The turn of the century has been a moment of rapid urbanization. Much of this urban growth is taking place in the cities of the developing world and much of it in informal settlements. This book presents cutting-edge research from various world regions to demonstrate these trends. The contributions reveal that informal housing is no longer the domain of the urban poor; rather it is a significant zone of transactions for the middle-class and even transnational elites. Indeed, the book prese...

Today in Texas, over 1500 colonias in the counties along the Mexican border are home to some 400,000 people. Often lacking basic services, such as electricity, water and sewerage, fire protection, policing, schools, and health care, these "irregular" subdivisions offer the only low-cost housing available to the mostly Hispanic working poor.This book presents the results of a major study of colonias in three transborder metropolitan areas and uncovers the reasons why colonias are sp...

After the 1960s, rapid urbanization in developing regions in Latin America, Africa, and Asia was marked by the expansion of low-income "irregular" settlements that developed informally and which, by the 2000s, often constituted between 20-60 percent of the built-up area of metropolitan areas and other large cities. There has been a variety of research directed at the housing policies involved with these informal settlements, yet apart from the activities of Latin American Housing Network (...

An insider's "indispensible" behind-the-scenes history of the transit system of San Francisco and surrounding counties ( Houston Chronicle).In the first-ever history book about BART, longtime agency spokesman Michael C. Healy gives an insider's account of the rapid transit system's inception, hard-won approval, construction, and operations, warts and all.With a master storyteller's wit and sharp attention to detail, Healy recreates the politically ...

A successful property developer in England, the Sligo-born Tom Gilmartin had ambitious plans for major retail developments in Dublin in the late 1980s. Little did he know that in order to do business in the city, senior politicians and public officials would want a slice of the action … in the form of large amounts of cash. Gilmartin blew the whistle on corruption at the heart of government and the city's planning system, and the fallout from his claims ultimately led to the resignation of...

By the mid-1960s Toronto was well on its way to becoming Canada's largest and most powerful city. One real estate firm aptly labelled it Boomtown. Expressways, subways, shopping centres, high-rise apartments, and skyscraping downtown office towers were transforming the city. City officials were cheerleaders for unrestricted growth.All this "progress" had a price. Heritage buildings were disappearing. Whole neighbourhoods were being destroyed -- by city hall itself -- in the name of...

Most of the world's population now lives in cities. So if we are to address the problems of environmental deterioration and peak oil adequately, the city has to be a major focus of attention.EcoCities is about re-building cities and towns based on ecological principles for the long term sustainability, cultural vitality and health of the Earth's biosphere. Unique in the literature is the book's insight that the form of the city really matters-and that it is within our abi...

The author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism and The New Class Conflict challenges conventions of urban planning.Around the globe, most new urban development has adhered to similar tenets: tall structures, small units, and high density. In The Human City, Joel Kotkin―called "America's uber-geographer" by David Brooks of the New York Times―questions these nearly ubiquitous practices, suggesting that they do not consider the needs and ...

This book gives definition to participatory practice as a necessary form of activism in development planning for cities. It gives guidance on how practice can make space for big and lasting change and for new opportunities to be discovered. It points to ways of building synergy and negotiating our way in the social and political spaces ‘in between’ conventional and often competing ideals – public and private interests, top down and bottom up, formal and informal, the global agendas which o...

With a new introduction for the paperback.London is a supreme achievement of civilization. It offers fulfilments of body and soul, encourages discovery and invention. It is a place of freedom, multiplicity and co-existence. It is a Liberal city, which means it stands for values now in peril.London has also become its own worst enemy, testing to destruction the idea that the free market alone can build a city, a fantastical wealth machine that denies too man...

Planning Sustainable Cities: An infrastructure-based approach provides an analytical framework for urban sustainability, focusing on the services and performance of infrastructure systems.The book approaches infrastructure as a series of systems that function in synergy and are directly linked with urban planning. This method streamlines and guides the planning process, while still highlighting detail, each infrastructure system is decoded in four "system levels". The leve...

This book argues that there is a new, Sinological form of orientalism at work in the world. It has shifted from a logic of ‘essential difference’ to one of ‘sameness’ or general equivalence. "China" is now in a halting but inevitable process of becoming-the-same as the USA and the West. Orientalism is now closer to the cultural logic of capitalism, even as it shows the afterlives of colonial discourse. This shift reflects our era of increasing globalization; the migration of orientalism to...