Government of paper Hull, Matthew S
2012., 20120506, 2012, 2012-06-05, 20120101
eBook
In the electronic age, documents appear to have escaped their paper confinement. But we are still surrounded by flows of paper with enormous consequences. In the planned city of Islamabad, order and ...disorder are produced through the ceaseless inscription and circulation of millions of paper artifacts among bureaucrats, politicians, property owners, villagers, imams (prayer leaders), businessmen, and builders. What are the implications of such a thorough paper mediation of relationships among people, things, places, and purposes? Government of Paper explores this question in the routine yet unpredictable realm of the Pakistani urban bureaucracy, showing how the material forms of postcolonial bureaucratic documentation produce a distinctive political economy of paper that shapes how the city is constructed, regulated, and inhabited. Files, maps, petitions, and visiting cards constitute the enduring material infrastructure of more ephemeral classifications, laws, and institutional organizations. Matthew S. Hull develops a fresh approach to state governance as a material practice, explaining why writing practices designed during the colonial era to isolate the government from society have become a means of participation in it.
The much-praised Cultural Quarters returns in a revised edition, offering new case studies and new chapters on the economics of cultural quarters and the importance of historical buildings. This ...definitive text provides a conceptual context for cultural quarters through a detailed discussion of urban design and planning.
Paul Stronski tells the fascinating story of Tashkent, an ethnically diverse, primarily Muslim city that became the prototype for the Soviet-era reimagining of urban centers in Central Asia. Based on ...extensive research in Russian and Uzbek archives, Stronski shows us how Soviet officials, planners, and architects strived to integrate local ethnic traditions and socialist ideology into a newly constructed urban space and propaganda showcase.
The Soviets planned to transform Tashkent from a "feudal city" of the tsarist era into a "flourishing garden," replete with fountains, a lakeside resort, modern roadways, schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, and of course, factories. The city was intended to be a shining example to the world of the successful assimilation of a distinctly non-Russian city and its citizens through the catalyst of socialism. As Stronski reveals, the physical building of this Soviet city was not an end in itself, but rather a means to change the people and their society.
Stronski analyzes how the local population of Tashkent reacted to, resisted, and eventually acquiesced to the city's socialist transformation. He records their experiences of the Great Terror, World War II, Stalin's death, and the developments of the Krushchev and Brezhnev eras up until the earthquake of 1966, which leveled large parts of the city. Stronski finds that the Soviets established a legitimacy that transformed Tashkent and its people into one of the more stalwart supporters of the regime through years of political and cultural changes and finally during the upheavals of glasnost.
Small and midsized cities played a key role in the Industrial Revolution in the United States as hubs for the shipping, warehousing, and distribution of manufactured products. But as the twentieth ...century brought cheaper transportation and faster communication, these cities were hit hard by population losses and economic decline. In the twenty-first century, many former industrial hubs-from Springfield to Wichita, from Providence to Columbus-are finding pathways to reinvention. With innovative urban policies and design, once-declining cities are becoming the unlikely pioneers of postindustrial urban revitalization.Revitalizing American Citiesexplores the historical, regional, and political factors that have allowed some industrial cities to regain their footing in a changing economy. The volume discusses national patterns and drivers of growth and decline, presents case studies and comparative analyses of decline and renewal, considers approaches to the problems that accompany the vacant land and blight common to many of the country's declining cities, and examines tactics that cities can use to prosper in a changing economy. Featuring contributions from scholars and experts of urban planning, economic development, public policy, and education,Revitalizing American Citiesprovides a detailed, illuminating look at past and possible reinventions of resilient American cities.Contributors:Frank S. Alexander, Eugenie L. Birch, Paul C. Brophy, Steven Cochrane, Gilles Duranton, Sean Ellis, Kyle Fee, Edward Glaeser, Daniel Hartley, Yolanda K. Kodrzycki, Sophia Koropeckyj, Alan Mallach, Ana Patricia Muñoz, Jeremy Nowak, Laura W. Perna, Aaron Smith, Catherine Tumber, Susan M. Wachter, Kimberly A. Zeuli.
This fascinating book explains the processes of suburbanization in the context of post-socialist societies transitioning from one system of socio-spatial order to another. Case studies of seven ...Central and Eastern Europe city regions illuminate growth patterns and key conditions for the emergence of sprawl. * Breaks new ground, offering a systematic approach to the analysis of the global phenomenon of suburbanization in a post-socialist context * Tracks the boom of the post-socialist suburbs in seven CEE capital city regions – Budapest, Ljubljana, Moscow, Prague, Sofia, Tallinn, and Warsaw * Situates the experience of the CEE countries in the broader context of global urban change * Case studies examine the phenomenon of suburbanization along four main vectors of analysis related to development patterns, driving forces, consequences and impacts, and management of suburbanization * Highlights the critical importance of public policies and planning on the spread of suburbanization
The 60s and 70s saw a strong role of planning, social engineering, etc., but there has since been a move towards a more decentralised 'community planning' approach. This text examines urban planning ...and policy in the context of deeply contested space, where place identity and cultural affinities are reshaping cities.
Races to Modernity Behrends, Jan C; Kohlrausch, Martin
2014, 20140830, 2014-07-20
eBook
This volume succeeds beautifully in conveying a detailed sense of urban development in Eastern Europe and the crucial importance of cities for the moderniszation of Eastern Europe during the half ...century before World War II.
Current societies face unprecedented risks and challenges connected to climate change. Addressing them will require fundamental transformations in the infrastructures that sustain everyday life, such ...as energy, water, waste and mobility. A transition to a ‘low carbon’ future implies a large scale reorganisation in the way societies produce and use energy. Cities are critical in this transition because they concentrate social and economic activities that produce climate change related emissions. At the same time, cities are increasingly recognised as sources of opportunities for climate change mitigation. Whether, how and why low carbon transitions in urban systems take place in response to climate change will therefore be decisive for the success of global mitigation efforts. As a result, climate change increasingly features as a critical issue in the management of urban infrastructure and in urbanisation policies.
Cities and Low Carbon Transitions presents a ground-breaking analysis of the role of cities in low carbon socio-technical transitions. Insights from the fields of urban studies and technological transitions are combined to examine how, why and with what implications cities bring about low carbon transitions. The book outlines the key concepts underpinning theories of socio-technical transition and assesses its potential strengths and limits for understanding the social and technological responses to climate change that are emerging in cities. It draws on a diverse range of examples including world cities, ordinary cities and transition towns, from North America, Europe, South Africa and China, to provide evidence that expectations, aspirations and plans to undertake purposive socio-technical transitions are emerging in different urban contexts.
This collection adds to existing literature on cities and energy transitions and introduces critical questions about power and social interests, lock-in and development trajectories, social equity and economic development, and socio-technical change in cities. The book addresses academics, policy makers, practitioners and researchers interested in the development of systemic responses in cities to curb climate change.
Harriet Bulkeley is a Professor at the Department of Geography, and Deputy Director of Durham Energy Institute, Durham University. Her research interests focuses on the nature and politics of environmental governance and on climate change and urban sustainability. She is co-author (with Michele Betsill) of Cities and Climate Change (Routledge, 2003), and currently holds an ESRC Climate Change Leadership Fellowship and a Philip Leverhulme Prize for Geography.
Vanesa Castán Broto is a Lecturer at the Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London. Her research interests focuses on how technology and environmental knowledge mediate the relationship between society and the environment. She has an inter-disciplinary background in engineering and social sciences.
Mike Hodson is Associate Director and Senior Research Fellow at the SURF Centre, University of Salford. His research interests focus on urban and regional transitions to low-carbon economies, the ways in which this may or may not happen and understandings of the lessons to be learned from such processes. He has developed projects funded by the European Commission, UK research councils, sub-national government and through private consultancy.
Simon Marvin is Carillion Chair of Low Carbon Cities, Professor at the Department of Geography and Deputy Director of Durham Energy Institute, Durham University. He is an expert on the changing relations between neighbourhoods, cities, regions and infrastructure networks in a period of resource constraint, institutional restructuring and climate change. Simon’s research has been funded by the ESRC, EPSRC, international research foundations, the European Commission, commercial funders and many public agencies. He has co-authored of three internationally leading books on cities and infrastructure.
"It is obvious that cities play a major role in climate change as both sources of problems and sites for solutions. What is less obvious is how to understand processes of urban transformation systematically, and how to frame analysis and practice in ways that offer hope for governing cities along low carbon pathways. This excellent volume, with contributions from leading scholars, puts key considerations on the table, and illustrates how social science can help address that governance challenge." – Adrian Smith, SPRU - Science & Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex"
1. Introduction Harriet Bulkeley, Vanesa Castán Broto, Mike Hodson and Simon Marvin Part I 2. The Role of Cities in Technological Transitions: Analytical Clarifications and Historical Examples Frank Geels 3. Governing Urban Low Carbon Transitions Harriet Bulkeley, Vanesa Castán Broto and Anne Maassen 4. The Carbon Calculus and Transitions in Urban Politics and Political Theory Aidan While 5. Can Cities Shape Socio-Technical Transitions and How Would We Know If They Were? Mike Hodson and Simon Marvin Part II 6. Urban Energy Transitions in Chinese Cities Shobhakar Dhakal 7. The ‘Eco-Cities’ Freiburg and Graz: The Social Dynamics of Pioneering Urban Energy and Climate Governance Philipp Späth and Harald Rohracher 8. The Rise of Post-Nnetworked Cities in Europe? Recombining Infrastructural, Ecological and Urban Transformations in Low-Carbon Transitions Olivier Coutard and Jonathan Rutherford 9. Living Laboratories For Sustainability: Exploring The Politics and Epistemology of Urban Transition James Evans and Andrew Karvonen 10. Municipal Bureaucracies and Integrated Urban Transitions to a Low Carbon Future Alex Aylett 11. Community-led Urban Transitions and Resilience: Performing Transition Towns in a City Amanda Smith 12. Building Liveable Cities: Urban Low Impact Developments as Low Carbon Solutions? Jenny Pickerill 13. Conclusions Mike Hodson, Simon Marvin, Harriet Bulkeley and Vanesa Castán Broto
When Philadelphia's iconoclastic city planner Edmund N. Bacon looked into his crystal ball in 1959, he saw a remarkable vision: "Philadelphia as an unmatched expression of the vitality of American ...technology and culture." In that year Bacon penned an essay forGreater Philadelphia Magazine, originally entitled "Philadelphia in the Year 2009," in which he imagined a city remade, modernized in time to host the 1976 Philadelphia World's Fair and Bicentennial celebration, an event that would be a catalyst for a golden age of urban renewal. What Bacon did not predict was the long, bitter period of economic decline, population dispersal, and racial confrontation that Philadelphia was about to enter. As such, his essay comes to us as a time capsule, a message from one of the city's most influential and controversial shapers that prompts discussions of what was, what might have been, and what could yet be in the city's future.Imagining Philadelphiabrings together Bacon's original essay, reprinted here for the first time in fifty years, and a set of original essays on the past, present, and future of urban planning in Philadelphia. In addition to examining Bacon and his motivations for writing the piece, the essays assess the wider context of Philadelphia's planning, architecture, and real estate communities at the time, how city officials were reacting to economic decline, what national precedents shaped Bacon's faith in grand forms of urban renewal, and whether or not it is desirable or even possible to adopt similarly ambitious visions for contemporary urban planning and economic development. The volume closes with a vision of what Philadelphia might look like fifty years from now.
