Books in the Cities and Society series

Researches the lives of gecekondu settlers in the capital city of Turkey in order to understand how households cope with poverty and why some households are more successful than others in reducing their deprivation. This book takes a critical stance towards conceptions such as household survival, livelihood and coping strategy.

Decentralization is accepted as one of the defining features of the third wave of democratic transitions in Latin America and commonly understood as an index and an agent of democratization. This book examines the relationship between global economic processes and decentralization.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Oslo, Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City offers an examination of gentrification from below, exploring the effects of this process upon city neighbourhoods and those that inhabit them, whether residents, business owners and their customers, or local activists.

We know very little about variations in urban class and ethnic segregation among nations. By emphasizing the importance of contextual diversity in the study of urban residential segregation, this book questions popular urban theories such as global city, neoliberal urbanism, and gentrification.

By studying urban activism in Central and Eastern Europe, this volume argues that the recent resurgence of urban grassroots mobilisation represents a new phase in the development of post-socialist civil societies and that these civil societies have significantly more vitality than is commonly perceived. The case studies here reflect the diversity and complexity of post-socialist urban movements, capturing also the extent to which the laboratory of urban politics is richly illustrative of the complex nexus of state-society-market relations within post-socialism.

This collection of field-based case-studies examines the role and contributions of AfricaΓÇÖs informal public transport (also referred to as paratransit) to the production of city forms and urban economies, as well as the voices, experiences, and survival tactics of its poor and stigmatised workforce. With attention to the question of what a micro-level analysis of the organisation and politics of informal public transport in urbanizing Africa might tell us about the precarious existence and agency of its informal workforce, it explores the political and socio-economic conditions of contemporary African cities, spanning from Nairobi and Dar es Salaam to Harare, Cape Town, Kinshasa and Lagos. Mapping, analysing and comparing the everyday experiences of informal transport operators across the continent, this book sheds light on the multiple challenges facing AfricaΓÇÖs informal transport workers today, as they negotiate the contours of city life, expand their horizons of possibility and make the most of their time. It thus offers directions for more effective policy response to urban public transport, which is changing fundamentally and rapidly in light of neoliberal urban planning strategies and ΓÇÿWorld ClassΓÇÖ city ambitions.

This collection of field-based case-studies examines the role and contributions of AfricaΓÇÖs informal public transport (also referred to as paratransit) to the production of city forms and urban economies, as well as the voices, experiences, and survival tactics of its poor and stigmatised workforce. With attention to the question of what a micro-level analysis of the organisation and politics of informal public transport in urbanizing Africa might tell us about the precarious existence and agency of its informal workforce, it explores the political and socio-economic conditions of contemporary African cities, spanning from Nairobi and Dar es Salaam to Harare, Cape Town, Kinshasa and Lagos. Mapping, analysing and comparing the everyday experiences of informal transport operators across the continent, this book sheds light on the multiple challenges facing AfricaΓÇÖs informal transport workers today, as they negotiate the contours of city life, expand their horizons of possibility and make the most of their time. It thus offers directions for more effective policy response to urban public transport, which is changing fundamentally and rapidly in light of neoliberal urban planning strategies and ΓÇÿWorld ClassΓÇÖ city ambitions.

Contending that everyday sociability and social networks are central elements to an understanding of urban poverty, this book draws on detailed research conducted in Sao Paulo in an examination of the social networks of individuals who identify as poor.

What are the consequences of staying in or moving out of a socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhood? In European urban sociology, research has mostly focused either on lower class ethnic minorities, or on white ethnic majority middle classes. This book fills by looking at upwardly mobile Turkish-Germans living in Berlin.