Examining the link between urbanization and capitalism, David Harvey suggests we view Haussmann's reshaping of Paris and today's explosive growth of cities as responses to systemic crises of accumulation”and issues a call to democratize the power to shape the urban experience.
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November 10, 2008
June 12, 2008
Advice for Mayor from Policy Exchange
The Million Vote Mandate: The Challenges facing Boris Johnson
The new Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was elected a month ago with the votes of over 1 million Londoners. Now, a new pamphlet from the Policy Exchange and Localis think tanks, looks at the big issues the new Mayor will face in his first term as set out by commentators on London politics and Steve Malanga of the Manhattan Institute.
"Boris has not yet articulated a coherent counter-narrative, and he needs to do so. So here is one suggestion: a less divided, less prescriptive city; a more enabling Mayoralty, working not top-down but through free associations of empowered individuals; a closer focus on the dull details of delivery which matter to Londoners' lives. " Andrew Gilligan
June 04, 2008
A city built on sanctuary
City of Sanctuary is a movement to build a culture of hospitality for refugees and asylum-seekers.
The first steps Sheffield took towards becoming a City of Sanctuary was for community and faith groups to pledge their support. Over the next two years, representatives spread the word and Sheffield city council came on board. Organisations agreed on a long-term vision of inclusion for asylum seekers and refugees - talks at schools and launching social and cultural events, for example. Gathering community support and drawing up an inclusion strategy are two of the main criteria for becoming a City of Sanctuary.
March 26, 2008
Learning from Curitiba
Jaime Lerner's 'urban revolution' successfully transformed a congested, grimy, crime-ridden city into a world-renowned model of green living and social innovation.
'Taking care of a city is a process that you start, and then give the population space to respond.'
Exemplar Open City talk at Somerset House Monday 31st March
December 19, 2007
Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Empowerment
22nd January 2008 London
Despite empowerment rising up the political agenda, there remain fundamental tensions at the heart of our political institutions. The lecture will be given by the distinguished author, broadcaster and psychologist Oliver James.
URBooks
Steve Bloom: Trading Places: The Merchants of Nairobi
A unique portrait of the small traders of Nairobi. .... a place where slick advertising has made few inroads and shopping malls and supermarkets remain a rarity. Businessmen and women paint their own hoardings and signs, or call in friends who happen to be handy with a paintbrush.Laurie Green: Let's Do Theology: Resources for Contextual Theology
...a classic text for contextual and urban theologiansStephen Graham: Disrupted Cities
Infrastructure failure is a major factor in the lives of cities. This book explores the implications of this vulnerability through war, hurricanes, blackouts and sewerage failure.Anthony Cartwright: Heartland
A passionate, page-turning story about grass-roots politics, football and the far right in a multicultural, working class town .Jane Bicknell, David Satterthwaite: Adapting Cities to Climate Change: Understanding and Addressing the Development Challenges
A wide-ranging and detailed body of information identifying and assessing risk, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in urban cities in low- and middle-income countries.David Owen: Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability
Owen finds in New York City, Manhattan in particular, a model that the rest of the country could profitably emulate. A city of "extreme compactness," New York "is the greenest community in the United States."R. Horsley: Covenant Economics: A Biblical Vision of Justice for All
A reexamination of the economics of the Bible and its clarion call for economic justice for all.Jim Krane: Dubai: The Story of the World's Fastest City
In the 1950s, with a few thousand souls scraping a living in a waterless desert by picking dates, diving for pearls, or sailing in wooden dhows to trade with Iran and India, Dubai was as poor as any village in Somalia or Sudan. Today freewheeling Dubai is everything the Arab world isn't.Glenna Lang: Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of the Death and Life of Great American Cities
Accessible account of the inspiring story of the woman whose passion and dedication revolutionised the way we think about cities.Anthony Flint: Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City
Documents the struggle in fascinating detail.Michael Sorkin: Twenty Minutes in Manhattan
offers a testing ground for speculation about the way in which the city can be newly imagined and designed, to deal with pressing issues such as the crisis of the environment, free expression and public space, security and surveillance, the place of history, and the future of the 'neighbourhood'.Joe Moran: On Roads: A Hidden History
'On Roads is a book that makes motorways safe for people .... explaining them in terms – historical, aesthetic, anthropological, political – not usually considered on Top Gear.' Owen HatherleySeyla Benhabib, Judith Resnik: Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and Gender
....uniquely situates gender in the context of ongoing, urgent conversations about globalization, citizenship, and the meaning of bordersSetha M. Low: On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture
How the physical form of the plaza encodes the social, political, and economic relations within the city.Manuel Castells: Communication Power
Manuel Castells analyses the transformation of the global media industry by this revolution in communication technologies, proposing a new theory of power in the information age based on the management of communication networksAnna Minton: Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First-Century City
This passionate and vivid polemic shows us the face of Britain today, revealing the untested urban planning that is transforming not only our cities, but the nature of public space, of citizenship and of trust.Martin Jacques: When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World
The rise of China, India and the Asian tigers means that, for the first time, modernity will no longer be exclusively western. The west will be confronted with the fact that its systems, institutions and values are no longer the only ones on offer.Theology in Built Environments: Exploring Religion, Architecture and Design
Reflections about space and place, and how they reflect and affect religious experience provide a challenge and an urgent necessity for theology. This is particularly important if religious practitioners are to become aware of how theology is given expression in the existential spatiality of life.Elaine Graham & Stephen Lowe: What Makes a Good City?: Public Theology and the Urban Church
Essential reading three years on from Faithful Cities.Nissa Finney: Sleepwalking to Segregation?: Challenging Myths About Race and Migration
"If you want to know what has really been happening in Britain in terms of ethnic segregation, how many ghettos exist, or whether immigration is a threat to social solidarity, this is the book to read." --Danny DorlingTerry Eagleton: Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate
Eagleton offers his own vibrant account of religion and politics in a book that ranges from the Holy Spirit to the recent history of the Middle East, from Thomas Aquinas to the Twin Towers.Owen Hatherley: Militant Modernism
'Hatherley’s championing of constructivism is grounded in the moral rectitude he discerns in it, as well as in a kind of aesthetic delight.' Jonathan MeadesMartin Wainwright: Leeds: Shaping the City
an authoritative and objective assessment of the redevelopment and regeneration of Leeds.Elaine Graham: Words Made Flesh: Writings in Pastoral and Practical Theology
Considers topics as diverse as science fiction, gender, consumerism, cyberspace and urban regeneration with the fundamental conviction that theology as 'talk about God-in-the-world' is always practical and public - and that it begins and ends in the complexities of the human condition: where words become flesh.J.W. Rogerson & J.J. Vincent: The City in Biblical Perspective
...explores the archaeological and social backgrounds to cities in the biblical world and draws out the implications of the deliberate ambiguities in the biblical text [and] and asks whether and how the Bible can provide resources for the city today, in a world in which the majority of earth's burgeoning population is located in cities.Scott, Baker and Graham (eds.): Remoralizing Britain?: Social, Ethical and Theological Perspectives on New Labour
Drawing together for the first time theorists from a range of disciplines and commitments, this interdisciplinary collection offers a reckoning of this New Labour decade.Andreas Huyssen ed.: Other Cities, Other Worlds: Urban Imaginaries in a Globalizing Age
...brings together leading scholars of cultural theory, urban studies, art, anthropology, literature, film, architecture, and history to look at non-Western global cities.Tristram Hunt: The Frock-coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels
A vital biography of the key victoran urban socilogist.Ched Myers: Binding the Strongest Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus
20th anniversary edition of mould breaking commentary. New preface and introduction by Sam Wells.
