Mobile Urbanism

How knowledge and power flow between places and impact cities worldwide.

Edited by thought leaders in the fields of urban informatics and urban interaction design, this book brings together case studies and examples from around the world to discuss the role that urban interfaces, citizen action, and city making play in the quest to create and maintain not only secure and resilient, but productive, sustainable and viable urban environments. The book debates the impact of these trends on theory, policy and practice. The individual chapters are based on blind peer reviewed contributions by leading researchers working at the intersection of the social / cultural, technical / digital, and physical / spatial domains of urbanism scholarship. The book will appeal not only to researchers and students, but also to a vast number of practitioners in the private and public sector interested in accessible content that clearly and rigorously analyses the potential offered by urban interfaces, mobile technology, and location-based services in the context of engaging people with open, smart and participatory urban environments.

Julie Ren investigates the motivations and practices of making art spaces in Beijing and Berlin to engage with comparative urbanism as a framework for doing research, beyond its significance as a critical intervention. Across vastly different contexts, where universal theories of modernity or development seem increasingly misplaced, she innovatively explores the ways that art spaces employ creative capital to sustain themselves in a competitive urban landscape. She shows how these art spaces are embedded within a politics of aspiration and demonstrates that aspiration is an important lens through which to understand the nature of, and possibilities for, urban change.

This book presents and discusses methodological approaches and operational tools aimed at increasing the awareness and skills necessary to face the social, economic and environmental challenges usually encountered in spatial planning. In addition, it deals with the concepts of risk and resilience from both a theoretical and operational point of view. The book promotes a better understanding of risk, resilience, and related notions such as vulnerability, fragility and anti-fragility in urban and landscape studies, while also analyzing new planning policies. Accordingly, it will benefit all researchers and public decision-makers looking for an interdisciplinary approach to risk and resilience.

Periodizing contemporary fiction against the backdrop of neoliberalism, After Critique identifies a notable turn away from progressive politics among a cadre of key twenty-first-century authors. Through authoritative readings of foundational texts from writers such as Percival Everett, Helena Viramontes, Uzodinma Iweala, Colson Whitehead, Tom McCarthy, and David Foster Wallace, Huehls charts a distinct move away from standard forms of political critique grounded in rights discourse, ideological demystification, and the identification of injustice and inequality. The authors discussed in After Critique register the decline of a conventional leftist politics, and in many ways even capitulate to its demise. As Huehls explains, however, such capitulation should actually be understood as contemporary U.S. fiction's concerted attempt to reconfigure the nature of politics from within the neoliberal beast. While it's easy to dismiss this as post-ideological fantasy, Huehls draws on an array of diverse scholarship--most notably the work of Bruno Latour--to suggest that an entirely new form of politics is emerging, both because of and in response to neoliberalism. Arguing that we must stop thinking of neoliberalism as a set of norms, ideological beliefs, or market principles that can be countered with a more just set of norms, beliefs, and principles, Huehls instead insists that we must start to appreciate neoliberalism as a post-normative ontological phenomenon. That is, it's not something that requires us to think or act a certain way; it's something that requires us to be in and occupy space in a certain way. This provocative treatment of neoliberalism in turn allows After Critique to reimagine our understanding of contemporary fiction and the political possibilities it envisions.

Responding to the urgent need to rethink the relationships between systems of government and those who are governed, this book examines ways that we can design regulatory systems that better support the knowledge and creativity of citizens.

Since the late eighteenth century, academic engagement with political, economic, social, cultural and spatial changes in our cities has been dominated by theoretical frameworks crafted with reference to just a small number of cities. This book offers an important antidote to the continuing focus of urban studies on cities in ‘the Global North’. Urban Theory Beyond the West contains twenty chapters from leading scholars, raising important theoretical issues about cities throughout the world. Past and current conceptual developments are reviewed and organized into four parts: ‘De-centring the City’ offers critical perspectives on re-imagining urban theoretical debates through consideration of the diversity and heterogeneity of city life; ‘Order/Disorder’ focuses on the political, physical and everyday ways in which cities are regulated and used in ways that confound this ordering; ‘Mobilities’ explores the movements of people, ideas and policy in cities and between them and ‘Imaginaries’ investigates how urbanity is differently perceived and experienced. There are three kinds of chapters published in this volume: theories generated about urbanity ‘beyond the West’; critiques, reworking or refining of ‘Western’ urban theory based upon conceptual reflection about cities from around the world and hybrid approaches that develop both of these perspectives. Urban Theory Beyond the West offers a critical and accessible review of theoretical developments, providing an original and groundbreaking contribution to urban theory. It is essential reading for students and practitioners interested in urban studies, development studies and geography.

Community foundations bring together the resources of individuals, families, and businesses to support effective nonprofits in their communities. Over the years, foundations have come to engage community problem-solving through more than just grant-making. They have added a rich array of other activities, including programs of community capacity building, active modes of advocacy, and centres for meeting. In 2011, the 700+ institutions in the United States gave an estimated $4.2 billion to a variety of nonprofit activities in fields that included the arts and education, health and human services, the environment, and disaster relief. The origins of this book stem from conversations among the leadership of community foundations about the challenges they must overcome in order to make such "foundational" contributions to their communities. As community foundations enter the second century of their existence (the first foundation was formed in Cleveland in 1914), the need for knowledge and best practices has never been greater. This book, with expert authors representing the best and the brightest in this important field, fills that need.