Disruptive Urbanism Glocal Urbanity

This book is the first in a trilogy that proposes a new model of Glocal Urbanity that contributes to replace the degraded urban situation created from the post-Fordist transition to current globalization. From 52 propositions it proposes to understand Glocal urbanity as a new modernity derived from the Axial Age. It proposes to understand the city, also as a socio-technological process. Integrate concepts such as Complexity, Urban Metabolism and Second Order Cybernetics into our disciplinary corpus. Urbanistically translate the new Glocal Transregionalism that emerges in step with the progressive dissolution of the Westphalian Nation-State, and definitely to promote a more Disruptive urbanism formed by tangible values and intangible virtues that is capable of overcoming the demagogic-populist currents that today besiege us.

Disruptive Urbanism examines how different forms and modes of the so called "sharing economy" are manifesting in cities and regions throughout the world, and how policy makers are responding to these disruptions. The emergence of the so called "sharing economy" and the "disruptive technologies" have profound implications for urban policy and governance. Initial expectations that "sharing" of homes, offices or vehicles could solve urban problems such as congestion or housing affordability have given way to concerns over job precarity, neighbourhood transformation, and the growing power of platforms in disrupting urban governance and regulation. Contributors to this volume canvas these issues, examining how the "sharing economy" is manifesting in urban areas, the implications of this for urban living, and how policy makers are responding to these changes. Implications for urban research, policy, and practice are highlighted through chapters which address forms of urban "sharing" across housing, transport, work, and food and wider processes of globalisation and neoliberalism as they disrupt cities and urban policy making. Disruptive Urbanism will be of great interest to scholars of urban planning, urban governance, the sharing economy, and housing studies. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Urban Policy and Research.

Through the study of more than twenty novels produced in Spain from the 1840s to the 1920s, this book explores the literary means by which the social options available to modern Spanish bourgeois citizens were discursively constructed, occasionally before and often concomitantly to their production in reality. As a result, this study is concerned with the interplay of realism and reality in modern Spain. From the earliest folletines of the 1840s to the Modernist novels of the 1920s, the majority of novels written in this eighty-year period are what one might term novelas de costumbres contempor neas, or novels of contemporary customs, and therefore primarily concerned with faithfully copying and moreover influencing real social norms in the public sphere. In these pages, I argue that the spatial and behavioral discourses in the novels of contemporary customs offer a telling history of the evolving formulation of the Spanish bourgeoisie. The linking of novels and urbanism is hardly arbitrary in the context of nineteenth-century Spain. Urbanism, particularly in the nineteenth century, was as much a verbal construction as the novel, as proven by the lengthy treatises of such prominent Spanish bureaucrats, engineers, architects, and urban planners as Ram n de Mesonero Romanos, Ildefons Cerd and Carlos Mar a de Castro. For Spanish intellectuals of this era, city planning and the novel functioned as parallel, enmeshed discourses in which to work out what it meant to be middle class and the roles this class ought to play in contemporary society. In this way, they can be considered associated fields of discourse, in the sense described by Michel Foucault in The Archaeology of Knowledge. Foucault's treatise was a call for scholars to reexamine historical fields and question the historical grouping of knowledge(s) into certain discursive unities, and consider whether these might be broken up and new ones conceived. In this vein, this book undertakes a broader and more integrative view of the Spanish nineteenth century, calling into question the boundaries of fields such as etiquette and urban planning, or literature and touristic discourse.

From one of today’s most inspired architects and urban advocates, a manifesto for architecture as a force for addressing our biggest social challenges The world is facing unprecedented challenges, from climate change and population growth, to political division and technological dislocation, to declining mental health and fraying cultural fabric. With most of the planet’s population now living in urban environments, cities are the spaces where we have the greatest potential to confront and address these problems. In this visionary book, Vishaan Chakrabarti argues for an “architecture of urbanity,” showing how the design of our communities can create a more equitable, sustainable, and joyous future for us all. Taking readers from the great cities of antiquity to the worldwide exurban sprawl of our postindustrial age, Chakrabarti examines architecture’s relationship to history’s greatest social, technological, and environmental dilemmas. He then presents a rich selection of work by a global array of practicing architects, demonstrating how innovative design can dramatically improve life in big cities and small settlements around the world, from campuses and refugee camps to mega-cities like São Paulo, Lima, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and Tokyo. Lavishly illustrated with a wealth of original graphics, data visualizations, photographs, and drawings, The Architecture of Urbanity eloquently explains why cities are the last, best hope for humanity, and why designers must, alongside political, business, community, and cultural leaders, steward the healing of our planet.

A critical and interdisciplinary exploration of our world's continuously urbanizing and expanding coastline. For centuries, cities have grown and expanded onto previously saturated grounds; "reclaiming" land from estuaries, marshes, mangroves, and seabeds. While these artificial coastlines are sites of tremendous real estate, civic, and infrastructural investments, they are also the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Terra-Sorta-Firma documents the global extent of reclaimed coastal lands, and provides a framework for comparison across varying geographies, cultures, and histories. It renders visible the ubiquity and precarity of urban coastal reclamation in an age of increased environmental and economic indeterminacy. It challenges designers, developers, policymakers, engineers, and urbanists to reconsider the design and construction of land itself, and to re-imagine this most fundamental of all infrastructures along a gradient of inundation.

Through the analysis of Indian metropolises, this volume critiques the reality of “entrepreneurial governance” that has emerged as a major urban development practice in cities of the global south. In neoliberal India, the use of management rhetoric in urban development has rapidly led to the growth of urban/peri-urban structures and spaces that are supposedly “smart” and “entrepreneurial”, which are networked within global systems of production, finance, technology/ telecommunication, culture and politics. Through diverse empirical evidence from India, particularly from the metropolises of New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai, this volume focuses on the fallout of the deployment of “entrepreneurial governance” practices at national, state and local levels. Foremost, it explores the impact of specific institutional and organizational reorientations and changing urban spatial landscapes at the local level; secondly, it discusses the socio-economic implications of rollback of the state and involvement of non-state organizations in governance as part of urban entrepreneurialism; further, it discusses the regulation of urban development projects by local governments and the impact of "entrepreneurial governance" for citizens, often resulting in social exclusion and inequality. Finally, it explores the inherent contradictions within political and institutional landscapes that can be described as “entrepreneurial”. Written by scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, and focusing on different facets of entrepreneurial governance in Indian metropolises, this book is of interest to researchers of urban politics, public policy, urban sociology, anthropology, urban geography, planning and architecture.

Worlding Cities is the first serious examination of Asian urbanism to highlight the connections between different Asian models and practices of urbanization. It includes important contributions from a respected group of scholars across a range of generations, disciplines, and sites of study. Describes the new theoretical framework of ‘worlding’ Substantially expands and updates the themes of capital and culture Includes a unique collection of authors across generations, disciplines, and sites of study Demonstrates how references to Asian power, success, and hegemony make possible urban development and limit urban politics

The ‘smart city’ is often promoted as a technology-driven solution to complex urban issues. Drawing on original research conducted in urban African settings, this book provides a much-needed alternative view, exploring how ‘home-grown’ digital disruption, driven and initiated by local actors, upending the mainstream corporate narrative.