Reframing The Reclaiming Of Urban Space

In Reframing the Reclaiming of Urban Space: A Feminist Exploration into Do-It-Yourself Urbanismin Chicago, Megan E. Heim LaFrombois explores the concept of do-it-yourself (DIY) urbanism from an intersectional, feminist, analytical framework. Interventions based on DIY urbanism are small-scale and place-specific and focus on urban spaces which can be reclaimed and repurposed, often outside of formal urban planning institutions. Heim LaFrombois examines the discourses and processes surrounding the institutionalized and embedded nature of DIY urbanism. She weaves together sites and sources to reveal the ways in which DIY urbanists make sense of their participation and experiences with DIY urbanism and with the broader political, social, and economic contexts and spaces in which these activities take place. Her research findings contribute to and build on current research that illustrates the importance of gender, race, class, and sexuality to cities, local politics, urban planning initiatives, and the development of communities.

This authoritative Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of research into urban politics and policy in cities across the globe. Leading scholars examine the position of urban politics within political science and analyse the critical approaches and interdisciplinary pressures that are broadening the field.

COMPANION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL STUDIES Indispensable overview and timely coverage of the major issues, debates, and research topics in urban and regional studies Companion to Urban and Regional Studies offers an up-to-date view of the rapidly growing field, exploring a diversity of theoretical perspectives, current and emerging research, and critical global policy concerns. Uniquely broad in geographical and thematic scope, this comprehensive volume brings together essays by more than fifty international scholars and researchers to provide expert assessments spanning the many dimensions of urban studies. Organized into five parts, the Companion begins with a review of the current state of cities across East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, North America, Europe, and Latin America, and all other world regions. Subsequent sections discuss contemporary theoretical perspectives, describe common methodological approaches used by urban scholars, and examine the political, social, and economic problems facing twenty-first century cities. Covering historical issues, current challenges, and comparative perspectives in urban studies, this timely resource: Addresses intensely debated policy issues such as governance, housing, immigration and migration, segregation, social mix, and gentrification Describes the use of demographic methods, advanced spatial analysis, social networks, policy mobilities, and ethnographies in urban studies research Discusses critical urban theory, feminist urban research, urbanization and environmental change, and the legacy of the Chicago School Covers contemporary research topics such as urban and regional inequalities, social heterogeneity and diversity, financialization Includes representative case studies of each region, including Australasia, Latin America, East Asia and South Asia Companion to Urban and Regional Studies is essential reading for scholars, researchers, practitioners, urban activists, and students, and it represents a must-have complement to The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies.

The New Companion to Urban Design continues the assemblage of rich and critical ideas about urban form and design that began with the Companion to Urban Design (Routledge, 2011). With chapters from a new set of contributors, this sequel offers a more comparative perspective representing multiple voices and perspectives from the Global South. The essays in this volume are organized in three parts: Part I: Comparative Urbanism; Part II: Challenges; and Part III: Opportunities. Each part contains distinct sections designed to address specific themes, and includes a list of annotated suggested further readings at the end of each chapter. Part I: Comparative Urbanism examines different variants of urbanism in the Global North and the Global South, produced by a new economic order characterized by the mobility of labor, capital, information, and technology. Part II: Challenges discusses some of the contemporary challenges that cities of the Global North and the Global South are facing and the possible role of urban design. This part discusses spatial claims and conflicts, challenges generated by urban informality, explosive growth or dramatic shrinkage of the urban settlement, gentrification and displacement, and mimesis, simulacra and lack of authenticity. Part III: Aspirations discusses some normative goals that urban design interventions aspire to bring about in cities of the Global North and the Global South. These include resilience and sustainability, health, conservation/restoration, justice, intelligence, access and mobility, and arts and culture. The New Companion to Urban Design is primarily intended for scholars and graduate students interested in cities and their built environment. It offers an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across a range of disciplines including urban design, planning, urban studies, and geography.

How local, specific, and personal understandings about belonging, ownership, and agency intersect with law to shape the city. In Owning the Street, Amelia Thorpe examines everyday experiences of and feelings about property and belonging in contemporary cities. She grounds her account in an empirical study of PARK(ing) Day, an annual event that reclaims street space from cars. A popular and highly recognizable example of DIY Urbanism, PARK(ing) Day has attracted considerable media attention, but has not yet been the subject of close scholarly examination. Focusing on the event's trajectories in San Francisco, Sydney, and Montreal, Thorpe addresses this gap, making use of extensive interview data, field work, and careful reflection to explore these tiny, temporary, and often transformative interventions.

New Urbanism, a movement devoted to building walkable, socially diversity cities, has garnered some successes and some failures over the past several decades. A Research Agenda for New Urbanism is a forward-looking book composed of chapters by leading scholars of New Urbanism. Authors focus on multiple topics, including affordability, transportation, social life and retail to highlight the areas of research that are most important for the future of the field. The book summarizes what we know and what we need to know to provide a research agenda that will have the greatest promise and most positive impact on building the best possible human habitat—which is the aim of New Urbanism.

This book explores the growing spatial inequality in contemporary cities, and the opportunity of reframing the role of public open space as a tool of inclusion in a context of an increasing economic gap between the urban poor and rich. The first part outlines the geographical and theoretical frames of reference, which are then tested in the analysis of a case study: Cape Town. This city in South Africa was selected since its spatial aspects of separation are particularly evident due to the legacy of both apartheid and modernism. The examination of the policies of the City of Cape Town confirms the rising attention to public space since the 1990s. This slow progress of desegregation is tested through a critical study of one of the most disadvantaged areas of the city, Khayelitsha. The book explores the relevance and impact of an urban-design project, and reframes the role of public open space not only as a tool for restructuring the apartheid city, but also for reinterpreting other fragmented contemporary cities.

Repair & Do-It-Yourself activities on the one hand and discussions about the circular economy on the other hand are currently regarded as promising examples of how current modes of consumption and production can be reorganized and redesigned in the sense of a sustainable society. This volume discusses the relevance, the interactions as well as the possibilities and limits of the aforementioned phenomena of repairing, do-it-yourself and longer use on the one hand and the circular economy on the other, from both a scientific and a practical perspective.

New Feminist Research Ethics re-examines the place of the ethical in feminist research and identifies new ethical priorities for feminist researchers. As urgent social, political and environmental challenges demand new ethical sensibilities, contributors revisit the relationship between feminism and research to ask what it means to be an ethical feminist researcher now. They explore how hierarchies of privilege have shaped our understandings of research ethics and question how evolving understandings of feminist research ethics sit alongside formal institutional ethics processes. Contributors also situate feminist research ethics in the context of a broader ethics of care and repair. Importantly, New Feminist Research Ethics acknowledges the need for feminist ethical research frameworks that encompass multiple perspectives and draw from diverse traditions of knowing. The volume brings together established and emerging scholars, and perspectives from sociology, history, gender studies, archival studies, cultural studies, and architecture. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Australian Feminist Studies.

“Reframing Postcolonial Studies addresses the urgent issues that Black Lives Matter has raised with respect to everyday material practices and the frameworks in which our knowledge and cultural heritage are conceptualized and stored. Thebook points urgently to the many ways in which our society must reinvent itself to enable equitable justice for all.”— Robert J.C. Young, Julius Professor of English and Comparative Literature, New York University, USA “Drawing on urban theory, art history, literary analysis, environmental humanities and linguistics, this book is ambitious and wide-ranging, asking us what it is to live creatively and critically with the residues of colonial appropriation and sedimentation while in open dialogue with the subjects who still live in its wake.” — Tamar Garb, Durning Lawrence Professor in History of Art, University College London, UK This book constitutes a collective action to examine what foundational concepts, interdisciplinary methodologies, and activist concerns are pivotal for the future of common humanity, as we bear the weight of our postcolonial inheritance in the twenty-first century. Written by scholars of different generations, the chapters interrogate how current intellectual endeavors are in contact with individual and community-based actions outside of the academy. Going beyond the perennial debates on the tension between theory and praxis or on the disparity between activism and scholarship, they examine literary texts, visual artworks, language and immigration policies, public monuments, museum exhibitions, moral dilemmas, and political movements to deepen our contemporary postcolonial action on the edge of conceptual thinking, methodological experimentation, and scholarly activism. Reframing Postcolonial Studies is the first volume whose rationale is formulated in explicitly intergenerational, future-oriented terms.