Multimedia Explorations in Urban Policy and Planning


Book Description

The book is a collection of essays exploring the potential of multimedia to enrich and transform the planning field. By multimedia the authors refer to a broad range of new information and communication technologies (from film and video to digital ethnography and the internet), which are opening up new possibilities in planning practices, processes, pedagogy and research. The authors document the ways in which these ICTs can expand the language of planning and the creativity of planners; can evoke the lived experience (the spirit, memories, desires) of our 21st century mongrel cities by engaging with stories and storytelling; and can democratise planning practices. The text is epistemologically radical, in presenting an argument for the importance of "multiple languages" (ways of knowing) in the planning field, and making the connection between this epistemology and the almost infinite potential of Multimedia to provide varied tools to accomplish this transformation, displacing the supremacy of the rational, linear and hierarchical with more open, playful and imaginative approaches. Each of the authors brings practical experience with different forms of Multimedia use and reflects on the different potentialities offered by Multimedia for critical intervention in urban and regional issues, and the power dynamics embedded in such interventions.




Multimedia Explorations in Urban Policy and Planning


Book Description

The book is a collection of essays exploring the potential of multimedia to enrich and transform the planning field. By multimedia the authors refer to a broad range of new information and communication technologies (from film and video to digital ethnography and the internet), which are opening up new possibilities in planning practices, processes, pedagogy and research. The authors document the ways in which these ICTs can expand the language of planning and the creativity of planners; can evoke the lived experience (the spirit, memories, desires) of our 21st century mongrel cities by engaging with stories and storytelling; and can democratise planning practices. The text is epistemologically radical, in presenting an argument for the importance of "multiple languages" (ways of knowing) in the planning field, and making the connection between this epistemology and the almost infinite potential of Multimedia to provide varied tools to accomplish this transformation, displacing the supremacy of the rational, linear and hierarchical with more open, playful and imaginative approaches. Each of the authors brings practical experience with different forms of Multimedia use and reflects on the different potentialities offered by Multimedia for critical intervention in urban and regional issues, and the power dynamics embedded in such interventions.




Metropolitan Research


Book Description

Metropolitan research requires multidisciplinary perspectives in order to do justice to the complexities of metropolitan regions. This volume provides a scholarly and accessible overview of key methods and approaches in metropolitan research from a uniquely broad range of disciplines including architectural history, art history, heritage conservation, literary and cultural studies, spatial planning and planning theory, geoinformatics, urban sociology, economic geography, operations research, technology studies, transport planning, aquatic ecosystems research and urban epidemiology. It is this scope of disciplinary - and increasingly also interdisciplinary - approaches that allows metropolitan research to address recent societal challenges of urban life, such as mobility, health, diversity or sustainability.




Mapping Possibility


Book Description

Mapping Possibility traces the intertwined intellectual, professional, and emotional life of Leonie Sandercock. With an impressive career spanning nearly half a century as an educator, researcher, artist, and practitioner, Sandercock is one of the leading figures in community planning, dedicating her life to pursuing social, cultural, and environmental justice through her work. In this book, Leonie Sandercock reflects on her past writings and films, which played an important role in redefining the field in more progressive directions, both in theory and practice. It includes previously published essays in conjunction with insightful commentaries prefacing each section, and four new essays, two discussing Sandercock’s most recent work on a feature-film project with Indigenous partners. Innovative, visionary, and audacious, Leonie’s community-based scholarship and practice in the fields of urban planning and community development have engaged some of the most intractable issues of our time – inequality, discrimination, and racism. Through award-winning books and films, she has influenced the planning field to become more culturally fluent, addressing diversity and difference through structural change. This book draws a map of hope for emerging planners dedicated to equity, justice, and sustainability. It will inspire the next generation of community planners, as well as current practitioners and students in planning, cultural studies, urban studies, architecture, and community development.




The Narrative Turn in Urban Planning


Book Description

Narratives, in the context of urban planning, matter profoundly. Planning theory and practice have taken an increasing interest in the role and power of narrative, and yet there is no comprehensive study of how narrative, and concepts from narrative and literary theory more broadly, can enrich planning and policy. The Narrative Turn in Urban Planning addresses this gap by defining key concepts such as story, narrative, and plot against a planning backdrop, and by drawing up a functional typology of different planning narratives. In two extended case studies from the planning of the Helsinki waterfront, it applies the narrative concepts and theories to a broad range of texts and practices, considering ways toward a more conscious and contextualized future urban planning. Questioning what is meant when we speak of narratives in urban planning, and what typologies we can draw up, it presents a threefold taxonomy of narratives within a planning framework. This book will serve as an important reference text for upper-level students and researchers interested in urban planning.




Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning


Book Description

This fourth volume of some of the best, award-winning writing from around the world’s planning schools promotes further discussion and thought. The international authors address a broad spectrum of planning issues including safety in urban spaces, rebuilding post-Katrina and planning and governance in urban Zimbabwe.




Policy, Planning, and People


Book Description

The contributors of Policy, Planning, and People argue for the promotion of social equity and quality of life by designing and evaluating urban policies and plans. Edited by Naomi Carmon and Susan S. Fainstein, the volume features original essays by leading authorities in the field of urban planning and policy, mainly from the United States, but also from Canada, Hungary, Italy, and Israel. The contributors discuss goal setting and ethics in planning, illuminate paradigm shifts, make policy recommendations, and arrive at best practices for future planning. Policy, Planning, and People includes theoretical as well as practice-based essays on a wide range of planning issues: housing and neighborhood, transportation, surveillance and safety, the network society, regional development and community development. Several essays are devoted to disadvantaged and excluded groups such as senior citizens, the poor, and migrant workers. The unifying themes of this volume are the values of equity, diversity, and democratic participation. The contributors discuss and draw conclusions related to the planning process and its outcomes. They demonstrate the need to look beyond efficiency to determine who benefits from urban policies and plans. Contributors: Alberta Andreotti, Tridib Banerjee, Rachel G. Bratt, Naomi Carmon, Karen Chapple, Norman Fainstein, Susan Fainstein, Eran Feitelson, Amnon Frenkel, George Galster, Penny Gurstein, Deborah Howe, Norman Krumholz, Jonathan Levine, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Enzo Mingione, Kenneth Reardon, Izhak Schnell, Daniel Shefer, Michael Teitz, Iván Tosics, Lawrence Vale, Martin Wachs.




Translocality in Contemporary City Novels


Book Description

Translocality in Contemporary City Novels responds to the fact that twenty-first-century Anglophone novels are increasingly characterised by translocality—the layering and blending of two or more distant settings. Considering translocal and transcultural writing as a global phenomenon, this book draws on multidisciplinary research, from globalisation theory to the study of narratives to urban studies, to explore a corpus of thirty-two novels—by authors such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dionne Brand, Kiran Desai, and Xiaolu Guo—set in a total of ninety-seven cities. Lena Mattheis examines six of the most common strategies used in contemporary urban fiction to make translocal experiences of the world narratable and turn them into relatable stories: simultaneity, palimpsests, mapping, scaling, non-places, and haunting. Combining and developing further theories, approaches, and techniques from a variety of research fields—including narratology, human geography, transculturality, diaspora spaces, and postcolonial perspectives—Mattheis develops a set of cross-disciplinary techniques in literary urban studies.




Communications/Media/Geographies


Book Description

Although there are human geographers who have previously written on matters of media and communication, and those in media and communication studies who have previously written on geographical issues, this is the first book-length dialogue in which experienced theorists and researchers from these different fields address each other directly and engage in conversation across traditional academic boundaries. The result is a compelling discussion, with the authors setting out statements of their positions before responding to the arguments made by others. One significant aspect of this discussion is a spirited debate about the sort of interdisciplinary area that might emerge as a focus for future work. Does the already-established idea of communication geography offer the best way forward? If so, what would applied or critical forms of communication geography be concerned to do? Could communication geography benefit from the sorts of conjunctural analysis that have been developed in contemporary cultural studies? Might a further way forward be to imagine an interdisciplinary field of everyday-life studies, which would draw critically on non-representational theories of practice and movement? Readers of Communications/Media/Geographies are invited to join the debate, thinking through such questions for themselves, and the themes that are explored in this book (for example, of space, place, meaning, power, and ethics) will be of interest not only to academics in human geography and in media and communication studies, but also to a wider range of scholars from across the humanities and social sciences.




Real Social Science


Book Description

Real Social Science presents a new, hands-on approach to social inquiry. The theoretical and methodological ideas behind the book, inspired by Aristotelian phronesis, represent an original perspective within the social sciences, and this volume gives readers for the first time a set of studies exemplifying what applied phronesis looks like in practice. The reflexive analysis of values and power gives new meaning to the impact of research on policy and practice. Real Social Science is a major step forward in a novel and thriving field of research. This book will benefit scholars, researchers and students who want to make a difference in practice, not just in the academy. Its message will make it essential reading for students and academics across the social sciences.