Maturing Megacities

This edited volume covers the multiple changes concerning urban governance in the course of the progressive transformation of the Pearl River Delta mega-urban region in China. Looking at the megacities Guangzhou and Shenzhen, it analyzes the maturing of socio-economic, political and spatial structures after the first waves of economic globalization, political transformation, and their rapid expansion and urbanization. The initial claim and starting point of the book is the existence of a profound multidimensional shift in the coastal mega-urban region with a major tendency towards urban upgrading, economic restructuring and a clearly observable consolidation of political institutions. For the first time since the beginning of the reform and opening up after 1978, this has led to a stronger bias toward urban regeneration, an adaptive re-use of the building stock and an establishment of post-industrial knowledge-based creative industries. The book investigates these changes as a set of mutually dependent developments that have to be understood and analyzed in connection with one another. Thus, the backgrounds and underlying forces that shape physical restructuring in the developed urban cores of the mega-urban region and the ways in which the relevant actors and institutions are trying to both cope with and to influence each other are introduced here.

What determines how cities move on? The ever-increasing challenges to urban mobility come in many forms, and approaches to address them range from the technically ingenious to attempts to change travel behaviour. Key amongst factors essential to the success of any such approach is whether the urban environment proves to be fertile ground for the desired progress. Another vital determinant of success is how well individual measures to engineer the transport system interact with other developments. This leads to the principal subject of Megacity Mobility Culture: the basic principles that determine the paths along which cities move. This book demonstrates that the concept of ‘mobility culture’ provides a framework for understanding the development of urban transport which transcends the boundaries between academic disciplines. Based on a discussion of the diversity of megacities worldwide, it provides help in navigating the complexity of megacity mobility culture. Experts from megacities around the world each take the reader on a journey to their own city and its mobility culture, giving a deeper insight into the unique evolutionary paths of mobility that these places have taken, and what lies before them. Whilst acknowledging the overwhelming diversity of cities worldwide, the authors also identify common denominators behind the evolution of urban transport systems – seven temperaments which are found in a unique mix in any given city, defining the character of its mobility culture. The Institute for Mobility Research is a research facility of the BMW Group. It deals with future developments and challenges relating to mobility across all modes of transport, with automobility being only one aspect among many. Taking on an international perspective, ifmo’s activities focus on social science and sociopolitical, economic and ecological issues, but also extend to cultural questions related to the key challenges facing the future of mobility. The work of the Institute is supported by an interdisciplinary board of renowned scientists and scholars, and by representatives of BMW, Deutsche Bahn, Lufthansa, MAN, Siemens and The World Bank.

The Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanization investigates the mutual relationship between the struggle for political inclusion and processes of informal urbanization in different socio-political and cultural settings. It seeks a middle ground between two opposing perspectives on the political meaning of urban informality. The first, the ‘emancipatory perspective’, frames urban informality as a practice that fosters autonomy, entrepreneurship and social mobility. The other perspective, more critical, sees informality predominantly as a result of political exclusion, inequality, and poverty. Do we see urban informality as a fertile breeding ground for bottom-up democracy and more political participation? Or is urban informality indeed merely the result of a democratic deficit caused by governing autocratic elites and ineffective bureaucracies? This book displays a wide variety of political practices and narratives around these positions based on narratives conceived upon specific case cities. It investigates how processes of urbanization are politicized in countries in the Global South and in transition economies. The handbook explores 24 cities in the Global South, as well as examples from Eastern Europe and East Asia, with contributions written by a global group of scholars familiar with the cases (often local scholars working in the cities analyzed) who offer unique insight on how informal urbanization can be interpreted in different contexts. These contributions engage the extreme urban environments under scrutiny which are likely to be the new laboratories of 21st-century democracy. It is vital reading for scholars, practitioners, and activists engaged in informal urbanization.

This book focuses on spatial planning of megacities that are growing in Asia, Africa, and America. These cities are not be seen in isolation from their respective influence regions. They complement each other. Most of the solutions to the problems of such cities are found in their respective regions, and, on the other hand, the regions derive their strength from their respective megacities. There is a need for promoting integrated spatial planning of megacity regions. The five chapters in this book highlight the spatial planning of such regions.

The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies is a timely intervention into the field of global urban studies, coming as comparison is being more widely used as a method for global urban studies, and as a number of methodological experiments and comparative research projects are being brought to fruition. It consolidates and takes forward an emerging field within urban studies and makes a positive and constructive intervention into a lively arena of current debate in urban theory. Comparative urbanism injects a welcome sense of methodological rigor and a commitment to careful evaluation of claims across different contexts, which will enhance current debates in the field. Drawing together more than 50 international scholars and practitioners, this book offers an overview of key ideas and practices in the field and extends current thinking and practice. The book is primarily intended for scholars and graduate students for whom it will provide an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across the range of disciplines which converge in the study of urbanism, including geography, sociology, political studies, planning, and urban studies.

This book provides new insights into popular understandings of urbanism by using a wide range of case studies from lesser studied cities across the Global South and Global North to present evidence for the need to reconstruct our understanding of who and what makes urban environments. Myers explores the global hierarchy of cities, the criteria for positioning within these hierarchies and the successes of various policymaking approaches designed specifically to boost a city’s ranking. Engaging heavily with postcolonial studies and Global South thinking, he shows how cities construct one another’s spaces and calls for a new understanding of planetary urbanism that moves beyond Western-centric perspectives.

This book demonstrates how agriculture can play a determining role in integrated, climate-optimised urban development. Agriculture within urban growth centres today is more than an economic or social left-over or a niche practice. It is instead a complex system that offers multiple potentials for interaction with the urban system. Urban open space and agriculture can be linked to a productive green infrastructure – this forms new urban-rural linkages in the urbanizing region and helps shape the city. But in order to do this, agriculture has to be seen as an integral part of the urban fabric and it has to be put on the local agenda. Urban Agriculture for Growing City Regions takes the example of Casablanca, one of the fastest growing cities in North Africa, to investigate this approach. The creation of synergies between the urban and rural in an emerging megacity is demonstrated through pilot projects, design solutions, and multifunctional modules. These synergies assure greater resource efficiency; particularly regarding the use and reuse of water, and they strengthen regional food security and the social integration of multiple spheres. A transdisciplinary research approach brings together different scientific disciplines and local actors into a process of integrated knowledge production. The book will have a long lasting legacy and is essential reading for researchers, planners, practitioners and policy makers who are working on urban development and urban agricultural strategies.

World cities are reaching previously inconceivable sizes and populations. For the last fifteen years, The Megacities Foundation has encouraged public debate on this development, uniting practitioners from the fields of architecture, economics, geography, sociology and urban planning. This book offers a compilation of the Foundation's best lectures, defining megacities and their processes and systems.