Unruly Places

Alastair Bonnett’s tour of the world’s most unlikely micro-nations, moving villages, secret cities, and no man’s lands shows us the modern world from surprising new vantage points, and is bound to inspire urban explorers, off-the-beaten-trail wanderers, and armchair travellers. He connects what we see on maps to what’s happening in the world by looking at the places that are hardest to pin down: inaccessible zones, improvised settlements, and multiple cities sharing the same space. Consider Hobyo, a real-life pirate capital on the coast of the Indian Ocean, or Sealand, an abandoned gun platform off the English coast that a British citizen claimed as his own sovereign nation, issuing passports and making his wife a princess. Or Sandy Island, which appeared on maps well into 2012, despite the fact that it never existed. Illustrated with original maps and drawings, Unruly Places gives readers a new way of understanding the places we occupy. It’s a stunning testament to how mysterious the world remains today.

Alastair Bonnett explores extraordinary, off-grid, offbeat places including micro-nations, moving villages, secret cities, and no man's lands. Consider Sealand, an abandoned gun platform off the English coast that a British citizen claimed as his own sovereign nation, issuing passports and making his wife a princess. Or Baarle, a patchwork city of Dutch and Flemish enclaves where crossing the street can involve traversing national borders. Or Sandy Island, which appeared on maps well into 2012 despite the fact it never existed.

The text argues that cities are open to many forms of order and disorder both from within the city and outside. They represent cities potentials as well as their problems. It challenges the assumption that cities are threatened by disorder from below and that they might be ruled by 'order' imposed from above.

An Unruly World explores the diverse conundrums thrown up by seemingly unruly globalization. Examining how fast transnational capitalism is re-making the rules of the game, in a wide variety of different places, domains, and sectors, the authors focus on a wide range of issues: from analysis of 'soft capitalism', and the post-Cold War organizational drives of international trade unions, to the clamour of states to reinvent welfare policy, and the efforts of citizen groups to challenge trade and financial regimes. An Unruly World argues that we are not living in a world bereft of rules and rulers; the rules governing the global economy today are more strictly enforced by international organizations and rhetoric than ever before.

Geography is getting stranger. Out there, fleets of new islands are under construction and micro-nations are struggling into the light. As new borders and boundaries ebb and flow with increasing speed, it feels as if our old maps are being discarded, redrawn or torn up. Alastair Bonnett uncovers the stories of thirty-nine extraordinary places, each of which challenges us to re-imagine the world around us. From emerging islands, disruptive enclaves and bold utopian visions to uncanny ruins, ghostly tunnels and hidden landscapes – these are destinations that lie beyond ordinary coordinates. A follow on from the critically acclaimed Off the Map, this is a timely and fascinating discussion of place, ownership and ideas of state.

From a MacArthur "Genius," a bold new perspective on the history of Asia, highlighting the long quest to tame its waters Asia's history has been shaped by her waters. In Unruly Waters, historian Sunil Amrith reimagines Asia's history through the stories of its rains, rivers, coasts, and seas--and of the weather-watchers and engineers, mapmakers and farmers who have sought to control them. Looking out from India, he shows how dreams and fears of water shaped visions of political independence and economic development, provoked efforts to reshape nature through dams and pumps, and unleashed powerful tensions within and between nations. Today, Asian nations are racing to construct hundreds of dams in the Himalayas, with dire environmental impacts; hundreds of millions crowd into coastal cities threatened by cyclones and storm surges. In an age of climate change, Unruly Waters is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Asia's past and its future.

This urgent book brings our cities to the fore in understanding the human input into climate change. The demands we are making on nature by living in cities has reached a crisis point and unless we make significant changes to address it, the prognosis is terminal consumption. Providing a radical new argument that integrates global understandings of making nature and making cities, the authors move beyond current policies of mitigation and adaption and pose the challenge of urban stewardship to tackle the crisis. Their new way of thinking re-orients possibilities for environmental policy and calls for us to reinvent our cities as spaces for activism.