This book offers a multidisciplinary approach to the medina, the traditional walled Arab city of North Africa. The medina becomes a concrete case study for comparative explorations of general questions about the social use of urban space by opening up fields of research at the intersection of history, comparative cultural studies, architecture and anthropology. Essays by American, European and North African scholars demonstrate a variety of sources and theoretical approaches now being used in writing historical narratives framed within the city space. They shed light on recent studies by anthropologists regarding social praxis within the urban context, and analyze the urban experience of the medina and the casbah as they are represented in visual and material culture.

This anthology synthesises a wealth of published research to provide students of the city with a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the key concepts and themes in contemporary urban studies. This collection comprises over 130 seminal readings accompanied by embedded references to guide further study. The readings have been selected from an international range of academic and professional journals. They include some of the most influential classic writings on the city as well as more recent research that contributes significantly to our understanding of the contemporary city. In addition to its global perspective, the anthology is based on a cross-disciplinary approach, drawing on the best scholarship to illuminate the complex nature of the city. Research has been incorporated from fields as diverse as geography, economics, planning, sociology, politics, psychology, architecture, history and archaeology to provide an essential collection of readings on The City.

Splintering Urbanism offers a path-breaking analysis of the nature of the urban condition at the start of the new millennium. Adopting a global and interdisciplinary perspective, it reveals how new technologies and increasingly privatised systems of infrastructure provision - telecommunications, highways, urban streets, energy, and water - are supporting the splintering of metropolitan areas across the world. The result is a new 'socio-technical' way of understanding contemporary urban change, which brings together discussions about:
* globalisation and the city
* the urban and social effects of new technology
* urban, architectural and social theory
* social polarisation, marginalisation and democratisation
* infrastructure, architecture and the built environment
* developed, developing and post-communist cities.



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Globalization, the shape of cities, the future of cities, the increasing gap between rich and poor inhabitants, and ethnic and racial segregation, are the key themes of this book. From their experiences of a wide range of cities, from Warsaw to Istanbul, Sao Paulo to New York, the authors examine what might be done to improve the lot of the citizen.

Contentious Cities offers unique interdisciplinary approaches to understanding gendered spatial equity in the urban environment. Positioning design as a central component in how cities produce, construct, represent and materialise gendered spatial practices, it brings together practice and theory to critique, question and enable solutions that challenge the root causes of gender inequalities in cities. Through a rich array of case-studies, practice-led interventions, and historical and theoretical perspectives, it examines important issues that affect the ways in which women, and people of diverse gender and sexual identities experience and participate in cities. Thematically organised, it considers problems of street-harassment, heterosexualisation and equity in access and mobility, together with modes of segregation, isolation and discrimination, as well as processes of resistance, intervention and agency. Grounded in feminist and queer methods of analysis, the book offers new insights regarding the representation of cities, the lived experience of cities, and how design-tactics and approaches might affect the ways cities shape and regulate how women and people of diverse gender and sexual identity inhabit, occupy and move through the city. An examination of the ways in which design might shift toward safer and more inclusive cities, Contentious Cities will appeal to scholars of sociology, gender studies and urban studies, as well as those working in the fields of urban planning and design.

In today's world, towns and cities dynamically develop over time and that's why urban regeneration is a widely experienced phenomenon. How can Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) create necessary conditions for the development of these phenomena? What is the role that BIDs have in entrepreneurial urbanism, supporting SMEs, city marketing and city branding? These are questions examined in this volume, in an effort to provide an extensive analysis of business improvement districts. Enriched with an analysis of various case studies, including South Africa, Ontario, Tokyo, Barcelona, Slovenia and with an in-field analysis of a cultural heritage site, Korca, Albania, the book analyses the importance, benefits, and impacts of this kind of organization. It highlights the social, economic and ecologic challenges to the historic city markets today, which led to their rapid stagnancy. This book offers a practical and structured guide of the concept of Business Improvement Districts and highlights the best practices for management, financing and organizing. It sheds light on the impacts and benefits of business improvement districts, offering conclusions about their influence on the future improvement of cultural and urban sites. It will be of value to researchers, academics, professionals, and students in the fields of management, organizational studies, strategy, and sustainable development of tourism districts.

Road pricing (tolls, etc.) as a means of generating revenue for infrastructure investment has become a major policy option in both Europe and North America. It can also be used as a policy in the management of traffic demand and flow, environmental objectives, and optimal resource allocation as regards the size of investments. Road pricing is assumed to be able to solve many problems simultaneously -- congestion control, pollution reduction, and investment financing. This volume assembles and assesses theoretical knowledge, empirical results and experiences of actual road pricing. In addition, the impact of new information technology on future policy formulation is considered.

In this book the authors examine in depth the lives of inner-city adolescent mothers, going beyond stereotypes to illuminate the diverse pathways to young adulthood taken by these young women. The different ways they respond to becoming a parent reflect a range of abilities, aspirations, and supports. Their often-creative solutions to living in poverty, the intensity of their desires to make their children's lives better, the height of their youthful ambition when they succeed, and the depth of their pain when they fail, all show a surprising range. The authors argue that adolescent mothers who enter young adulthood with the skills and desires to care for themselves and their children are "not" the resilient few and present a lengthy analysis of the multidimensional processes that lead to and characterize this resilience.
In making constructive suggestions for social welfare policies and reforms, this book serves as an ideal model of the important uses of qualitative research for understanding the adolescent experience. More than that, the book stands out among others by this social policy perspective and its focus on encouraging adolescent mothers to reach their potentials.
This volume aims to attract those who wish to learn more about the adolescent experience without getting lost in the detail of the methods and analyses. To this end, the main body of the text presents general methods and results. Scholarly details of the work are placed in appendices to which the interested reader can refer. A second highlight is the inclusion of impressionistic material, such as quotes from the adolescent mothers who were participants in this research. Such material brings to life the real issues of very real adolescents--their triumphs and struggles, their riches and poverty, their strengths and weaknesses.

This text is a clear and thorough introduction to political philosophy and political thought. Each chapter begins with a brief overview of a major political thinker and clearly introduces one or more of their most influential works. The reader is then introduced to key secondary readings, aiming to complement and further their understanding of the thinker and text in question. Key features of the book also include clear exercises, reading notes and guides for further reading. The book is structured around eight major works including Machiavelli's "The Prince"; Hobbes - "Leviathan"; Locke- "The Second Treatise of Government"; Rousseau - "The Social Contract"; " Two Concepts of Liberty' by Isaiah Berlin'; Marx and Engels - "The German Ideology (Part 1)"; and Mill - "On Liberty". This text provides students with the skills necessary to understand the main thinkers, texts and arguments of political philosophy. It requires no previous knowledge of philosophy or politics and is suitable to anyone coming to political philosophy and political thought for the first time.

1. Introduction.2. Class, State and Urban Space.3. Social and Spatial Transformations.4. The Electoral Geography Of Amsterdam.5. Political and Institutional Transformations.6. Symbolic Politics within the Local State.7. Conclusion.

Achieving Sustainable Urban Form represents a major advance in the sustainable development debate. It presents research which defines elements of sustainable urban form - density, size, configuration, detailed design and quality - from macro to micro scale. Case studies from Europe, the USA and Australia are used to illustrate good practice within the fields of planning, urban design and architecture.

This book examines how to promote industrial development in low-income countries. It considers the role of traders in the evolution of a cluster, the role of managerial human capital, the effect of the "China shock," and the role of industrial policies focused on international knowledge transfer in supporting the upgrading of clusters.

This book is about cities as engines of consumption of the world's environment, and the spread of policies to reduce their impact. It looks at these issues by examining the impact of the Rio Declaration and assesses the extent to which it has made a difference. Consuming Cities examines this impact using case studies from around the world including: the USA, Japan, Germany, the UK, China, India, Sweden, Poland, Australia and Indonesia The contributors all have direct experience of the urban environment and urban policies in the countries on which they write and offer an authoritative commentary which brings the urban 'consumption' dimension of sustainable development into focus.

Empirically rich and theoretically informed, this book is an innovative analysis of political decentralization under the Islamic Republic of Iran. Drawing upon Kian Tajbakhsh's twenty years of experience working with and researching local government in Iran, it uses original data and insights to explain how local government operates in towns and cities as a form of electoral authoritarianism. With a combination of historical, political, and financial field research, it explores the multifaceted dimensions of local power and how various ideologically opposed actors shaped local government as an integral component of authoritarian state building. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how local government serves to undermine democratization and consolidate the Islamist regime. As Iran's cities and towns grow and develop, their significance will only increase, and this study is vital to understanding their politics, administration and influence.

Cities affect every person's life, yet across the traditional divides of class, age, gender and political affiliation, armies of people are united in their dislike of the transformations that cities have undergone in recent times. The physical form of the urban environment is not a designer add-on to 'real' social issues; it is a central aspect of the social world. Yet in many people's experience, the cumulative impacts of recent urban development have created widely un-loved urban places. To work towards better-loved urban environments, we need to understand how current problems have arisen and identify practical action to address them.
Urban Transformations examines the crucial issues relating to how cities are formed, how people use these urban environments and how cities can be transformed into better places. Exploring the links between the concrete physicality of the built environment and the complex social, economic, political and cultural processes through which the physical urban form is produced and consumed, Ian Bentley proposes a framework of ideas to provoke and develop current debate and new forms of practice.

This book gathers the latest advances, innovations, and applications in the field of building design and construction, by focusing on new design solutions for buildings and new technologies creation for construction, as presented by researchers and engineers at the 4th International Conference Building Innovations (ICBI), held in Poltava - Baku, Ukraine - Azerbaijan, on May 19-20, 2022. It covers highly diverse topics, including structures operation, repairing and thermal modernization in existing buildings and urban planning features, machines and mechanisms for construction, as well as efficient economy and energy conservation issues in construction. The contributions, which were selected by means of a rigorous international peer-review process, highlight numerous exciting ideas that will spur novel research directions and foster multidisciplinary collaborations.

This volume in the Greenwood Technographies series covers urban mass transit - that is, the technologies that allow cities to move large numbers of people around. Just a few hundred years ago, the size of cities was limited by the time it took people to move from one part of the city to another. The development of successive technologies has forever altered the urban landscape. From horse-drawn omnibuses to subways to current light-rail, this volume highlights the technological and social struggles that have accompanied urbanization and the need for an efficient and cost-effective means of transportation in cities. Urban Mass Transit: The Life Story of a Technology follows the story of transportation in cities through all stages of its history: Urbanization and transit by horsepower The introduction of mechanical power to run cable railways Electrification and the ascendance of the trolley The Rise of the motor vehicle and the decline of the trolley Rapid transit and the revival of mass transportation The volume includes a timeline, a glossary, and a bibliography of resources useful for further research.

This series addresses the major subject areas of urban sociology, ethnic and minority groups within the city, social network of urban residents, location of retail and industrial activities within the metropolitan complex, decline of the central cities and emergence of suburban lifestyles, and the core question of community integration itself.
*Volume 8 includes case studies from Toronto, Japan, Bulgaria, and other geographic locations with ethnic minority populations
*Addresses the major concepts of urban sociology while including perspectives from diverse locations
*Online availability via ScienceDirect

The book results from research carried out by the authors since 1999 on urban gardening collectives in Russia, then from the extension of this research towards collective urban gardening in France, with some investigations in other European Union Member States and Brazil. This research was carried out within the framework of Kazan University (currently, the Institute of Administration and Territorial Development of the Federal University of Kazan) and the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA). It enabled the creation of an international research network entitled Sustainable Development of Cities: the Relationship between City-Dwellers and Nature. This research was developed with help from a three-year research contract (October 2009 - September 2012) with the GESSOL programme of the French Ministry of Ecology, on the theme of the use of urban and peri-urban soils for the sustainable development of cities. The final report of this research contract provides the basis for the book.

This volume covers cities of the industrial revolution to 1870, European Cities since 1870 and urban technology transfer. Among the cities and themes covered are:
* the onset of industrialization
* Manchester and Glasgow
* London and Paris
* the rise of modern urban planning
* Berlin
* Building and government sponsorship
* Milton Keynes
* cities in Russia
* cities in Colonial India
This text is designed to be used on its own or as a companion volume to the accompanying "European Cities and Technology Reader" in the same series. It investigates the relative importance of technology, economics, politics and social conditions in relation to urban change.

The text challenges the commonplace assumption that cities are threatened by disorder 'from below' and that they might be ruled by an order imposed 'from above'. Cities' problems and potentials are analysed and existing theories contested, using examples drawn from around the world.

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Cities & Technology, a series of three textbooks and three readers, explores one of the most fundamental changes in the history of human society: the transition from predominantly rural to urban ways of living. This series presents a new social history of technology, using primarily urban settings as a source of historical evidence anda focus for the interpretation of the historical relations of technology and society.
Drawing on perspectives and writings from accross a number of disciplines involved in urban historical studies - including archaeology, urban history, historical geography and architectural history - the books in the series explore: how towns and cities have been shaped by applications of a range of technologies and how such technological applications have been influenced by their social contexts, including politics, economics, culture and the natural environment.
European Cities and Technology is designed to be used on its own or as a companion volume to the accompanying European Cities and Technology Reader in the same series. The book is divided into three principal sections: cities of the Industrial Revolution including case studies of Manchester, Glasgow, London and Paris; European cities since 1870, including London, Paris Berlin, the rise of modern urban planning and post-war reconstruction; and a variety of topics including Milton Keynes, Colonial India and Russia. It investigates the relative importance of technology, economics, politics and social conditions in relation to urban change.

This book is about the "public realm," defined as a particular kind of social territory that is found almost exclusively in large settlements. This particular form of social-psychological space comes into being whenever a piece of actual physical space is dominated by relationships between and among persons who are strangers to one another, as often occurs in urban bars, buses, plazas, parks, coffee houses, streets, and so forth. More specifically, the book is about the social life that occurs in such social-psychological spaces (the normative patterns and principles that shape it, the relationships that characterize it, the aesthetic and interactional pleasures that enliven it) and the forces (anti-urbanism, privatism, post-war planning and architecture) that threaten it. The data upon which the book's analysis is based are diverse: direct observation; interviews; contemporary photographs, historic etchings, prints and photographs, and historical maps; histories of specific urban public spaces or spatial types; and the relevant scholarly literature from sociology, environmental psychology, geography, history, anthropology, and architecture and urban planning and design. Its central argument is that while the existing body of accomplished work in the social sciences can be reinterpreted to make it relevant to an understanding of the public realm, this quintessential feature of city life deserves much more u it deserves to be the object of direct scholarly interest in its own right. "Choice" noted that: "The author's writing style is unusually accessible, and the often fascinating narrative is generously supported by well-chosen photos." "Lyn H. Lofland" is professor and chair, Department of Sociology, University of California, Davis. She is the author of many works, including "A World of Strangers: Order and Action in Urban Public Space."

This text is a sociological study of a community in transition and the impact of urban regeneration. The process of change on the Isle of Dogs is revealed from the differing perspectives of Islanders, developers and business, and yuppies attracted to the area. The book is intended for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in urban sociology, social geography, cultural and community studies, housing and urban planning, race and ethnic studies, and broader market including Open University courses, "A"-level courses and general interest.

The Pre-Industrial Cities Reader is designed to be used on its own or as a companion volume to the accompanying Pre-Industrial Cities: Open University textbook, in the same series. Compiled as a reference source for students, this reader is divided into three main sections, presenting key readings on: Ancient Cities, Medieval and Early Modern Cities, and Pre-Industrial Cities in China and Africa. Among the technologies discussed are: agricaultural innovations such as the heavy plough, water transport, the medieval road revolution, the first urban public transport, aqueducts, building materials such as brick and Roman concrete, weaponry and fortifications, water clocks, street lighting, and fire-fighting. Among the cities covered are: Uruk, Babylon, Thebes, Athens, Rome, Constantinople, Baghdad, Siena, Florence, Antwerp, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Hangzhou, Beijing and Hankou.