Providing an overview of urban social movements from a diverse range of empirical and theoretical perspectives, this Handbook includes not only a critical analysis of the transformations that have occurred in the urban landscape recently, but also sheds light on the strategies implemented by social actors in various socio-political and cultural contexts. It focuses on better understanding how and to what extent collective action around urban issues remains relevant in our modern world. Top international scholars introduce the main features of urban movements from countries and cities around the world, including across Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America, to highlight their diversity as well as the multiple scales through which they are employed. The Handbook first documents the concrete forms of contemporary urban movements, before highlighting new developments in the field, particularly in the face of new forms of communication, and finally examines the specificity of contemporary urban movements in the context of emerging unexpected local and global challenges. With a broad range of case studies and in-depth coverage of key issues, this Handbook is critical reading for urban studies and social movement studies scholars. The practical advice offered throughout also makes this an invigorating read for representatives of international institutions working on urban policies and development, as well as urban activists looking for a more in-depth study of the field.

This book presents the findings of a major Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project into urban austerity governance in eight cities across the world (Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Melbourne, Dublin, Leicester, Montréal and Nantes). It offers comparative reflections on the myriad experiences of collaborative governance and its limitations. An international collaborative from across the social sciences, the book discusses ways that citizens, activists and local states collaborate and come into conflict in attempting to build just cities. It examines the development of egalitarian collaborative governance strategies, provides innovative ideas and tools to extend emancipatory governance practices and shows hopeful possibilities for cities beyond austerity and neoliberalism.

This book presents the findings of a major Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project into urban austerity governance in eight cities across the world (Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Melbourne, Dublin, Leicester, Montreal and Nantes). It offers comparative reflections on the myriad experiences of collaborative governance and its limitations. An international collaborative from across the social sciences, the book discusses ways that citizens, activists and local states collaborate and come into conflict in attempting to build just cities. It examines the development of egalitarian collaborative governance strategies, provides innovative ideas and tools to extend emancipatory governance practices and shows hopeful possibilities for cities beyond austerity and neoliberalism.

This collection deals with the transformation of urban movements in these new social, economic and political environments.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203361369

The region is back in town. Galloping urbanization has pushed beyond historical notions of metropolitanism. City-regions have experienced, in Edward Soja's terms, "an epochal shift in the nature of the city and the urbanization process, marking the beginning of the end of the modern metropolis as we knew it." Governing Cities Through Regions broadens and deepens our understanding of metropolitan governance through an innovative comparative project that engages with Anglo-American, French, and German literatures on the subject of regional governance. It expands the comparative angle from issues of economic competiveness and social cohesion to topical and relevant fields such as housing and transportation, and it expands comparative work on municipal governance to the regional scale. With contributions from established and emerging international scholars of urban and regional governance, the volume covers conceptual topics and case studies that contrast the experience of a range of Canadian metropolitan regions with a strong selection of European regions. It starts from assumptions of limited conversion among regions across the Atlantic but is keenly aware of the remarkable differences in urban regions' path dependencies in which the larger processes of globalization and neo-liberalization are situated and materialized.

North American gated communities, African squatter settlements, European housing estates, and Chinese urban villages all share one thing in common: they represent types of suburban space. As suburban growth becomes the dominant urban process of the twenty-first century, its governance poses an increasingly pressing set of global challenges. In Suburban Governance: A Global View, editors Pierre Hamel and Roger Keil have assembled a groundbreaking set of essays by leading urban scholars that assess how governance regulates the creation of the world's suburban spaces and everyday life within them. With contributors from ten countries on five continents, this collection covers the full breadth of contemporary developments in suburban governance. Examining the classic North American model of suburbia, contemporary alternatives in Europe and Latin America, and the emerging suburbanisms of Africa and Asia, Suburban Governance offers a strong analytical introduction to a vital topic in contemporary urban studies.

New urban forms characterizing contemporary metropolises reflect a certain continuity with the patterns of the past. They also include unexpected forms of settlement and design that have emerged in response to social and economic needs and as a way of leveraging new technologies. Politics of the Periphery sets out to explore sub/urban governance in diverse contexts in order to better understand how materiality and space are shaped by the possibilities and constraints of confronting actors. This collection, edited by Pierre Hamel, examines the empirical aspects of collective action and planning in eight urban regions around the world – across North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa – and reveals the impacts and consequences of various structures of suburban governance. The case studies feature a diverse range of local actors facing both the specificity of their respective milieus and the broader context of extended urbanization as metropolitan regions cope with new territorial challenges. The book focuses on suburbanization processes that characterize most of these post-metropolitan regions and questions whether it is possible to improve suburban governance in the face of growing uncertainties arising from structural and subjective transformations. Paying close attention to the relationship between the local and the global, Politics of the Periphery challenges the planning processes of evolving metropolitan regions.