Cities for Citizens Improving Metropolitan Governance

Cities for Citizens Improving Metropolitan Governance
Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2001-12-05
Genre:
ISBN: 926418984X

Drawing on the lessons from successful and unsuccessful attempts at the reform of metropolitan governance, this book identifies ways by which central and metropolitan governments can work better to optimise the potential of each urban region.

Cities for Citizens

Cities for Citizens
Author: Mike Douglass
Publisher:
Total Pages: 320
Release: 1998-07-03
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

Cities for Citizens planning and the rise of civil society in a global age Contributors Rebecca Abers Janet Abu Lughod Mike Douglass Bent Flyvbjerg John Forester John Friedmann Roger Keil Ute Lehrer Peter Marris Lisa Peattie Francisco Sabatini Leonie Sandercock Michael Storper In an era of the globalization of finance, production and distribution networks, cities have become increasingly competitive. The business environments preferred by such international investment impact on the lives of citizens, on urban spaces, services, amenities and infrastructure. In the fight for the future of our cities, civil society has now entered the fray. Whether resisting the intrusion of both state and corporate economy into the life of neighbourhoods and communities or working with both government and the private sector in managing urban affairs, civil society lays claim to inclusion in a more democratic politics of planning. This political shift is refashioning planning. Planning is now recognized as more than simply a state regulatory process; it has become a political activity, central to the struggle towards more liveable cities. Cities for Citizens brings together leading names in planning today. The contributors present an international range of case studies — from the USA, Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific — which ground the exploration of ideas in the realities and struggles of everyday life. Planning / Urban Studies / Social Science

Cities for Life

Cities for Life
Author: Jason Corburn
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1642831727

In cities around the world, planning and health experts are beginning to understand the role of social and environmental conditions that lead to trauma. By respecting the lived experience of those who were most impacted by harms, some cities have developed innovative solutions for urban trauma. In Cities for Life, public health expert Jason Corburn shares lessons from three of these cities: Richmond, California; Medellín, Colombia; and Nairobi, Kenya. Corburn draws from his work with citizens, activists, and decision-makers in these cities over a ten-year period, as individuals and communities worked to heal from trauma--including from gun violence, housing and food insecurity, poverty, and other harms. Cities for Life is about a new way forward with urban communities that rebuilds our social institutions, practices, and policies to be more focused on healing and health.

Cities, Citizens, and Technologies

Cities, Citizens, and Technologies
Author: Paula Geyh
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 461
Release: 2009-05-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1135852197

This book is about the contemporary city and those who live in it. It is thus also about the urban world of the era (extending roughly from the 1960s to the present) that we see as postmodern, and specifically about how the postmodern city is changing under the impact of globalization and new information and communication technologies. In particular, Geyh explores how the urban spaces of postmodernity (parks, plazas, streets, sidewalks) and postmodern urban subjectivities and communities respond to and create each other – how they become mutually constructing. While there is much in this book about what makes a city "postmodern," its primary focus is on how the postmodern city is experienced by its inhabitants, and in this respect the book is also a study of everyday life in the postmodern era. As such, it deals not only with the ways in which the postmodern city has developed out of economic, technological, political, and cultural structures that are different from those of the modern city, but also with how the postmodern city changes our ways of knowing and experiencing the world and ourselves as postmodern urban subjects, as citizens of postmodernity.

Cities and Citizenship

Cities and Citizenship
Author: James Holston
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1999
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780822322740

An expanded edition of the Public Culture special issue, which explores current meanings and contestations of citizenship in relation to the urban experience.

Building and Dwelling

Building and Dwelling
Author: Richard Sennett
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2023-08-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0300274769

A reflection on the past and present of city life, and a bold proposal for its future “Constantly stimulating ideas from a veteran of urban thinking.”—Jonathan Meades, The Guardian In this sweeping work, the preeminent sociologist Richard Sennett traces the anguished relation between how cities are built and how people live in them, from ancient Athens to twenty-first-century Shanghai. He shows how Paris, Barcelona, and New York City assumed their modern forms; rethinks the reputations of Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, and others; and takes us on a tour of emblematic contemporary locations, from the backstreets of Medellín, Colombia, to Google headquarters in Manhattan. Through it all, Sennett laments that the “closed city”—segregated, regimented, and controlled—has spread from the Global North to the exploding urban centers of the Global South. He argues instead for a flexible and dynamic “open city,” one that provides a better quality of life, that can adapt to climate change and challenge economic stagnation and racial separation. With arguments that speak directly to our moment—a time when more humans live in urban spaces than ever before—Sennett forms a bold and original vision for the future of cities.

The Citizens at Risk

The Citizens at Risk
Author: Pedro Jacobi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2010-09-23
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1136534520

Local environments such as cities and neighbourhoods are becoming a focal point for those concerned with environmental justice and sustainability. The Citizens at Risk takes up this emerging agenda and analyses the key issues in a refreshingly simple yet sophisticated style. Taking a comparative look at cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the book examines: the changing nature of urban environmental risks, the rules governing the distribution of such risks and their differential impact, how the risks arise and who is responsible The authors clearly describe the most pressing urban environmental challenges, such as improving health conditions in deprived urban settlements, ensuring sustainable urban development in a globalizing world, and achieving environmental justice along with the greening of development. They argue that current debates on sustainable development fail to come to terms with these challenges, and call for a more politically and ethically explicit approach. For policy makers, students, academics, activists or concerned general readers, this book applies a wealth of empirical analysis and theoretical insight to the interaction of citizens, their cities and their environment.

City, Street and Citizen

City, Street and Citizen
Author: Suzanne Hall
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2012-06-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136310614

How can we learn from a multicultural society if we don’t know how to recognise it? The contemporary city is more than ever a space for the intense convergence of diverse individuals who shift in and out of its urban terrains. The city street is perhaps the most prosaic of the city’s public parts, allowing us a view of the very ordinary practices of life and livelihoods. By attending to the expressions of conviviality and contestation, ‘City, Street and Citizen’ offers an alternative notion of ‘multiculturalism’ away from the ideological frame of nation, and away from the moral imperative of community. This book offers to the reader an account of the lived realities of allegiance, participation and belonging from the base of a multi-ethnic street in south London. ‘City, Street and Citizen’ focuses on the question of whether local life is significant for how individuals develop skills to live with urban change and cultural and ethnic diversity. To animate this question, Hall has turned to a city street and its dimensions of regularity and propinquity to explore interactions in the small shop spaces along the Walworth Road. The city street constitutes exchange, and as such it provides us with a useful space to consider the broader social and political significance of contact in the day-to-day life of multicultural cities. Grounded in an ethnographic approach, this book will be of interest to academics and students in the fields of sociology, global urbanisation, migration and ethnicity as well as being relevant to politicians, policy makers, urban designers and architects involved in cultural diversity, public space and street based economies.

Citizens in the 'Smart City'

Citizens in the 'Smart City'
Author: Paolo Cardullo
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429798091

This book critically examines ‘smart city’ discourse in terms of governance initiatives, citizen participation and policies which place emphasis on the ‘citizen’ as an active recipient and co-producer of technological solutions to urban problems. The current hype around smart cities and digital technologies has sparked debates in the fields of citizenship, urban studies and planning surrounding the rights and ethics of participation. It also sparked debates around the forms of governance these technologies actively foster. This book presents new socio-technological systems of governance that monitor citizen power, trust-building strategies, and social capital. It calls for new data economics and digital rights for a city founded on normative ideals rather than neoliberal ones. It adopts a normative approach arguing that a ‘reloaded’ smart city should foster citizenship as a new set of civil and social rights and the ‘citizen’ as a subject vested with active and meaningful forms of participation and political power. Ultimately, the book questions the utility of the ‘smart city’ project for radical municipalism, proposing a technological enough but more democratic city, an ‘intelligent city’ in fact. Offering useful contribution to smart city initiatives for the protection of emerging digital citizenship rights and socially accrued benefits, this book will draw the interest of researchers, policymakers, and professionals in the fields of urban studies, urban planning, urban geography, computing and technology studies, urban politics and urban economics.

Urban Ecology for Citizens and Planners

Urban Ecology for Citizens and Planners
Author: Gail Hansen
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2021-11-09
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1683402790

Ideal for city residents, developers, designers, and officials looking for ways to bring urban environments into harmony with the natural world and make cities more sustainable, Urban Ecology for Citizens and Planners offers a wealth of information and examples that will answer fundamental scientific questions, guide green initiatives, and inform environmental policies and decision-making processes. This book provides an overview of the synergistic relationships between humans and nature that shape the ecology of urban green spaces. It also emphasizes the social and cultural value of nature in cities for human health and well-being. Chapters describe the basic science of natural components and ecosystems in urban areas and explore the idea of biophilic urbanism, the philosophy of building nature into the framework of cities. To illustrate these topics, chapters include projects, case studies, expert insights, and successful citizen science programs from urban areas around the world. Authors Gail Hansen and Joseli Macedo argue that citizens have increasingly important roles to play in the environmental future of the cities they live in. A valuable resource for real-world solutions, this volume encourages citizens and planners to actively engage and collaborate in improving their communities and quality of life.