The temporal and spatial intersection of information and telecommunication technologies, creative and knowledge economies, and related new manufacturing systems, has been leading to significant effects on urban socioeconomic and spatial configurations and public policies. Specifically, the post-crisis emergence of innovative workplaces to accommodate these changes, is creating socioeconomic and spatial features that are only recently beginning to be explored in the scholarly literature.

COVID-19 has stressed the condition of radical uncertainty that increasingly characterises our times and compels cities to learn new ways to cope with unexpected global urban challenges. The volume proposes preparedness as a key concept in urban geography, planning, and policy, inviting international scholars to discuss its pros and cons.Firstly, it builds a critical theoretical framework around the concept of preparedness in relation to the COVID-19 effects and other interconnecte...

This book highlights the discontinuities and the ongoing development of the urban question in policy-making in the context of the controversial current issues of global reversal and regional revival. It critically examines contemporary public policies and practices at the urban, regional and national scales in order to offer a timely contribution to the debate on the significance of the urban dimension and interpretation in terms of the theory, policy and practice of social-spatial researc...

As a main urban centre of one of the most dynamic European regions, Milan is a key location from which to study narratives of innovations and contemporary productions – old and new manufacturing, tertiary and consumptive sectors, creative and cultural economy – and investigate their influence both on spatial patterns and urban policy agenda.Accordingly, this book explores the contentious geographies of innovation, productions and working spaces, both empirically and theoretically i...

This open access book explores the complexity of socio-environmental extreme events and the possible ways to cope with them by mobilising critical and spatial thinking. Being set in “critical disaster studies”, it proposes a critique of dominant intellectual traditions and practices. However, unlike other works based exclusively on critical deconstruction, the book stirs an anticipatory, prefigurative and generative research sensibility for hope and new preparedness. Therefore, the volume ...

This open access book explores the agenda of education policies in the 21st century. In the first part of the book, education is handled from a historical and political framework, and the effects of the change of states and policies on education are examined. In the second part, the effects of changes in the economy on education policies and economies’ demands from educational institutions are examined. In the last section, current policies in the international education sector, which is g...

This open access book provides in-depth insights into participatory research and planning by presenting practical examples of its use. In particular, it describes theoretical and methodological aspects of participatory research and planning, as well as the implementation of participatory processes in fields such as transport planning, cultural heritage management, environmental planning and post-earthquake recovery. Further, it compares participatory planning experiences from different ter...

This book focuses on the relationships between the creative city principles and the planning approach introduced by the European Landscape Convention in order to identify best practices for the development of innovative cultural policies and new urban regeneration tools.The research is characterized by a cross-cutting approach to cultural heritage. It proposes a new model for the design of advanced cultural districts consisting of a benchmark methodology and a "toolbox" of spatial,...

This text challenges the belief that cities will eventually disappear as territorial forms of social organization as new information technologies permit the articulation of social processes without regard for distance, arguing that the specific role of cities will become more important, and proposing that a dynamic and creative relationship be built up between the local and the global. In this way, cities will remain the focus of social organization, political management and cultural expre...

A new model of urban governance, mapping the route to a more equitable management of a city’s infrastructure and services.The majority of the world’s inhabitants live in cities, but even with the vast wealth and resources these cities generate, their most vulnerable populations live without adequate or affordable housing, safe water, healthy food, and other essentials. And yet, cities also often harbor the solutions to the inequalities they create, as this book mak...

Corporate responsibility and sustainable development are two concepts that may be able to reconcile many of the big challenges facing the world; challenges such as tensions between respect for the natural environment, social justice, and economic development; the long view versus short-term imperatives and the competing priorities between developed and developing economies.This book explores the gaps and overlaps between corporate responsibility and sustainable development. These c...

This open access edited book brings together a number of theories under the umbrella of humanistic governance to develop a persuasive alternative perspective on governance, particularly for democratic organisations such as co-operatives. It examines how we can move beyond a profit-first approach to governance, into a framework that prioritises human dignity in all aspects of an operation. This book also discusses key issues for different types of cooperatives and how these might be address...