In port cities around the world, waterfront development projects have been hailed both as spaces of promise and as crucial territorial wedges in twenty-first century competitive growth strategies. Frequently, these mega-projects have been intended to transform derelict docklands into communities of hope with sustainable urban economies-economies intended to both compete in and support globally-networked hierarchies of cities. This collection engages with major theoretical debates and empirical findings on the ways waterfronts transform and have been transformed in port-cities in North and South America, Europe, the Caribbean. It is organized around the themes of fixities (built environments, institutional and regulatory structures, and cultural practices) and flows (information, labor, capital, energy, and knowledge), which are key categories for understanding processes of change. By focusing on these fixities and flows, the contributors to this volume develop new insights for understanding both historical and current cases of change on urban waterfronts, those special areas of cities where land and water meet. As such, it will be a valuable resource for teaching faculty, students, and any audience interested in a broad scope of issues within the field of urban studies.

In port cities around the world, waterfront development projects have been hailed both as spaces of promise and as crucial territorial wedges in twenty-first century competitive growth strategies. Frequently, these mega-projects have been intended to transform derelict docklands into communities of hope with sustainable urban economies-economies intended to both compete in and support globally-networked hierarchies of cities. This collection engages with major theoretical debates and empirical findings on the ways waterfronts transform and have been transformed in port-cities in North and South America, Europe, the Caribbean. It is organized around the themes of fixities (built environments, institutional and regulatory structures, and cultural practices) and flows (information, labor, capital, energy, and knowledge), which are key categories for understanding processes of change. By focusing on these fixities and flows, the contributors to this volume develop new insights for understanding both historical and current cases of change on urban waterfronts, those special areas of cities where land and water meet. As such, it will be a valuable resource for teaching faculty, students, and any audience interested in a broad scope of issues within the field of urban studies.

Massive protests have disrupted global summit meetings from Seattle to Quebec City and from Gothenburg to Genoa. These demonstrations let the world know that resistance to globalization remains strong and vibrant. Not as clearly heard, though, are accounts of local communities organizing popular collective actions to resist those same institutions and policies of globalization.

Focusing on four countries -- Mexico, Guatemala, United States, and Canada -- the narratives in this volume tell of peoples' collective struggles for environmental, economic and social justice. They deal with: indigenous peoples struggles against violence and coercion in Guatemala; Guatemalan refugees mobilizing in exile; environmental education for sustainable agriculture in Mexico; organizing waste pickers of Mexico; the resistance efforts to better working conditions of telemarketing operators; improving seniors housing; and the ways people of color have taken community actions to change oppressive environments in New York City.

In all cases the focus is on the meaning and usefulness of individual acts of resistance and their relationship to collective action: the ways people cope with difficult working conditions and how these acts help to change, not only the working conditions, but the workers themselves.

Large-scale development is once again putting Toronto's waterfront at the leading edge of change. As in other cities around the world, policymakers, planners, and developers are envisioning the waterfront as a space of promise and a prime location for massive investments. Currently, the waterfront is being marketed as a crucial territorial wedge for economic ascendancy in globally competitive urban areas.

Reshaping Toronto's Waterfront analyses how and why 'problem spaces' on the waterfront have become 'opportunity spaces' during the past hundred and fifty years. Contributors with diverse areas of expertise illuminate processes of development and provide fresh analyses of the intermingling of nature and society as they appear in both physical forms and institutional arrangements, which define and produce change. Reshaping Toronto's Waterfront is a fundamental resource for understanding the waterfront as a dynamic space that is neither fully tamed nor wholly uncontrolled.