This book engages the reader in exploring the relationships between digital social innovation initiatives and the city. It delivers a fresh, accessible and case-based discussion on the emergence of digitally-enabled social innovation practices in Europe that are redesigning the urban space and challenging the consolidated urban governance processes. By adopting a critical geography perspective, this ground-breaking analysis of digital social innovation provides the reader with an accessible overview of the way in which urban reproductive processes mobilise the physical and the virtual dimensions of the city and generate distinctive spatial configurations. Together with novel urban narratives and socio-technical imaginaries, these support the existing geometries of power or construct new ones. The author clearly describes contemporary cities as the new battlegrounds for controlling the digital sphere, shaped by the interplay between digital capitalism and resistance movements. In light of grassroots initiatives advanced by cyber-activists, e-makers and hackers, the book unveils the socio-political and cultural underpinnings of the revolution produced by the digital social innovations in the city and the socio-technological regimes supporting them. This author successfully sheds new critical light on traditional innovation studies exploring the debate on digital innovation through the lens of social and cultural geography providing an invaluable reference for those working in this field.

This unique book brings together high-quality research contributions on ecological aspects of urbanization, water quality concerns in an urban environment, and climate change issues with a strong Indian focus under one umbrella. It includes several case studies that discuss urban water management, particularly highlighting the quality aspects. Urbanization is an ecological disturbance that the modern world accepts as essential in the absence of a better alternative that could provide an equal level of comfort. The prohibitive costs of eco-friendly production technologies are forcing the developing world to generate industrial waste that is detrimental to the environment. At the same time, the availability of adequate fresh water is another challenge for our climate-change impacted world. The scientific community is, therefore, searching for ways towards ecologically sustainable urban development. Discussing all these issues, this book offers a useful guide for academicians, researchers, practicing engineers, and managers dealing with diverse water-related problems in urban areas.

This handbook is a resource for parents, community members, teachers, and administrators who want to make a difference in their urban schools. Breault and Allen provide a way for stakeholders to see the roles they can play in building civic capacity for change in urban schools and communities. It also offers critical background information to help stakeholders recognize the complexity and necessity of their efforts.

The authors organized this book around the need for beginning, continuing, and enacting conversations to emphasize the need for stakeholders to build relationships with one another in order to advocate for and act on behalf of urban students and communities. While this book eschews prescriptive and simplistic solutions, it does offer ways in which stakeholders create and support an infrastructure for change in their schools and communities. For example, this book helps stakeholders navigate the bureaucracy of urban school districts, build collegial communities of inquiry within schools, develop systematic ways of gathering important data schools and communities, organize the energy and efforts of those who want to get involved, seek out, and utilize various resources, and then use the infrastructure of knowledgeable and collegial stakeholders to bring about change. The authors realize how daunting these challenges may seem for stakeholders who want to make a difference in their schools and communities. In response, they offer images of positive changes including schools, parent associations, and networking strategies used in urban communities today as glimpses of what is possible through hard work, collaboration, and an imaginative spirit.

Global Garbage examines the ways in which garbage, in its diverse forms, is being produced, managed, experienced, imagined, circulated, concealed, and aestheticized in contemporary urban environments and across different creative and cultural practices. The book explores the increasingly complex relationship between globalization and garbage in locations such as Beirut, Detroit, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Manchester, Naples, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Tehran. In particular, the book examines how, and under what conditions, contemporary imaginaries of excess, waste, and abandonment perpetuate - but also sometimes counter - the imbalances of power that are frequently associated with the global metropolitan condition. This interdisciplinary collection will appeal to the fields of anthropology, architecture, film and media studies, geography, urban studies, sociology, and cultural analysis.

This book explores the contributions of psychological, neuroscientific and philosophical perspectives to the design of contemporary cities. Pursuing an innovative and multidisciplinary approach, it addresses the need to re-launch knowledge and creativity as major cultural and institutional bases of human communities. Dwelling is a form of knowledge and re-invention of reality that involves both the tangible dimension of physical places and their mental representation. Findings in the neuroscientific field are increasingly opening stimulating perspectives on the design of spaces, and highlight how our ability to understand other people is strongly related to our corporeity. The first part of the book focuses on the contributions of various disciplines that deal with the spatial dimension, and explores the dovetailing roles that science and art can play from a multidisciplinary perspective. In turn, the second part formulates proposals on how to promote greater integration between the aesthetic and cultural dimension in spatial design. Given its scope, the book will benefit all scholars, academics and practitioners who are involved in the process of planning, designing and building places, and will foster an international exchange of research, case studies, and theoretical reflections to confront the challenges of designing conscious places and enable the development of communities.

This book looks at slums and social exclusion in the four major megacities of India and Brazil, and analyzes the interrelationships between urban policies and housing and environmental issues. In Delhi, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, the challenges they pose have spurred public actors into action through housing, rehabilitation and conservation programs, not to mention civil society and the inhabitants themselves. On the other hand, one must wonder whether these challenges were partly created by the deficiencies of these very public actors and civil society, be it their lack of intervention (as advocates of government intervention would argue), or the flaws and inadequacies of their actions (as supporters of the free market would suggest). Are policies alleviating or aggravating social exclusion? This book explores these questions and more.

The Great Recession punished American workers, leaving many underemployedor trapped in jobs that do not provide the income or opportunitythey need. Moreover, the gap between the wealthy and the poor has widenedin past decades as mobility remains stubbornly unchanged. Against thisdeepening economic divide, a dominant cultural narrative has taken root:immobility, especially for the working class, is driven by shifts in demand forlabor. In this context, and with right-to-work policies proliferating nationwide,workers are encouraged to avoid government dependency by armingthemselves with education and training. Drawing on archival material and interviews with African Americanwomen transit workers in the San Francisco Bay area, Katrinell Davis grappleswith our understanding of mobility as it intersects with race and genderin the postindustrial and post-civil rights United States. Consideringthe consequences of declining working conditions within the public transitworkplace of Alameda County, Davis illustrates how worker experience-onand off the job-has been undermined by workplace norms and administrativepractices designed to address flagging worker commitment and morale.Providing a comprehensive account of how political, social, and economicfactors work together to shape the culture of opportunity in a postindustrialworkplace, she shows how government manpower policies, administrativepolicies, and drastic shifts in unionisation have influenced the prospects oflow-skilled workers.

Rising life expectancy has led to the growth of the 'Sandwich Generation' - men and women who are caregivers to their children of varying ages as well as for one or both parents whilst still managing their own household and work responsibilities. This book considers both the strains and benefits of this position. Tackling a myriad of issues such as gender, parents and parents-in-law, ethnic differences, residential status, and developing changes in the caregiving relationship such as Alzheimer's or dementia, this book highlights the complexities of the caregiving relationship. Key chapters also address potential benefits including improved relationships, skill set development and generously giving to another. Expert contributors use examples to illustrate the need for organizations to address increases in caregiving among their employees and develop supportive policies and initiatives. They further show that there is a need at the country level to integrate employees, communities, employers, businesses and levels of government to deal with this increasing trend. This timely book will prove an indispensible reference for academics and students interested in the sandwich generation, caregiving and health. Its practical approach will also benefit human resource management professionals, managers dealing with sandwiched employees and health administrators at various levels of government. Contributors include: R. Attieh, S. Austen, R. Burke, L. Calvano, C.E. Greaves, T. Jefferson, N.L. Jimmieson, A.H. Kim, S. LoboPrabhu, N. Mandell, A. Mitra, V. Molinari, A. Ollier-Malterre, R. Ong, S.L. Parker, A.H. Prokos, J. Reid Keene, C. Reinicke, C.W. Rudolph, R. Sharp, P. Ulmanen, S.I. White Means, T. Yamashita, H. Zacher

Marxism and Urban Culture is the first volume to reconcile social science and humanities perspectives on culture. Covering a range of global cities-Bologna, Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, Liverpool, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mahalla al-Kubra, Mexico City, Montreal, Osaka, Strasbourg, Vienna-the contributions fuse political and theoretical concerns with analyses of urban cultural practices and historical movements, as well as urban-themed literary and filmic art. Conceived as a response to the persistent rift between disciplinary Marxist approaches to culture, this book prioritizes the urban problematic and builds implicitly and explicitly on work by numerous thinkers: not only Karl Marx but also David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, Friedrich Engels and Antonio Gramsci, among others. Rather than reanimate reductive views either of Marx or of urban theory, the chapters in Marxism and Urban Culture speak broadly to the interdisciplinary connections that are increasingly the concern of cultural scholars working across and beyond the boundaries of geography, sociology, history, political science, language and literature fields, film studies, and more. A foreword written by Andy Merrifield (the author of Metromarxism) and an introduction by Benjamin Fraser (the author of Henri Lefebvre and the Spanish Urban Experience) situate the book's chapters firmly in interdisciplinary terrain.

Written by a team of nationally recognized African American social work professionals with extensive and distinguished backgrounds of HIV/AIDS service, the book examines the crisis facing African American communities. The editors strive to convey to academics, researchers, and students the magnitude of the crisis and that individuals and organizations serving African Americans need to be able to respond to the service delivery needs this crisis brings.

The crisis is evident in the fact that by year 2000 fully 50% of all AIDS cases will be among African Americans--who only constitute 12% of the nation's population. This book serves as a wake-up call and is designed to stimulate discussion and planning for new models of service to all African Americans and HIV prevention, education, and treatment.

As a history of family life in the squatter settlements of Rio de Janeiro from the 1940s to the 1960s, this study shatters the myth of household disorganization said to be the norm among the urban poor. Using quantitative evidence, field reports by social workers, newspaper accounts, and the recollections of the squatters themselves, the study dissects household structure, economic activity, living standards, and political participation among the one million "favelados" (squatters) living in Rio by 1960, singling out three favelas for comparative analysis. "Favelados" prized family life, and most succeeded in holding their households together against daunting odds. Shantytowns provided residence close to the workplace, and some were erected literally in the shadow of the construction projects where the squatters worked. Indeed, the location and economic activity of the surrounding neighborhood largely determined the ability of the favela to survive. As squatters became an important part of the city work force, they mobilized to put pressure on the authorities to provide collective services like water and electricity.

This book is an examination of neighborhood mobilization and engagement from the perspective of several disciplines: psychology, social work, political science, planning, and education. The essays included in the work examine both internal and external factors related to the ability of neighborhoods to meet the human needs of their residents. They address the constraints put on neighborhood mobilization by the local and international political economy, but they also show how those constraints can, in a number of cases, be overcome by effective action. They treat neighborhood engagement as an educational process through which residents enhance their skills and knowledge as they participate. Taken together, these essays provide a comprehensive and multi-faceted view of the issues facing contemporary urban neighborhoods.

This book focuses on the relationship between the state and economy in the development of cities. It reviews and reinterprets fundamental theoretical models that explain how the operation of markets in equilibrium shapes the scale and organization of the commercial city in a mixed market economy within a liberal state. These models link markets for the factors of production, markets for investment and fixed capital formation, markets for transportation, and markets for exports in equilibrium both within the urban economy and the rest of the world. In each case, the model explains the urban economy by revealing how assumptions about causes and structures lead to predictions about scale and organization outcomes. By simplifying and contrasting these models, this book proposes another interpretation: that governance and the urban economy are outcomes negotiated by political actors motivated by competing notions of commonwealth and the individual desire for wealth and power. The book grounds its analysis in economic history, explaining the rise of commercial cities and the emergence of the urban economy. It then turns to factors of production, export, and factor markets, introducing and parsing the Mills model, breaking it down into its component parts and creating a series of simpler models that can better explain the significance of each economic assumption. Simplified models are also presented for real estate and fixed capital investment markets, transportation, and land use planning. The book concludes with a discussion of linear programming and the Herbert- Stevens and the Ripper-Varaiya models. A fresh presentation of the theories behind urban economics, this book emphasizes the links between state and economy and challenges the reader to see its theories in a new light. As such, this book will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners of economics, public policy, public administration, urban policy, and city and urban planning. >

This book provides critical insight into the experience of multi-owned property, and showcases different cultural responses across the Asia-Pacific region. Escalating demand for properties within global cities has created exuberance around apartment living; however less well understood are the restrictions on individual rights and responsibilities associated with collective living. In contrast to the highly populated and traditional communal housing arrangements of past Asian economies, we see an increasing focus on neo-liberalist, market-based policies associated with the rise of an Asian middle class shaping structural change from communal to individualistic. This edited collection unpacks the rights, restrictions and responsibilities of multi-owned property ownership across the Asia-Pacific region; examining the experiences of developers, strata-managers, owners and residents. In doing so, they highlight how the rights of one party affects the restrictions and responsibilities of others within different policy frameworks. This work will reach an interdisciplinary audience including scholars and practitioners of sociology, public policy, urban studies and planning, economics, property management and architecture.

Skateboarders are an increasingly common feature of the urban environment - recent estimates total 40 million world-wide. We are all aware of their often extraordinary talent and manoeuvres on the city streets. This book is the first detailed study of the urban phenomenon of skateboarding. It looks at skateboarding history from the surf-beaches of California in the 1950s, through the purpose-built skateparks of the 1970s, to the street-skating of the present day and shows how skateboarders experience and understand the city through their sport. Dismissive of authority and convention, skateboarders suggest that the city is not just a place for working and shopping but a true pleasure-ground, a place where the human body, emotions and energy can be expressed to the full.
The huge skateboarding subculture that revolves around graphically-designed clothes and boards, music, slang and moves provides a rich resource for exploring issues of gender, race, class, sexuality and the family. As the author demonstrates, street-style skateboarding, especially characteristic of recent decades, conducts a performative critique of architecture, the city and capitalism. Anyone interested in the history and sociology of sport, urban geography or architecture will find this book riveting.

This book focuses on urbanization as an attendant consequence of industrialization and sheds light on urban problems such as housing shortages and poverty of jobless people, and the housing and social policies implemented by central and local governments to deal with these problems. Through this book, the volume editor and authors convey the view that urbanization transformed economy and society spatially and in quality, and caused the change of central and local administration in the process of tackling various urban problems. The book features recent academic works on economic history of the city and housing, researched from an advanced perspective of comparative history in Japan. The aim of this book is to make works by Japanese scholars accessible to a wider readership throughout the world. This edited volume includes four articles (chapters) and four book reviews originally published in Japanese and subsequently translated into English. The first chapter analyzes the characteristics of the urbanization that occurred under the land readjustment projects implemented from the Sino-Japanese War to the reforms following World War II, by focusing on the conflict between landowners and peasants in Japan. The second chapter examines the construction of urban housing following Japan's defeat in World War II, focusing on the reconstruction of war-damaged housing from the perspective of the creation and distribution of private residential space under Japan's postwar regulatory regime. The third chapter examines the adoption of communal unemployment insurance systems in Wilhelmine Germany, focusing on the Genter system, in which the municipalities paid subsidies to the trade unions that provided their out-of-work members with unemployment benefits. The last chapter investigates the accumulation of the mechanical engineering industry in Paris region during the period 1939-1958, focusing on the role of the subcontracting system.

For many people, urbanization and the growth of big cities promised new lives, employment opportunities and increased prosperity. And in the long run this fundamental process of social change witnessed the spread of a new urban way of life. In the short run, however, the rapid urbanization of German society brought a range of pressing social, political and environmental concerns. Rapidly expanding cities meant overcrowding, sickness, pollution and growing inequality between the rich and poor. While some of these problems were largely overcome in the course of the twentieth century, German cities faced new challenges due to the Nazi dictatorship, the bombing of World War II, and the interventions of city planners in both the GDR and the Federal Republic.
This book explores the nature and impact of Germany's urbanization during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and emphasizes the range of solutions and reforms, both private and governmental, introduced to address these issues. What did these new cities look like? How did they develop? Who ran them? How were cities perceived by their inhabitants? Exploring these and other key questions, this book makes a vital new contribution to studies of urbanization, one of the most fundamental factors in the creation of the modern era.

This book examines and addresses the particular character of urban tourism occurring in the global South. It presents research essays on tourism in urban areas of South Africa, a country which is associated with big 5 nature tourism but where urban areas are also major tourism destinations. The book contextualizes urban tourism in South Africa as part of 'the other half of urban tourism', an overlooked but energetic scholarship which is emerging on urban places in the global South. The volume moves to present a collection of original material variously on national perspectives on urban tourism following by a cluster of city level perspectives. The last three contributions turn to the role of tourism in small towns, the bottom rung in the urban settlement system. Issues of concern include gastronomic tourism, VFR travel, airportscapes, climate change, AirBnb and creative tourism. Finally, as COVID-19 is potentially a defining historical moment for urban tourism, the volume incorporates historical research perspectives in order to address the overwhelming 'present-mindedness' of mainstream urban tourism writings. The book highlights the challenges and opportunities for tourism development in the environment of the urban global South and is relevant to scholars of both tourism and urban studies as well as researchers in development studies.

Cities are home to over fifty percent of the world's population, a figure which is expected to increase enormously by 2050. Despite the growing demand on urban resources and infrastructure, food is still often overlooked as a key factor in planning and designing cities. Without incorporating food into the design process - how it is grown, transported, and bought, cooked, eaten and disposed of - it is impossible to create truly resilient and convivial urbanism. Moving from the table and home garden to the town, city, and suburbs, Food and Urbanism explores the connections between food and place in past and present design practices. The book also looks to future methods for extending the 'gastronomic' possibilities of urban space. Supported by examples from places across the world, including the UK, Norway, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Romania, Australia and the USA, the book offers insights into how the interplay of physical design and socio-spatial practices centred around food can help to maintain socially rich, productive and sustainable urban space. Susan Parham brings together the latest research from a number of disciplines - urban planning, food studies, sociology, geography, and design - with her own fieldwork on a range of foodscapes to highlight the fundamental role food has to play in shaping the urban future.

In this book, Dr Cole Hendrigan examines the options for sustainable transport and land-use planning based on building heights, mixes of land-use, transportation mode capacity and others to build the next generation of parks, housing, commercial and retail spaces along high-capacity rail corridors. Following the paradigm of 'Transit Oriented Development', Dr Hendrigan provides unique knowledge and insights on how to best make the transition towards more sustainable and livable cities, offering a practical method to better integrate transport and urban development to this end.

This guidebook for students offers a survey of comparative politics intended for use in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is one of the world's great cities, but its political future has never been hazier. Mass protests, contested elections, a 2047 transition causing uncertainty in financial and business elites- for Hong Kong, it is the best of times as well as the worst of times. Hong Kong University politics scholar Matthew Wong brings a clear-headed and fact-based approach, introducing Hong Kong to scholars of comparative politics even as he introduces comparative politics to students in Hong Kong, with this new area-specific reference work, a mix of theory and insights into how political theory can be of value in understanding the case of Hong Kong, complete with datasets and quantitative information that helps to disentangle fact from myth. For Hong Kong residents, scholars, students, and members of civil society, this book will be a breath of fresh air.

These ethnographically-based studies of diverse urban experiences across the world present cutting edge research and stimulate an empirically-grounded theoretical reconceptualization. The essays identify ethnography as a powerful tool for making sense of life in our rapidly changing, complex cities. They stress the point that while there is no need to fetishize fieldwork-or to view it as an end in itself -its unique value cannot be overstated. These active, engaged researchers have produced essays that avoid abstractions and generalities while engaging with the analytical complexities of ethnographic evidence. Together, they prove the great value of knowledge produced by long-term fieldwork to mainstream academic debates and, more broadly, to society.

This book focuses on three ethnic neighbourhoods in San Francisco: commoditized Chinatown, gentrified Japantown, and defunct Manilatown, and argues that the city is global because it comprises a multiplicity of global niches in its midst that interface with and sustain each other at the local level.

This book examines urban development and its role in planning in China and other Asian cities. Starting with a substantial narrative on the history, development philosophy, and urban form of ancient Asian cities, it then identifies the characteristics of urban society and different phases of development history. It then discusses urbanization patterns in China with a focus on spatial layout of the city clusters in the Yangtze River Delta since the 20th Century. Lastly, it explores institutional design and the legal system of urban planning in China and other Asian cities. As a textbook for the "Model Course in English" for international students listed by the Ministry of Education in China, it helps international researchers and students to understand urban development and planning in Asian cities.