Unsettling The City

Contemporary capitalism has produced gentrification, socio-spatial stratification and racial inequality. In this book, Nicholas Blomley shows how the concept of "property" helps to generate and underwrite these pervasive urban processes.

This text examines the global nature of cities - cities whose openness has shaped their dynamism and character. It explores cities as sites of movement, migration and settlement where different peoples, cultures and environments combine. Unsettling Cities explores the mix of proximity and difference that exists in the rich and diverse texture of city life. The contributors reveal the association between the changing fortunes of cities and the power and influence of global networks.

Using the context of international transformations in a post- industrial, post modern society, this book examines the creation and self-creation of a new middle class of professional and managerial workers associated with the gentrification.

Traces how cities evolved from autonomous entities with citizens to modern corporations without citizens. "A remarkable book.... explains the origins of modern Canadian cities as corporations."--Imprint "A useful canvas on which to rethink the polarity of governments."--Montreal Mirror

This text offers an international and interdisciplinary analysis of the complex interactions between infrastructure networks and urban spaces. Drawing on case studies and examples from across the globe, it offers a statement on the urban condition.

Poems, stories and visual pieces that reflect on what it means to live in a smaller community.

A quarterly of comparative studies of Chinese and foreign literatures.

The Urban Uncanny explores through ten engaging essays the slippage or mismatch between our expectations of the city—as the organised and familiar environments in which citizens live, work, and go about their lives—and the often surprising and unsettling experiences it evokes. The city is uncanny when it reveals itself in new and unexpected light; when its streets, buildings, and people suddenly appear strange, out of place, and not quite right. Bringing together a variety of approaches, including psychoanalysis, historical and contemporary case study of cities, urban geography, film and literary critique, the essays explore some of the unsettling mismatches between city and citizen in order to make sense of each, and to gauge the wellbeing of city life more generally. Essays examine a number of cities, including Edmonton, London, Paris, Oxford, Las Vegas, Berlin and New York, and address a range of issues, including those of memory, death, anxiety, alienation, and identity. Delving into the complex repercussions of contemporary mass urban development, The Urban Uncanny opens up the pathological side of cities, both real and imaginary. This interdisciplinary collection provides unparalleled insights into the urban uncanny that will be of interest to academics and students of urban studies, urban geography, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, social studies and film studies, and to anyone interested in the darker side of city life.

The literature on rural America, to the extent that it exists, has largely been written by urban-based scholars perpetuating out-of-date notions and stereotypes or by those who see little difference between rural and agricultural concerns. As a result, the real rural America remains much misunderstood, neglected, or ignored by scholars and policymakers alike. In response, Emery Castle offers The Changing American Countryside, a volume that will forever change how we look at this important subject. Castle brings together the writings of eminent scholars from several disciplines and varying backgrounds to take a fresh and comprehensive look at the "forgotten hinterlands." These authors examine the role of non-metropolitan people and places in the economic life of our nation and cover such diverse issues as poverty, industry, the environment, education, family, social problems, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, government, public policy, and regional diversity The authors are especially effective in demonstrating why rural America is so much more than just agriculture. It is in fact highly diverse, complex, and interdependent with urban America and the international market place. Most major rural problems, they contend, simply cannot be effectively addressed in isolation from their urban and international connections. To do so is misguided and even hazardous, when one-fourth of our population and ninety-seven per cent of our land area is rural. Together these writings not only provide a new and more realistic view of rural life and public policy, but also suggest how the field of rural studies can greatly enrich our understanding of national life.