EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.Focusing on material and social forms of infrastructure, this edited collection draws on rich empirical details from cities across the global North and South. The book asks the reader to think through the different ways in which infrastructure comes to be present in cities and its co-constitutive relationships with urban inhabitants and wider processes of urbanization.Considering the climate emergency, economic t...

How economics needs to change to keep pace with the twenty-first century and the digital economyDigital technology, big data, big tech, machine learning, and AI are revolutionizing both the tools of economics and the phenomena it seeks to measure, understand, and shape. In Cogs and Monsters, Diane Coyle explores the enormous problems—but also opportunities—facing economics today and examines what it must do to help policymakers solve the world’s crises, fr...

With transitions to more sustainable ways of living already underway, this book examines how we understand the underlying dynamics of the transitions that are unfolding. Without this understanding, we enter the future in a state of informed bewilderment.Every day we are bombarded by reports about ecosystem breakdown, social conflict, economic stagnation and a crisis of identity. There is mounting evidence that deeper transitions are underway that suggest we may be entering another ...

How public affairs are run depends upon the degree of authority and control central government decides to relinquish to regional and local governments, and the extent to which it favors citizen involvement in the governing process. Public administrators do not operate in a vacuum. The context within which decision-making takes place greatly influences public administrators approach to public issues. Consequently, what government decides to do and how it decides to carry it out affects the ...

Who makes our cities, and what part do everyday users have in the design of cities? This book powerfully shows that city-making is a social process and examines the close relationship between the social and physical shaping of urban environments.With cities taking a growing share of the global population, urban forms and urban experience are crucial for understanding social injustice, economic inequality and environmental challenges. Current processes of urbanization too often cont...

This revised fifth edition not only examines the new geographical patterns forming within and between cities, but also investigates the way geographers have sought to make sense of this urban transformation. It is structured into three sections: 'contexts', 'themes' and 'issues' that move students from a foundation in urban geography through its major themes to contemporary and pressing issues. The text critically synthesizes key literatures in the following areas:t...

Today, for the first time in the history of Humankind urban dwellers outnumber rural residents. Urban places, towns and cities, are of fundamental importance – for the distribution of population within countries; in the organization of economic production, distribution and exchange; in the structuring of social reproduction and cultural life; and in the allocation and exercise of power. Furthermore, in the course of the present century the number of urban dwellers and level of global urban...

This book examines the social impact of intellectual property laws. It addresses issues and trends relating to health, food security, education, new technologies, preservation of bio-cultural heritage and contemporary challenges in promoting the arts. It explores how intellectual property frameworks could be better calibrated to meet socio-economic needs in countries at different stages of development, with local contexts and culture in mind. A resource for policy-makers, stakeholders, non...

Urban planning is not just about applying a suite of systematic principles or plotting out pragmatic designs to satisfy the briefs of private developers or public bodies. Planning is also an activity of imagination, with a stock of wisdom and an array of useful methods for making decisions and getting things done.This critical introduction uncovers and celebrates this imagination and its creative potential. Nicholas A. Phelps explores the key themes and driving questions in the cir...

The full text downloaded to your computerWith eBooks you can:search for key concepts, words and phrasesmake highlights and notes as you studyshare your notes with friendseBooks are downloaded to your computer and accessible either offline through the Bookshelf (available as a free download), available online and also via the iPad and Android apps.Upon purchase, you'll gain instant access to t...

In this weaving of radical political economy, Omnia Sunt Communia sets out the steps to postcapitalism. By conceptualising the commons not just as common goods but as a set of social systems, Massimo De Angelis shows their pervasive presence in everyday life, mapping out a strategy for total social transformation.From the micro to the macro, De Angelis unveils the commons as fields of power relations – shared space, objects, subjects – that explode the limits of daily life...

Modern urban planning has long promised to improve the quality of human life. But how is human life defined? Displacing Blackness develops a unique critique of urban planning by focusing, not on its subservience to economic or political elites, but on its efforts to improve people’s lives.While focused on twentieth-century Halifax, Displacing Blackness develops broad insights about the possibilities and limitations of modern planning. Drawing connections between t...