Cities, Space and Power


Book Description

The scholarly purpose of this manuscript is to provide a resource for academics and researchers looking into cities, space and power in emerging economies. It also takes into consideration the relationship between emerging economies and developing contexts, as well as the lessons that may be shared between them. This book presents a unique perspective and aims to highlight issues not addressed much in writing on the built environment. Based on substantiation and references to numerous other sources and authors, alternative theoretical frameworks for the study of the built environment are developed. This is a very relevant contribution at this time, especially as cities will most probably go through transformations in the post-COVID-19 era. Our first line of defense against this public health crisis will be in areas of poverty, with people who have generally been excluded and urban practices that have been undocumented or labeled as informal. The main thesis of the manuscript is that space and power are strongly linked in cities. The research results prevalent in the book are original, and while the authors consult widely across disciplines, the themes are firmly rooted in the built environment fields – with a focus on the architectural discipline.




The City as Power


Book Description

This interdisciplinary book considers national identity through the lens of urban spaces. By bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, The City as Power provides broad comparative perspectives about the critical importance of urban landscapes as forums for creating, maintaining, and contesting identity and belonging. Rather than serving as passive backdrops, urban spaces and places are active mediums for defining categories of inclusion—and exclusion. With an international scope and ready appeal to visual learners, the book offers a compelling survey of historical and contemporary efforts to enact state ideals, express counter-narratives, and negotiate global trends in cities. The contributors show how successive regimes reshape cityscapes to mirror their respective socio-political agendas, perspectives on history, and assumptions of power. Yet they must do so within the legal, ethnic, religious, social, economic, and cultural geographies inherited from previous regimes. Exploring the rich diversity of urban space, place, and national identity, the book compares core elements of identity projects in a range of political, cultural, and socioeconomic settings. By focusing on the built form and urban settings for social movements, protest, and even organized violence, this timely book demonstrates that cities are not simply lived in but also lived through.




The Insecure City


Book Description

Fifteen years after the end of a protracted civil and regional war, Beirut broke out in violence once again, forcing residents to contend with many forms of insecurity, amid an often violent political and economic landscape. Providing a picture of what ordinary life is like for urban dwellers surviving sectarian violence, The Insecure City captures the day-to-day experiences of citizens of Beirut moving through a war-torn landscape. While living in Beirut, Kristin Monroe conducted interviews with a diverse group of residents of the city. She found that when people spoke about getting around in Beirut, they were also expressing larger concerns about social, political, and economic life. It was not only violence that threatened Beirut’s ordinary residents, but also class dynamics that made life even more precarious. For instance, the installation of checkpoints and the rerouting of traffic—set up for the security of the elite—forced the less fortunate to alter their lives in ways that made them more at risk. Similarly, the ability to pass through security blockades often had to do with an individual’s visible markers of class, such as clothing, hairstyle, and type of car. Monroe examines how understandings and practices of spatial mobility in the city reflect social differences, and how such experiences led residents to be bitterly critical of their government. In The Insecure City, Monroe takes urban anthropology in a new and meaningful direction, discussing traffic in the Middle East to show that when people move through Beirut they are experiencing the intersection of citizen and state, of the more and less privileged, and, in general, the city’s politically polarized geography.




Contesting Space in Colonial Singapore


Book Description

In the British colonial city of Singapore, municipal authorities and Asian communities faced off over numerous issues. As the city expanded, various disputes concerning issues such as sanitation, housing and street names arose. This volume details these conflicts and how they shaped the city.




Strangers in the City


Book Description

With rapid commercialization, a booming urban economy, and the relaxation of state migratory policies, over 100 million peasants, known as China's "floating population," have streamed into large cities seeking employment and a better life. This book traces the profound transformation this massive flow of rural migrants has caused as it challenges Chinese socialist modes of state control.




Working, Housing: Urbanizing


Book Description

This book presents an incisive outline of the historical development and geography of cities. It focuses on three themes that constitute essential foundations for any understanding of urban form and function. These are: (a) the shifting patterns of urbanization through historical time, (b) the role of cities as centers of production and work in a globalizing world, and (c) the diverse housing and shelter needs of urban populations. The book also explores a number of critical urban problems and the political challenges that they pose. Empirical evidence from urban situations on all five continents is brought into play throughout the discussion.




Verandahs of Power


Book Description

Garth Andrew Myers' work makes a significant contribution to a long tradition of research on colonial cities and a multidisciplinary body of literature on urban legacies of colonialism. He examines both colonial rule and postcolonial inheritance in these cities, tracing the legacies of colonialism in different and divergent postcolonial settings—a revolutionary left-wing socialist state (Zanzibar) and a reactionary right-wing dictatorship (Malawi). In addition to the examination of urban plans and the African urban majority's responses to them, the book traces the experience of the urban planning process through three different "verandahs of power," or levels of class depiction: the colonial power, the colonized middle, and the urban majority. Interspersed with personal stories, this book illuminates our understanding of the workings of power in African cities by addressing human experiences of that power.




Power and Architecture


Book Description

Capital cities have been the seat of political power and central stage for their state’s political conflicts and rituals throughout the ages. In the modern era, they provide symbols for and confer meaning to the state, thereby contributing to the “invention” of the nation. Capitals capture the imagination of natives, visitors and outsiders alike, yet also express the outcomes of power struggles within the political systems in which they operate. This volume addresses the reciprocal relationships between identity, regime formation, urban planning, and public architecture in the Western world. It examines the role of urban design and architecture in expressing (or hiding) ideological beliefs and political agenda. Case studies include “old” capitals such as Rome, Vienna, Berlin and Warsaw; “new” ones such as Washington DC, Ottawa, Canberra, Ankara, Bonn, and Brasília; and the “European” capital Brussels. Each case reflects the authors’ different disciplinary backgrounds in architecture, history, political science, and urban studies, demonstrating the value of an interdisciplinary approach to studying cities.




'City of the Future'


Book Description

Astana, the capital city of the post-Soviet Kazakhstan, has often been admired for the design and planning of its futuristic cityscape. This anthropological study of the development of the city focuses on every-day practices, official ideologies and representations alongside the memories and dreams of the city’s longstanding residents and recent migrants. Critically examining a range of approaches to place and space in anthropology, geography and other disciplines, the book argues for an understanding of space as inextricably material-and-imaginary, and unceasingly dynamic – allowing for a plurality of incompatible pasts and futures materialized in spatial form.




City Power


Book Description

Reigning theories of urban power suggest that in a world dominated by footloose transnational capital, cities have little capacity to effect social change. In City Power, Richard Schragger challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that cities can and should pursue aims other than making themselves attractive to global capital. Using the municipal living wage movement as an example, Schragger explains why cities are well-positioned to address issues like income equality and how our institutions can be designed to allow them to do so.