1) This book presents an overview of the challenges of urbanisation in the global South 2) It contains case studies from various cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of Development studies and South Asian Studies across UK and USA.

The Sociology of Urban Communities provides an authoritative collection of over 60 key articles by leading international contributors to urban sociology, together with an introductory article by the editor.The coverage is comprehensive, ranging from work on the role of cities in the transition from feudalism to capitalism and the nineteenth century origins of urban sociology, through the classic writings associated with the Chicago School and the Marxist new urban sociology of the 1960s and 1970s. The collection is completed by sections which focus on the urban consequences of contemporary economic restructuring and work which reflects recent developments in the sociology of gender, space and postmodernism.

The term "urban ecology" has become a buzzword in various disciplines, including the social and natural sciences as well as urban planning and architecture. The environmental humanities have been slow to adapt to current theoretical debates, often excluding human-built environments from their respective frameworks. This book closes this gap both in theory and in practice, bringing together "urban ecology" with ecocritical and cultural ecological approaches by conceptualizing the city as an integral part of the environment and as a space in which ecological problems manifest concretely. Arguing that culture has to be seen as an active component and integral factor within urban ecologies, it makes use of a metaphorical use of the term, perceiving cities as spatial phenomena that do not only have manifold and complex material interrelations with their respective (natural) environments, but that are intrinsically connected to the ideas, imaginations, and interpretations that make up the cultural symbolic and discursive side of our urban lives and that are stored and constantly renegotiated in their cultural and artistic representations. The city is, within this framework, both seen as an ecosystemically organized space as well as a cultural artifact. Thus, the urban ecology outlined in this study takes its main impetus from an analysis of examples taken from contemporary culture that deal with urban life and the complex interrelations between urban communities and their (natural and built) environments.

This collection seeks to expand the limits of current debates about urban commoning practices that imply a radical will to establish collaborative and solidarity networks based on anti-capitalist principles of economics, ecology and ethics.

Against the background of a growing tendency among state and local governments in the United States to vie against one another, spending public funds, and foregoing corporate tax revenues in order to attract private investment, this book offers an analysis of local economic development and business recruitment in the automotive industry. Asking why localities felt they could - and, more importantly, should - make deals with private capital in the first place, this book examines the shift toward entrepreneurial local governance from a global and historically informed perspective. Through a study of the 19 greenfield automotive assembly plants constructed in the United States during the neoliberal era, the author draws on interviews with corporate and government elites, to chart the connections between increasingly global competitive industry pressures and changing attitudes toward "incentivizing" private investment. Studying the development of an approach that has partially reoriented local governments away from managing localities and towards helping manage transnational capital flows by absorbing some of the increasing risk of long-term capital investment, Entrepreneurial Governance in the Neoliberal Era will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics, and urban studies with interests in globalization, the sociology of work and industry, the sociology of development, and neoliberal governance.

Near Eastern Cities from Alexander to the Successors of Muhammad compares the evolution of several cities in the Near East from the time of Alexander the Great until the beginning of the Islamic 'Abbasid Dynasty. This volume examines both archaeological remains and literary sources to explain the diversity of imperial, cultural, and religious influences on urban life. It offers several case studies chosen from different regions of the Roman Near East, demonstrating that Greco-Roman and Islamic culture spread unevenly through these various cities, and that it is impossible to make broad generalizations. It argues instead that there were different patterns of urbanism that demonstrate a continued vitality of civic life up to the 'Abbasid revolution. Near Eastern Cities from Alexander to the Successors of Muhammad will be of particular interest to students of this period in the Ancient Near East, as well as those studying ancient cities and everyday life.

In this prequel to Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (1998), his acclaimed book about the post-industrial city as a site of theming, branding and simulated spaces, sociologist John Hannigan travels back in time to the 1950s. Unfairly stereotyped as 'the tranquillized decade', America at mid-century hosted an escalating proliferation and conjunction of 'spectacular' events, spaces, and technologies. Spectacularization was collectively defined by five features. It reflected and legitimated a dramatic increase in scale from the local/regional to the national. It was mediated by the increasingly popular medium of television. It exploited middle-class tension between comfortable conformity and desire for safe adventure. It celebrated technological progress, boosterism and military power. It was orchestrated and marketed by a constellation, sometimes a coalition, of entrepreneurs and dream merchants, most prominently Walt Disney. In this wide-ranging odyssey across mid-century America, Hannigan visits leisure parks (Cypress Gardens), parades (Tournament of Roses), mega-events (Squaw Valley Olympics, Century 21 Exposition), architectural styles (desert modernism), innovations (underwater photography, circular film projection) and everyday wonders (chemistry sets). Collectively, these fashioned the 'spectacular gaze', a prism through which Americans in the 1950s were acculturated to and conscripted into a vision of a progressive, technology-based future. Rise of the Spectacular will appeal to architects, landscape designers, geographers, sociologists, historians, and leisure/tourism researchers, as well as non-academic readers who are by a fascinating era in history.

In this prequel to Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (1998), his acclaimed book about the post-industrial city as a site of theming, branding and simulated spaces, sociologist John Hannigan travels back in time to the 1950s. Unfairly stereotyped as 'the tranquillized decade', America at mid-century hosted an escalating proliferation and conjunction of 'spectacular' events, spaces, and technologies. Spectacularization was collectively defined by five features. It reflected and legitimated a dramatic increase in scale from the local/regional to the national. It was mediated by the increasingly popular medium of television. It exploited middle-class tension between comfortable conformity and desire for safe adventure. It celebrated technological progress, boosterism and military power. It was orchestrated and marketed by a constellation, sometimes a coalition, of entrepreneurs and dream merchants, most prominently Walt Disney. In this wide-ranging odyssey across mid-century America, Hannigan visits leisure parks (Cypress Gardens), parades (Tournament of Roses), mega-events (Squaw Valley Olympics, Century 21 Exposition), architectural styles (desert modernism), innovations (underwater photography, circular film projection) and everyday wonders (chemistry sets). Collectively, these fashioned the 'spectacular gaze', a prism through which Americans in the 1950s were acculturated to and conscripted into a vision of a progressive, technology-based future. Rise of the Spectacular will appeal to architects, landscape designers, geographers, sociologists, historians, and leisure/tourism researchers, as well as non-academic readers who are by a fascinating era in history.

This book looks at the typologies of cities and ideas of urbanity. Focusing specifically on cities in South Asia, it analyses the unique planning concepts, archaeology, art, culture, life and philosophy of various cities of ancient and modern South Asia. Drawing from various archeological and literary sources, the volume includes rich details about heterogeneity, rituals, festivals, social stratification, penal systems, famines and insurrections in ancient cities as well as modern cities like Lahore, Dhaka and Calcutta among many others in South Asia. This book will be of interest to researchers and students in the US and UK of ancient and modern history, archaeology, urban studies, urban and town planning, urban sociology, urban geography, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, ancient and medieval architecture, heritage studies, conservation studies, and South Asian studies.

Diverse factors like globalization, geopolitical tensions, and the transformation of lifestyles are strengthening the role of mobility as a structuring dimension of contemporary societies. Social-science research has taken note of these changes, but few studies cross the different forms of mobility, ranging from commuting to tourists and backpackers, and on to seasonal workers or international migrants. The diversity of mobility situations studied in this book highlights the contribution of the reality of mobility in the daily construction of urban, regional, and global spaces, as well as in the redefinition of socio-spatial concepts. By using an interdisciplinary relational approach, the book revisits certain concepts such as exclusion, heritage, or distance, in order to understand spatialities beyond the oppositions of fixity/mobility, private/public, or here/elsewhere. The book sheds light on the capacities for resistance of mobile persons in Singapore, Dakar, Bangkok, Amman, Paris, New York, or Mexico by studying the power relationships that are established in situations of mobility. By deciphering the values that characterize regimes of (im)mobility, the contributors stress the normative injunctions of public policies and social practices. The originality of the work lies in capturing the deployment of alternative spatialities and underlining how they are reshaped between sedentary and mobility regimes. It highlights the importance of fully associating mobility with its characteristics of ephemerality and fluidity, in our theorizations and understandings of spatialities. By taking a post-structuralist posture, the book makes it possible to establish a logic of 'and' to design a 'between' of things, and to reverse ontology. This allows the temporary and the connected to be rehabilitated, beyond distance, in our practical knowledge of spatialities and territorialities. As such, the volume will be of interest to scholars of geography, sociology, anthropology, and urban studies with interests in mobility, migration and relational thought.

This book provides a clear outline of the key principles underlying property valuation and the current techniques and issues in the practice of valuation for the major sectors of the Australian real estate market. Formerly titled Valuation Principles and Practice, this entirely new third edition comprises Australia's leading advanced valuation textbook. The first part of the book, Principles of valuation, comprises chapters written by globally recognised academics and specialists on the principles of law, economics, planning, policy and finance, all in the context of property valuation. The second part of the book, Practice of valuation, comprises chapters written by acknowledged expert valuers on the practice of valuation for key property sectors including residential, retail, commercial, industrial, leisure and rural. Further, chapters also cover valuations for purposes including lending, insurance, rating, taxation and financial reporting. The most up to date valuation text for the Australian market, this book will appeal to both valuation practitioners and undergraduate/postgraduate students as well as to accountants, lawyers and professionals dealing with property valuation issues.

Urban Renewal and Resistance: Race, Space, and the City in the Late Twentieth to Early Twenty-First Century examines how urban spaces are rhetorically constructed through discourses that variously justify or resist processes of urban growth and renewal. This book combines insights from critical geography, urban studies, and communication to explore how urban spaces, like Detroit and Harlem, are rhetorically structured through neoliberal discourses that mask the racialized nature of housing and health in American cities. The analysis focuses on city planning documents, web sites, media accounts, and draws on insights from personal interviews in order to pull together a story of city growth and its consequences, while keeping an eye on the ways city residents continue to confront and resist control over their communities through counter-narratives that challenge geographies of injustice. Recommended for scholars of communication studies, journalism, sociology, geography, and political science.

This proceedings volume examines individual city transports, transport companies and entire transport systems. Featuring select contributions presented at the 2018 TranSopot Conference in Sopot, Poland, this book provides an analysis of transportation solutions both at the micro-level (single city or single company) as well as the macro-level (whole transportation systems). The enclosed research and case studies provide a theoretical background for transport analysis but also new innovative and sustainable solutions to transportation while also increasing the efficiency of transport operations. Transportation is a very specific area of social and economic life. It creates countless opportunities and fulfills the need for mobility while also generating significant cost-direct for the company or indirect to societies. Planning and organizing transport is a task which requires a multi-level approach with a focus on operational, ecological and financial aspects. At a time in which many transport systems are unable to grow extensively due to lack of space or increased cost, these activities are even more crucial. The enclosed research from researchers, scholars and practitioners provides not only new theories but also empirical data and practical experience. The TranSopot 2018 conference is a continuation of a long series of conferences devoted to the topic of transport sector development. The goal of the conference is to exchange current trends and spread the results of current research into the fields of transport growth, development and management.

As thrilling as it is touching and revealing - this book is an indispensable map to London today. - Ben Judah, Journalist and author of This is London: Life and Death in the World City What makes a Londoner? What is it to be Black, African and British? And how can we understand the many tangled roots of our modern nation without knowing the story of how it came to be? This is a story that begins not with the 'Windrush Generation' of Caribbean immigrants to Britain, but with post-1960s arrivals from African countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe and Somalia. Some came from former British colonies in the wake of newfound independence; others arrived seeking prosperity and an English education for their children. Now, in the 2020s, their descendants have unleashed a tidal wave of creativity and cultural production stretching from Lambeth to Lagos, Islington to the Ivory Coast. Daniel Kaluuya and Skepta; John Boyega and Little Simz; Edward Enninful and Bukayo Saka - everywhere you look, across the fields of sport, business, fashion, the arts and beyond, there are the descendants of Black African families that were governed by many of the same immutable, shared traditions. In this book Jimi Famurewa, a British-Nigerian journalist, journeys into the hidden yet vibrant world of African London. Seeking to understand the ties that bind Black African Londoners together and link them with their home countries, he visits their places of worship, roams around markets and restaurants, attends a traditional Nigerian engagement ceremony, shadows them on their morning journeys to far-flung grammar schools and listens to stories from shopkeepers and activists, artists and politicians. But this isn't just the story of energetic, ambitious Londoners. Jimi also uncovers a darker side, of racial discrimination between White and Black communities and, between Black Africans and Afro-Caribbeans. He investigates the troublesome practice of 'farming' in which young Black Nigerians were sent to live with White British foster parents, examines historic interaction with the police, and reveals the friction between traditional Black African customs and the stresses of modern life in diaspora. This is a vivid new portrait of London, and of modern Britain.

China's New National Urbanization Plan (2014-20) sets ambitious targets for sustainable, human-centered, and environmentally friendly urbanization. What key institutional and governance challenges will China face in reaching those goals? This title, coedited by a prominent leader of China's National Development and Reform Commission, features policy-focused contributions from leading social scientists in the United States and China who explore challenges ranging from migration and labor markets to agglomeration economies, land finance, affordable housing, and education policy.

Compared to much of the rest of the world, America and its citizens are rich. But many people are also deeply miserable at work, at home, or both. In this provocative book, author John Brueggemann unpacks why so many people are struggling, both emotionally and financially, in a nation that looks so prosperous on the surface. From a hospital patient reduced to a balance sheet to a parent working such long hours that he misses dinner, Brueggemann argues that market thinking has permeated every corner of our lives. In the pursuit of more and better, relationships erode, to the detriment of individuals, communities, and the nation as a whole. Rich, Free, and Miserable not only outlines these pressing social problems, but also offers practical suggestions for people looking to make a positive change."

The Regional Economics of Technological Transformations provides a comprehensive overview of 4.0 technological transformations in Europe and their socio-economic impact, with a particular emphasis on the regional dimension of the phenomena. The authors employ extensive original data and robust quantitative methods to analyse technological change in all regions of the 27 EU countries plus the UK and shed light on this trend for Europe and beyond. Structured in four parts, the book first looks at conceptual definitions, empirical measurements and expected impacts on both the economic performance (GDP and productivity growth) and the labour market, and then moves on to analyse where 4.0 technological transformation actually takes place in Europe and the reasons for this. Next, it offers original empirical evidence on the impacts of the different transformations, and of their intertwined effects, on both the economy and the society. Finally, the book explores the policy implications of this technological transformation. This book will be valuable reading for advanced students, researchers and policymakers working across regional economics, industrial economics and innovation policy. It will be of primary interest to regional scientists interested in the field, who may enjoy the conceptual and empirical solutions to the study of a very complex, timely and still largely unexplored theme. Sociologists, engineers and political economists can benefit from the book's analysis, noting the urgency of the development of new ethical rules governing the new digital and labour markets. Finally, the book may appeal to policymakers interested in opportunities to increase regional competitiveness and sustainability goals through the advent of 4.0 technologies.

Brings the earlier literature up to the present time with an added emphasis on culture. Careful and sophisticated treatment of geographical scale - in the blending of global/transnational processes with the fine-grained imprint of governance processes and social relations in the manifestations of contemporary urban inequality. A major review and synthesis of a wide array of research literatures on globalizing cities.

Urban Schools: Crisis and Revolution describes America's inner-city public schools and the failure of most to provide even a minimally adequate education for their students. With numerous examples, James Deneen and Carm Catanese argue that these failures are preventable. Early chapters document the two-tiered character of American public schools, the tragic consequences of failing schools for millions of students-mostly Black and Hispanic-and the financial costs to American society. In later chapters, Deneen and Catanese describe the special problems of inner-city schools and the changes in school organization and curriculum needed to overcome them. They also provide examples of schools in severely disadvantaged communities in which such changes have enabled students to succeed academically, graduate, and enter college. In the final chapters, the authors examine the public and non-public school options available to urban parents. They discuss school choice, a hotly debated issue in urban education. The book concludes with a plan, consisting of six recommendations, for reforming a failing urban school.

" These essays] are of high academic quality and present often penetrating ethnographic and historical insight into the negotiation of (im)purity in a variety of cultural contexts. They offer a stimulating and engaging read." . Aidan Davison, University of Tasmania

Re-examining Mary Douglas' work on pollution and concepts of purity, this volume explores modern expressions of these themes in urban areas, examining the intersections of material and cultural pollution. It presents ethnographic case studies from a range of cities affected by globalization processes such as neoliberal urban policies, privatization of urban space, continued migration and spatialized ethnic tension. What has changed since the appearance of Purity and Danger? How have anthropological views on pollution changed accordingly? This volume focuses on cultural meanings and values that are attached to conceptions of 'clean' and 'dirty', purity and impurity, healthy and unhealthy environments, and addresses the implications of pollution with regard to discrimination, class, urban poverty, social hierarchies and ethnic segregation in cities.

Eveline Durr is Professor at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ludwig- Maximilians-University, Munich. She has conducted fieldwork in Mexico, the USA and Germany, and also in New Zealand while she was Associate Professor at the Auckland University of Technology. Her research focuses on urban anthropology, cultural identities and representations.

Rivke Jaffe is Lecturer at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University. She previously held teaching and research positions at the University of the West Indies and the KITLV. She has conducted fieldwork in Jamaica, Curacao and Suriname on topics ranging from the urban environment to the political economy of multiculturalism to alternative governance structures."

This book offers interdisciplinary and cross-national perspectives on the challenges of negotiating the contours of religious tolerance in Europe. In today's Europe, religions and religious individuals are increasingly framed as both an internal and external security threat. This is evident in controls over the activities of foreign preachers but also, more broadly, in EU states' management of migration flows, marked by questions regarding the religious background of migrating non-European Others. This book addresses such shifts directly by examining how understandings of religious freedom touch down in actual contexts, places, and practices across Europe, offering multidisciplinary insights from leading thinkers from political theory, political philosophy, anthropology, and geography. The volume thus aims to ground ideal liberal democratic theory and, at the same time, to bring normative reflection to grounded, ethnographic analyses of religious practices. Such 'grounded' understandings matter, for they speak to how religions and religious difference are encountered in specific places. They especially matter in a European context where religion and religious difference are increasingly not just securitised but made the object of violent attacks. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, philosophy, geography, religious studies, and the sociology and anthropology of religion.

The study of urban political economy needs no justification, for cities are the heart (and arguably the soul) of our civilization, and their political and economic conditions are the linchpins of its existence. But how should we study urban political economy? Urban Political Economy deals with different nations - Belgium, Denmark, France, Norway, the UK. and the USA - and with different problems - expenditure patterns, service provision, economic development, fiscal strain, budgetary cuts, and borrowing systems - but they all agree on two fundamental points about the study of their subject matter: first, that the urban economy cannot be understood outside its political context, just as urban politics cannot be understood without its economic background; and second, that the local and the national are knitted together so closely and so tightly that it is necessary to think of them as forming a single system. Urban Political Economy explores the idea of the fusion of factors by demonstrating the extent to which local and national conditions react upon one another to analyze the urban political economy.

This book explores the fascinating phenomenon of place event marketing in the Asia Pacific region. It examines procedures in the promotion and branding of places that use events to shape their identities. It considers how events are used in forming a branded image of a place and disseminate information about it. This innovative book offers theoretical insights of the opportunities and challenges related to place event marketing. With contributions from leading thinkers in the field, chapters also draw on empirical examples to showcase a variety of events across the Asia Pacific, such as MICE, sporting events, festivals, and religious and cultural celebrations. The book explores the importance of such events for the socio-economic development of urban regions. Today, the Asia Pacific is one of the world's fastest developing regions and its rising economic power is accompanied by the growing importance of the tourism and event sector. The book is a unique study relating to a very exceptional region of the world. The role of events in tourism development and the rise of the region's soft power is presented through carefully selected examples of cities from different countries. The book concludes with commentary on the future directions for research in this area. Written in an accessible style, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners working in events studies, urban studies, tourism, place branding and promotion, business and management studies, geography, sociology, and sport and leisure studies.

This book offers fresh theoretical, methodological and empirical analyses of the relation between religion and the city in the South Asian context. Uniting the historical with the contemporary by looking at the medieval and early modern links between religious faith and urban settlement, the book brings together a series of focused studies of the mixed and multiple practices and spatial negotiations of religion in the South Asian city. Filling a gap in the literature by discussing a diversity of settings and faiths, the book will be of interest to scholars on South Asian history, sociology, literary analysis, urban studies and cultural studies.

This book explores everyday walking in contemporary urban life. It brings together important theoretical and empirical insights to understand how the 'walkability' of urban spaces can be imagined, planned for, and experienced. The book focuses on the everyday experiences of the urban walker, the bodily experiences of walking, and different walking research methods. It goes beyond the conventional focus on walkable places by delving into the ways in which urban space is consumed and produced through different ways of walking. Drawing on fieldwork in the UK and international secondary sources, the book examines how walking is socially and materially co-produced, focusing on pedestrian practices, infrastructures, and the social nature of walking. Chapters in the book offer key explorations of the cultural and social inclusions and exclusions of navigating the city on foot. The book considers transport planning and policy promoting pedestrian movement, pedestrian infrastructures, the politics of walking, and social interactions of urban pedestrians. The book offers vital analyses of how different but overlapping dimensions of walking and their relationship with urban space are often overlooked, and the importance of centring the lived experiences of walking in understandings of pedestrian practices. This book provides a timely contribution to the field of mobilities due to a growing interest in urban walking. It will be of interest to students and scholars of urban studies, human geography, sociology, and public health.