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Urban Spaces in Contemporary Latin American Literature

This collection of essays studies the depiction of contemporary urban space in twenty-first century Latin American fiction. The contributors to this volume seek to understand the characteristics that make the representation of the postmodern city in a Latin American context unique. The chapters focus on cities from a wide variety of countries in the region, highlighting the cultural and political effects of neoliberalism and globalization in the contemporary urban scene. Twenty-first century authors share an interest for images of ruins and dystopian landscapes and their view of the damaging effects of the global market in Latin America tends to be pessimistic. As the book demonstrates, however, utopian elements or “spaces of hope” can also be found in these narrations, which suggest the possibility of transforming a capitalist-dominated living space.

Urban Spaces and Gender in Asia (Sustainable Development Goals Series)

Exploring the relationship between place and identity, this book gathers 30 papers that highlight experiences from throughout the Asia-Pacific region. The countries profiled include China, India, Japan, Indonesia, and Thailand. Readers will gain a better understanding of how urbanization is affecting gender equity in Asian-Pacific cities in the 21st century. The contributing authors examine the practical implications of urban development and link them with the broader perspective of urban ecology. They consider how visceral experiences connect with structural and discursive spheres. Further, they investigate how multiple, interconnected relations of power shape gender (in)equity in urban ecologies, and address such issues as construction of Kawaii as an idealized femininity, diversity among homosexuals in urban India, and single women and rental housing. In turn, the authors present hitherto unexplored sub-themes from historiography and existentialist literary perspectives, and share a vast range of multi-disciplinary views on issues concerning gendered dispossession due to the impact of urban policy and governance. The topics covered include socio-spatial and ethnic segregation in urban spaces; intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and caste in urban spaces; and identity-based marginalization, including that of LGBT groups. Overall, the book brings together perspectives from the humanities and the social sciences, and represents a valuable contribution to the vital theoretical and practical debates on urbanism and gender equity.

Urban Space and Representation

Theories of urban space have become the focus of a great deal of work by scholars in cultural geography, urban studies and critical theory. This volume contributes to that debate by analysing the relationship between theories of urban space and literary and visual representations of the city – an emergent area of confluence in literary, film and cultural studies. *BR**BR*The contributors address themes such as visual culture and spectacle; class and capital; community and public space; and nation, diaspora and belonging. Cities covered include New York, Chicago, Jerusalem, Paris, London, Birmingham and Freetown, Sierra Leone. Artists and writers discussed include Piet Mondrian, Nella Larsen, Rudolph Fisher, Amos Oz, David Grossman, Sarah Schulman, Jonathan Larsen, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Paul Auster and Wayne Wang.

Urban Space and National Identity in Early Twentieth Century São Paulo, Brazil: Crafting Modernity

This book focuses on how the political, cultural, and technical networks within the field of engineering provided the space within which an important professional middle class prospered in the city of São Paulo and made lasting contributions to the development of modern Brazil.

Urban Space and Cityscapes: Perspectives from Modern and Contemporary Culture

From the verticals of New York, Hong Kong and Singapore to the sprawls of London, Paris and Jakarta, this interdisciplinary volume of new writing examines constructions, representations, imaginations and theorizations of 'cityscapes' in modern and contemporary culture. With specially-commissioned essays from the fields of cultural theory, architecture, film, literature, visual art and urban geography, it offers fresh insight into the increasingly complex relationship between urban space, cultural production and everyday life. This volume draws on critical urban studies and moves beyond familiar cultural representations of the city by considering urban planning and architecture. Organized under three inter-related themes - image, text and form - essay topics range from the examination of cyberpunk skylines, pagan urbanism and the cinema of urban disaster, to the analysis of iconic city landmarks such as the twin towers, the London Eye and the Judisches Museum Berlin. Covering a diverse range of cities, including Berlin, Chicago, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Paris, and Venice, this fantastic resource for students, scholars and researchers alike, works expertly at the intersections of visual, material, and literary culture.

Urban Space and Cityscapes: Perspectives from Modern and Contemporary Culture

From the verticals of New York, Hong Kong and Singapore to the sprawls of London, Paris and Jakarta, this interdisciplinary volume of new writing examines constructions, representations, imaginations and theorizations of 'cityscapes' in modern and contemporary culture. With specially-commissioned essays from the fields of cultural theory, architecture, film, literature, visual art and urban geography, it offers fresh insight into the increasingly complex relationship between urban space, cultural production and everyday life. This volume draws on critical urban studies and moves beyond familiar cultural representations of the city by considering urban planning and architecture. Organized under three inter-related themes - image, text and form - essay topics range from the examination of cyberpunk skylines, pagan urbanism and the cinema of urban disaster, to the analysis of iconic city landmarks such as the twin towers, the London Eye and the Judisches Museum Berlin. Covering a diverse range of cities, including Berlin, Chicago, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Paris, and Venice, this fantastic resource for students, scholars and researchers alike, works expertly at the intersections of visual, material, and literary culture.

Urban Soundscapes: A Guide to Listening for Landscape Architecture and Urban Design

Sound and listening are intrinsically linked to how we experience and engage with places and communities. This guide puts forward a new conceptual framework of embodied affectivity that emphasises listening in urban research and design and advances new ways of knowing and making. The guide invites landscape architects and urban designers to become soundscape architects and offers practical advice on sound and listening applicable to each stage of a design project: from reading the environment to intervening on it.Urban Soundscapes foregrounds listening as an affective mediator between subjects and multispecies environments, and a vehicle to think and conceptualise environmental research and design beyond prevailing visual and human-centred modes. The guide expands landscape architects’ and urban designers’ tools and skills to assess existing soundscapes, predict how those soundscapes will be altered through their designs, consider sound as a creative and active part of the design process and envisage how users might perceive and be affected by those soundscapes as they evolve in time. The volume sits in the interface of research and practice and interweaves theoretical, methodological and creative contributions from acoustic ecology, ecoacoustics, bioacoustics and sound art. Each of the design stages is illustrated through project examples that demonstrate the many advantages of incorporating attentive listening and sound into Landscape Architecture and Urban Design Practice. This book shows how incorporating listening and sounding as part of the design process promotes slow and subtle ways of practice, adds social and ecological value through the reduction of noise pollution and by monitoring the health of habitats, and enables the design of soundscapes that complement the character and design intent of a scheme and elicit joy and wonder.The book will be of interest to practitioners and academics in landscape architecture, and other design and spatial fields such as urban design, architecture, geography and engineering, who play a primary role in the composition of the soundscape.

Urban Soundscapes: A Guide to Listening for Landscape Architecture and Urban Design

Sound and listening are intrinsically linked to how we experience and engage with places and communities. This guide puts forward a new conceptual framework of embodied affectivity that emphasises listening in urban research and design and advances new ways of knowing and making. The guide invites landscape architects and urban designers to become soundscape architects and offers practical advice on sound and listening applicable to each stage of a design project: from reading the environment to intervening on it.Urban Soundscapes foregrounds listening as an affective mediator between subjects and multispecies environments, and a vehicle to think and conceptualise environmental research and design beyond prevailing visual and human-centred modes. The guide expands landscape architects’ and urban designers’ tools and skills to assess existing soundscapes, predict how those soundscapes will be altered through their designs, consider sound as a creative and active part of the design process and envisage how users might perceive and be affected by those soundscapes as they evolve in time. The volume sits in the interface of research and practice and interweaves theoretical, methodological and creative contributions from acoustic ecology, ecoacoustics, bioacoustics and sound art. Each of the design stages is illustrated through project examples that demonstrate the many advantages of incorporating attentive listening and sound into Landscape Architecture and Urban Design Practice. This book shows how incorporating listening and sounding as part of the design process promotes slow and subtle ways of practice, adds social and ecological value through the reduction of noise pollution and by monitoring the health of habitats, and enables the design of soundscapes that complement the character and design intent of a scheme and elicit joy and wonder.The book will be of interest to practitioners and academics in landscape architecture, and other design and spatial fields such as urban design, architecture, geography and engineering, who play a primary role in the composition of the soundscape.

The Urban Sociology Reader (Routledge Urban Reader Series)

The urban world is an exciting terrain for investigating the central institutions, structures and problems of the social world and how they have transformed through the last 200 years. This Reader comprises sections on urban social theory, racial and social difference in the city, culture in everyday life, culture and the urban economy, globalization and transnational social relations and the regulation of urban space. Drawing together seminal selections covering the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, this Reader includes forty-three significant writings from eminent names such as Simmel, Wirth, Park, Burgess, DuBois, Zukin, Sassen, and Harvey. The 2nd edition illuminates more recent urban issues such as sprawl, sustainability, immigration and urban protest. Selections are predominantly sociological, but some readings cross disciplinary boundaries. Providing an essential resource for students of urban studies, this book brings together important but, till now, widely dispersed writings. Editorial commentaries precede each entry; introducing the text, demonstrating its significance, and outlining the issues surrounding its topic, whilst the associated bibliography enables deeper investigations.

The Urban Sociology Reader (Routledge Urban Reader Series)

The urban world is an exciting terrain for investigating the central institutions, structures and problems of the social world and how they have transformed through the last 200 years. This Reader comprises sections on urban social theory, racial and social difference in the city, culture in everyday life, culture and the urban economy, globalization and transnational social relations and the regulation of urban space. Drawing together seminal selections covering the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, this Reader includes forty-three significant writings from eminent names such as Simmel, Wirth, Park, Burgess, DuBois, Zukin, Sassen, and Harvey. The 2nd edition illuminates more recent urban issues such as sprawl, sustainability, immigration and urban protest. Selections are predominantly sociological, but some readings cross disciplinary boundaries. Providing an essential resource for students of urban studies, this book brings together important but, till now, widely dispersed writings. Editorial commentaries precede each entry; introducing the text, demonstrating its significance, and outlining the issues surrounding its topic, whilst the associated bibliography enables deeper investigations.

Urban Social Sustainability: Theory, Policy and Practice (Routledge Studies in Sustainability)

This ground breaking volume raises radical critiques and proposes innovative solutions for social sustainability in the built environment. Urban Social Sustainability provides an in-depth insight into the discourse and argues that every urban intervention has a social sustainability dimension that needs to be taken into consideration, and incorporated into a comprehensive and cohesive ‘urban agenda’ that is built on three principles of recognition, integration, and monitoring. This should be achieved through a dialogical and reflexive process of decision-making. To achieve sustainable communities, social sustainability should form the basis of a constructive dialogue and be interlinked with other areas of sustainable development. This book underlines the urgency of approaching social sustainability as an urban agenda and goes on to make suggestions about its formulation. Urban Social Sustainability consists of original contributions from academics and experts within the field and explores the significance of social sustainability from different perspectives. Areas covered include urban policy, transportation and mobility, urban space and architectural form, housing, urban heritage, neighbourhood development, and urban governance. Drawing on case studies from a number of countries and world regions the book presents a multifaceted and interdisciplinary understanding from social sustainability in urban settings, and provides practitioners and policy makers with innovative recommendations to achieve more socially sustainable urban environment.

Urban Social Sustainability: Theory, Policy and Practice (Routledge Studies in Sustainability)

This ground breaking volume raises radical critiques and proposes innovative solutions for social sustainability in the built environment. Urban Social Sustainability provides an in-depth insight into the discourse and argues that every urban intervention has a social sustainability dimension that needs to be taken into consideration, and incorporated into a comprehensive and cohesive ‘urban agenda’ that is built on three principles of recognition, integration, and monitoring. This should be achieved through a dialogical and reflexive process of decision-making. To achieve sustainable communities, social sustainability should form the basis of a constructive dialogue and be interlinked with other areas of sustainable development. This book underlines the urgency of approaching social sustainability as an urban agenda and goes on to make suggestions about its formulation. Urban Social Sustainability consists of original contributions from academics and experts within the field and explores the significance of social sustainability from different perspectives. Areas covered include urban policy, transportation and mobility, urban space and architectural form, housing, urban heritage, neighbourhood development, and urban governance. Drawing on case studies from a number of countries and world regions the book presents a multifaceted and interdisciplinary understanding from social sustainability in urban settings, and provides practitioners and policy makers with innovative recommendations to achieve more socially sustainable urban environment.

Urban Social Housing: Global Health and Climate Change Mitigation and Redress

This book proposes operational approaches to public sector support to community-led development of urban low-income group social housing in the prevailing and medium-term. Within the context of mitigating and redressing the existential threats of climate change and global pathogenic transmission, building on current concerns of global heating and the lessons learnt from the 2020-22 COVID-19 pandemic, the book closely examines recent examples from a wide international range of countries and cities from the Sri Lanka experience to Arab States of the Middle East and the Andes. Topics include maintenance and management of public sector housing, poverty alleviation objectives, climate change mitigation, housing density, local land management and planning, land rights, affordable housing markets, and international governance and administration, ultimately pointing to the universal need for institutional, organisational and human skills development and the compilation and dissemination of operationally successful examples of participatory partnerships for affordable social housing. The book will be of interest to researchers, instructors, practitioners, and students of urban development, housing, environmental design, land-use planning, public administration and environmental health engineering.

Urban Social Housing: Global Health and Climate Change Mitigation and Redress

This book proposes operational approaches to public sector support to community-led development of urban low-income group social housing in the prevailing and medium-term. Within the context of mitigating and redressing the existential threats of climate change and global pathogenic transmission, building on current concerns of global heating and the lessons learnt from the 2020-22 COVID-19 pandemic, the book closely examines recent examples from a wide international range of countries and cities from the Sri Lanka experience to Arab States of the Middle East and the Andes. Topics include maintenance and management of public sector housing, poverty alleviation objectives, climate change mitigation, housing density, local land management and planning, land rights, affordable housing markets, and international governance and administration, ultimately pointing to the universal need for institutional, organisational and human skills development and the compilation and dissemination of operationally successful examples of participatory partnerships for affordable social housing. The book will be of interest to researchers, instructors, practitioners, and students of urban development, housing, environmental design, land-use planning, public administration and environmental health engineering.

Urban Slums and Circular Economy Synergies in the Global South: Theoretical and Policy Imperatives for Sustainable Communities (Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements)

This book takes a theoretical and empirical distance from urban slums/low-income settlements as a threat to environmental sustainability and recast them as places where environmentally rehabilitative and circular practices occur—drawing on the theoretical lens of the circular economy (CE). CE is defined as regenerative system that minimizes waste, emission, and energy leakage by slowing, closing, and narrowing material and energy loops. In principle, CE departs from the traditional linear model of take-make-use-dispose. As conceived in urban contexts, circular cities offer possibilities to regenerate natural systems, design out waste, and keep products in use. While the CE key principles of reduce, repair, and reuse are essential to the sustainable and inclusive interventions in urban slums, there is lack of case studies exploring the role of place and agency, especially the slum living-CE nexus in global south contexts. In inequitable urban transitions, a nuanced understanding of thesynergies between urban slums and the circular economy is not only theoretically relevant for reconceptualizing the slum in urban sustainability discourses but also exert policy and practice ramifications to decidedly figure out how the urban slum phenomenon can foster the sustainable and inclusive development of marginal areas through contextual and people-centered initiatives.

Urban Shrinkage, Industrial Renewal and Automotive Plants

This book focuses on the relationship between the auto industry and the built environment at multiple scales, a topic of particular interest now as the industry is going through a period of major transformation. Drawing from multiple perspectives, including architecture, urban design and urban planning, the authors examine the changing form of the auto factory itself, the changing geography of auto production, and the challenges faced by communities as the auto plants that once brought them prosperity, and often a sense of identity, leave town. They examine four places that are dealing in different ways, and with varying success, with the aftermath of a decommissioned auto plant in their midst. These are Janesville, Wisconsin, and Willow Run, Michigan, in the U.S., and Bochum, Germany, and Genk, Belgium, in Europe. Together these four cases provide some clues about what the future might look like for places that were once intimately connected with the manufacture of cars.

Urban Services in Developing Countries

Urban Segregation and Governance in the Americas

Residential segregation is a key issue for good governance in Latin American cities. The isolation of people of different social classes or ethnicities has potential political and social consequences, including differential access to and quality of education, health and other services. This volume uses the recent availability of geo-coded census data and techniques of spatial analysis to conduct the first detailed comparative examination of residential segregation in six major Latin American metropolises, with Austin, Texas, as a US comparison. It demonstrates the high degree of residential segregation of contemporary Latin American cities and discusses implications for the welfare of urban residents.

Urban Safety and Peacebuilding: New Perspectives on Sustaining Peace in the City (Studies in Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding)

This volume draws together original research related to conceptual and practical advances at the interface of urban safety and peacebuilding. The book reflects the advances in urban safety and peacebuilding to help address the rapidly increasing risk of conflict and insecurity in cities. Specifically, it draws on contributions to the Technical Working Group on the Confluence of Urban Safety and Peacebuilding Practice, an informal expert network co-facilitated by the United Nations Office at Geneva, UN-Habitat’s Safer Cities Programme, and the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform. A focus on ‘sustaining peace’ serves as a framework for situating new policy responses against conflict, violence, and exclusion in the city, and for promoting a conversation across disciplinary and specialist silos. The volume thereby broadens the optic of peacebuilding practice beyond interstate and intrastate armed conflicts – and especially their aftermath – and reconnects it to the community-level origins of building peace. The analysis and practice presented here will remind those willing to work towards peaceful and inclusive cities that there are tried and tested approaches available, and a host of experts and practitioners ready to accompany those prepared to lead in their respective contexts. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of peacebuilding, urban studies, security studies, and international relations.

Urban Safety and Peacebuilding: New Perspectives on Sustaining Peace in the City (Studies in Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding)

This volume draws together original research related to conceptual and practical advances at the interface of urban safety and peacebuilding. The book reflects the advances in urban safety and peacebuilding to help address the rapidly increasing risk of conflict and insecurity in cities. Specifically, it draws on contributions to the Technical Working Group on the Confluence of Urban Safety and Peacebuilding Practice, an informal expert network co-facilitated by the United Nations Office at Geneva, UN-Habitat’s Safer Cities Programme, and the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform. A focus on ‘sustaining peace’ serves as a framework for situating new policy responses against conflict, violence, and exclusion in the city, and for promoting a conversation across disciplinary and specialist silos. The volume thereby broadens the optic of peacebuilding practice beyond interstate and intrastate armed conflicts – and especially their aftermath – and reconnects it to the community-level origins of building peace. The analysis and practice presented here will remind those willing to work towards peaceful and inclusive cities that there are tried and tested approaches available, and a host of experts and practitioners ready to accompany those prepared to lead in their respective contexts. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of peacebuilding, urban studies, security studies, and international relations.

Urban-Rural Interactions: Towns as Focus Points in Rural Development (Contributions to Economics)

Modern Europe has rural roots. Even today, as much as 90 per cent of Europe (EU25) consists of rural areas in which half of the population lives. While different rural areas often face different challenges, the shift from agricultural production towards a multifunctional landscape and the increasing value assigned to environmental values affect all rural areas. The ambition to develop a more diversified rural economy, as well as the bottom-up approach and local focus of many rural policies, require a clear knowledge of the current socio-economic function of towns and town-hinterland linkages. Therefore, the aim of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the current function of towns in Europe in general and in the Netherlands more specifically. By using both micro- and macro-approaches, the multifaceted relationships between town-hinterland and the rural economy are explored at different spatial levels and for different actors, in particular for households, farms and firms.

Urban Roar: A Psychophysical Approach to the Design of Affective Environments

Urban Roar argues for the existence of 'autonomous affectivities' that roar beneath the din of the urban, seeking the attention of us humans so captured by the environments of our own making. In hearing the urban roar, it is the mythic intention of this book to discover ways in which we can work with the intensities of more-than-human forces to vitalize our cities. The book explores methods by which artists, particularly those sound artists involved in fieldwork practices, might encounter and translate autonomous affectivities between different environments. Of particular interest is Jung's concept of synchronicity and its relationship to artistic creation – as experience, flow and catalyst – in manifesting autonomous affectivities into diverse and affective environments. The book makes use of both theoretical and practical approaches: from a study of scholarship through which it is argued that an autonomous affectivity is equivalent to an archetype (via Jung) and an essence (via Deleuze's reading of Spinoza), to theoretical considerations of the situated body in everyday contexts, to practical study of an artistic research experiment designed to reveal and index autonomous affectivities encountered during fieldwork practices, for the purpose of influencing urban design interventions. In this fresh analysis, Lacey reveals the possibilities in urban environments.

Urban Roar: A Psychophysical Approach to the Design of Affective Environments

Urban Roar argues for the existence of 'autonomous affectivities' that roar beneath the din of the urban, seeking the attention of us humans so captured by the environments of our own making. In hearing the urban roar, it is the mythic intention of this book to discover ways in which we can work with the intensities of more-than-human forces to vitalize our cities. The book explores methods by which artists, particularly those sound artists involved in fieldwork practices, might encounter and translate autonomous affectivities between different environments. Of particular interest is Jung's concept of synchronicity and its relationship to artistic creation – as experience, flow and catalyst – in manifesting autonomous affectivities into diverse and affective environments. The book makes use of both theoretical and practical approaches: from a study of scholarship through which it is argued that an autonomous affectivity is equivalent to an archetype (via Jung) and an essence (via Deleuze's reading of Spinoza), to theoretical considerations of the situated body in everyday contexts, to practical study of an artistic research experiment designed to reveal and index autonomous affectivities encountered during fieldwork practices, for the purpose of influencing urban design interventions. In this fresh analysis, Lacey reveals the possibilities in urban environments.

Urban Rhythms and Travel Behaviour: Spatial and Temporal Phenomena of Daily Travel

The recent availability of longitudinal data on individual trip making and activity behaviour has provided analysts with new insights into the structures and motives of daily life travel. Multi-week travel diary data-sets and GPS observations are exciting sources of information for the description and modelling of the variability of individual travel patterns. Through an analysis of these strong new data sets, this book questions what are the most suitable methodological tools to represent the structures of long-term travel behaviour. It also examines what the data tells us about the travellers' motives and looks at how planning should translate the findings into forecasting tools and transport strategies. In doing so, the multifaceted and ambiguous character of daily life travel is revealed, illustrating how, while sound routines in time and space seem to dominate daily life, individuals show a considerable amount of variability and flexibility in travel and activity behaviour.

Urban Rhythms and Travel Behaviour: Spatial and Temporal Phenomena of Daily Travel

The recent availability of longitudinal data on individual trip making and activity behaviour has provided analysts with new insights into the structures and motives of daily life travel. Multi-week travel diary data-sets and GPS observations are exciting sources of information for the description and modelling of the variability of individual travel patterns. Through an analysis of these strong new data sets, this book questions what are the most suitable methodological tools to represent the structures of long-term travel behaviour. It also examines what the data tells us about the travellers' motives and looks at how planning should translate the findings into forecasting tools and transport strategies. In doing so, the multifaceted and ambiguous character of daily life travel is revealed, illustrating how, while sound routines in time and space seem to dominate daily life, individuals show a considerable amount of variability and flexibility in travel and activity behaviour.