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.

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 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.

1. Offers an introduction and overview of key contemporary essays and topics that students of literature/culture/humanities need to be aware of 2. Knowledge of these debates is essential for advanced undergrad/postgrad work in the humanities but the essays themselves can be complex or assume a certain level of knowledge - this book fills in those gaps 3. There is no other book that looks at the most current and contemporary essays in relation to literary theory

1. Offers an introduction and overview of key contemporary essays and topics that students of literature/culture/humanities need to be aware of 2. Knowledge of these debates is essential for advanced undergrad/postgrad work in the humanities but the essays themselves can be complex or assume a certain level of knowledge - this book fills in those gaps 3. There is no other book that looks at the most current and contemporary essays in relation to literary theory

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.

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.

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.

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 critically assesses the complex urban issues, planning challenges and development opportunities of rapidly growing cities, using Addis Ababa as a case study. Just like other developing cities, Addis Ababa is undergoing numerous natural and policy-driven changes. This book analyses the effect of these changes on urban management to allow better understanding of the conceptual frameworks that define the everyday functions of rapidly growing cities. It demonstrates that rapid urban growth has simultaneously created opportunities for economic development in the developing world as well as social, environmental and cultural challenges causing a mismatch between demand and the supply of services. The author argues that, by combining indigenous knowledge and practices and contemporary planning principles, developing countries can overcome challenges concerning environmental and public health, transport congestion, rising rents and house prices and lack of open space. Foregrounding the experience of everyday citizens of the city, this book aids our understanding of the nature of rapidly growing cities and outlines what needs to be done so that the city meets the needs of the people. A unique contribution to the literature on cities of the developing world, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Urban Studies, Planning, Development Studies and African Studies.

Megaregions presents an excellent collection of spatial-imaginary cameos drawn from the US and beyond, together with theoretically searching and provocative commentary from its editors. [The book] provides a series of thought-provoking and question-prompting interjections to inspire and prompt new research agendas.' - Kathy Pain, Geographical Review 'This splendid collection both defines and dissects trajectories of a research agenda on one of the chief, yet contested, discursive scalar fixes on our planet in an age of complete urbanization: the megaregion.' - Roger Keil, York University, Toronto, Canada Are megaregions a meaningful new spatial framework for the analysis of cities in globalization? Drawing together a range of innovative contributions and case studies from around the world, this book interrogates the many claims and counter-claims made about megaregions and critically assesses their position within global urban studies. Connecting research on megaregions to broader theoretical debates about globalized urbanization, the book examines the latest conceptualizations of trans-metropolitan landscapes. It investigates the opportunities and challenges posed by planning and governing at the megaregional scale and moves the debate forward to address questions of 'how', 'why' and 'by whom' megaregional spaces are being constructed. This far-reaching book will be of considerable interest to a broad audience, appealing to those engaged in urban and regional studies, geography and planning, and with direct relevance for policymakers and practitioners working at international, state and local levels. Contributors: B. Fleming, M.R. Glass, J. Harrison, M. Hesse, M. Hoyler, A. Schafran, P. Schmitt, L. Smas, D. Wachsmuth, S.M. Wheeler, X. Zhang

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.

Through the unique conceptualisation of 'urban resettlement', the book is a first attempt to conceptualise 'resettlement' in urban studies not only as an important dimension of ordinary city lives but also as a tool of government (for populations and places). The book will offer an interesting range of contributions combining destruction and production of urban space in the context of urban development. The unique selection of cases studies brings together empirical evidence on resettlement from three different continents (Africa, Asia, Latin America)

In Whiteness Interrupted Marcus Bell presents a revealing portrait of white teachers in majority-black schools in which he examines the limitations of understandings of how white racial identity is formed. Through in-depth interviews with dozens of white teachers from a racially segregated, urban school district in Upstate New York, Bell outlines how whiteness is constructed based on localized interactions and takes a different form in predominantly black spaces. He finds that in response to racial stress in a difficult teaching environment, white teachers conceptualized whiteness as a stigmatized category predicated on white victimization. When discussing race outside majority-black spaces, Bell's subjects characterized American society as postracial, in which race seldom affects outcomes. Conversely, in discussing their experiences within predominantly black spaces, they rejected the idea of white privilege, often angrily, and instead focused on what they saw as the racial privilege of blackness. Throughout, Bell underscores the significance of white victimization narratives in black spaces and their repercussions as the United States becomes a majority-minority society.

This will be the first edited collection in English on urban space and architecture in Spanish popular film since 1898. Building on existing film and urban histories, this innovative volume will examine Spanish film through contemporary interdisciplinary theories of urban space, the built environment, visuality and mass culture from the industrial through to the digital age. Architecture and Urbanism in Spanish Film brings together the innovative scholarship of an international and interdisciplinary group of film, architecture and urban studies scholars thinking through the reciprocal relationship between the seventh art and the built environment. Some of the shared concerns that emerge from this volume include the ways cinema as a new technology reshaped how cities and buildings are built and inhabited since the early twentieth century; the question of the mobile gaze; film's role in the shifting relationship between the private and the public; film and everyday life; monumentality and the construction of historical memory for a variety of viewing publics; the impact of the digital and the virtual on filmmaking and spectatorship. Primary readership will be those researching, teaching and studying Spanish film, international film studies, urban cultural studies, cultural studies, and architects who are interested in interdisciplinary endeavours.

Walking Inside Out is the first text that attempts to merge the work of literary and artist practitioners with academics to critically explore the state of psychogeography today. The collection explores contemporary psychogeographical practices, shows how a critical form of walking can highlight easily overlooked urban phenomenon, and examines the impact that everyday life in the city has on the individual. Through a variety of case studies, it offers a British perspective of international spaces, from the British metropolis to the post-communist European city. By situating the current strand of psychogeography within its historical, political and creative context along with careful consideration of the challenges it faces Walking Inside Out offers a vision for the future of the discipline.

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.

The Climate Planner is about overcoming the objections to climate change mitigation and adaption that urban planners face at a local level. It shows how to draft climate plans that encounter less resistance because they involve the public, stakeholders, and decisionmakers in a way that builds trust, creates consensus, and leads to implementation. Although focused on the local level, this book discusses climate basics such as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Paris Agreement of 2015, worldwide energy generation forecasts, and other items of global concern in order to familiarize urban planners and citizen planners with key concepts that they will need to know in order to be able to host climate conversations at the local level. The many case studies from around the United States of America show how communities have encountered pushback and bridged the implementation gap, the gap between plan and reality, thanks to a commitment to substantive public engagement. The book is written for urban planners, local activists, journalists, elected or appointed representatives, and the average citizen worried about climate breakdown and interested in working to reshape the built environment.

Maybe the Global Village metaphor has never been more accurate than it is today, where societies join forces in the fight against the COVID 19 pandemic, in a global coordinated effort, possibly never tested before in the known history of Humankind. Although we are sure that in the past some other shared demands have united the different peoples of the world, this has never been so strongly necessary, mainly in what the global scientific community is concerned. This is a fight for the survival of a society. However, we should not lose sight of what we are fighting for. We fight together for people. Not just for the abstract value of Human life, but for life in society as a whole, including its moral and ethical aspects. The topics of this book are based on this claim, on what makes it possible. We do not build our lives in a vacuum, or in distant Invisible Cities, but through a higher value, which represents physical life in society: the City, built by the discipline of Urbanism. This book is a spin-off of the International Research Seminar on Urbanism_SIIU2020. Inspired by the contents of twelve research seminars, a group of researchers from the universities of Barcelona, Lisbon and Sao Paulo discuss the contemporary agenda of research in Urbanism. Following the conference, a selection of 35 original double-blind peer-reviewed research papers were brought together with different perspectives about such an agenda.

This collection interrogates relationships between court architecture and social justice, from consultation and design to the impact of material (and immaterial) forms on court users, through the lenses of architecture, law, socio-legal studies, criminology, anthropology, and a former senior federal judge. International multidisciplinary collaborations and single-author contributions traverse a range of methodological approaches to present new insights into the relationship between architecture, design, and justice. These include praxis, photography, reflections on process and decolonising practice, postcolonial, feminist, and poststructural analysis, and theory from critical legal scholarship, political science, criminology, literature, sociology, and architecture. While the opening contributions reflect on establishing design principles and architectural methodologies for ethical consultation and collaboration with communities historically marginalised and exploited by law, the central chapters explore the textures and affects of built forms and the spaces between; examining the disjuncture between design intention and use; and investigating the impact of architecture and the design of space. The collection finishes with contemplations of the very real significance of material presence or absence in courtroom spaces and what this might mean for justice. Courthouse Architecture, Design and Social Justice provides tools for those engaged in creating, and reflecting on, ethical design and building use, and deepens the dialogue across disciplinary boundaries towards further collaborative work in the field. It also exists as a new resource for research and teaching, facilitating undergraduate critical thought about the ways in which design enhances and restricts access to justice.

This book examines experiences and implications of 'against-the-grain' school choices, where white middle class families choose ordinary and 'low performing' secondary schools for their children. It offers a unique view of identity formation, taking in matters like family history, locality and whiteness.

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.

--Covers 16 countries including Spain, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Greece, Israel, Bulgaria, Australia, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Fiji, Nigeria, South Africa, and Peru. --University level courses: Local and regional development, Spatial planning, Socio-economic geography, Urban development, Rural development, Policy development. --will be interesting to the representatives of several disciplines: economists, geographers, urban planners and other researchers dealing with urban and rural local development

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.