Who shapes our cities? In an age of increasing urban pluralism, globalization and immigration, decreasing public budgets, and an ongoing crisis of authority among designers and planners, the urban environment is shaped by a number of non-traditional stakeholders. The book surveys the kaleidoscope of views on the agency of urbanism, providing an overview of the various scholarly debates and territories that pertain to bottom-up efforts such as everyday urbanism, DIY urbanism, guerilla urbanism, tactical urbanism, and lean urbanism. Uniquely, this books seeks connections between the various movements by curating a range of views on the past, present, and future of bottom-up urbanism. The contributors also connect the recent trend of bottom-up efforts in the West with urban informality in the Global South, drawing parallels and finding contrast between social and institutional structures across the globe. The book appeals to urbanists in the widest sense of the word: those who shape, study, and improve our urban spaces.

This book explores the tenacity of Iran's informal settlements against the backdrop of the World Bank's USD 80 million loan for physical upgrading. Arefi seeks to identify and unravel the distinctive models, policies, processes, and outcomes associated with it, and explains why-despite obvious challenges-informal settlements remain popular in Iran, and also how understanding them in a broader theoretical context helps rectify existing redevelopment policies in order to develop more effective ones.

A new taxonomy of placemaking is needed; concerns have been expressed about the professionalization of placemaking through the proliferation of standards, zoning codes, and restrictive covenants. "Place matters" has become a mantra in many disciplines - architecture, urban planning and urban design, geography, and sociology to name a few. While conceptualized narrowly by individual disciplines, a holistic framework of placemaking is sorely missing. Mahyar Arefi seeks to fill this gap by exploring these questions: how are places physically created, socially mobilized, and politically contested? This book explores three competing approaches to placemaking: need-based, opportunity-based, and asset-based. Using a case study approach, the book delves into each paradigm and its stages of physical formation, social mobilization, and political contestation.

A new taxonomy of placemaking is needed; concerns have been expressed about the professionalization of placemaking through the proliferation of standards, zoning codes, and restrictive covenants. "Place matters" has become a mantra in many disciplines - architecture, urban planning and urban design, geography, and sociology to name a few. While conceptualized narrowly by individual disciplines, a holistic framework of placemaking is sorely missing. Mahyar Arefi seeks to fill this gap by exploring these questions: how are places physically created, socially mobilized, and politically contested? This book explores three competing approaches to placemaking: need-based, opportunity-based, and asset-based. Using a case study approach, the book delves into each paradigm and its stages of physical formation, social mobilization, and political contestation.