Mobile Urbanism

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

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.

In the past decade, urban regeneration policy makers and practitioners have faced a number of difficult challenges, such as sustainability, budgetary constraints, demands for community involvement and rapid urbanization in the Global South. Urban regeneration remains a high profile and important field of government-led intervention, and policy and practice continue to adapt to the fresh challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, as well as confronting long standing intractable urban problems and dilemmas. This Companion provides cutting edge critical review and synthesis of recent conceptual, policy and practical developments within the field. With contributions from 70 international experts within the field, it explores the meaning of ‘urban regeneration’ in differing national contexts, asking questions and providing informed discussion and analyses to illuminate how an apparently disparate field of research, policy and practice can be rendered coherent, drawing out common themes and significant differences. The Companion is divided into six sections, exploring: globalization and neo-liberal perspectives on urban regeneration; emerging reconceptualizations of regeneration; public infrastructure and public space; housing and cosmopolitan communities; community centred regeneration; and culture-led regeneration. The concluding chapter considers the future of urban regeneration and proposes a nine-point research agenda. This Companion assembles a diversity of approaches and insights in one comprehensive volume to provide a state of the art review of the field. It is a valuable resource for both advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in Urban Planning, Built Environment, Urban Studies and Urban Regeneration, as well as academics, practitioners and politicians.

Technological changes have often produced important social changes that translate into spatial and planning practice. Whereas the intelligent city is one of the unavoidable and even dominant concepts, digital uses can influence urban planning in four different directions. These scenarios are represented by a compass composed of a horizontal axis opposing institutional and non-institutional actors, and a second axis with open and closed opposition.

This book is the first in which current societal themes revolving around urbanism, architecture, and city planning are put forth solely through female perspectives. It reveals the importance of having female lenses on certain societal debates.

Over the last 20 years, urbanization processes have undergone profound transformations under the growing influence of private actors, particularly in the financial sector. This has exposed the physical environment of various cities to global capital flows, which has generated an overall rise in real estate values on a global scale. This is often disconnected from the financial capacities of local actors – primarily households – which then increases the inequalities and vulnerabilities of societies regarding financial and environmental risks. This book offers the keys to understanding these new dynamics of capital accumulation in the general built-up environment of cities by taking into account the diversity of their configurations, their intensity and their urban effects according to national contexts. Beyond the cases involving the major Western countries, the initial centers of the financial industry and the theorizations on the urban, this book addresses the particular contexts of real estate production in four major regions: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and West Africa.

This book discusses the effects of Neo-Liberal policies on the transformations of architectural and urban practices and education in the transition from the era of “professionalism” to “post-professionalism.” Building on previous literature in the field of contemporary theory of architecture, it provides the necessary resources for the study of contemporary architecture and urban politics, urban sociology, local administration and urban geography. Further, it develops a political and critical perspective on contemporary practices of architecture and urbanism, their implementation, legal background, political effects and social results. The book will interest readers from a wide range of academic disciplines, from political science to architecture, and from urban studies to sociology.

"Ugo Rossi and Alberto Vanolo take us on a journey around the ascent and crisis of urban liberalism, providing a clear and highly readable analysis of key issues and debates in the field of urban political geography." - Ola Söderström, Université de Neuchâtel "It is in the city trenches that the crises, contradictions, and counterpolitics of neoliberalization are finding some of their most vivid and consequential expressions, where new worlds are being imagined, made, and unmade. This has yet to be mapped. But in Urban Political Geographies, we have a timely and astute field guide to this unfolding process." - Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia How can we think about the urban within a political and geographical framework? This compelling textbook scrutinizes urban politics through a theoretical and empirical lens to provide readers with a clear understanding of the relationship between political, spatial and economic issues relating to the urban environment. Taking a truly global analysis, the book uses international comparative case studies from cities across the world including, London, Beijing, Austin and Vancouver. It draws on ideas and theories from human geography, politics, sociology, economics and development. Engaging in style and thorough in its coverage of the key issues, the book is essential reading for students and scholars looking for a book that deals with contemporary urban debates from a political, economic and geographical perspective.