Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities


Book Description

Unlocking the Economic Potential of Post-Industrial Cities provides a roadmap for how urban policy makers, community members, and practitioners in the public and private sector can work together with researchers to discover how all cities can solve the most pressing modern urban challenges.




Slow and Sudden Violence


Book Description

Exposing the roots of racial unrest that consistently harm Black communities In Slow and Sudden Violence, Derek Hyra links police violence to an ongoing cycle of racial and spatial urban redevelopment repression. By delving into the real estate histories of St. Louis and Baltimore, he shows how housing and community development policies advance neighborhood inequality by segregating, gentrifying, and displacing Black communities. Repeated decisions to “upgrade” the urban fabric and uproot low-income Black populations have resulted in pockets of poverty inhabited by people experiencing displacement trauma and police surveillance. These interconnected sets of divestments and accumulated frustrations have contributed to eruptions of violence in response to tragic, unjust police killings. To confront American unrest, Hyra urges that we end racialized policing, stop Black community destruction and displacement, and reduce neighborhood inequality.




Challenges in Classical Liberalism


Book Description

This book examines contemporary policy debates from opposing perspectives. It considers seven key topics in today’s society: land use, education, international trade, health insurance, technological change, and recreational alcohol and drugs. Two scholars with differing viewpoints discuss each topic, one working in the classical liberal tradition and the other advocating slower, incremental societal change. While classical liberalism historically presents a vision of society comprised of free and responsible individuals, this book shows the importance of considering the nuances of this vision today. Beyond theoretical regulation vs. de-regulation debates, the book highlights challenges for classical liberals by considering how dynamism and creative destruction may disrupt communities, leading to worse outcomes for some groups. This edited volume aims to deepen understanding of this challenge to a free society and partake in and encourage civil intellectual discourse and debate. It will interest students and scholars from various fields, including economics, political science, public health, and environmental studies.




Toward a Political Economy of the Commons


Book Description

Since Garrett Hardin published The Tragedy of the Commons in 1968, critics have argued that population growth and capitalism contribute to overuse of natural resources and degradation of the global environment. They propose coercive, state-centric solutions. This book offers an alternative view. Employing insights from new institutional economics, the authors argue that property rights, competitive markets, polycentric political institutions, and social institutions such as trust, patience and individualism enable society to conserve natural resources and mitigate harms to the global environment.




Dayton


Book Description

Examines underlying factors behind the rise and decline of Dayton, Ohio, an archetypal Rust-Belt city, ultimately proposing a plan for revival.




Unlocking Africa's Business Potential


Book Description

Africa welcomes business investment and offers some of the world's highest returns and impacts Africa has tremendous economic potential and offers rewarding opportunities for global businesses looking for new markets and long-term investments with favorable returns. Africa has been one of the world's fastest-growing regions over the past decade, and by 2030 will be home to nearly 1.7 billion people and an estimated $6.7 trillion worth of consumer and business spending. Increased political stability in recent years and improving regional integration are making market access easier, and business expansion will generate jobs for women and youth, who represent the vast majority of the population. Current economic growth and poverty-alleviation efforts mean that more than 43 percent of the continent's people will reach middle- or upper-class status by 2030. Unlocking Africa's Business Potential examines business opportunities in the eight sectors with the highest potential returns on private investment—the same sectors that will foster economic growth and diversification, job creation, and improved general welfare. These sectors include: consumer markets, agriculture and agriprocessing, information and communication technology, manufacturing, oil and gas, tourism, banking, and infrastructure and construction. The book's analysis of these sectors is based on case studies that identify specific opportunities for investment and growth, along with long-term market projections to inform decision-making. The book identifies potential risks to business and offers mitigation strategies. It also provides policymakers with solutions to attract new business investments, including how to remove barriers to business and accelerate development of the private sector.




Urban Re-industrialization


Book Description

Urban re-industrialisation could be seen as a method of increasing business effectiveness in the context of a politically stimulated 'green economy'; it could also be seen as a nostalgic mutation of a creative-class concept, focused on 3D printing, 'boutique manufacturing' and crafts. These two notions place urban re-industrialisation within the context of the current neoliberal economic regime and urban development based on property and land speculation. Could urban re-industrialisation be a more radical idea? Could urban re-industrialization be imagined as a progressive socio-political and economic project, aimed at creating an inclusive and democratic society based on cooperation and a symbiosis that goes way beyond the current model of a neoliberal city?In January 2012, against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis, Krzysztof Nawratek published a text in opposition to the fantasy of a 'cappuccino city, ' arguing that the post-industrial city is a fiction, and that it should be replaced by 'Industrial City 2.0.' Industrial City 2.0 is an attempt to see a post-socialist and post-industrial city from another perspective, a kind of negative of the modernist industrial city. If, for logistical reasons and because of a concern for the health of residents, modernism tried to separate different functions from each other (mainly industry from residential areas), Industrial City 2.0 is based on the ideas of coexistence, proximity, and synergy. The essays collected here envision the possibilities (as well as the possible perils) of such a scheme.TABLE OF CONTENTS //Introduction: Urban Re-industrialization as a Political Project (Krzysztof Nawratek)PART 1: Why Should We Do It? / Re-industrialisation as Progressive Urbanism: Why and How? (Michael Edwards & Myfanwy Taylor) - Mechanisms of Loss (Karol Kurnicki) - The Cultural Politics of Re-industrialisation: Some Remarks on Cultural and Urban Policy in the European Union (Jonathan Vickery)PART 2: Political Considerations and Implications / 'Shrimps not whales': Building a City of Small Parts as an Alternative Vision for Post-industrial Society (Alison Hulme) - 'Der Arbeiter': (Re) Industrialisation as Universalism? (Krzysztof Nawratek) - Whose Re-industrialisation? Greening the Pit or Taking Over the Means of Production? (Malcolm Miles) - Crowdsourced Urbanism? The Maker Revolution and the Creative City 2.0. (Doreen Jakob) - Brave New World? (Tatjana Schneider) - The Political Agency of Geography and the Shrinking City (Jeffrey T. Kruth)PART 3: How Should We Do It? / Beyond the Post-Industrial City? The Third Industrial Revolution, Digital Manufacturing and the Transformation of Homes into Miniature Factories (John R. Bryson, Jennifer Clark, & Rachel Mulhall) - Conspicuous Production: Valuing the Visibility of Industry in Urban Re-industrialisation Strategies (Karl Baker) - Industri[us] (Christina Norton) - Working with the Neighbours: Co-operative Practices Delivering Sustainable Benefits (Kate Royston) - Low-carbon (Re-)industrialisation: Lessons from China (Kevin Lo & Mark Yaolin Wang




Creative Economies in Post-Industrial Cities


Book Description

There has been much written on the new creative economy, but most work focuses on the so-called 'creative class,' with lifestyle preferences that favor trendy new restaurants, mountain biking, and late night clubbing. This 'creative class,' flagship cultural destinations, and other forms of commodity-driven cultural production, now occupy a relatively uncritical place in the revitalization schemes of most cities up and down the urban hierarchy. In contrast, this book focuses on small- to medium-size post-industrial cities in the US, Canada, and Europe that are trying to redress the effects of deindustrialization and economic decline through cultural economic regeneration. It examines how culture-infused economic opportunities are being incorporated into planning in distinct ways, largely under the radar, in many working class communities and considers to what extent places rooted in an industrial past are able to envisage a different economic future for themselves. It questions whether these visions replicate strategies employed in larger cities or put forth plans that better suit the unique histories and challenges of places that remain outside the global limelight. Exploring the intersection between a cultural and sustainable economy raises issues that are central to how urban regeneration is approached and neighborhood needs and assets are understood. Case studies in this book examine spaces and planning processes that hold the possibility of addressing inequality by forging new economic and social relationships and by embarking on more inclusive and collaborative experiments in culture-based economic development. These examples often focus on building upon the assets of existing residents and broadly define creativity and talent. They also acknowledge both the economic and non-monetary value of cultural practices. This book maintains a critical edge, incorporating left critiques of mainstream creative economy theories and practices into empirical case studies that depart from standard cultural economy discourse. Structural barriers and unequal distributions of power make the search for viable urban development alternatives especially difficult for smaller post-industrial cities and risk derailing even creative grassroots initiatives. While acknowledging these obstacles, this book moves beyond critique and focuses on how the growing economy surrounding culture, the arts, and ecological design can be harnessed and transformed to best benefit such cities and improve the quality of life for its residents.




Climatopolis


Book Description

One of the worldÕs leading urban and environmental economists tells us what our lives will be like when climate change arrives




Greening Post-Industrial Cities


Book Description

City greening has been heralded for contributing to environmental governance and critiqued for exacerbating displacement and inequality. Bringing these two disparate analyses into conversation, this book offers a comparative understanding of how tensions between growth, environmental protection, and social equity are playing out in practice. Examining Chicago, USA, Birmingham, UK, and Vancouver, Canada, McKendry argues that city greening efforts were closely connected to processes of post-industrial branding in the neoliberal economy. While this brought some benefits, concerns about the unequal distribution of these benefits and greening’s limited environmental impact challenged its legitimacy. In response, city leaders have moved toward initiatives that strive to better address environmental effectiveness and social equity while still spurring growth. Through an analysis that highlights how different varieties of liberal environmentalism are manifested in each case, this book illustrates that cities, though constrained by inconsistent political will and broader political and economic contexts, are making contributions to more effective, socially just environmental governance. Both critical and hopeful, McKendry’s work will interest scholars of city greening, environmental governance, and comparative urban politics.