values and dynamics that shaped a healthy city to enable those things. It is a case study of a recognized success - looking more closely at a recent urban infill: the Pearl District. The future roles of the planners and other design professionals in continuing to build healthy and responsive environments are suggested. The cities of the future will be those that we already inhabit, but infilled and adapted to tomorrow's needs and values. Understanding the dynamics involved is essential for those in whose hands we entrust the design of cities and urban places.

As 300 million Americans squeeze into our country, and as single-person households outnumber parents with children, it's time to rethink our land use laws that favor the single-family house. This provocative book visits sites of recent controversies--from an immigration dispute in a Virginia suburb, to eminent domain in New York City, to illegal apartments in the backyards of California. Boudreaux explores how we could scrap the old housing bias in favor of affluent homeowners, and in its place harness the free market to provide for a greater variety of residences--apartments, townhouses, and mobile homes - for the twenty-first century.

Global change, land use policies and EU enlargement affect the driving forces for landscape functioning, land use management and rural development. New demands on landscapes and natural resources call for multifunctional approaches to land development. Tools are required to (i) identify the effects of land management on landscape sustainability and (ii) support the decision-making process on the multipurpose utilisation of landscape resources.

Scientists from across Europe installed the Landscape Tomorrow network to be prepared for new challenges of research on sustainable land development in a European perspective. In this publication they (i) analyse general principles of land use multifunctionality, (ii) highlight the specific requirements and approaches of implementing multifunctional land use from different disciplinary viewpoints, (iii) report on success stories of multifunctional land use from different geographic and political settings, and (iv) discuss modelling and monitoring approaches to scientifically assess the impact of mutlifunctional land use implementation. The book contributes to the scientific basis for future land development strategies and helps supporting land use decision making on the political, planning and management level.

Systems of transportation long ago developed out of the profound human need to connect and communicate. Transport today is still the only means for the physical movement of goods and people. Alongside the evolution of transportation and communication technologies, the astounding phenomenon of urbanization has taken place. Cities have grown faster and larger, absorbing vast influxes of dwellers who seek convenient and comfortable lifestyles with the required fast, cheap, and safe systems of transport. Of the world's megacities, with populations of more than ten million, over half are in Asia. While enjoying large-scale economic power, Asian megacities also face serious challenges. They suffer from too-rapid urbanization, with the resulting congestion, pollution, and destruction of traditional local cultures and industries. Written by experts from Asian academic institutes, this book addresses the urgent question of how to achieve sustainability in the still-growing cities of Asia. The chapters comprise the latest research and the application of promising measures, some already realized in Asia, that include urban transport system design and management, land-use control, city planning, and sustainability. Of vast import, this volume was written for students and researchers, planners and engineers, and all who are interested in sustainable urban environments.

Following is the structure and rough sketch of the contents of this book: Part I, "The First Step: An Overview" deals with Asian characteristics from natural, cultural, and economic viewpoints, and then describes how we should grasp the concept of urban sustainability in urban transport in Asia. Readers will understand various aspects of Asia as introductory and preparatory knowledge. Part II, "Best Practices from Asia with Wisdom: Keys to Success and Facing Limitations" will introduce actual comparatively successful and promising measures tried and realized in Asia. This part covers various cases from passenger transport to freight transport, from transport system design to system management, from engineering measures to people's participation, from traffic control to land-use control and site development. Readers will find an abundance of information and examples in this main part of the book. Part III, "Future of Urban Transport in Asia: Rising Asia Proposes to the World" discusses key issues and hot topics of study on sustainable city and transport for the future: development and management, travel demand management, growth management, site development strategies, and financial and institutional measures.

The great migration of farmers leaving rural China to work and live in big cities as 'floaters' has been an on-going debate in China for the past three decades. This book probes into the spatial mobility of migrant workers in Beijing, and questions the city 'rights' issues beneath the city-making movement in contemporary China. In revealing and explaining the socio-spatial injustice, this volume re-theorizes the 'right to the city' in the Chinese context since Deng Xiaoping's reforms. The policy review, census analysis, and housing survey are conducted to examine the fate of migrant workers, who being the most marginalized group have to move persistently as the city expands and modernizes itself. The study also compares the migrant workers with local Pekinese dislocated by inner city renewals and city expansion activities. Rapid urban growth and land expropriation of peripheral farmlands have also created a by-product of urbanization, an informal property development by local farmers in response to rising low-cost rental housing demand. This is a highly comparable phenomenon with cities in other newly industrialized countries, such as Sao Paulo. Readers will be provided with a good basis in understanding the interplay as well as conflicts between migrant workers' housing rights and China's globalizing and branding pursuits of its capital city. Audience: This book will be of great interest to researchers and policy makers in housing planning, governance towards urban informalities, rights to the city, migrant control and management, and housing-related conflict resolutions in China today.

Pollution, alternative fuels, congestion, intelligent transportation systems, and the shift from construction to maintenance all call for a reconsideration of the existing highway revenue mechanisms, especially the gas tax. David Levinson explores the fundamental theoretical basis of highway finance, in particular the use of tolls, and supports that theory with empirical evidence. The author examines highway finance from the perspective of individual jurisdictions and travellers, and considers their interactions rather than specifying a single optimal solution. Congestion pricing has long been a goal of transportation economists, who believe it will result in a more efficient use of resources. Levinson argues that if the governance were to become more decentralized, and collection costs continue to drop, tolls could return to prominence as the preferred means of financing roads for both local and intercity travel. An approach that creates the local winners necessary to implement road pricing is required before it can be expected to become widespread. Economists, civil engineers, planners, students and policymakers will find this detailed examination of transportation networks enlightening and useful.

Future development in the Arctic and Subarctic region requires careful attention to the possible consequences of the development activities themselves, in relation to their environmental, socioeconomic and cultural impacts. A more thorough understanding of the impact of future activities, however, demands the dissemination and confrontation of results from different regions and different scientific traditions. This requires scientific cooperation, not only across disciplines but across border. Primarily it requires both consensus and innovations in regard to methods. This book confronts such differences in approaches and methods in relation to the analysis of socioeconomic and environmental consequences of large-scale mineral and energy development activities in the Arctic and Subarctic, establishing the common ground upon which future research activities can be based.

The newly revised Globalizing Cities Reader reflects how the geographies of theory have recently shifted away from the western vantage points from which much of the classic work in this field was developed. The expanded volume continues to make available many of the original and foundational works that underpin the research field, while expanding coverage to familiarize students with new theoretical and epistemological positions as well as emerging research foci and horizons. It contains 38 new chapters, including key writings on globalizing cities from leading thinkers such as John Friedmann, Michael Peter Smith, Saskia Sassen, Peter Taylor, Manuel Castells, Anthony King, Jennifer Robinson, Ananya Roy, and Fulong Wu. The new Reader reflects the fact that world and global city studies have evolved in exciting and wide-ranging ways, and the very notion of a distinct "global" class of cities has recently been called into question. The sections examine the foundations of the field and processes of urban restructuring and global city formation. A large number of new entries focus on the emerging urban worlds of Asia, Latin America and Africa, including Beijing, Bogota, Cairo, Cape Town, Delhi, Istanbul, Medellin, Mumbai, Phnom Penh, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Shanghai. The book also presents cases off the conventional map of global cities research, such as smaller cities and less known urban regions that are undergoing processes of globalization. The book is a key resource for students and scholars alike who seek an accessible compendium of the intellectual foundations of global urban studies as well as an overview of the emergent patterns of early 21st century urbanization and associated sociopolitical contestation around the world.