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The Permanence of Temporary Urbanism
Temporary urbanism has become an established marker of city making after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. The book offers a critical exploration of its emergence and establishment as a seductive discourse and as an entangled field of urban practice encompassing architecture, visual and performative arts, urban regeneration and planning. Drawing on seven years of semi-ethnographic research in London, it explores the politics of temporariness at time of austerity from a situated analysis of neighbourhood transformation and wider cultural and economic shifts. Through a sympathetic, longitudinal engagement with projects and practitioners, the book tests the power of aesthetic and cultural interventions and highlights tensions between the promise of practices of dissenting vacant space re-appropriation, and their practical foreclosure. Against the normalisation of ephemerality, it develops a critique of temporary urbanism as a glamorisation of the anticipatory politics of precarity, transforming subjectivities and imaginaries of urban action.
eBook
Sustainable low-carbon city development in China
Cities contribute an estimated 70 percent of the world's energy-related greenhouse gases (GHG). Their locations, often in low-elevation coastal zones, and large populations make them particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. But cities often take steps, even ahead of national governments, to reduce GHG emissions. So it is with China's cities, which are well placed to chart a low-carbon growth path to help reach China's national targets for reducing the energy and carbon intensity of its economy. China's cities will need to act on multiple fronts, in some cases scaling up elements of existing good practice, in others changing established ways of doing business. Actions affecting land-use and spatial development are among the most critical to achieving low-carbon growth as carbon emissions are closely connected to urban form. Spatial development also has very strong 'lock-in' effects: once cities grow and define their urban form, it is almost impossible to retrofit them because the built environment is largely irreversible and very costly to modify. Furthermore, cities need energy-efficient buildings and industries. They need a transport system that offers alternatives to automobiles. They need to shift to efficient management of water, wastewater, and solid waste. And they need to incorporate responses to climate change in their planning, investment decisions, and emergency-preparedness plans.
eBook
Neighborhood
In an effort to make neighborhoods compatible with 21st century ideals, Talen has produced a singular resource for understanding what is meant by neighborhood--a multi-dimensional, comprehensive view of what neighborhoods signify, how they're idealized and measured, and what their historical progression has been.
Book
Climate change, disaster risk, and the urban poor : cities building resilience for a changing world
Poor people living in slums are at particularly high risk from the impacts of climate change and natural hazards. They live on the most vulnerable land within cities, typically areas deemed undesirable by others and thus affordable. This study analyzes the key challenges facing the urban poor, given the risks associated with climate change and disasters, particularly with regard to the delivery of basic services, and identifies strategies and financing opportunities for addressing these risks. The main audience for this study includes mayors and other city managers, national governments, donors, and practitioners in the fields of climate change, disaster-risk management, and urban development. The work is part of a broader program under the Mayor's task force on climate change, disaster risk and the urban poor. The study is organized in four chapters covering: 1) a broad look at climate change and disaster risk in cities of the developing world, with particular implications for the urban poor; 2) analysis of the vulnerability of the urban poor; 3) discussion of recommended approaches for building resilience for the urban poor; and 4) review of the financing opportunities for covering investments in basic services and other needs associated with climate and disaster risk.
eBook
Risky Cities
Over half the world’s population lives in urban regions, and increasingly disasters are of great concern to city dwellers, policymakers, and builders. However, disaster risk is also of great interest to corporations, financiers, and investors. Risky Cities is a critical examination of global urban development, capitalism, and its relationship with environmental hazards. It is about how cities live and profit from the threat of sinkholes, garbage, and fire. Risky Cities is not simply about post-catastrophe profiteering. This book focuses on the way in which disaster capitalism has figured out ways to commodify environmental bads and manage risks. Notably, capitalist city-building results in the physical transformation of nature. This necessitates risk management strategies –such as insurance, environmental assessments, and technocratic mitigation plans. As such capitalists redistribute risk relying on short-term fixes to disaster risk rather than address long-term vulnerabilities.
eBook
Leveraging Bogotá
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is marked by the consolidation of sustainability as a key guiding principle and an emphasis on cities as a potential solution to global development problems. However, in the absence of an agreement on how to implement sustainable development in cities, a set of urban policy solutions and ‘best practices’ became the vehicles through which the sustainable development agenda is spreading worldwide. This article shows that the rapid circulation of Bogotá as a model of sustainable transport since the 2000s reflects an increasing focus of the international development apparatus on urban policy solutions as an arena to achieve global development impacts, what I call the ‘leveraging cities’ logic in this article. This logic emerges at a particular historical conjuncture characterised by: (1) the rising power of global philanthropy to set development agendas; (2) the generalisation of solutionism as a strategy of action among development and philanthropic organisations; and (3) the increasing attention on cities as solutions for global development problems, particularly around sustainability and climate change. By connecting urban policy mobilities debates with development studies this article seeks to unpack the emergence, and the limits, of ‘leveraging cities’ as a proliferating global development practice. These urban policy solutions are far from being a clear framework of action. Rather, their circulation becomes a ‘quick fix’ to frame the problem of sustainable development given the unwillingness of development and philanthropic organisations to intervene in the structural factors and multiple scales that produce environmental degradation and climate change.
“2030年可持续发展议程”的特点是将可持续性作为一项关键指导原则强化，并强调将城市作为解决全球发展问题的潜在办法。然而，由于没有就如何在城市实施可持续发展达成协议，一系列城市政策解决方案和“最佳实践”成为可持续发展议程在全球范围内传播的工具。本文表明，自2000年代以来波哥大作为可持续交通模式的迅速传播，反映了国际发展机制越来越注重城市政策解决方案，将其作为实现全球发展影响的舞台，在这篇文章中我称之为“利用城市”的逻辑。这种逻辑出现在一个特定的历史时期，其特点是：（1）在制定发展议程方面，全球慈善事业的力量崛起；（2）“解决方案主义”作为发展和慈善组织行动战略的普遍化；（3）越来越多地关注城市作为全球发展问题的解决方案，特别是围绕可持续性和气候变化问题。
通过将城市政策流动性辩论与发展研究联系起来，本文旨在揭示“利用城市”作为一种激增的全球发展实践的出现和局限。这些城市政策解决方案远非明确的行动框架。相反，鉴于发展和慈善组织不愿意干预产生环境退化和气候变化的结构因素和多种层面，它们的流行成为了框定可持续发展问题的“快速解决方案”。
Journal Article