Offering a critical examination of the nature of co-produced research, this important new book draws on materials and case studies from the ESRC funded project `Imagine - connecting communities through research'. Outlining a community development approach to co-production, which privileges community agency, the editors link with wider debates about the role of universities within communities and discuss what co-production between community groups and academics can achieve.

Before the interstates, Main Street America was the small town's commercial spine and served as the linchpin for community social solidarity. Yet, during the past three decades, a series of economic downturns has left many of the great small cities barely viable. American Hometown Renewal is the first book to combine administrative, budgetary, and economic analysis to examine the economic and fiscal plight currently facing America's small towns. Featuring a blend of theory, applications, and case studies, it provides a comprehensive, single-source textbook covering the key issues facing small town officials in today's uncertain economy. Written by a former public manager, university professor, and consultant to numerous small towns in the Heartland, this book demonstrates the ways in which contemporary small towns throughout the nation are facing economic challenges brought about by the financial shocks that began in 2008. Each chapter explores a theme related to small town revival and provides a related tool or technique to enable small town officials to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. Encouraging local small town officials to look at the economic orbit of communities in a similar manner as a town's budget or a family's personal wealth, examining its specific competitive advantages in terms of relative assets to those of competing communities, this book provides the reader with step-by-step instructions on how to conduct an asset inventory and apply key asset tools to devise a strategy for overcoming the challenges and constraints imposed upon spatially-fixed communities. American Hometown Renewal is an essential primer for students studying city management, economic community development, and city planning, and will be a trusted handbook for city managers, geographers, city planners, urban or rural sociologists, political scientists, and regional microeconomists.

Scholarly definitions of elites as those who wield political power and control distribution of resources in their locales consistently leave out their capacity to shape morality, civic ethics and the legitimacy of power relations beyond material domination. In this insightful ethnography of Rundu, a frontier town in Namibia, Mattia Fumanti highlights the fundamental contribution elites make to the public space through their much-praised concept of civility and their promotion of nation-building at the local level. In centring his argument on the moral agency of elites over three generations and their attempts to achieve distinction in public life, this book counters an often found and over-generalized view of postcolonial African states as weak, ruling through authoritarian, greedy and corrupt practices. By looking at the intricate ways in which the biographies of a middle-range town and its inhabitants are interwoven, this study draws very different conclusions from the grand narratives of pathologies, chaos and crisis that characterize much of the accepted discourse of African urbanization derived from the study of large cities. Focusing on how generational relations between elites have both shaped, and are shaped by, the transitions from apartheid and civil war to independence and postindependence, the book illuminates public debates on the power of education, the aspirations of youth, the role of the state and citizen, delivery of good governance and the place of ethnic and settler minorities in post-apartheid southern Africa. This book is a vibrant antidote to Afro-pessimism and views that emphasize the spectacle of disaster, kleptomania and corruption of the weak state. By examining the rhetoric of public morality Fumanti challenges this but is, nevertheless, also critical of the ruling elite. This is a sophisticated and nuanced analysis of how small-town elites emerge and how they see the world, a group of people who are potentially vital players in the evolving shape of African cultures and moralities, who have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Robert Gordon, University of Vermont and University of the Free State The Politics of Distinction tackles a perennial anthropological subject with immense brio. Using the most contemporary of social theories and ethnographic methods, Mattia Fumanti addresses the enduring but elusive nexus of inter-generational consciousness and of the ambivalences between generations. That the two generations in this Namibian border town see themselves as the architects and inheritors of liberation imbues their provincial relations with echoes of grand history. Anyone interested in African elite formation, post-colonial governance, and the dividends and distinctions of education, or simply looking for a finely crafted contemporary ethnography, will find Fumanti's a compelling narrative. Richard Fardon, Professor of West African Anthropology at SOAS

This book presents possible alternatives and interpretations to the well established notion in the mostly western discourse on public space. The discourse on public space as understood in the democratic-rationalist tradition, when applied to the Singaporean public space, would offer much criticism but would not be adequate in identifying alternative processes that allow for transformative potentials in public space. Thus said, the objectives of this book are: 1. To develop a conceptual frame of reference to construct the discourse on Singapore public space 2. To form a preliminary model of Singapore public space through analyzing case studies 3. To understand the modes, methods of production and representation of these public spaces within the rapidly changing urban context 4. To situate these constructions of public space and its possible trajectories within the larger discourse on public space, and to examine the viability of such a construction and interpretive model of public space

The contributors to this collection question the boundaries and limitations that are imposed on the study of cities by urban sociology. They do not disagree that during most of their history, the regions and peoples of the world have been organized hierarchically and that there are differences that need to be explained. But they see the processes and relations that link regions and people together as the main factor that explains these differences. It is the differentiation and not the differences per se that constitute this volume's focus and, in its respective accounts, taking care not to privilege any one region or time period on the basis of its presumed special characteristics. Against this background the book is divided into three parts. Part one deals with places outside of western Europe and with times that preceded the establishment of the European-based capitalist world-economy. The articles in part two discuss the different aspects of the concept of hegemony and the establishment of domination as these apply to cities in the world-system. In part three the focus shifts back to extra-European zones where the patterns of transformation around cities under the aegis of capitalist world-economy are examined. This book constitutes an important addition to the literature on cities. By approaching cities from a large-scale and a long-term perspective, the contributors develop a historical explanation of some of the different patterns of development that affected particular cities in their interaction with the world-economy. This historical and holistic perspective represents an improvement over most of urban sociology, where cities or aspects of cities are studied in isolation from all contingent and contextual factors. This book can be used by scholars, graduate, and upper-division undergraduate students of urban history and sociology.

Japan's population is shrinking. Based on current trends, it will decline by an average of half a million people per year for the next forty years. The country is also getting older and the ratio of dependants to active workers is expected to approach 1:1 by around 2030. These two interdependent processes will bring great changes to Japan in the coming decades. In the twenty-first century, a historic turnaround in global demographic trends will occur. Europe and East Asia are especially vulnerable to demographic shrinkage. Germany is already shrinking, as is Russia. South Korea will begin to shrink soon and, importantly, so will China from around 2035. Overall, this is good news, but it brings with it worldwide changes to ways of living and working. Japan's rural areas have been shrinking for decades. Entire villages have vanished; some have even been "sold." Thousands of municipalities have been judged "non-viable" and merged. Thousands more private and public enterprises have collapsed, leaving colossal debts, while hundreds of thousands of older people live miserable lives in neighbourless communities. Rural shrinkage has been the unseen corollary of Japan's extraordinarily dynamic twentieth century urban expansion; indeed, Japan's postwar economic miracle has been achieved at the expense of rural retreat. Potentially disastrous is the negative-sum game that national depopulation triggers, as one community's gain becomes another's loss. Japan's Shrinking Regions in the 21st Century reveals how communities are responding positively to these emerging circumstances, delivering a message of hope and vitality to shrinking regions worldwide. Setting Japan alongside Europe, and with an epilogue describing the T hoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown of 11 March 2011, the book offers policy makers and practitioners up to date advice for community revival born of extensive collaborative fieldwork across the whole Japanese archipelago. Japan's Shrinking Regions in the 21st Century brings together the work of 18 international scholars to present the first comprehensive study of regional shrinkage under Japan's national depopulation. Interspersed throughout with numerous illustrations, the book reveals a richly textured examination of shrinkage at the local level, from which emerges the overall story of Japan's depopulation and its place within the trajectory of world development. This will be an important source for all social science collections, as well as for researchers, policy makers, students, and practitioners with interests in regional development, demography, East Asia, and post-industrial change.

In 2008 for the first time the majority of the planet's inhabitants lived in cities and towns. Becoming globally urban has been one of mankind's greatest collective achievements over time and raises many questions. How did global city systems evolve and interact in the past? How have historic urban patterns impacted on those of the contemporary world? And what were the key drivers in the roller-coaster of urban change over the millennia - market forces such as trade and industry? rulers and governments? competition and collaboration between cities? or the urban environment and demographic forces? This pioneering comparative work by fifty leading scholars drawn from a range of disciplines offers the first detailed comparative study of urban development from ancient times to the present day.
The Handbook explores not only the main trends in the growth of cities and towns across the world - in Asia and the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and the Americas - and the different types of cities from great metropolitan centres to suburbs, colonial cities, and market towns, but also many of the essential themes in the making and remaking of the urban world: the role of power, economic development, migration, social inequality, environmental challenge and the urban response, religion and representation, cinema, and urban creativity. Split into three parts covering Ancient cities, the medieval and early modern period, and the modern and contemporary era, it begins with an introduction by the editor identifying the importance and challenges of research on cities in world history as well as the crucial outlines of urban development since the earliest cities in ancient Mesopotamia to the present.

In this significant scholarly contribution to the study of ethnic minorities, Chalsa Loo documents a distinctive American community--Chinatown, San Francisco. Based on an interview survey of residents of Chinatown, Loo's study tests prevailing psychological and sociological theories, and ultimately dispels stereotypes about Asian Americans, replacing them with empirically derived realities of American life. "Chinatown: Most Time, Hard Time" comprehensively covers a range of significant areas of life, integrating several disciplines and combining the rigor of scientific analysis with the richness of individual experience through the use of photographs and personal vignettes.

This valuable analysis serves as a model of comprehensive, quantitative multidomain interview sample survey research. It provides data on the major domains of life for all Americans, but particularly for ethnic Americans: neighborhood, crowding, health, mental health, employment, language and cultural barriers, quality of life, and differences between men and women. This book is scholarly yet readable, and will be particularly useful to social scientists, educators, researchers, human service professionals, and policy planners.

This third edition of a classic urban sociology text examines critical but often-neglected aspects of urban life from a social-psychological theoretical perspective. Symbolic interaction is among the most central theoretical paradigms in sociology and the theory that most thoroughly attends to how individuals give meaning to their world-in this case, how city dwellers interpret and respond to their daily experiences as urbanites. This thoroughly updated edition of Being Urban: A Sociology of City Life remains true to this particular theoretical angle of vision-the symbolic interactionist approach-focusing on specific topics that are relatively neglected in other urban sociology texts, and that lend themselves to the kind of social-psychological analyses that define the distinctive conceptual core of the authors' efforts. After the first two chapters supply readers with theoretical foundations of urban sociology, the next four chapters describe the various ways that individuals experience and make sense of key aspects of urban life. The final section-also composed of four chapters-addresses strategically chosen urban institutions and related processes of social change. Specific subject areas covered include sports, everyday public life, tolerance for diversity, women in cities, urban politics, and the arts. Readers will learn about how order is maintained in public urban places, understand why cities naturally breed a tolerance for diversity that may not be so easily achieved in less urban settings, and appreciate the delicate political and economic tensions between cities and their surrounding suburbs. Provides a complete analysis of the important social psychological dimensions of urban life that are often overlooked Supplies a comprehensive description of the 19th-century theoretical roots of urban sociology Enables readers to see concretely how theories are "applied" to illuminate the operation of a range of urban cultures, processes, and structures Considers a number of topics that are likely to resonate with readers personally, such as alternative approaches to the concept of "community," the daily organization of city life, and the phenomenon of urban tolerance of diversity Includes an up-to-date, new chapter on the arts and urban life

Cultural theorist Mica Nava makes an original and significant contribution to the study of cosmopolitanism by exploring everyday English urban cosmopolitanism and foregrounding the gendered, imaginative and empathetic aspects of positive engagement with cultural and racial difference. By looking at a wide range of texts, events and biographical narratives, she traces cosmopolitanism from its marginal status at the beginning of the twentieth century to its relative normalisation today. Case studies include the promotion of cosmopolitanism by Selfridges before the first world war; relationships between white English women and 'other' men -- Jews and black GIs -- during the 1930s and 1940s; literary, cinematic and social science representations of migrants in postcolonial Britain; and Diana and Dodi's interracial romance in the 1990s. In the final chapter, the author draws on her own complex family history to illustrate the contemporary cosmopolitan London experience.Scholars have tended to ignore the oppositional cultures of antiracism and social inclusivity. This groundbreaking study redresses this imbalance and offers a sophisticated account of the uneven history of vernacular cosmopolitanism.

This book focuses on urban crime and policing in Turkey since the steady economic decline of the 1990s. Concentrating on the attempts to 'modernize' the policing of Izmir, Zeynep Gonen highlights how the police force expanded their territorial control over the urban space, specifically targeting the poor and racialized segments of the city. Through in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations of these 'targeted' populations, as well as rare ethnographic data from the Turkish police, surveys of the media and politicians' rhetoric, Gonen shows how Kurdish migrants have been criminalized as dangerous 'enemies' of the order. In studying the ideological and material processes of criminalization, The Politics of Crime in Turkey makes the case for the neoliberal politics of crime that uses the notion of 'security' to legitimize violence and authoritarianism. The book will be of interest to criminologists, as well as those investigating the modern Turkish state and its relationship to the Kurds in the wider region. The multilayered methodology and conceptual approach sheds light on parallel developments in penal and security systems across the globe.

Twentieth anniversary edition of a landmark book that cataloged a vibrant but disappearing neighborhood in New York City In the two decades that preceded the original publication of Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Forty-second Street, then the most infamous street in America, was being remade into a sanitized tourist haven. In the forced disappearance of porn theaters, peep shows, and street hustlers to make room for a Disney store, a children's theater, and large, neon-lit cafes, Samuel R. Delany saw a disappearance, not only of the old Times Square, but of the complex social relationships that developed there. Samuel R. Delany bore witness to the dismantling of the institutions that promoted points of contact between people of different classes and races in a public space, and in this hybrid text, argues for the necessity of public restrooms and tree-filled parks to a city's physical and psychological landscape. This twentieth anniversary edition includes a new foreword by Robert Reid-Pharr that traces the importance and continued resonances of Samuel R. Delany's groundbreaking Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.

Coming Home to New Orleans documents grassroots rebuilding efforts in New Orleans neighborhoods after hurricane Katrina, and draws lessons on their contribution to the post-disaster recovery of cities. The book begins with two chapters that address Katrina's impact and the planning and public sector recovery policies that set the context for neighborhood recovery. Rebuilding narratives for six New Orleans neighborhoods are then presented and analyzed. In the heavily flooded Broadmoor and Village de L'Est neighborhoods, residents coalesced around communitywide initiatives, one through a neighborhood association and the second under church leadership, to help homeowners return and restore housing, get key public facilities and businesses rebuilt and create new community-based organizations and civic capacity. A comparison of four adjacent neighborhoods in the center of the city show how differing socioeconomic conditions, geography, government policies and neighborhood capacity created varied recovery trajectories. The concluding chapter argues that grassroots and neighborhood scale initiatives can make important contributions to city recovery in four areas: repopulation, restoring "complete neighborhoods " with key services and amenities, rebuilding parts of the small business economy and enhancing recovery capacity. It also calls for more balanced investments and policies to rebuild rental and owner-occupied housing and more deliberate collaboration with community-based organizations to undertake and implement recovery plans, and proposes changes to federal disaster recovery policies and programs to leverage the contribution of grassroots rebuilding and more support for city recovery.

In this chatty, anecdotal, and often ironic inquiry, Stephen Birmingham investigates the nesting habits, enjoyments, and frustrations of American suburban life in the Seventies. He explores the social organism that is the American suburb-from Scottsdale Arizona, and Salt Lake City's suburbs, to New York's Westchester County and the suburbs surrounding the great industrial cities that fringe the Great Lakes. He has talked with householders great and small and gleaned their intensely personal views of the suburban experience: what they like, what they lament, what they fear. Much of what he records is agreeable gossip-as in his account of the relationship between the Pocantico Hills Rockefellers and the Greenwich Rockefellers; some is acute social criticism. Almost without exception, the suburbanites came to the suburbs with a dream. The reality they found was often less than what they envisioned, but occasionally it was more. Most have had to strike a compromise between the dream and the reality, the swimming pool and manicured lawn and soaring property tax, good public schools and out-of-sight school taxes. This compromise in its various manifestations, and the related problems of status, add a depth of perspective to a book that oozes the fun and charm of the Seventies.

The focus of Regional Urban Systems in the Roman World is on urban hierarchies and interactions in large geographical areas rather than on individual cities. Based on a painstaking examination of archaeological and epigraphic evidence relating to more than 1,000 cities, the volume offers comprehensive reconstructions of the urban systems of Roman Gaul, North Africa, Sicily, Greece and Asia Minor. In addition it examines the transformation of the settlement systems of the Iberian Peninsula and the central and northern Balkan following the imposition of Roman rule. Throughout the volume regional urban configurations are examined from a rich variety of perspectives, ranging from climate and landscape, administration and politics, economic interactions and social relationships all the way to region-specific ways of shaping the townscapes of individual cities.

The book compares different approaches to urban development in Singapore and Seoul over the past decades, by focusing on community participation in the transformation of neighbourhoods and its impact on the built environment and communal life. Singapore and Seoul are known for their rapid economic growth and urbanisation under a strong control of developmental state in the past. However, these cities are at a critical crossroads of societal transformation, where participatory and community-based urban development is gaining importance. This new approach can be seen as a result of a changing relationship between the state and civil society, where an emerging partnership between both aims to overcome the limitations of earlier urban development. The book draws attention to the possibilities and challenges that these cities face while moving towards a more inclusive and socially sustainable post-developmental urbanisation. By applying a comparative perspective to understand the evolving urban paradigms in Singapore and Seoul, this unique and timely book offers insights for scholars, professionals and students interested in contemporary Asian urbanisation and its future trajectories.

Explores popular economic development strategies in midsize Canadian urban areas. Roads to Prosperity: Economic Development Lessons from Midsize Canadian Cities explores the relative prosperity of midsize Canadian urban areas (population 50,000 to 400,000) over the past two decades. Communities throughout North America have strived for decades to maintain and enhance the prosperity of their residents. In the areas that are the focus of this research, the results of these efforts have been mixed-some communities have been relatively successful while others have fallen further behind the national averages. Midsize cities often lack the resources, both internal and external, to sustain and enhance their prosperity. Policies and strategies that have been successful in larger urban areas may be less effective (or unaffordable) in smaller ones. Roads to Prosperity first examines the economic structure of forty-two Canadian urban regions that fall within the midsize range to determine the economic specializations that characterize these communities and to trace how these specializations have evolved over the time period between 1991 and 2011. While urban areas with an economic base of natural resource or manufacturing industries tend to retain this economic function over the years, communities that rely on the service industries have been much more likely to experience some degree of restructuring in their economies over the past twenty years. The second part of the book looks at a number of currently popular economic development strategies as they have been applied to midsize urban areas and their success and failures. While there appears to be no single economic development strategy that will lead to greater prosperity for every community, Sands and Reese explore the various factors that help explain why some work and others don't.

Using quantitative research, this volume investigates the characteristics, problems and trends of the automobile society in China's mega cities and large cities. It also addresses topics related to cars and cities, traffic safety and cars' consumption. China has experienced more than 30 years of rapid economic development, and people's living conditions have greatly improved. One of the symbols of this is family-car ownership, which has increased year by year. China is rapidly becoming an automobile society like North America. But China has huge population and limited urban space, and most of the cities are deteriorating environmentally. Added to this are the low degree energy self-sufficiency and people's lack of awareness of traffic rules, all of which have brought various social problems, such as traffic congestion, lack of parking spaces, air pollution, energy shortage and frequent accidents. The volume presents a series of studies examining the characteristics and problems of China's automobile society development from the perspective of sustainable development. The reports in the volume are both academic and highly readable, making it an interesting resource for researchers and general readers alike. It offers insights into the trends and problems of private cars in China, as well as observations on China's social change through the unique medium of cars.

This compact yet comprehensive account of Chicago's history links key events in the city's development, from its marshy origins in the 1600s to today's robust metropolis. Synthesizing a vast body of literature, Spinney presents Chicago in terms of the people whose lives made the city-not only the tycoons and the politicians but also the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all over the world who have kept the city working. City of Big Shoulders sweeps across the colorful and dramatic panorama of Chicago's explosive past. How did the pungent swamplands that the Native Americans called the wild-garlic place mushroom into one of the world's largest and most sophisticated cities? What is the real story behind the Great Chicago Fire? What aspects of American industry exploded with the bomb in Haymarket Square? Did the 1920s in Chicago roar as loudly as Hollywood would have us believe? A city of immigrants and entrepreneurs, Chicago is quintessentially American. Spinney traces formative events in the city's history, bringing to life the people, events, and institutions that are most important for understanding Chicago's story. From Fort Dearborn to Cabrini-Green, P\u00e8re Marquette to Mayor Daley, the Union Stockyards to the Chicago Bulls, City of Big Shoulders draws together diverse threads of the city's development, shedding light on underlying social and economic causes of major events and, especially, on the roles of ordinary people. Engaging and highly informative, this account will interest students and teachers of urban history, as well as anyone looking for a brisk overview of Chicago's history. Historic photographs and informative tables illuminate the narrative.

This study examines the rise of the technopolis--high technology-based regional development. It explores how and why these regions emerged and the policies that have been devised to promote them. The rapid, propulsive growth of the technopolis in the 1960s and 1970s caught many people by surprise. Silicon Valley arose in an agricultural area; Route 128 in a stagnant manufacturing region. Throughout the rest of the world, a new generation of regional development policies have appeared, the most common ones being science parks, small business incubators, and venture capital funds. This book surveys these policies from a comparative, critical perspective. It also develops a theoretical framework for understanding why regional high-technology development occurs and the role policy can play in the process.

This work will be of interest to development planners and scholars in the fields of economic geography, development economics, and regional development.

Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Yusuf al-Shirbini's Brains Confounded pits the "coarse" rural masses against the "refined" urban population. In Volume One, al-Shirbini describes the three rural "types"-peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion, and rural dervish-offering anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, and criminality of each. In Volume Two, he presents a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day, with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Abu Shaduf, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirbini responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire with digressions into love, food, and flatulence. Volume Two of Brains Confounded is followed by Risible Rhymes, a concise text that includes a comic disquisition on "rural" verse, mocking the pretensions of uneducated poets from Egypt's countryside. Risible Rhymes also examines various kinds of puzzle poems, which were another popular genre of the day, and presents a debate between scholars over a line of verse by the fourth/tenth-century poet al-Mutanabbi. Together, Brains Confounded and Risible Rhymes offer intriguing insight into the intellectual concerns of Ottoman Egypt, showcasing the intense preoccupation with wordplay, grammar, and stylistics and shedding light on the literature of the era. An English-only edition.

From their experience in nonprofit operations and their understanding of the realities of urban politics, the editors of this wide-ranging volume and their contributors dig into issues seldom explored in the literature. They study the role of nonprofits in local governing coalitions, the potential of nonprofits to replace social welfare programs, their efforts to restructure key elements of the local political process, and the unanticipated internal impacts of the changing roles of nonprofit organizations in the urban community. The result is a compelling argument that to understand life in contemporary American cities, we must take into account the expanding role of nonprofit organizations, their response to increased service demands, and their participation in common efforts to direct policy choices.

Hula, Jackson-Elmoore, and their panel of scholars, researchers, and close observers of urban policymaking focus on the delivery of social services to illustrate the complex and important set of roles that nonprofits have assumed. As social programs are cut at all levels of government, it is often believed that nonprofits can and should take up the slack and restore at least some portion of the cutbacks in such services. They examine how some nonprofit organizations have taken a proactive stance in this regard by implementing efforts that do not simply react to political and social change, but attempt to initiate and guide it instead. They attempt to change the political environment in which they operate, and the result has been to change the face of local politics in many jurisdictions. Each chapter of their book explores these expanding and emerging roles. Themes and focuses vary, which in turn reflects the variation and complexity within the nonprofit sector itself. At the same time, each chapter presents an emerging political or policy role now being played by today's nonprofits and voluntary associations, and a theoretical context in which such activities and behavior can best be understood. Scholars and advanced students in public administration, economics, and nonprofit management, as well as executive-level nonprofit managers, will find here an important update on what is happening in their special worlds, and the knowledge they need to make sense of it.