This book addresses the practice of social innovation, which is currently very much in the public eye. New ideas and approaches are needed to tackle the severe and wicked problems with which contemporary societies are struggling. Especially in times of economic crisis, social innovation is regarded as one of the crucial elements needed to move forward. Our knowledge of its dynamics has significantly progressed, thanks to an abundance of studies on social innovation both general and sector-specific. However, despite the valuable research conducted over the past years, the systematic analysis of social innovation is still contested and incomplete. The questions asked in the book will be the following: 1. What is the nature of social innovations? 2.What patterns can be identified in social innovations emerging at the local level? 3.How is the emergence and spread of social innovations related to urban governance? More precisely, which conditions and arrangements facilitate and hinders social innovation? We explore these questions using different types of data and methods, and studying different contexts. In particular, we focus on innovations that aim at solving problems of the young unemployed, single parents and migrants. This analysis is based on original research carried out in the period 2010-2013 in the framework of a European project with a specific empirical research strategy. Research was carried out in 20 cities in 10 different European countries.

Dimensions peculiar to urban life, such as high population density, proximity to power centers, heterogeneity of residents in terms of class and ethnicity, susceptibility to political action, and tensions between rich and poor, have considerable impact on educational policies. Important studies have been conducted on urban conditions in the developed world, but few studies on education in Third World cities have appeared. This volume looks at urban problems related to education cross-nationally, beginning with a careful definition of what is distinctly urban in educational settings. Chapters on trends and issues, bureaucratic dynamics, disparities and inequities, goals, neighborhood movements, politics, and the experience of women and marginal students round out this internationally contributed volume.

Toward an Urban Cultural Studies is a call for a new interdisciplinary area of research and teaching. Blending Urban Studies and Cultural Studies, this book grounds readers in the extensive theory of the prolific French philosopher Henri Lefebvre.

Adopting a perspective inspired by Henri Lefebvre, this book considers the spread of multiculture from the central city to the periphery and considers the role that 'race' continues to play in structuring the metropolis, taking London, New York and Paris as examples.

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 offers a unique contribution to the burgeoning field of Chinese historical geography. Urban transformation in China constitutes both a domestic revolution and a world-historical event. Through the exploration of nine urban sites of momentous change, over an extended period of time, this book connects the past with the present, and provides much-needed literature on city growth and how they became complex laboratories of prosperity. The first part of this book puts Chinese urban changes into historical perspective, and probes the relationship between nation and city, focusing on Shanghai, Beijing and Changchun. Part two deals with the relationship between history and modernity, concentrating on Tunxi, a traditional trade center of tea, New Villages in Shanghai and street names in Taipei and Shanghai. Part three showcases the complexities of urban regeneration vis-a-vis heritage preservation in cities such as Datong, Tianjin and Qingdao. This book offers an innovative interdisciplinary and international perspective, which will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese urban studies, as well Chinese politics and society.

This book describes Smart Cities and the information technologies that will provide better living conditions in the cities of tomorrow. It brings together research findings from 27 countries across the globe, from academia, industry and government. It addresses a number of crucial topics in state of the arts of technologies and solutions related to smart cities, including big data and cloud computing, collaborative platforms, communication infrastructures, smart health, sustainable development and energy management. Information Innovation Technology in Smart Cities is essential reading for researchers working on intelligence and information communication systems, big data, Internet of Things, Cyber Security, and cyber-physical energy systems. It will be also invaluable resource for advanced students exploring these areas.

Black Los Angeles started small. The first census of the newly formed LosAngeles County in 1850 recorded only twelve Americans of African descentalongside a population of more than 3,500 Anglo Americans. Over the followingseventy years, however, the African American founding families ofLos Angeles forged a vibrant community within the increasingly segregatedand stratified city. In this book, historian Marne L. Campbell examines theintersections of race, class, and gender to produce a social history of communityformation and cultural expression in Los Angeles. Expanding on thetraditional narrative of middle-class uplift, Campbell demonstrates that theblack working class, largely through the efforts of women, fought to securetheir own economic and social freedom by forging communal bonds withblack elites and other communities of colour. This women-led, black working-class agency and cross-racial community building, Campbell argues, wasmarkedly more successful in Los Angeles than in any other region in thecountry. Drawing from an extensive database of all African American householdsbetween 1850 and 1910, Campbell vividly tells the story of how middle-classAfrican Americans were able to live, work, and establish a community oftheir own in the growing city of Los Angeles.

Housing and home ownership has been strongly embedded in East Asian socioeconomic and policy models. Based on the primacy of national economic growth objectives, it was promoted as a means of, on the one hand, contributing directly to economic growth through the motor of the construction industry, and, on the other, supporting a low-taxation, low-public-expenditure economy with minimal social protection measures based on the support of the family. In recent years, however, this housing pillar is facing new social, economic, political and demographic challenges, including a decline in the political authority of authoritarian states, the undermining of traditional developmental logic, fragmentation of families and household types and the growing volatility of housing markets. Most of these have been generated or exacerbated by intensified globalization and economic crises in recent years.
Through contextual, conceptual and empirically focused chapters, nine of which deal with a different country - China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand - this book explores the development of housing policies and practices that have responded to dynamic socioeconomic and demographic restructuring.

This book covers social inequalities in Chinese cities and provides comparative perspectives on inequality and social polarization, neoliberalization and the poor, the change of property rights, rural to urban migration and migrants' enclaves, deprivation and residential segregation, state social security and reemployment training programs.

This book presents a theory as well as methods to understand and to purposively influence complex systems. It suggests a theory of complex systems as nested systems, i. e. systems that enclose other systems and that are simultaneously enclosed by even other systems. According to the theory presented, each enclosing system emerges through time from the generative activities of the systems they enclose. Systems are nested and often emerge unplanned, and every system of high dynamics is enclosed by a system of slower dynamics. An understanding of systems with faster dynamics, which are always guided by systems of slower dynamics, opens up not only new ways to understanding systems, but also to effectively influence them. The aim and subject of this book is to lay out these thoughts and explain their relevance to the purposive development of complex systems, which are exemplified in case studies from an urban system. The interested reader, who is not required to be familiar with system-theoretical concepts or with theories of emergence, will be guided through the development of a theory of emergent nested systems. The reader will also learn about new ways to influence the course of events - even though the course of events is, in principle, unpredictable, due to the ever-new emergence of real novelty.

Exploring the complex dynamics of twenty-first century spatial sociality, this volume provides a much-needed multi-dimensional perspective that undermines the dominant image of Northern Ireland as a conflict-ridden place. Despite touching on memories of "the Troubles" and continuing unionist-nationalist tensions, the volume refuses to consider people in the region as purely political beings, or to understand processes of placemaking solely through ethnic or national contestations and territoriality. Topics such as the significance of friendship, gender, and popular culture in spatial practices are considered, against the backdrop of the growing presence of migrants, refugees and diasporic groups.

This edited monograph presents the selected papers from RailNewcastle 2016, being held in Newcastle UK, June 2016. The collected papers focus on railway research, including topics such as rail operations, engineering, logistics, communication systems and safety. The target audience primarily comprises researchers and experts in the field of railway engineering, but the paper collection may also be beneficial for graduate students alike.

The role of Cities in driving global economies has been well covered, and their impact on the larger ecosystem is well documented. Resilient and Sustainable Cities: Research, Policy and Practice explores how cities can be transformed into sustainable fabrics, while leading to positive socio-economic change. The topics include urban policy and covers the challenges cities experienced during the pandemic and resulting urban responses from federal, state, and local levels. This includes a transdisciplinary perspective dwelling on the city narrative, including Resources, Economics, Politics, and others. Resilient and Sustainable Cities serves as a valuable resource for leaders and practitioners working in Urban Policy and academia, as well as students in urban planning, architecture, and policy undergraduate and graduate level programs.

The fifth edition of this text presents a balanced review of the ecological arguments that the urban arena produces unique experiential and urban-based cultural effects while exploring the broader political and economic contexts that produce and modify the urban environment. In addition to examining the urban dimensions of such topics as community formation and continuity, minority and majority dynamics, ethnic experience, poverty, power, and crime, it provides an analysis of the spatial distribution of population and resources with regard to the metropolitanization of the urban form, and the interaction between urban concentration and development and underdevelopment. From a first chapter that begins with a discussion of some of the more micrological features of the urban experience, the text focuses on the significance of the more macrological cultural, social organizational, and political dimensions of urban change, in an historical span that includes the first cities and concludes with an exploration of the implications of cyberspace, transnationalism, and global terrorism for the future of urban sociology. While the work focuses primarily on the North American case, its analytical and integrated discussion makes it applicable to urban societies in general.

The revised and updated third edition of The Making of Urban America includes seven new articles and a richly detailed historiographical essay that discusses the vast urban history literature added to the canon since the publication of the second edition. The authors' extensively revised introductions and the fifteen reprinted articles trace urban development from the preindustrial city to the twentieth-century city. With emphasis on the social, economic, political, commercial, and cultural aspects of urban history, these essays illustrate the growth and change that created modern-day urban life. Dynamic topics such as technology, immigration and ethnicity, suburbanization, sunbelt cities, urban political history, and planning and housing are examined. The Making of Urban America is the only reader available that covers all of U.S. urban history and that also includes the most recent interpretive scholarship on the subject.

Latin American and Caribbean countries are the most urban in the developing world and have very high home ownership rates. Many cities in the region also show high average family incomes for developing world standards. However, despite these accomplishments, many of the region's inhabitants are still poorly housed. Of the 124 million families living in the region's cities, five million rely on another family for shelter; three million live in houses that are beyond repair; and a remaining 31 million live in houses that lack either title, water, sewerage, adequate flooring, or sufficient space. Most of these dwellings and many more otherwise satisfactory homes are located in neighborhoods that lack many basic urban amenities. This book looks at both the determinants and consequences of these poor housing outcomes. Housing and neighborhood conditions strongly influence health, nutrition, education, and environmental outcomes, along with access to economic opportunities and vulnerability to social ills. The book examines, with new data sources and rigorous analytical methods presented in an accessible way, the three main related factors usually identified as key determinants of the region's poor housing outcomes: high housing prices relative to family income, lack of access to mortgage credit, and high land prices. The book also looks at the role of government policies and regulations as well as public housing programs, both at the local and federal level, in shaping housing outcomes in the region.

Imperial cities explores the influence of imperialism in the landscapes of modern European cities. Many still display unmistakable signs of their imperial past, not only in their architecture and monuments, but also in the ways in which their identities are constructed by their inhabitants and by international tourists. urban centres, including London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Marseilles, Glasgow and Seville. The first part on imperial landscapes is devoted to large-scale architectural schemes and monuments, including the Queen Victoria Memorial in London and the Vittoriano in Rome. In the second part, the focus is on imperial display throughout the city, from spectacular exhibitions and ceremonies, to more private displays of empire in suburban gardens. The final part considers the changing cultural and political identities in the imperial city, looking particularly at nationalism, masculinity and anti-imperialism. imperial history. It should be important for students and teachers of history, geography, architecture, art history, sociology and cultural studies, as well as those interested in understanding the modern European city.

Shortly after the book's protagonists moved into their apartment complex in Sarajevo, they, like many others, were overcome by the 1992-1995 war and the disintegration of socialist Yugoslavia More than a decade later, in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, they felt they were collectively stuck in a time warp where nothing seemed to be as it should be. Starting from everyday concerns, this book paints a compassionate yet critical portrait of people's sense that they were in limbo, trapped in a seemingly endless "Meantime." Ethnographically investigating yearnings for "normal lives" in the European semi-periphery, it proposes fresh analytical tools to explore how the time and place in which we are caught shape our hopes and fears.

The emergence of sharing mobility is having a profound impact on urban landscapes. In fact, it is deeply affecting the traditional organization of local services by calling into question how urban transportation is planned, and by redesigning city spaces. Further, by connecting people to shared assets, services or both, sharing mobility is poised to facilitate the more efficient use of underutilized resources, becoming a powerful tool for economic growth and social inclusion, while also contributing to sustainability. That being said, the economic, social and spatial impacts of sharing mobility have not been sufficiently investigated, and so far, the evidence is mixed. From a normative standpoint, while it is relevant to better understand the relations between sharing mobility, the city and the environment, it is also of crucial importance to define new policies and sound rules for sharing mobility in urban areas. Against this backdrop, this book adopts a multidisciplinary perspective to explore the role that sharing mobility can play in the creation of more just and sustainable cities.

A collection of essays by economists and political scientists, each with an interest in Austrian school arguments, Basic Income and the Free Market confronts the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) concept. It outlines Austrian arguments for and against the BIG; critiques of Austrian theory from market-socialist and post-Keynesian perspectives that lead to defense of the BIG; critiques of BIG that consider Austrian and other heterodox theory; comparisons of the policy to proposals by others, such as Milton Friedman's negative income tax; pragmatic arguments for the policy; and proposals which discuss complex systems theory (which is embraced by 'left' and 'right' thinkers alike) and its relationship to Hayek's spontaneous order. The collection opens a dialog between Austrian and other heterodox economists as well as between 'classical liberal, ' libertarian, and left-leaning or socialist political scientists and policymakers. The authors discuss whether the BIG could offer an alternative to both laissez-faire and existing welfare systems in developed countries, which are often criticized by both advocates and critics of laissez-faire, opening a constructive dialog in policy discussion. Included in this discussion is a systematic critique of pure laissez-faire interpretations of Austrian theory, and the analysis of the addition of a BIG to pure laissez-faire in the place of existing interventionist systems. Proposals making this case form the first section, followed by rebuttals and proposals against the policy, and rejoinders.

This book provides an interdisciplinary lens for exploring, assessing, and coming to new understandings of smart cities and regions, focusing on the six dimensions of sensing, awareness, learning, openness, innovation, and disruption. Using a hybrid case study and correlational approach, people from diverse sectors in a variety of small to medium to large-sized cities in multiple countries (e.g., Canada, United States, Ireland, Greece, Israel, etc.) provide experience-based perspectives on smart cities together with assessments for elements pertaining to each of the six dimensions. The analysis of findings in this work surfaces a rich and interwoven tapestry of patterns from the qualitative data highlighting for example, the importance of emotion/affect, privacy, trust, and data visualizations in influencing and informing the directions of smart cities and regions going forward. Correlational analysis of quantitative data reveals the presence and strength of emerging relationships among elements assessed, shedding light on factors that may serve as starting points for understanding what is contributing to potentials for improving success in smart cities and regions.

This book discusses Bangladesh's economic and social development that may be called a "miracle" since the country has achieved remarkable development progress under several unfavorable situations: weak governance and political instabilities, inequality, risks entailed in rapid urbanization, and exposure to severe disaster risks. The authors examine what led to this successful economic development, and the potential challenges that it presents, aiming to elicit effective policy interventions that can be adapted by other developing countries.

The transformation of the London suburb of Penge from a quiet, rural hamlet into a bustling railway hub over the course of a century is the focus of this engaging historical study. London's rapid development as a center of international capitalism in the 19th century and the social, economic, and political ramifications of this transformation on surrounding areas is examined. Attention is also given to the ways in which land was used and exploited. More than a quaint local history, this is a dynamic case study that unveils the grassroots impact of urban development.

Despite its utmost importance, the issue of industrial development has been largely neglected in the literature for the last few decades. The authors have conducted comparative case studies between Chinese and Japanese industries.