Hybrid Urbanism

Despite strong forces toward globalization, much of late 20th century urbanism demonstrates a movement toward cultural differentiation. Such factors as ethnicity and religious and cultural heritages have led to the concept of hybridity as a shaper of identity. Challenging the common assumption that hybrid peoples create hybrid places and hybrid places house hybrid people, this book suggests that hybrid environments do not always accommodate pluralistic tendencies or multicultural practices. In contrast to the standard position that hybrid space results from the merger of two cultures, the book introduces the concept of a third place and argues for a more sophisticated understanding of the principal. In contributed chapters, the book provides case studies of the third place, enabling a comparative and transnational examination of the complexity of hybridity. The book is divided into two parts. Part one deals with pre-20th century examples of places that capture the intersection of modernity and hybridity. Part two considers equivalent sites in the late 20th century, demonstrating how hybridity has been a central feature of globalization.

This book explores how histories of migration, cultural encounter and transculturation have shaped formations of urban space, domestic architecture and cultural modernity in Kolkata from the early colonial period to the beginning of the era of India’s economic liberalization. It charts how these themes were manifest in what was an important ‘contact zone’ in the history of globalization and the modern city. Drawing on a wide range of resources and representations, from urban plans and architectural drawings to European travel journals and Bengali literature and cinema, the book investigates the history of Kolkata through an examination of key urban and architectural spaces across the colonial and postcolonial epochs. Through illustrated chapters, it sheds new light on questions of difference and segregation, cultural hybridity, migration, and entanglements of tradition and modernity in the city, analyzing spaces inhabited by a diverse range of cultures, including several neglected in previous studies. Architecture and Urbanism in a Contact Zone offers an instructive contribution to the fields of global architectural history and theory, urban studies and postcolonial cultural studies for scholars, researchers and students alike.

Accompanying DVD contains the short documentary film The Village and the megacity / directed by Jacob Ipsen, Detlev Ipsen ; idea, concept, Detlev Ipsen.

With the impending demise of modernist planning, the footprints and corpses of failed modernist visions are littered everywhere. A vacuum of implementable urban theories has occurred at the time when unprecedented expansion and restructuring of cities in rapidly developing economies are taking place. In this collection of essays, William S W Lim zeroes in on the peculiarities and dynamics of present Asian urban and architectural conditions in order to challenge and transcend the socio-ecological forms and political influences generated by the current system of global capitalism. Part I of this book consists of the main essay, which attempts to establish baselines for an effective formulation of ethical urbanism in Asia, by clarifying issues that have previously been unquestioningly bound up with Western values and discourses. As an architect/urbanist, Lim lends a determinedly spatialist and environmental perspective to issues such as rights, ethics, happiness and social justice, while compelling his readers to rethink previously established notions about them. Part II of this book consists of three city studies on Hanoi, Shanghai and Singapore, completed in the last two years, which attempt to match LimOCOs theoretical formulation with actual conditions occurring in Asia today. Also included is OC Asian Architecture in the New MillenniumOCO, a fascinating discourse on contemporary design conducted from a postmodern perspective."

This book argues that understanding global urbanism in the twenty-first century requires us to cast our gaze upon vast city-regions without an urban core.

This is the first book ever to examine the architecture and urbanism of the Persian Gulf as a complete entity, dealing equally with conditions on the eastern Iranian shoreline as in Arabic countries on the western side. By inviting a range of architects and scholars to write about historical and contemporary influences on 14 cities along both Gulf coastlines, the book traces the changes in architecture and human settlement in relation to environmental factors and particularity of place. It provides an innovative contribution to the study of architecture and globalisation through a detailed investigation of this particular region, investigating how buildings and cities are being shaped as a result. A set of thematic essays at the end offer important insights into issues of globalisation, urbanism and environmental design, drawing from the experience of the Persian Gulf. The outcome is a unique record of the Gulf in the early-21st century at a point when global capitalism is making major inroads and yet questions of architectural design, climate change, ecological sustainability, cultural identity and so-called 'Facebook Democracy' are likewise shaking up the Middle Eastern region. The book thus offers a fresh reading of the architecture and urbanism of a fascinating and often contradictory region, while also showing how globalisation can be analysed in a more engaged and integrated manner.

The urban legacy of the Global South since the colonial era and how sustainable development and environmental and social justice can be achieved. Remarkably little of the expansive literature on development and globalization considers actual urban form and the physical design of cities as outcomes of these phenomena. The development that has shaped historic transformations in urban form and urbanism—and the consequent human experiences—remains largely unexplored. In this book, Tridib Banerjee fills this void by linking the idea of development with those of urbanism, urban form, and urban design, focusing primarily on the contemporary cities in the developing world—the Global South—and their intrinsic prospects in city design. Further, he examines the endogenous possibilities for the future design of these cities that may address growing inequality and the environmental crisis. Banerjee deftly traces the urban legacy of the Global South from the beginning of the colonial era, closely examining the economic, political, and ideological forces that influenced colonial and postcolonial development, drawing from relevant experiences of different cities in the developing world and discussing the arguments for the historic parity of these cities with their Western counterparts. Finally, Banerjee considers essential notions of future city design that are grounded in the critical challenges of sustainable development, equity, environmental and social justice, and diversity, and how such outcomes can be achieved. This book serves as the opening of a long overdue conversation among design, development, and planning scholars and practitioners, and those interested in the urban development of the Global South.