Companion to Urban and Regional Studies

Companion to Urban and Regional Studies
Author: Anthony M. Orum
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 676
Release: 2021-07-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1119316871
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COMPANION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL STUDIES Indispensable overview and timely coverage of the major issues, debates, and research topics in urban and regional studies Companion to Urban and Regional Studies offers an up-to-date view of the rapidly growing field, exploring a diversity of theoretical perspectives, current and emerging research, and critical global policy concerns. Uniquely broad in geographical and thematic scope, this comprehensive volume brings together essays by more than fifty international scholars and researchers to provide expert assessments spanning the many dimensions of urban studies. Organized into five parts, the Companion begins with a review of the current state of cities across East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, North America, Europe, and Latin America, and all other world regions. Subsequent sections discuss contemporary theoretical perspectives, describe common methodological approaches used by urban scholars, and examine the political, social, and economic problems facing twenty-first century cities. Covering historical issues, current challenges, and comparative perspectives in urban studies, this timely resource: Addresses intensely debated policy issues such as governance, housing, immigration and migration, segregation, social mix, and gentrification Describes the use of demographic methods, advanced spatial analysis, social networks, policy mobilities, and ethnographies in urban studies research Discusses critical urban theory, feminist urban research, urbanization and environmental change, and the legacy of the Chicago School Covers contemporary research topics such as urban and regional inequalities, social heterogeneity and diversity, financialization Includes representative case studies of each region, including Australasia, Latin America, East Asia and South Asia Companion to Urban and Regional Studies is essential reading for scholars, researchers, practitioners, urban activists, and students, and it represents a must-have complement to The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies.

Local Governance in Spain

Local Governance in Spain
Author: Ángel Iglesias Alonso
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2022-11-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3031148045
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The book addresses in detail local governance in Spain. In recent decades, local governments in Europe have increasingly found themselves under pressure from a multitude of new challenges, such as demographic change, climate change, fiscal austerity policies, digitization, the demand for more citizen participation in local affairs, and the migration crisis in some of them, to name just a few. Consequently, a wave of political and administrative reforms to address these challenges, pressures and problems, has changed local governance in many countries. In part, these changes were the result of reform policies introduced by national and state governments, often triggered by austerity policies, which has become an overwhelming reality for Spanish local governments that have been forced to introduce innovations in local governance. This book aims to give an account of these innovations in local governance in Spain. This book considers the local political-administrative structure in its dimensions, focusing on the analysis of its party system, electoral competition and political behavior in the local arena, as well as on local finances, all of which are determining elements in urban and rural governance processes. On the occasion of the recent crisis unleashed by Covid-19, the book will also deal with local governance in crisis situations. The book will also contextualize local governance processes in Spain in relation to the trends in local governance observed in other European countries.

Enhancement of Public Real-estate Assets and Cultural Heritage

Enhancement of Public Real-estate Assets and Cultural Heritage
Author: Lucia Della Spina
Publisher: MDPI
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2021-01-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3039363042
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The management of cultural heritage and public real-estate assets is one of the most crucial challenges concerning the sustainable use of these resources, involving dynamic methods to stimulate preservation, development, renewal, and transmission to future generations of these essential assets. The contributions presented in this book provide a rich and varied panorama of research experiences and innovative tools, capable of promoting the re-use of cultural heritage in European cities and cultural landscapes, using a circular economy logic as a model of sustainable development. From this point of view, cultural capital becomes the driver of a regeneration process on the local, urban, and metropolitan scales, in which the transversal interconnections between the production cycles of the adaptive re-use of the available heritage, both in the adaptation and in the management phase, configure a circular process of multidimensional production of value. Therefore, future territorial redevelopment projects can base their idea strength on an open system of appropriately selected social attractors, whose enhancement and use have the objective of triggering widespread regeneration effects on the whole territory of influence, receiving inducement and resources to progress.

Urbanismo Regenerativo

Urbanismo Regenerativo
Author: Landlab
Publisher: Actar D, Inc.
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2024-01-23
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1638401098
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We are living in a critical moment, a reality marked by environmental and socio-economic limits that requires innovative and realistic forms of action and planning. This is what regenerative urbanism proposes, a new approach based on utopian pragmatism that seeks to restore balance to the urban territory by designing systems that allow it to adapt and transform. It is a methodology that defines models that do not consume available resources, but rather generate new ones that ensure compatibility between economic and social prosperity and nature. Santander, Hábitat Futuro (Santander, Future Habitat) is the city model created from this methodology, a proposal for the transformation of this city for the year 2055. It is an open model based on innovation and citizen participation that prepares and adapts the territory for the different scenarios to come. Santander, Habitat Futuro is a guide that directs the commitment of the different social, economic and political agents towards a common goal: to achieve a circular, sustainable, resilient, vertebrate, prosperous, vital and inclusive city. A model that, due to its innovative nature, can serve as an example to other intermediate cities around the world.

Democracy and Expertise

Democracy and Expertise
Author: Frank Fischer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2009-03-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0199282838
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This book examines the role of policy expertise in a democratic society. From the perspectives of both political theory and policy studies, the chapters explore the implications of deliberative democratic governance for professional expertise and extends them to specific policy practices. Following the lead of John Dewey, the discussion focuses in particular on the ways professional practices might be reoriented to assist citizens in understanding and discussing the complex policy issues of an advanced technological society. In doing so, it also explores how public deliberation can be improved through more cooperative forms of policy inquiry. Adopting a deliberative-analytic approach , policy inquiry is grounded in a postempiricist, constructivist understanding of inquiry and knowledge and the participatory practices that support it. Toward this end, the chapters draw on thriving theoretical and practical work dedicated to revitalizing the citizen's role in both civil society and newer practices of democratic governance, in particular deliberative democracy in political theory, practical work with deliberative experiments, the theory and practices of democratic governance, and participatory research. Deliberative practices are promoted here as a new component part of policy-related disciplines required for participatory governance. Calling for a specialization of "policy epistemics" to advance such practices, the second half of the book takes up issues related to deliberative empowerment, including the relation of technical and social knowledge, the interpretive dimensions of social meaning and multiple realities, the role of narrative knowledge and storylines policy inquiry, social learning, tacit knowledge, the design of discursive spaces, and the place of emotional expression in public deliberation.

Debating the Neoliberal City

Debating the Neoliberal City
Author: Gilles Pinson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2017-04-21
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1317154215
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The concept of the neoliberal city has become a key structuring analytical framework in the field of urban studies. It explains both the ongoing transformation of urban policies and the socio-spatial effects of these policies within cities and highlights the prominent role of cities in the new geography of capitalism. Bringing together a team of leading scholars, this book challenges the neoliberal city thesis. It argues that the definition of neoliberalization may be more complex than it seems, resulting in over-simplified explanations of some processes, such as the rise of metropolitan governments or the importance given to urban economic development policies or gentrification. As a structuralist and macro-level theory, the "neoliberal city" does not shed light upon micro-level processes or identify and analyze actors’ logics and practices. Finally, the concept is profoundly influenced by the historical trajectories of the United Kingdom and the United States, and the generalization of this experience to other contexts often leads to a kind of academic ethnocentrism. This book argues that, on its own, the current conceptualizations of neoliberalization are insufficient. Instead, it should be analyzed alongside other transformative processes in order to provide an analytical framework to explain the variety of processes of change, motivations and justifications too easily labelled as urban neoliberalism. This unique and critical contribution will be essential reading for students and scholars alike working in Human Geography, Urban Studies, Economics, Sociology and Public Policy.

Social Innovation and Territorial Development

Social Innovation and Territorial Development
Author: Diana MacCallum
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2016-04-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317053915
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The concept of social innovation offers an alternative perspective on development and territorial transformation, one which foregrounds innovation in social relations. This volume presents a broad-ranging and insightful exploration of social innovation and how it can affect life, society and economy, especially within local communities. It addresses key questions about the nature of social innovation as a process and a strategy and explores what opportunities may exist, or may be generated, for social innovation to nourish human development. It puts forward alternative development options which variously highlight solidarity, co-operation, cultural-artistic endeavour and diversity. In doing so, this book offers a provocative response to the predominant neoliberal economic vision of spatial, economic and social change.