Drawing from decades of research, Setha Low shows how public space contributes to a flourishing society through promoting social justice and democratic practices. Thriving public spaces also enhance creativity, health, urban resilience, and environmental sustainability. Yet more than ever, public spaces across the world are threatened by urban development, privatization and neglect. Public spaces -- where people from all walks of life play, work, meet, talk, read, think, debate, and protes...

Explores how elites restrict access to public beaches around the globeBeaches are a beloved form of public space. Yet there has been an alarming global trend of restricting access to public sections of beaches to ensure that waterfront property owners can enjoy the shoreline exclusively or develop the land for commercial use.Beach Politics examines how over the past forty years, privatization of public space has accelerated with the help of both lo...

This book demonstrates the value of ethnographic theory and methods in understanding space and place, and considers how ethnographically-based spatial analyses can yield insight into prejudices, inequalities and social exclusion as well as offering people the means for understanding the places where they live, work, shop and socialize. In developing the concept of spatializing culture, Setha Low draws on over twenty years of research to examine social production, social construction, embod...

The People, Place, and Space Reader brings together the writings of scholars, designers, and activists from a variety of fields to make sense of the makings and meanings of the world we inhabit. They help us to understand the relationships between people and the environment at all scales, and to consider the active roles individuals, groups, and social structures play in creating the environments in which people live, work, and play. These readings highlight the ways in which spac...

Exploring the pernicious influence of security capitalism on neighborhoods, airports, cities, and states.Calls to defund the police or to stop brutal police violence, argue Mark Maguire and Setha Low, will never succeed as long as there are those who enjoy and take comfort in security capitalism. Security capitalism can be recognized by the marks it leaves on society, remaking public space in its own image—privatized, fortified, unequal, striated, and access-contro...

COVID-19 is an invisible threat that has hugely impacted cities and their inhabitants. Yet its impact is very visible, perhaps most so in urban public spaces and spaces of mobility.This international volume explores the transformations of public space and public transport in response to COVID-19 across the world, both those resulting from official governmental regulations and from everyday practices of urban citizens. The contributors discuss how the virus made urban inequalities s...

An ethnographic investigation into the dynamics between space and security in countries around the worldIt is difficult to imagine two contexts as different as a soccer stadium and a panic room. Yet, they both demonstrate dynamics of the interplay between security and space. This book focuses on the infrastructures of security, considering locations as varied as public entertainment venues to border walls to blast-proof bedrooms.Around the world, experts, o...

The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and the City provides a comprehensive study of current and future urban issues on a global and local scale. Premised on an ‘engaged’ approach to urban anthropology, the volume adopts a thematic approach that covers a wide range of modern urban issues, with a particular focus on those of high public interest. Topics covered include security, displacement, social justice, privatisation, sustainability, and preservation. Offering valuable insigh...

In the last twenty years, thousands upon thousands of the upper and middle classes have retreated into gated communities. In 2002 it is estimated that one in eight Americans will live in these exclusive neighborhoods. What has sparked this alarming trend?Behind the Gates is Low's revealing account of what life is like inside these suburban fortresses. After years researching and interviewing families in Long Island, New York and San Antonio, Texas, Low provides an inside vi...

Why is public space disappearing? Why is this disappearance important to democratic politics and how has it become an international phenomenon? Public spaces are no longer democratic spaces, but instead centres of private commerce and consumption, and even surveillance and police control. "The Politics of Public Space" extends the focus of current work on public space to include a consideration of the transnational - in the sense of moving people and transformations in the nation or state ...

How do we build cities where we aren't just living within the same urban space, but living together?Greater Toronto is now home to a larger proportion of foreign-born residents than any other major global metropolis. Not surprisingly, city officials rarely miss an opportunity to tout the region’s ethno-cultural neighbourhoods. Yet there’s strong evidence that the GTA is experiencing widening socio-economic disparities that have produced worrisome divisions. We say that ‘diversity i...

This concise yet comprehensive overview of the political and economic development of the world's cities offers a unique emphasis on its cultural impacts. The book emphasizes the transition from modern (industrial) to post-modern (post-industrial) eras and its effect on established and developing global cities, and arguments are supported with case studies for each of the main concepts of urban theory and research. Mark Abrahamson analyzes contemporary global cities - ranging from Lagos to ...