This book highlights major quantitative and qualitative methods and approaches used in the field of urban analysis. The respective chapters cover the background and relevance of various approaches to urban studies and offer guidance on implementing specific methodologies. Each chapter also provides links to real-world examples. The book is unique in its focus on Australian examples and subject matter, presented by recognized experts in the field.

This book provides in-depth comparative studies of the two largest cities and metropolitan areas in the United States: New York City and Los Angeles. The chapters, written by leading experts and based upon the most current information available from the Census and other sources, discuss and explicitly compare politics, economic prospects and the financial crisis, and a host of social issues. Reform movements in education, ethnic politics, budget stringency, strategies to deal with crime, the development and political context of infrastructure, rising inequality, immigration and immigrant communities, the segregation of the poor and minorities and the new segregation of the economic elite, environmental impacts and attempts to deal with them, the image of both cities and regions in the movies, architectural trends, and the differential impact and response to the financial crisis, including foreclosure patterns, are all examined in this volume. This comparative framework reveals that old paradigms such as urban "decline" or "resurgence" are inadequate for grasping the new challenges and complexities facing America's two major global cities. Each is responding in sometimes similar and different ways to the challenges brought on by two events that defined the last decade: the attack of 9/11 and its aftermath, and the continuing effects of the financial crisis. How all of these events, institutions, and trends play out in the New York and Los Angeles regions is important not only for the two cities, but also as a harbinger for other U.S. cities, the entire nation, and cities worldwide. New York and Los Angeles provides an essential guide for understanding the many forces that determine the future of our cities.

This book focuses on the level of industrial synergy development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt in China. The main contents include: Linkage Development of the Manufacturing and Logistics Industries of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Cooperative Development of the Information Industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Coordination and Deepening of Agricultural Development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Coordinated Development of the Ecological Environment in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Development of Regional Financial Integration in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Port Coordinated Development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, as well as Industrial Division of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

The book presents a methodology for detecting intervention needs on existing healthcare buildings and estimating the related costs, to perform a sustainable financial planning for modernization, regulatory adjustment and performance upgrade. By the identification of specific parameters, characterizing the building in terms of layout typology, technical features and services provision, it proposes a framework for the collection of relevant information to current regulations and standards. Integrated evaluation tools are developed to perform first a technical assessment of the investigated building, basing on the survey of its key features and on the codification of standard actions. Then, appraisal procedure valuates intervention cost from the similarity degree between the object of analysis and a set of interventions already performed on healthcare assets. The book offers a valuable tool for technical professionals, public administrations and healthcare managers engaged in maintenance and performance assessment of healthcare facilities.

This interdisciplinary book examines the contemporary nature and possible futures of cities in a postindustrial and globalized world. Considering urban plans as complex systems and as products of collective human action, Byrne draws on urban history, geography, sociology, and studies from the developed, developing, and former soviet systems. He describes the crucial processes of the restructuring of urban employment, the creation of the built environment, and the transformation of "culture" in cities.

This edited collection examines the formation of urban networks and role of gateways in Europe from the Middle Ages to the modern world. In the past, gateway cities were merely perceived as transport points, only relevant to maritime shipping. Today they are seen as the organic entities coordinating the allocation of resources and supporting the growth, efficiency and sustainability of logistics (including both the transport and distribution of goods and services). Using different historical case studies, the authors consider how logistics shaped urban networks and were shaped by them.

This book offers a detailed account of the employment promises made to local East Londoners when the Summer Olympic Games 2012 were awarded to London, as well as an examination of how those promises had morphed into the Olympic Labor market jamboree from which local communities were excluded. Regarding the global job market of London, this study provides a nuanced empirical view on how the world's biggest mega event was experienced and endured in terms employment by its immediate hosts, in one of the UK's poorest, most ethnically complex, and transient areas. The data has been collected through ethnographic observation and interviews with local residents, and expert interviews with the Olympic delivery professionals. Using Bourdieusian theory of contested capital, the findings provide an important bearing on the reproduction of inequality in the local labor markets of Olympic host cities.

China Urban Statistics 1988 is an important reference book for understanding and studying economic and social conditions in Chinese cities. This is an annual publication presenting data on economic development in 382 Chinese cities. The data in the 1988 edition are figures for 1987. There were 381 cities in China at the end of 1987. However, since the cities of Huangshan and Tunxi in Anhui Province maintained separate statistical reports in 1987 after the administration of these two cities was merged, there are a total of 382 cities included in this book. Data presented in this volume include a survey of population, surface area, agricultural and industrial production, transportation and telecommunications, urban development, trade and commerce, education and culture, public health, labor, and public finance. China Urban Statistics 1988 is a revised and improved English language edition of the official China Statistical Abstract compiled by the State Statistical Bureau of the People's Republic of China (SSB). The English Language Editorial Board was responsible for the translation and annotation of this volume. The English Language Editorial Board is composed of representatives of the China Statistical Information and Consultancy Service Center, an affiliate of the SSB, and the China Statistics Archives, a research center at the University of Illinois at Chicago. This is the sixth volume in a series of statistical annuals. The volumes so far published are China Statistical Abstract 1988, China Social Statistics 1986, China Trade and Prices Statistics 1988, China Rural Statistics 1988 and China Statistical Abstract 1989.

The first treatise ever written on the sociology of cities, On the Causes of the Greatness and Magnificence of Cities (1588) marked a radical departure from previous literature on urban centres. It provided a revolutionary analysis of how cities function, and of the political, economic, demographic and geographic factors that cause their growth and decline. Noteworthy too is Botero's strikingly original use of sources in his analysis: moving beyond familiar classical and biblical references, he drew groundbreaking insights from reports by travelers and missionaries about cities in the non-European world, especially in China.

Though seminally important to the history of urban studies, On the Causes of the Greatness and Magnificence of Cities has not been available in a modern translation until now. This edition of the treatise - which includes an introduction by Geoffrey W. Symcox on the intellectual context within which it was conceived - is a must-read for anyone interested in the life of cities both historical and contemporary.

This book provides an analysis of South African urban change over the past three decades. It draws on a seminal text, Homes Apart, and revisits conclusions drawn in that collection that marked the final phases of urban apartheid. It highlights changes in demography, social as well as economic structure and their differential spatial expression across a range of urban sites in South Africa. The evidence presented in this book points to a very complex set of narratives in urban South Africa and one that cannot be reduced to a singular statement so the conclusions of the various investigations are in many ways open. As urban apartheid represented one clear outcome, its post-apartheid urban legacies varies greatly from city to city. As such this book is a great resource to students and academics focused on urban change in South African cities since the demise of apartheid, and scholars of urban policy-making in South Africa and Southern urbanists generally.

Cities are experiencing unprecedented times. In addition of managing the best possible post-pandemic recovery, Cities are at the beginning of the 4th industrial revolution, and all want to play a relevant role in it. To achieve this, they must retain and attract the necessary talent. There is a fierce competition where cities transform to become as attractive as possible. But what makes a city attractive (from emotional and rational sides) to talented citizens? For mayors and city directors: how can I prepare my city for this goal? What kind of transformations in the medium-long term should I develop? And in the short term, what processes and technologies (SmartCity) should I put in place? And from the point of view of citizens: how do I choose the best city to develop my full potential? Which one offers me the best citizenship contract? Where am I going to enjoy the best services with the highest quality of life and lower taxes/cost of life? In addition, the city must be attractive, with a strong identity and dynamism and promising future. Can I find the cities that best suit my aesthetic and emotional preferences, and that also offer me the services that I consider a priority at the lowest cost to my pocket? Find all the answers in this book.

Can China now be considered urbanized? Unlike earlier studies that viewed China as a peasant or rural society, this book focuses on the question of whether China is already urbanized. Each of the contributors considers the degree to which the town-country dichotomy has been obliterated in the China of the 1980s and 1990s. The focus is unique, for previous studies have failed to raise this fundamental question. The contributors to the volume, who are from China, Hong Kong, the United States, and Canada, collectively address China's past and continuing transformation, the multiple factors influencing the urbanization of Chinese society, and the strengths and weaknesses in China's transformation. China's urbanization, the authors claim, can be traced to two successful development strategies: small town development and coastal economic reforms. These strategies, however, raise the question of how China should deal with uneven and inequitable regional growth. China's solution, Guldin says, has been to mix economic liberalization and an emphasis on small town development with a still significant degree of central planning. The work is interdisciplinary, with contributions from the fields of sociology, geography, anthropology, and urban planning. It should be of interest to scholars from all of those disciplines with a special interest in China.

Digital technologies promise efficiency and comfort, but the smoothness of platform services relies on the hidden social labour of those who keep the gig economy running. This book presents a comparative ethnography of young men making a living through digital technologies: selling mobile airtime in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, and app-based delivery riders in Berlin, Germany. These case studies explore the significance of symbolic capital in urban youth's social existence and organisation of livelihood in the digital economy, and the technological mechanisms producing a new form of urban precarity. Globalised urban precarity in Berlin and Abidjan puts forward an original comparative approach to develop a global urban sociology for the digital era. It provides an innovative analytical toolbox that decentres discussions of precarity from the standard of a normal employment contract. With its focus on symbolic capital, the ethnography shows the consequences of the proliferating gig economy for status struggles among urban youth, and carefully embeds the densification of software and services into the socio-material relations on which these new urban infrastructures are built. -- .

No detailed comparison of the city-state in medieval Europe has been undertaken over the last century. Research has concentrated on the role of city-states and their republican polities as harbingers of the modern state, or else on their artistic and cultural achievements, above all in Italy. Much less attention has been devoted to the cities' territorial expansion: why, how, and with what consequences cities in the urban belt, stretching from central and northern Italy over the Alps to Switzerland, Germany, and the low countries, succeeded (or failed) in constructing sovereign polities, with or without dependent territories. Tom Scott goes beyond the customary focus on the leading Italian city-states to include, for the first time, detailed coverage of the Swiss city-states and the imperial cities of Germany. He criticizes current typologies of the city-state in Europe advanced by political and social scientists to suggest that the city-state was not a spent force in early modern Europe, but rather survived by transformation and adaption. He puts forward instead a typology which embraces both time and space by arguing for a regional framework for analysis which does not treat city-states in isolation but within a wider geopolitical setting.

'One of the most exciting and provocative books that I've read in a long time' - Mike Davis, author of Planet of the Slums Can people who live in shantytowns, shacks and favelas teach us anything about democracy? About how to govern society in a way that is inclusive, participatory and addresses popular needs? This book argues that they can. In a study conducted in dozens of South Africa's shack settlements, where more than 9 million people live, Trevor Ngwane finds thriving shack dwellers' committees that govern local life, are responsive to popular needs and provide a voice for the community. These committees, called 'amakomiti' in the Zulu language, organise the provision of basic services such as water, sanitation, public works and crime prevention especially during settlement establishment. Amakomiti argues that, contrary to common perception, slum dwellers are in fact an essential part of the urban population, whose political agency must be recognised and respected. In a world searching for democratic alternatives that serve the many and not the few, it is to the shantytowns, rather than the seats of political power, that we should turn.

Innovative study of the role of sports in modernity in Africa. Sports in Ethiopia was always more than a means of useful recreation. It was also a way to enjoy and define fun, as new modes of behaviour emerged that showed what it meant to be a modern man or woman. This book is the first academic study of the history of modern sports in Ethiopia during the imperial rule of the twentieth century. Showing how agents, ideas and practices linked societal improvement and bodily improvement, this innovative study argues thatmodern sports offers new possibilities to explore the meanings of modernity in Africa. Drawing on written and oral sources in Amharic, Tigrinya, English, French, German and Italian, Bromber provides an in-depth analysis of the role of sports in modern educational institutions, volunteer organizations and urbanization processes. She examines sports' function as a political propaganda tool during the Italian fascist occupation (1935 - 1941), as well as in representations of successful modernization under Haile Selassie (1930 - 1974). The integration into global networks of ideas about the fit colonized body linked Ethiopia, which was never colonized, to the legacy of colonialism. Institutions such as schools, civilian sports clubs, and volunteer organizations were not only loaded with coercive procedures, but instituted modes of behaviour that developed into certain styles and affirmation of the self as well as their contestation. Examining the locations for practising sports in organized forms, informal leisure and practices consumption in Ethiopia, this book contributes to recent debates on the role of sports in the history of urbanization in Africa, as well as those on global modernity. Ethiopia: AAUP

What is a religion? That is the question that Richard Kent Evans attempts to answer in this book. He does so through the story of MOVE, a little-known group with a fascinating story. MOVE emerged in Philadelphia in the early 1970s. It was a small, mostly African American group devoted to the teachings of John Africa. In 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department - working in concert with federal and state law enforcement - attacked a home that "MOVE people" as they preferred to be known, shared in West Philadelphia. Hundreds of police officers and firefighters laid siege to the building using tear gas, ten thousand rounds of ammunition, and improvised explosives. Most infamously, a police officer riding in a helicopter dropped a bomb containing C-4 explosives, which he had acquired from the FBI, onto the roof of the MOVE house. The bomb started a fire, which officials allowed to spread in hopes of chasing the MOVE people out of the house. Police officers fired upon those who tried to escape the flames. Eleven MOVE people died in the attack, including John Africa. Five of those who died were children. In this book, Richard Kent Evans tells the story of MOVE - a story that has been virtually lost outside of Philadelphia. What was MOVE? Many MOVE members thought of themselves as belonging to a religion, and they sought legal recognition. But to others, including other religious groups like the Quakers and, more importantly, the courts, MOVE was anything but a religion. Evans dives deep into how we decide what constitutes a genuine religious tradition, and the enormous consequences of that decision.

The book is the first to explore the history and political significance of the Japanese public housing program. In the 1960s, as Japan's postwar economy boomed, architects and urban planners inspired equally by Western modernism and Soviet ideas of housing as a basic right created new cityscapes to house populations turned into refugees by the war. Over time, as Japan's society aged and the economy began to stagnate, these structures have become a burden on society. In this closely researched monograph on the conditions of Japanese housing, Tatiana Knoroz sheds unexpected light on the rise and fall of the idea of social democracy in Japan which will be of interest to historians, architects, and scholars of Asian economic modernization.

"How do urban communities in Asian cities experience the impacts of urbanisation and climate change? This book throws light on the ongoing processes of rapid urban transformation in many cities in developing countries, with particular reference to cities such as Chennai in India. Due to increasing demands on infrastructures and urban services, cities in developing countries are often pushed to the edge of collapse even when not in times of disaster. While such cities try to implement measures to safeguard the well-being of their citizens, looming impacts of climate change such as increasingly frequent and intense natural hazards pose new and additional challenges to their urban communities. This book connects critical issues relating to the general functioning of cities with climate-related disasters with the concept of resilience. Furthermore, this research takes a pro-solution stance, and demonstrates that individuals can form collective power to deliver added value before, during and after a disaster. The concept of resilience is applied to determine whether an urban community would be affected or damaged during a climate-related disaster, and to what extent."

Surrounding all major cities in the United States are numerous smaller communities collectively known as suburbia. The most popular place of residence in America, the suburbs are peaceful and tranquil environments, where civility prevails and disturbances of the peace are uncommon. Drawing on research, observation, and hundreds of in-depth interviews conducted during a twelve-month study of an affluent New York City suburb, M.P. Baumgartner reveals that the apparent serenity of the suburb is caused by the avoidance of open conflict. She contends that although nonviolence, nonconfrontation, and tolerance produce a superficial social harmony, these behaviors arise from disintegrative tendencies in modern culture--transience, fragmentation, weak family and communal ties, isolation, and indifference--conditions customarily viewed as sources of disorder, antagonism, and violence. A kind of moral minimalism pervades the suburbs, a disorganized social order that, with the suburbs' rapid growth in America, promises to be the moral order of the future. A valuable contribution to the literature on social control, this study of conflict management should attract general readers and scholars alike.

American schools in urban areas have received much attention. This reference offers a comprehensive look at the issues and controversies at the heart of urban American education. The volume is divided into several parts devoted to historical, political, and social dimensions of urban schooling. The chapters in each part are authored by expert contributors, and each offers a fresh perspective on historical and contemporary concerns. The volume considers the place of schools in urban society and analyzes their mission and how they have changed, or failed to change, to meet modern needs. Much of the work is devoted to the problems of particular populations, such as minorities and special-needs students, while other chapters examine broad pedagogical issues and the societal problems that confront students of all backgrounds and abilities. Each chapter closes with a list of works for further reading, and the volume concludes with a bibliography.

Water is one of the most pressing concerns of our time. This book argues for the importance of water as a cultural object, and as a source of complex meanings and practices in everyday life, embedded in the socio-economics of local water provision. Each chapter aims to capture one element of water's fluid existence in the world, as material object, cultural representation, as movement, as actor, as practice and as ritual. The book explores the interconnectedness of humans and non-humans, of nature and culture, and the complex entanglements of water in all its many forms; how water constitutes multiple differences and is implicated in relations of power, often invisible, but present nevertheless in the workings of daily life in all its rhythms and forms; and water's capacity to assemble a multiplicity of publics and constitute new socialities and connections. Cities, and their inhabitants, without water will die, and so will their cultures.

Carefully limiting his analysis to the correlation of residential proximity and marriage, social cast/class structures, and occupational status, Dr. Beshers clearly demonstrates how census tract data, official registrations of residence on marriage licenses, and other information can be used to reinforce and corroborate sociological hypotheses. Ultimately, he develops a theoretical model, empirically oriented, of the relationship between spatial distribution and social distance in the average American city.

This volume, comprised of contributions by urban planners and social scientists sets forth accumulated experience directed at improving the quality of life in cities through neighbourhood programmes. Policy issues, housing programmes and job development plans, along with organizational innovations aimed at redistribution of power, are described and evaluated.;The book shows that in spite of national and local differences, there are common lines of thinking in the urban planning profession that lead to similar approaches to solving problems of urban neighbourhoods in western countries. In all of them, slum clearance has been substituted by programmes to improve the existing housing stock and to open new opportunities to the local residents. In addition, government-only large projects are being replaced by public-private smaller initiatives. The collection of papers leads to the conclusion that there are reasons and ways to cultivate our neighbourhoods. This may be important in our times, when changing employment arrangements cause a larger proportion of the population to spend more time at home and at its immediate environment, the neighbourhood.

This book examines ways in which communities can affect change by providing strategies on creating and developing communities that enables people to live their lives. Through a model of our comprehensive community development efforts, collective impact, enhancing social capital, developing neighborhoods with affordable housing that create opportunity and community and placemaking.