The Cybercities Reader


Book Description

Bringing together a vast range of debates and examples of city changes based on Information and Communications Technology (ICT), this book illustrates how new media in cities shapes societies, economies and cultures.




The Political Twittersphere in India


Book Description

The book investigates political re/tweets that reveal the nature and patterns of politics and digital political revolution in India. The re/tweets are made by Indian politicians at various capacities in order to communicate to followers, which shaped the political discourse in form of response, activism, and technology. The book is based on interdisciplinary approaches wherein geography interfaces with political, cultural, social, economic and social media studies. The book is mapping patterns of spatial politics through Twitter which revolutionized the digital politics in India. It discusses and answers the questions: Why do politicians use Twitter and other social networking sites? When do politicians make re/tweets? Is Twitter all about official? The book triggers questions about the politics of gadgets. To what extent are politics inseparable from re/tweets? The book adheres the inevitable role of technology, particularly of Twitter in day-to-day spatial reporting in the shape of politics, culture, identity, ideology, norms and empiricism. This book is the result of the research project “Mapping Political Tweets: The Digital Political Revolution in India” (2015–16), funded by Kalindi College, University of Delhi, New Delhi. KC/GB/3349(a). The book appeals to research scientists, graduate students and practitioners in the fields of political science, media representation, communication, and those who have interests to investigate the linkages between different parts of geography and social science with communication technology.




Cities, War, and Terrorism


Book Description

Cities, War and Terrorism is the first book to look critically at the ways in which warfare, terrorism and counter-terrorism policies intersect in cities in the post Cold-War period. A path-breaking exploration of the intersections of war, terrorism and cities Argues that contemporary cities are the key strategic sites of geopolitical conflict Written by the world’s leading analysts of the intersections of urban space and military and terrorist violence Draws on cutting-edge research from geography, history, architecture, planning, sociology, critical theory, politics, international relations and military studies Provides up-to-date empirical analyses of specific conflicts, including 9/11, the “War on Terrorism”, the Balkan wars, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and urban antiglobalization battles Offers lay readers a sophisticated perspective on the violence that is engulfing our increasingly urbanised world




Information and Communication Technologies, Society and Human Beings: Theory and Framework (Festschrift in honor of Gunilla Bradley)


Book Description

Information and Communication Technologies, Society and Human Beings: Theory and Framework addresses the extensive area of effects of ICT on human beings and the interaction between ICT, individuals, organizations, and society. This premier reference source features contributions from over 45 distinguished researchers from around the world, each presenting high quality research on Social Informatics, Human Computer Interaction, Organizational Behavior, and Macro-ergonomics. This unique publication is perfect for students, teachers, researchers, engineers, practitioners, managers, policy-makers, and media alike.




The City Reader


Book Description

The sixth edition of the highly successful The City Reader juxtaposes the very best classic and contemporary writings on the city to provide the comprehensive mapping of the terrain of Urban Studies and Planning old and new. The City Reader is the anchor volume in the Routledge Urban Reader Series and is now integrated with all ten other titles in the series. This edition has been extensively updated and expanded to reflect the latest thinking in each of the disciplinary areas included and in topical areas such as compact cities, urban history, place making, sustainable urban development, globalization, cities and climate change, the world city network, the impact of technology on cities, resilient cities, cities in Africa and the Middle East, and urban theory. The new edition places greater emphasis on cities in the developing world, globalization and the global city system of the future. The plate sections have been revised and updated. Sixty generous selections are included: forty-four from the fifth edition, and sixteen new selections, including three newly written exclusively for The City Reader. The sixth edition keeps classic writings by authors such as Ebenezer Howard, Ernest W. Burgess, LeCorbusier, Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, and Louis Wirth, as well as the best contemporary writings of, among others, Peter Hall, Manuel Castells, David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, and Kenneth Jackson. In addition to newly commissioned selections by Yasser Elshestawy, Peter Taylor, and Lawrence Vale, new selections in the sixth edition include writings by Aristotle, Peter Calthorpe, Alberto Camarillo, Filip DeBoech, Edward Glaeser, David Owen, Henri Pirenne, The Project for Public Spaces, Jonas Rabinovich and Joseph Lietman, Doug Saunders, and Bish Sanyal. The anthology features general and section introductions as well as individual introductions to the selected articles introducing the authors, providing context, relating the selection to other selection, and providing a bibliography for further study. The sixth edition includes fifty plates in four plate sections, substantially revised from the fifth edition.




Urban Confrontations in Literature and Social Science, 1848-2001


Book Description

In an innovative contribution to the challenging of disciplinary boundaries, Edward J. Ahearn juxtaposes works of literature with the writings of social scientists to discover how together they illuminate city life in ways that neither can accomplish separately. Ahearn's argument spans from the second half of the nineteenth century in Western Europe to the present-day United States and encompasses a wide range of literary genres and sociological schools. For example, Charles Baudelaire's essays on the city are viewed alongside the work of Emile Durkheim and Georg Simmel; Bertolt Brecht's Jungle of Cities heightens the arguments of Louis Wirth and Robert Park; Richard Wright's Native Son and Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March are re-visioned in tandem with works by William Julius Wilson and others; Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" poses a challenge to James Q. Wilson's Bureaucracy; Toni Morrison's historical novel Jazz is buttressed by the career of Robert Moses and the revisionist work of historians Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson; and Don DeLillos's Cosmopolis comes into brilliant focus in the light of arguments on world cybercities by David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, and Manuel Cassels. Resisting the temptation to ignore contradictions for the sake of interpretation, Ahearn instead offers the reader a view of the modern city as complex as his subject matter. Here the methodologies and knowledge generated by the social sciences are both complemented and subverted by the experience of city life as portrayed in literature. With its diverse narrative tactics and shifting points of view, which can be as disorienting to the reader as a foreign city is to an arriving immigrant, literature reinforces the importance of method and outlook in the social sciences. Ultimately, Ahearn suggests, neither literature nor the social sciences can capture the experience of urban misery.




The Urban Design Reader


Book Description

The second edition of The Urban Design Reader draws together the very best of classic and contemporary writings to illuminate and expand the theory and practice of urban design. Nearly 50 generous selections include seminal contributions from Howard, Le Corbusier, Lynch, and Jacobs to more recent writings by Waldheim, Koolhaas, and Sorkin. Following the widespread success of the first edition of The Urban Design Reader, this updated edition continues to provide the most important historical material of the urban design field, but also introduces new topics and selections that address the myriad challenges facing designers today. The six part structure of the second edition guides the reader through the history, theory and practice of urban design. The reader is initially introduced to those classic writings that provide the historical precedents for city-making into the twentieth century. Part Two introduces the voices and ideas that were instrumental in establishing the foundations of the urban design field from the late 1950s up to the mid-1990s. These authors present a critical reading of the design professions and offer an alternative urban design agenda focused on vital and lively places. The authors in Part Three provide a range of urban design rationales and strategies for reinforcing local physical identity and the creation of memorable places. These selections are largely describing the outcomes of mid-century urban design and voicing concerns over the placeless quality of contemporary urbanism. The fourth part of the Reader explores key issues in urban design and development. Ideas about sprawl, density, community health, public space and everyday life are the primary focus here. Several new selections in this part of the book also highlight important international development trends in the Middle East and China. Part Five presents environmental challenges faced by the built environment professions today, including recent material on landscape urbanism, sustainability, and urban resiliency. The final part examines professional practice and current debates in the field: where urban designers work, what they do, their roles, their fields of knowledge and their educational development. The section concludes with several position pieces and debates on the future of urban design practice. This book provides an essential resource for students and practitioners of urban design, drawing together important but widely dispersed writings. Part and section introductions are provided to assist readers in understanding the context of the material, summary messages, impacts of the writing, and how they fit into the larger picture of the urban design field.




The Urban Sociology Reader


Book Description

This reader draws together seminal selections spanning the subfield from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Contributions from Simmel, Wirth, Park, Burgess, Zukin, Sassen, Smith and Castells are amongst the 40 selections.




Cities of the Global South Reader


Book Description

The Cities of the Global South Reader adopts a fresh and critical approach to the fi eld of urbanization in the developing world. The Reader incorporates both early and emerging debates about the diverse trajectories of urbanization processes in the context of the restructured global alignments in the last three decades. Emphasizing the historical legacies of colonialism, the Reader recognizes the entanglement of conditions and concepts often understood in binary relations: first/third worlds, wealth/poverty, development/underdevelopment, and inclusion/exclusion. By asking: “whose city? whose development?” the Reader rigorously highlights the fractures along lines of class, race, gender, and other socially and spatially constructed hierarchies in global South cities. The Reader’s thematic structure, where editorial introductions accompany selected texts, examines the issues and concerns that urban dwellers, planners, and policy makers face in the contemporary world. These include the urban economy, housing, basic services, infrastructure, the role of non-state civil society-based actors, planned interventions and contestations, the role of diaspora capital, the looming problem of adapting to climate change, and the increasing spectre of violence in a post 9/11 transnational world. The Cities of the Global South Reader pulls together a diverse set of readings from scholars across the world, some of which have been written specially for the volume, to provide an essential resource for a broad interdisciplinary readership at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in urban geography, urban sociology, and urban planning as well as disciplines related to international and development studies. Editorial commentaries that introduce the central issues for each theme summarize the state of the field and outline an associated bibliography. They will be of particular value for lecturers, students, and researchers, making the Cities of the Global South Reader a key text for those interested in understanding contemporary urbanization processes.




Sustainable Urban Development Reader


Book Description

Building on the success of its second edition, the third edition of the Sustainable Urban Development Reader provides a generous selection of classic and contemporary readings giving a broad introduction to this topic. It begins by tracing the roots of the sustainable development concept in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, before presenting readings on a number of dimensions of the sustainability concept. Topics covered include land use and urban design, transportation, ecological planning and restoration, energy and materials use, economic development, social and environmental justice, and green architecture and building. All sections have a concise editorial introduction that places the selection in context and suggests further reading. Additional sections cover tools for sustainable development, international sustainable development, visions of sustainable community and case studies from around the world. The book also includes educational exercises for individuals, university classes, or community groups, and an extensive list of recommended readings. The anthology remains unique in presenting a broad array of classic and contemporary readings in this field, each with a concise introduction placing it within the context of this evolving discourse. The Sustainable Urban Development Reader presents an authoritative overview of the field using original sources in a highly readable format for university classes in urban studies, environmental studies, the social sciences, and related fields. It also makes a wide range of sustainable urban planning-related material available to the public in a clear and accessible way, forming an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the future of urban environments.