This text examines struggles over urban space in three contemporary first world cities: London, Perth and Brisbane. Through these examples the spatialised cultural politics of a number of "postcolonial" processes are unravelled: the imperial nostalgias of the one-time heart of empire, the City of London; the struggle of diasporic groups to make a homespace in the old imperial heartlands; the unsettling presence of Aboriginal claims for the sacred in the space of the modern city; and the emergence of hybrid spaces in the contemporary city. This book is about the unruly spatial politics of race and nation, nature and culture, past and present. This is a "global geography of the local" that takes theories of colonialism and postcolonialism to the space of the city - giving real space to the spatial metaphors of much contemporary social theory. If the contemporary city is a postmodern space it has not-so-hidden geographies of imperialism and postcolonialism.

Imperialism is seen as an historical relic, the British empire's colonial past providing rich allusions to space and territory. Yet imperialism not only lingers in the present but also shapes the postcolonial future. Edge of Empire examines struggles over urban space in three contemporary first world cities in an attempt to map the real geographies of colonialism and postcolonialism as manifest in modern society. From London, the one-time heart of the empire, to Perth and Brisbane, scenes of Aboriginal claims for the sacred in the space of the modern city, Jacobs emphasises the global geography of the local and unravels the spatialised cultural politics of postcolonial processes. Edge of Empire forms the basis for understanding imperialism over space and time, and is a recognition of the unruly spatial politics of race and nation, nature and culture, past and present.

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415120063

Part memento mori for architecture, and part invocation to reimagine the design values that lay at the heart of its creative purpose. Buildings, although inanimate, are often assumed to have "life." And the architect, through the act of design, is assumed to be their conceiver and creator. But what of the "death" of buildings? What of the decay, deterioration, and destruction to which they are inevitably subject? And what might such endings mean for architecture's sense of itself? In Buildings Must Die, Stephen Cairns and Jane Jacobs look awry at core architectural concerns. They examine spalling concrete and creeping rust, contemplate ruins old and new, and pick through the rubble of earthquake-shattered churches, imploded housing projects, and demolished Brutalist office buildings. Their investigation of the death of buildings reorders architectural notions of creativity, reshapes architecture's preoccupation with good form, loosens its vanities of durability, and expands its sense of value. It does so not to kill off architecture as we know it, but to rethink its agency and its capacity to make worlds differently. Cairns and Jacobs offer an original contemplation of architecture that draws on theories of waste and value. Their richly illustrated case studies of building "deaths" include the planned and the unintended, the lamented and the celebrated. They take us from Moline to Christchurch, from London to Bangkok, from Tokyo to Paris. And they feature the work of such architects as Eero Saarinen, Carlo Scarpa, Cedric Price, Arata Isozaki, Rem Koolhaas and Francois Roche. Buildings Must Die is both a memento mori for architecture and a call to to reimagine the design values that lay at the heart of its creative purpose.

A challenging and thought-provoking work that offers a new way of understanding how the sacred haunts the modern through the effect of the uncanny. Gelder and Jacobs show how Aboriginal claims for sacredness radiate out to affect the fortunes and misfortunes of the modern nation.

How can contemporary theories of difference enhance our understanding of traditional urban studies concerns such as housing, labor markets, and structures of state entitlement? What are the connections between urban space and identity politics? This provocative text provides fresh perspectives on the fragmented city within a cultural political economy framework. Contributors explore the role of race, ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality, able-bodiedness, and other axes of difference in the geography of postmodern cities. Using a range of cutting-edge theoretical and methodological approaches, the book probes the relationship of the broader realities of urban life--economic polarization, gentrification, and the proliferation of sites of consumption to the everyday life and political power of different communities.