Author: Ignacio Farías Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135202737 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 354
Book Description
This book takes it as a given that the city is made of multiple partially localized assemblages built of heterogeneous networks, spaces, and practices. The past century of urban studies has focused on various aspects—space, culture, politics, economy—but these too often address each domain and the city itself as a bounded and cohesive entity. The multiple and overlapping enactments that constitute urban life require a commensurate method of analysis that encompasses the human and non-human aspects of cities—from nature to socio-technical networks, to hybrid collectivities, physical artefacts and historical legacies, and the virtual or imagined city. 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). The essays examine artefacts, technical systems, architectures, place and eventful spaces, the persistence of history, imaginary and virtual elements of city life, and the politics and ethical challenges of a mode of analysis that incorporates multiple actors as hybrid chains of causation. The chapters are attentive to the multiple scales of both the object of analysis and the analysis itself. The aim is more ambitious than the mere transfer of a fashionable template. The authors embrace ANT critically, as much as a metaphor as a method of analysis, deploying it to think with, to ask new questions, to find the language to achieve more compelling descriptions of city life and of urban transformations. By greatly extending the chain or network of causation, proliferating heterogeneous agents, non-human as well as human, without limit as to their enrolment in urban assemblages, Actor-Network Theory offers a way of addressing the particular complexity and openness characteristic of cities. By enabling an escape from the reification of the city so common in social theory, ANT’s notion of hybrid assemblages offers richer framing of the reality of the city—of urban experience—that is responsive to contingency and complexity. Therefore Urban Assemblages is a pertinent book for students, practitioners and scholars as it aims to shift the parameters of urban studies and contribute a meaningful argument for the urban arena which will dominate the coming decades in government policies.
Author: Colin McFarlane Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 1444343416 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
Learning the City: Translocal Assemblage and Urban Politics critically examines the relationship between knowledge, learning, and urban politics, arguing both for the centrality of learning for political strategies and developing a progressive international urbanism. Presents a distinct approach to conceptualising the city through the lens of urban learning Integrates fieldwork conducted in Mumbai's informal settlements with debates on urban policy, political economy, and development Considers how knowledge and learning are conceived and created in cities Addresses the way knowledge travels and opportunities for learning about urbanism between North and South
Author: June Wang Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317535820 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
This book examines the vast and largely uncharted world of cultural/creative city-making in Asia. It explores the establishment of policy models and practices against the backdrop of a globalizing world, and considers the dynamic relationship between powerful actors and resources that impact Asian cities. Making Cultural Cities in Asia approaches this dynamic process through the lens of assemblage: how the policy models of cultural/creative cities have been extracted from the flow of ideas, and how re-invented versions have been assembled, territorialized, and exported. This approach reveals a spectrum between globally circulating ideals on the one hand, and the place-based contexts and contingencies on the other. At one end of the spectrum, this book features chapters on policy mobility, in particular the political construction of the "web" of communication and the restructuring or rescaling of the state. At the other end, chapters examine the increasingly fragmented social forces, their changing roles in the process, and their negotiations, alignments, and resistances. This book will be of interest to researchers and policy-makers concerned with cultural and urban studies, creative industries and Asian studies.
Author: Kevin J. Gaston Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019956356X Category : City planning Languages : en Pages : 389
Book Description
"This is the urban century in which, for the first time, the majority of people live in towns and cities. Understanding how people influence, and are influenced by, the 'green' component of these environments is therefore of enormous significance. Providing an overview of the essentials of urban ecology, the book begins by covering the vital background concepts of the urbanisation process and the effect that it can have on ecosystem functions and services. Later sections are devoted to examining how species respond to urbanisation, the many facets of human-ecology interactions, and the issues surrounding urban planning and the provision of urban green spaces. Drawing on examples from urban settlements around the world, it highlights the progress to date in this burgeoning field, as well as the challenges that lie ahead"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Neil Brenner Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136625046 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 334
Book Description
The worldwide financial crisis has sent shock-waves of accelerated economic restructuring, regulatory reorganization and sociopolitical conflict through cities around the world. It has also given new impetus to the struggles of urban social movements emphasizing the injustice, destructiveness and unsustainability of capitalist forms of urbanization. This book contributes analyses intended to be useful for efforts to roll back contemporary profit-based forms of urbanization, and to promote alternative, radically democratic and sustainable forms of urbanism. The contributors provide cutting-edge analyses of contemporary urban restructuring, including the issues of neoliberalization, gentrification, colonization, "creative" cities, architecture and political power, sub-prime mortgage foreclosures and the ongoing struggles of "right to the city" movements. At the same time, the book explores the diverse interpretive frameworks – critical and otherwise – that are currently being used in academic discourse, in political struggles, and in everyday life to decipher contemporary urban transformations and contestations. The slogan, "cities for people, not for profit," sets into stark relief what the contributors view as a central political question involved in efforts, at once theoretical and practical, to address the global urban crises of our time. Drawing upon European and North American scholarship in sociology, politics, geography, urban planning and urban design, the book provides useful insights and perspectives for citizens, activists and intellectuals interested in exploring alternatives to contemporary forms of capitalist urbanization.
Author: Ben Jervis Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1351657038 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 188
Book Description
From examinations of prehistoric burial to understanding post-industrial spaces and heritage practices, the writing of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari is gaining increasing importance within archaeological thought. Their concept of ‘assemblages’ allows us to explore the past in new ways, by placing an emphasis on difference rather than similarity, on fluidity rather stasis and unpredictability rather than reproduceable models. Assemblage Thought and Archaeology applies the notion of assemblage to specific archaeological case studies, ranging from early urbanism in Mesopotamia to 19th century military fortifications. It introduces the concept of assemblage within the context of the wider ‘material turn’ in the social sciences, examines its implications for studying materials and urban settlements, and explores its consequences for the practice of archaeological research and heritage management. This innovative book will be of particular interest to postgraduate students of archaeological theory and researchers looking to understand this latest trend in archaeological thought, although the case studies will also have appeal to those whose work focusses on material culture, settlement archaeology and archaeological practice.
Author: Igor Vojnovic Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1315465434 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 1170
Book Description
Through interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives, and with an emphasis on exploring patterns as well as distinct and unique conditions across the globe, this collection examines advanced and cutting-edge theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of the health of urban populations. Despite the growing interest in global urban health, there are limited resources available that provide an extensive and advanced exploration into the health of urban populations in a transnational context. This volume offers a high-quality and comprehensive examination of global urban health issues by leading urban health scholars from around the world. The book brings together a multi-disciplinary perspective on urban health, with chapter contributions emphasizing disciplines in the social sciences, construction sciences and medical sciences. The co-editors of the collection come from a number of different disciplinary backgrounds that have been at the forefront of urban health research, including public health, epidemiology, geography, city planning and urban design. The book is intended to be a reference in global urban health for research libraries and faculty collections. It will also be appropriate as a text for university class adoption in upper-division under-graduate courses and above. The proposed volume is extensive and offers enough breadth and depth to enable it to be used for courses emphasizing a U.S., or wider Western perspective, as well as courses on urban health emphasizing a global context.
Author: Caroline Isaksson Publisher: Frontiers Media SA ISBN: 2889454975 Category : Languages : en Pages : 364
Book Description
Urbanization is next to global warming the largest threat to biodiversity. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly evident that many bird species get locally extinct as a result of urban development. However, many bird species benefit from urbanization, especially through the abundance of human-provided resources, and increase in abundance and densities. These birds are intriguing to study in relation to its resilience and adaption to urban environments, but also in relation to its susceptibility and the potential costs of urban life. This Research Topic consisting of 30 articles (one review, two meta-analyzes and 27 original data papers) provides insights into species and population responses to urbanization through diverse lenses, including biogeography, community ecology, behaviour, life history evolution, and physiology.
Author: Ignacio Farías
Author: Eugene McCann
Author: Colin McFarlane
Author: Ignacio Farías
Author: June Wang
Author: Kevin J. Gaston
Author: Neil Brenner
Author: Ben Jervis
Author: Igor Vojnovic
Author: Caroline Isaksson