Medium-Sized cities in the Age of Globalisation provides a brand-new perspective on academic discussions of globalisation through exploring urban development outside of select global cities including Paris, Tokyo, and London, and instead focuses on medium-sized cities in the context of a globalising world. Combining the author’s expertise with extensive research, this book fills a gap in the scholarly debate on globalisation and urban development, with chapters of the book giving detailed insight on urban governance and economy, local identity, and urban representation. Through a range of visual sources including maps, tables, and graphs, the book is applicable and accessible, and offers a specialised analysis of medium-sized cities through assessing urban regeneration policies as well as promotional activities and their role in promoting positive change in an era of great inter-urban competition. This book contains valuable historical insights and is excellent specialised material for scholars and postgraduate students in the disciplines of Urban History, Urban Studies, and Geography, as well as being a significant source for Professionals working in urban planning and place promotion

This book investigates changing geographies of fast growing Asian metropolitan regions, in particular their peripheral areas. Through examining the intersection of global suburbanisation and Asian urbanism, the book depicts a complex (sub)urban world in Asia. It explains how the forces of globalisation, the logic of capital accumulation, and the history of rural-urban divide and interaction, path-dependent local institutions, and government policies work together to reshape the geographies of Asian urbanism. Touching on social, environmental, governance and planning aspects of contemporary urban Asia, the chapters in this volume provide grounded studies of residential relocation and changing rural settlements, property development by a congregation of developers, political ecologies of water provision, middle-class consumers, and local state agencies, transit-oriented development and infrastructure finance in peri-urban areas. It demonstrates an assemblage of actors and coexistence of multiple urban governance regimes with everyday negotiations. Changing Asian Urban Geographies will be interesting not only to those who wish to know more about Asian urban geographies but also to scholars and students wishing to see Asian metropolises in a comparative perspective of (sub)urban dynamics. The chapters in this book were originally published in Urban Geography.

This book on urban water bodies, catchment areas and drainage pattern is set against the backdrop of the unprecedented heavy rainfall that severely deluged metropolitan cities and other parts of India in recent years. It discusses how the processes and implementation of colonial urban development policies and projects have radically transformed the water bodies and their catchment areas - traditional water holding systems of Varanasi city. In this imperative colonial process, through the case study of Varanasi, the book mainly engages with the reasons behind the elimination of the temple tanks and ponds after the annexation of Varanasi by the British from 1775 till 1947. The book investigates the colonial notion of 'dry city', and how this notion crafted the process of separating land and water bodies, which arguably resulted in the reclamation and draining of water bodies, and also gave rise to water pollution. Additionally, the book analyzes the elimination of water bodies and loss of catchment areas through the ongoing processes of restoring the ancient city's natural and cultural heritage. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Spatial fixity is one of the characteristics that distinguishes housing from most other goods and services in the economy. In general, housing cannot be moved from one part of the country to another in response to shortages or excesses in particular areas. The modelling of housing markets and the interlinkages between markets at different spatial levels - international, national, regional and urban - are the main themes of this book. A second major theme is disaggregation, not only in terms of space, but also between households. The book argues that aggregate time-series models of housing markets of the type widely used in Britain and also in other countries in the past have become less relevant in a world of increasing income dispersion. Typically, aggregate relationships will break down, except under special conditions. We can no longer assume that traditional location or tenure patterns, for example, will continue in the future. The book has four main components. First, it discusses trends in housing markets both internationally and within nations. Second, the book develops theoretical housing models at each spatial scale, starting with national models, moving down to the regional level and, then, to urban models. Third, the book provides empirical estimates of the models and, finally, the models are used for policy analysis. Analysis ranges over a wide variety of topics, including explanations for differing international house price trends, the causes of housing cycles, the role of credit markets, regional housing market interactions and the role of housing in urban/suburban population drift.

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 3rd International Conference Building Innovations (ICBI), held in Poltava - Baku, Ukraine - Azerbaijan, on June 1-2, 2020. 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 book investigates the success story of the fast fashion industry-mainly owned by Chinese migrants-in Prato, Italy. It outlines how Prato has become the center of a value chain stretching from suppliers in China and Turkey all the way to buyers in Europe. Despite this, a policy attacking Chinese entrepreneurship has been devised and implemented in Prato. This volume analyzes said policy against the crisis of Prato's textile industry. Based on the author's 15 years of fieldwork in Prato, the book sheds light on the entangled processes of city making and the restructuring processes linked to capital accumulation by tackling issues of governance, territory, migration, division of labor, labor mobility, housing, and human rights.

This book uncovers, explores and analyses the cultural and social factors and values that lie behind waste making, recycling and disposal in the Asia Pacific region, where impressive economic growth has led to significant increases in production, consumption and concomitant waste production. This volume demonstrates the immense scope of waste as a multi-sectoral phenomenon, covering discussions on food, menstrual products, sewage, electronics, scrap, nuclear waste, plastics, and even entire villages as they are submerged underwater by dam building, considered expendable in favour of economic growth. It discusses the wide range of approaches and contexts through which people interact with waste, including socio-economic analysis, participatory observation, laboratory science, art, video, installations, literature and photography. Case studies focusing on India, China and Japan, in addition to other regional examples, demonstrate the ubiquity of waste, materially and geographically. It examines the duality of waste management, fostering community building while simultaneously excluding marginalised groups; how it can be linked to efforts creating circular economies, to then reappear in oceanic garbage patches; or technical waste repurposed for high-tech laboratory research before being discarded once again. This timely and wide-ranging collection of essays will be an important read for scholars, researchers and students in sustainability, development studies, discard studies, and social and cultural history, particularly focusing on countries in the Asia-Pacific.

Gregory M. Fulkerson offers a complete portrait of what communities are, how they work, and how they are embedded in urban-rural systems at regional, national, and global scales. After explaining the concept of urban-rural systems, Fulkerson walks through the central dynamics of environmental demography, political economy, culture, social interaction, the built environment, and community connections. His focus on urban-rural systems ensures that communities are understood as nodes within a network, overcoming the tendency to view them as self-contained. Each chapter in Community in Urban-Rural Systems: Theory, Planning, and Development offers a blend of classical and contemporary theories and conclude with relevant planning considerations. An additional chapter on community development provides strategies for translating planning considerations into action. The conclusion offers insights into long-term principles of community sustainability and justice.

This book examines the increasing marginalization of and response by people living in urban areas throughout the Western Hemisphere, and both the local and global implications of continued colonial racial hierarchies and the often-dire consequences they have for people perceived as different. However, in the aftermath of recent U.S. elections, whiteness also seems to embody strictures on religion, ethnicity, country of origin, and almost any other personal characteristic deemed suspect at the moment. For that reason, gender, race, and even class, collectively, may not be sufficient units of analysis to study the marginalizing mechanisms of the urban center. The authors interrogate the social and institutional structures that facilitate the disenfranchisement or downward trajectory of groups, and their potential or subsequent lack of access to mainstream rewards. The book also seeks to highlight examples where marginalized groups have found ways to assert their equality. No recent texts have attempted to connect the mechanisms of marginality across geographical and political boundaries within the Western Hemisphere.

Characterized by the rapid growth of spontaneous squatter settlements, the urbanization process in Africa differs substantially from that of more developed countries. This book provides fresh insights into the goals and nature of development of the urban sector of Africa. It brings together urban geographers, planners, economists, anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and sociologists to examine the interaction between the modern and traditional forces shaping development. The contributors suggest valuable new methods for both understanding and formulating development strategies.

Philosophy begins in the city states of Classical Greece. And in the context of our own highly urbanised modes of living, the relationship between philosophy and the city is more important than ever. The city is the place in which most humans now play out their lives, and the place that determines much of the cultural, social, economic, and political life of the contemporary world. Towards a Philosophy of the City explores a wide range of approaches and perspectives in a way that is true to the city's complex and dynamic character. The volume begins with a comprehensive introduction that identifies the key themes and then moves through four parts, examining the concept of the city itself, its varying histories and experiences, the character of the landscapes that belong to the city, and finally the impact of new technologies for the future of city spaces. Each section takes up aspects of the thinking of the city as it develops in relation to particular problems, contexts, and sometimes as exemplified in particular cities. This volume provides an invaluable resource for students and scholars in Philosophy, Geography, Sociology and Urban Studies.

Microeconomic Modeling in Urban Science proposes an interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of urban systems. It portrays agents as rational beings modeled under the framework of random utility behavior and interacting in a complex market of location auctions, location externalities, agglomeration economies, transport accessibility attributes, and planning regulations and incentives. Francisco Javier Martinez Concha considers the optimal planning of cities as he explores interactions between citizens and between citizens and firms, the mesoscopic agglomeration of firms and the segregation of agents' socioeconomic clusters, and the emergence of city-level scale laws. Its unified model of city life is relevant to micro-, meso- and macro-scale interactions.

The Routledge Handbook of Urban Logistics offers a state of the art, comprehensive overview of the discipline of urban and city logistics. The COVID-19 pandemic and the rise in internet shopping in particular has placed new demands on urban logistics which require innovative technological and policy responses. Similarly, the necessity for sustainable urban logistics offers both a challenge and opportunity for development and seeks to address traffic congestion, local air quality, traffic related degradation, the use of energy, safety aspects and noise. Featuring contributions from world-leading, international scholars, the chapters examine concepts, issues and ideas across six topic areas that reflect the increasingly diverse nature of current research and thinking in urban logistics: key features of urban logistics, freight transport, sectors in urban logistics, technical aspects, policy, and environmental and social sustainability. Each chapter provides an overview of current knowledge, identifies issues, discusses the relevant debates in urban logistics and the future research agenda. This handbook offers a single repository on the current state of knowledge, written from a practical perspective, utilising theory that is applied and developed using real-work examples. It is an essential reference for researchers, academics and students working in all areas of urban logistics, from policy and planning to technology and sustainability, in addition to industry practitioners looking to develop their professional knowledge.

This open access book presents recent research and hot topics in the field of real estate science in Japan. It features carefully selected English translations of peer-reviewed papers and excellent articles published in the Japanese Journal of Real Estate Sciences, as well as papers presented at the Japan Association of Real Estate Sciences (JARES) annual conference. The topics covered include market analyses of vacant houses, policies for reuse of vacant houses, property tax policy, issues of land for which the owners are unknown, disaster and real estate values, the siting optimization plan and its influence on real estate, big data and ICT technology for the real estate business, and public real estate management.Real estate science in Japan has developed in step with international research in the fields of law and economics, regional science, civil engineering, environmental science, architectonics, and related areas. At the same time, it has evolved into a unique discipline that focuses on policy-oriented practical science with arguments for the reform of outdated laws, regulations, and traditional customs. Asian countries are currently growing rapidly and are catching up with developing countries. The lessons learned and know-how accumulated by JARES is helpful for practitioners and policymakers not only in Japan, but also in other Asian countries.

This book approaches the issue of rural-urban inequality through fieldwork conducted in a specific township (Zuogang) in Qinggang County, part of Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China. Presenting painstaking fieldwork in a single location, it successfully illuminates fundamental aspects of the reality and the complexity of rural-urban inequality that cannot be found in macro-level studies, most of which are prepared by economists. The book offers a unique combination of rigorous economic analysis with insightful social and anthropological analysis, as well as revealing interviews with local government officials. This approach provides a rich tapestry of rural perceptions of rural-urban inequality. With in-depth analysis and empirical evidence on questions concerning the development and root causes of urban-rural disparities, the book significantly enriches our understanding of the widely discussed issue of rural-urban income inequality, but from the unique perspective of rural China.

--The book could be used at undergraduate and postgraduate levels on urban and regional planning programmes, but could also feature in some urban geography programmes and international studies. --The book would have widespread international appeal reflecting its focus on the Commonwealth and its authorship by world renown academics, thought leaders and distinguished practitioners from 9 countries.

China's citizenship challenge tells a story of how labour NGOs contest migrant workers' citizenship marginalisation in China. The book argues that in order to effectively address problems faced by migrant workers, these NGOs must undertake 'citizenship challenge': the transformation of migrant workers' social and political participation in public life, the broadening of their access to labour and other rights, and the reinvention of their relationship to the city. By framing the NGOs' activism in terms of citizenship rather than class struggle, this book offers a valuable contribution to the field of labour movement studies in China. The monograph also proves exceptionally timely in the context of the state's repression of these organisations in recent years, which, as the book explores, were largely driven by their citizenship-altering activism. -- .

Originally published in 1991, the focus of the contributions in this book is the relationships between rurality and small-scale production, particularly in Europe. This remains relevant, as then, as when the book was first published, the issues covered had a particular resonance in the shifting terrain of Europe and the political debates surrounding its common future. The contributors explore the diversity and significance of rural small-scale production in different countries and the regional disciplinary theoretical discourses which inform research.

This handbook provides the most comprehensive examination of Asian cities - developed and developing, large and small - and their urban development. Investigating the urban challenges and opportunities of cities from every nation in Asia, the Handbook engages not only the global cities like Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul, and Mumbai, but also less studied cities like Dili, Male, Bandar Seri Begawan, Kabul, and Pyongyang. The Handbook discusses Asian cities in alignment to the United Nations' New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals in order to contribute to global policy debates. In doing so, it critically reflects on the development trajectories of Asian cities and imagines an urban future, in Asia and the world, in the post-globalisation and post-pandemic era. Presenting 43 chapters of original, insightful research, this book will be of interest to scholars, practitioners, students, and general readers in the fields of urban development, urban policy and planning, urban studies, and Asian studies.

China's Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI) is an ambitious infrastructure project conceived in 2013 by President Xi Jinping with development and investment initiatives stretching from Asia and Europe that reflect the original Silk Road with business networks through countries such as Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as India and Pakistan, spanning a route of more than four thousand miles and history that can be dated back more than 2200 years. Given the background of China's unique approach in fighting the COVID-19, and against the backdrop of sluggish economic growth, innovation and management within the sustainable development of BRI will be the key and the driving force for the post-pandemic economic recovery for many countries, especially when BRI countries now accounts for nearly 30% of China's foreign trade and 15% of outward direct investment. The vision to create a vast network of railways, energy pipelines, highways, and streamlined border crossings to expand the international use of Chinese currency and improve connectivity to China is good foresight and fortuitous with COVID-19 pandemic came to plague the world, and amid in the conflicts between US and China as well as a War between Russia and Ukraine. Since the inception of BRI many books are written to cover topics ranging from globalization to detailing how China's business and politics as a major motivation for China's overseas economic activities with case studies and practices, yet seldom of these books provide structured approach to the sustainable management of BRI projects. This book is about how to manage innovation, sustainability, and business necessary to make BRI works, and how to handle the issues, problems and crisis that may arise thereof. Participants of BRI projects can take many different roles but ultimately it is team effort and leadership for each project. Here the readers will find guidelines and insights to survive and prosper in a myriad of BRI opportunities and risks. Most important of all, this book provides a glimpse of different approach for success in BRI projects, including sustainability, environmental issues, social and political aspects, technological, choice of industry, project management, education and training, governance and many more.

Neither government programs nor massive charitable efforts responded adequately to the human crisis that was Hurricane Katrina. In this study, the authors use extensive interviews with Katrina evacuees and reports from service providers to identify what helped or hindered the reestablishment of the lives of hurricane survivors who relocated to Austin, Texas. Drawing on social capital and social network theory, the authors assess the complementary, and often conflicting, roles of FEMA, other governmental agencies and a range of non-governmental organizations in addressing survivors' short- and longer-term needs. While these organizations came together to assist with immediate emergency needs, even collectively they could not deal with survivors' long-term needs for employment, affordable housing and personal records necessary to rebuild lives. Community Lost provides empirical evidence that civil society organizations cannot substitute for an efficient and benevolent state, which is necessary for society to function.

This book provides a thorough discussion about fundamental questions regarding urban theories and modeling. It is a curated collection of contributions to a workshop held in Paris on October 12th and 13th 2017 at the Institute of Complex Systems by the team of ERC GeoDiverCity. There are several chapters conveying the answers given by single authors to problems of conceptualization and modeling and others in which scholars reply to their conception and question them. Even, the chapters transcribing keynote presentations were rewritten according to contributions from the respective discussions. The result is a complete "state of the art" of what is our knowledge about urban processes and their possible formalization.

Political meaning in architecture has been a subject of interest to many critics and writers. The most notable of these include Charles T. Goodsell and Kenneth Frampton. In Goodsell's (1988) statement "Political places are not randomly or casually brought into existence" (ibid, p. 8), the stipulation is that architecture has been used very deliberately in the past to bolster connotations of power and strength in cities representative of larger nations and political movements. The question central to this book relates to how this can be achieved. Goodsell argues that any study of the interplay between political ideology, architecture, and identity, demands a place imbued with political ideas opposed to "cold concepts and lifeless abstractions" (Goodsell 1988, p. 1). As a means through which to examine and evaluate the ways in which the development of cities can be influenced by political and ideological tendencies, this book focuses on Berlin, as a political discourse, given its significant destruction and reorganisation to reinstate its identity in the context of geopolitics and the advent of globalisation.

Redesigning the Unremarkable is a timely and necessary reminder that the often neglected elements and spaces of our built environment - from trash bins, seats, stairways, and fences to streets, bikeways, underpasses, parking lots, and shopping centers - must be thoughtfully redesigned to enhance human and planetary health. Using the lens of sustainable, salutogenic, and playable design, in this inspiring book, Miller and Cushing explore the challenges, opportunities, and importance of redesigning the unremarkable. Drawing on global research, theory, practical case studies, photographs, and personal experiences, Redesigning the Unremarkable is a vital text - a doer's guide - for researchers, policymakers and practitioners wanting to transform and positively reimagine our urban environment.