Books in the Questioning Cities series

Examines the 1990's rise of a black ghetto in rust belt America, 'the global ghetto.' This work finds out how race and political economy in cities dynamically connect in ways to deepen deprivation in these areas. It is useful for students of geography, urban studies and sociology.

This book proposes-and its various chapters offer demonstrations-importing into urban studies a body of theories, concepts, and perspectives developed in the field of science and technology studies (STS) and, more specifically, Actor-Network Theory (ANT).

Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene: Interruptions and Possibilities centres on how to organize anew the articulation between emancipatory theory and political activism.

This book is the first interdisciplinary volume to examine the complex relationship between globalization, violence, and the visual culture of cities

Invoking the notion of ''cosmopolitics'' from Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers, this volume shows how and why cities constitute privileged sites for studying the search for and composition of common worlds of cohabitation. A cosmopolitical approach to the city focuses on the multiple assemblages of human and nonhuman actors that constitute urban common worlds, and on the conflicts and compromises that arise among different ways of assembling the city. It brings into view how urban worlds are always in the process of being subtly transformed, destabilized, decentred, questioned, criticized, or even destroyed. As such, it opens up novel questions as to the gradual and contested composition of urban life, thereby forcing us to pay more explicit attention to the politics of urban assemblages. Focusing on changing sanitation infrastructures and practices, emerging forms of urban activism, processes of economic restructuring, transformations of the built environment, changing politics of expert-based urban planning, as well as novel practices for navigating the urban everyday, the contributions gathered in this volume explore different conceptual and empirical configurations of urban cosmopolitics: agencements, assemblies, atmospheres. Taken together, the volume thus aims at introducing and specifying a novel research program for rethinking urban studies and politics, in ways that remain sensitive to the multiple agencies, materialities, concerns and publics that constitute any urban situation.

First Published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Using an unusual set of over 100 interviews with local political and community leaders, this book investigates the prospects that grassroots urban policies can provide "pushes from below" which help nation-states address the thorny challenges of ethnic conflict and democratization.

Including urban case studies, international research and contributions from prominent urban scholars, this book describes how interrelated, everyday economic, political and cultural processes form and transform urban environments. It is aimed at the students, scholars and researchers of geographical, environmental and urban studies.

Examining constructions, representations, imaginations and theorizations of 'cityscapes' in contemporary culture, this interdisciplinary volume includes commissioned essays from the fields of architecture, visual art and urban geography. It draws on urban studies and moves beyond familiar cultural representations of the city.

Establishes a notion of conscious agency in our understanding of urban life. Using empirical examples and drawing on pragmatist ideas of 'experience' and rationality, this text offers an alternative reading of the city.

This book explains the economic and social changes cities experience as they compete in a global world and explores how the discourse of globalizing has become a major narrative in the restructuring of cities around the world.

Bringing together cutting-edge studies into a range of contemporary sites of urban concern, this volume unfolds the collective research agenda of urban cosmopolitics in three directions: the relational constitution and political effects of urban technologies, infrastructures, and other material-semiotic agencies (agencements); the coming together of new urban concerns, constituencies, and publics (assemblies); and the coalescing of urban practices into shared spaces of co-existence, life-support, and survival (atmospheres). Together, we assert, this exploration of urban cosmopolitics amounts to a `strong program¿ of urban studies, allowing us to shed new light on key topics of contemporary research, including urban planning and citizen publics; economic dynamics and constraints; street life and the everyday; built environment dynamics and differentiations; and disasters, risks, and sustainable transitions.

This book proposes - and its various chapters offer demonstrations - importing into urban studies a body of theories, concepts, and perspectives developed in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and, more specifically, Actor-Network Theory (ANT).

This book is the first interdisciplinary volume to examine the complex relationship between globalization, violence, and the visual culture of cities

A collection of essays on how and why cities are connecting to each other in a globalizing world. This work covers four key themes beginning with the different ways of measuring a 'world city network', ranging from analyses of corporate structures to airline passenger flows.

Combining urban-studies theories with Benjaminian cultural analyses, and theoretical discussions with close-readings of cultural works in various media, this book compares Mexico City and Sao Paulo.

Examining constructions, representations, imaginations and theorizations of 'cityscapes' in contemporary culture, this new interdisciplinary volume includes commissioned essays from the fields of architecture, visual art and urban geography.

Concerned with the borders and boundaries, constraints and limits on accepting, acknowledging and celebrating difference in public, this book interrogates how difference is negotiated and performed. It helps us re-imagine urban public space as a site of potentiality, difference, and enchanted encounters.

Drawing together research from an international team of contributors, this book provides a systematic overview of small cities. Centering on urban change as opposed to pure ethnographic description, it focuses on informed empirical research that raises many important issues.

Including international research and contributions, this collection offers an approach to untangling the interconnected processes involved in forming urban landscapes. It seeks to enable scholars and researchers of geographical, and urban studies to understand how economic, political and cultural processes form and transform urban environments.

Among their least appealing aspects, cities are frequently characterized by concentrations of insecurity and exploitation. If today's cities are full of injustices and unrealized promises, how would a Just City function? Is a Just City merely a utopia, or does it have practical relevance? This book engages with the debates around these questions.

Presents a framework for urban development. This book considers the two framing axes of urban modernity and development, and argues that if cities are to be imagined in equitable and creative ways, urban theory must overcome these axes with their Western bias, and that resources must become at least as cosmopolitan as cities themselves.

Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene: Interruptions and Possibilities centres on how to organize anew the articulation between emancipatory theory and political activism.