Explore the vast range of titles available.

Since the late eighteenth century, academic engagement with political, economic, social, cultural and spatial changes in our cities has been dominated by theoretical frameworks crafted with reference to just a small number of cities. This book offers an important antidote to the continuing focus of urban studies on cities in ‘the Global North’. Urban Theory Beyond the West contains twenty chapters from leading scholars, raising important theoretical issues about cities throughout the world. Past and current conceptual developments are reviewed and organized into four parts: ‘De-centring the City’ offers critical perspectives on re-imagining urban theoretical debates through consideration of the diversity and heterogeneity of city life; ‘Order/Disorder’ focuses on the political, physical and everyday ways in which cities are regulated and used in ways that confound this ordering; ‘Mobilities’ explores the movements of people, ideas and policy in cities and between them and ‘Imaginaries’ investigates how urbanity is differently perceived and experienced. There are three kinds of chapters published in this volume: theories generated about urbanity ‘beyond the West’; critiques, reworking or refining of ‘Western’ urban theory based upon conceptual reflection about cities from around the world and hybrid approaches that develop both of these perspectives . Urban Theory Beyond the West offers a critical and accessible review of theoretical developments, providing an original and groundbreaking contribution to urban theory. It is essential reading for students and practitioners interested in urban studies, development studies and geography. 1. Introduction: Urban Theory Beyond ‘the West’ Part 1: De-Centring the City 2. No Longer the Subaltern: Refiguring Cities of the Global South 3. China Exceptionalism? Unbounding Narratives on Urban China 4. Urban Theory beyond the ‘East/West Divide’? Cities and Urban Research in Postsocialist Europe 5. Urbanism, Colonialism, and Subalternity Part 2: Order/Disorder 6. Governing Cities without States? Rethinking Urban Political Theories in Asia 7. Public Parks in the Americas: New York City and Buenos Aires 8. An Illness Called Managua: ‘Extraordinary’ Urbanisation and ‘Mal- Development’ in Nicaragua 9. The Concept of Privacy and Space in Kurdish Cities 10. The Networked City: Popular Modernizers and Urban Transformation in Morelia, Mexico, 1880-1955 Part 3: Mobilities 11. Distinctly Delhi: Affect and Exclusion in a Crowded City 12. Shanghai Borderlands: The Rise of a New Urbanity? 13. Contemporary Urban Culture in Latin America: Everyday Life in Santiago, Chile 14. Urban (Im)mobility: Public Encounters in Dubai Part 4: Imaginaries 15. Reality Tours: Experiencing the ‘Real Thing’ in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas 16. Modern Warfare and Theorization of the Middle Eastern City 17. Reading Thai Community: Reformation and Fragmentation 18. Urban Political Ecology in the Global South: Everyday Environmental Struggles of Home in Managua, Nicaragua 19. Spectral Kinshasa: Building the City through an Architecture of Words 20. Afterword: A World of Cities Tim Edensor teaches Cultural Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. His research interests include tourism, materialities and mobilities. Mark Jayne is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Manchester, UK. His research interests include; consumption, the urban order, city cultures and cultural economy. \"The entries are remarkably even, each characterized by the geographer's knack for capturing ground-level realities and appreciation for the rewards that come from intimate engagement with place. Summing up: Highly Recommended.\" R. Sanders, Temple University, USA, CHOICE, August 2012. \"This fascinating book not only demonstrates the deep diversity of post-colonial urban experiences and dynamics of change, it also shows the wealth of ideas about cities, and concepts of urban life, that come from the majority world. This is a formidable contribution to the global re-making of social science and urban studies.\" Raewyn Connell, University of Sydney, Australia. \"Spanning considerable territory while opening up new lines of research on patterns of consumption, visual and literary representations, institutions, infrastructures, and migration, this rich collection of incisive, innovative, and well documented studies of cities outside the West demonstrates both a keen epistemological understanding of urban processes and a deep knowledge of the cultural, political, and economic dimensions of urbanization. Not only does it compellingly challenge the Western bias of the literature on urban theory, it also prods us to rethink, indeed refashion urban theory itself, taking stock of the lessons from the peripheries of the West.\" - Mamadou Diouf, Columbia University, USA.

In twenty essays, this book covers aspects of planning, architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, park and garden design. Their approach, described as post-postmodern, is a challenge to the 'anything goes' eclecticism of the merely postmodern.

Improved public understanding of the ocean and the importance of sustainable ocean use, or ocean literacy, is essential for achieving global commitments to sustainable development by 2030 and beyond. However, growing human populations (particularly in mega-cities), urbanisation and socio-economic disparity threaten opportunities for people to engage and connect directly with ocean environments. Thus, a major challenge in engaging the whole of society in achieving ocean sustainability by 2030 is to develop strategies to improve societal connections to the ocean. The concept of ocean literacy reflects public understanding of the ocean, but is also an indication of connections to, and attitudes and behaviours towards, the ocean. Improving and progressing global ocean literacy has potential to catalyse the behaviour changes necessary for achieving a sustainable future. As part of the Future Seas project (https://futureseas2030.org/), this paper aims to synthesise knowledge and perspectives on ocean literacy from a range of disciplines, including but not exclusive to marine biology, socio-ecology, philosophy, technology, psychology, oceanography and human health. Using examples from the literature, we outline the potential for positive change towards a sustainable future based on knowledge that already exists. We focus on four drivers that can influence and improve ocean literacy and societal connections to the ocean: (1) education, (2) cultural connections, (3) technological developments, and (4) knowledge exchange and science-policy interconnections. We explore how each driver plays a role in improving perceptions of the ocean to engender more widespread societal support for effective ocean management and conservation. In doing so, we develop an ocean literacy toolkit, a practical resource for enhancing ocean connections across a broad range of contexts worldwide.

Food security is becoming an increasingly relevant topic in the Global North, especially in urban areas. Because such areas do not always have good access to nutritionally adequate food, the question of how to supply them is an urgent priority in order to maintain a healthy population. Urban and peri-urban agriculture, as sources of local fresh food, could play an important role. Whereas some scholars do not differentiate between peri-urban and urban agriculture, seeing them as a single entity, our hypothesis is that they are distinct, and that this has important consequences for food security and other issues. This has knock-on effects for food system planning and has not yet been appropriately analysed. The objectives of this study are to provide a systematic understanding of urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North, showing their similarities and differences, and to analyse their impact on urban food security. To this end, an extensive literature review was conducted, resulting in the identification and comparison of their spatial, ecological and socio-economic characteristics. The findings are discussed in terms of their impact on food security in relation to the four levels of the food system: food production, processing, distribution and consumption. The results show that urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global North indeed differ in most of their characteristics and consequently also in their ability to meet the food needs of urban inhabitants. While urban agriculture still meets food needs mainly at the household level, peri-urban agriculture can provide larger quantities and has broader distribution pathways, giving it a separate status in terms of food security. Nevertheless, both possess (unused) potential, making them valuable for urban food planning, and both face similar threats regarding urbanisation pressures, necessitating adequate planning measures.

This essay critically examines the concept of the right to the city. While many progressive scholars have embraced the idea of the right to the city, what these scholars mean by rights has often been left unexplored. The first half of this essay focuses on the distinctions that political philosophers and legal scholars often draw between various kinds and forms of rights. The second section focuses specifically on how rights are mobilized within scholarship on the right to the city, as well as the tensions and contradictions – with respect to rights – that arise therein.

Innovative forms of green urban architecture aim to combine food, production, and design to produce food on a larger scale in and on buildings in urban areas. It includes rooftop gardens, rooftop greenhouses, indoor farms, and other building-related forms (defined as “ZFarming”). This study uses the framework of sustainability to understand the role of ZFarming in future urban food production and to review the major benefits and limitations. The results are based on an analysis of 96 documents published in accessible international resources. The analysis shows that ZFarming has multiple functions and produces a range of non-food and non-market goods that may have positive impacts on the urban setting. It promises environmental benefits resulting from the saving and recycling of resources and reduced food miles. Social advantages include improving community food security, the provision of educational facilities, linking consumers to food production, and serving as a design inspiration. In economic terms it provides potential public benefits and commodity outputs. However, managing ZFarming faces several challenges. For some applications, the required technologies are known but have not been used or combined in that way before; others will need entirely new materials or cultivation techniques. Further critical aspects are the problem of high investment costs, exclusionary effects, and a lack of acceptance. In conclusion, ZFarming is seen as an outside-the-box solution which has some potential in generating win–win scenarios in cities. Nevertheless, ZFarming practices are not in and of themselves sustainable and need to be managed properly.

Cities are mysteriously attractive. The more we get used to being citizens of the world, the more we feel the need to identify ourselves with a city. Moreover, this need seems in no way distressed by the fact that the urban landscape around us changes continuously: new buildings rise, new restaurants open, new stores, new parks, new infrastructures… Cities seem to vindicate Heraclitus’s dictum: you cannot step twice into the same river; you cannot walk twice through the same city. But, as with the river, we want and need to say that it is the same city we are walking through every day. It is always different, but numerically self-identical. How is that possible? What sort of mysterious thing is a city? The answer, I submit, is that cities aren’t things. They are processes. Like rivers, cities unfold in time just as they extend in space, by having different temporal parts for each time at which they exist. And walking though one part and then again through another is, literally, walking through the same whole.

Cross-cultural dialogues in sacred space cultivate awareness of self and othersTemples are everywhere in Chiang Mai, filled with tourists as well as saffron-robed monks of all ages. The monks participate in daily urban life here as elsewhere in Thailand, where Buddhism is promoted, protected, and valued as a tourist attraction. Yet this mountain city offers more than a fleeting, commodified tourist experience, as the encounters between foreign visitors and Buddhist monks can have long-lasting effects on both parties.These religious contacts take place where economic motives, missionary zeal, and opportunities for cultural exchange coincide. Brooke Schedneck incorporates fieldwork and interviews with student monks and tourists to examine the innovative ways that Thai Buddhist temples offer foreign visitors spaces for religious instruction and popular in-person Monk Chat sessions in which tourists ask questions about Buddhism. Religious Tourism in Northern Thailand also considers how Thai monks perceive other religions and cultures and how they represent their own religion when interacting with tourists, resulting in a revealing study of how religious traditions adapt to an era of globalization.