A few months into the popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in 2009/10, the promises of social media, including its ability to influence a participatory governance model, grassroots civic engagement, new social dynamics, inclusive societies and new opportunities for businesses and entrepreneurs, became more evident than ever. Simultaneously, cartography received new considerable interest as it merged with social media platforms. In an attempt to rearticulate the relationship between media and mapping practices, whilst also addressing new and social media, this interdisciplinary book abides by one relatively clear point: space is a media product. The overall focus of this book is accordingly not so much on the role of new technologies and social networks as it is on how media and mapping practices expand the very notion of cultural engagement, political activism, popular protest and social participation.

For the antagonist, private communities are icons of post-consensus, fragmenting civic society, enclosing and excluding by contractual constitution and sometimes by walls and gates. For others they are simply an efficient new way of organizing urban life.
"Private Cities" brings together an international team of authors in an attempt to construct an interdisciplinary discourse on the global spread of private communities based upon empirical evidence. Case studies from the US, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe and China are used to explore local and global explanations of the phenomenon. Two distinct propositions emerge from the analysis, firstly that private neighborhoods are a manifestation of the processes bound up in the globalization of culture and economy. Alternatively they can be seen to emerge and adapt locally. Unifying the chapters is the notion that private neighborhoods are a new territorial form of organization on a local scale.
The volume takes an institutionalist approach, developing a model in which cities are shaped by the interplay of local and global processes and evolve at the interface of spontaneous and planned order. It seeks to draw together the various themes, propositions and hypotheses in a way that clarifies the questions asked in different ways by different social science perspectives and in a way that poses researchable questions and new agendas.

For the antagonist, private communities are icons of post-consensus, fragmenting civic society, enclosing and excluding by contractual constitution and sometimes by walls and gates. For others they are simply an efficient new way of organizing urban life. Contributed to, and edited by, an international team of leading authors, this revealing book constructs an interdisciplinary discourse on the global spread of private communities based upon empirical evidence. Case studies from the US, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe and China are used to explore local and global explanations of the phenomenon. Taking an institutionalist approach, this informative textbook for undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers alike, develops a model in which cities are shaped by the interplay of local and global processes, and evolve at the interface of spontaneous and planned order. It draws together the various themes, propositions and hypotheses in a way that clarifies the questions by different social science perspectives and that poses researchable questions and new agendas.

In diesem essential wird praxisorientiert dargestellt, wie interaktive Exkursionen im Hochschulkontext von Studierenden vorbereitet und moderiert werden koennen. Ausgangspunkt bildet der Ansatz eines "lehrenden Lernens", bei dem die Studierenden zu Expert*innen fur einzelne Themenbereiche werden. Kern des Konzepts sind exkursionsdidaktische Drehbucher, die von Kleingruppen ausgearbeitet werden. Mit Tipps zur Wahl von Standorten, zur Exkursionsleitung und zur interaktiven Gestaltung von einzelnen Exkursionsbloecken stellt das essential die "Werkzeuge" vor, die fur eine erfolgreiche Gestaltung von Exkursionen notwendig sind.

In vielen Landern der Welt sind in den letzten Jahren Siedlungen und Apartmentanlagen entstanden, die durch Zaune abgeschlossen sind und deren Zugange bewacht werden. Das Buch untersucht anhand bewachter Wohnkomplexe im Libanon die Ursachen und die sozialen Folgen dieser Fragmentierung der Siedlungsstrukturen."