September 09, 2010

Crisis and Recovery

Tuesday 28th September British Library

The idea that economics is morally neutral or that finance should be above ethical scrutiny deserves to be challenged.

In a new book, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Larry Elliott, Economics Editor of The Guardian, have brought together a collection of leading commentators to examine the role of morality and ethics in business. At this event, both discuss these fundamental themes together with Zac Goldsmith MP, Editor of The Ecologist, and Robert Skidelsky, professor of political economy, politician and historian.

Posted at 04:39 PM in Books, capital, Current Affairs, democracy and participation, poverty, exclusion, inequality, recession, theology | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 14, 2009

Wrestling With Moses

Mother Courage

A bicycling mother arrested for rabble-rousing, Jane Jacobs has set the agenda for urban planning for half a century. But was she right?

It was only when [Robert] Moses tried to bring light and air into the city that he was charged with elitism. Like Jacobs, he wanted to democratise space - it was just his techniques that were different.

Jacobs checked Moses's mad worship of the car and his despotic excesses. But in a world of faux cobblestones, pedestrian zones and hanging baskets, aren't we a little nostalgic for Moses's obsessive audacity - for an era when planners could transcend the nimbies to execute grand gestures in the public interest?

Posted at 12:21 PM in americas, architecture & built environment, Books, democracy and participation, gentrification, planning, space & place | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 10, 2008

"An unsuccessful city has closed its mind to the future."

Cities on the edge of chaos

Deyan Sudjic, co-editor of Endless City, asks if the city of the future will be a vision of hell or a force for civilised living?
"Cities are made by an extraordinary mixture of do-gooders and bloody-minded obsessives, of cynical political operators and speculators. They are shaped by the unintended consequences of the greedy and the self-interested, the dedicated and the occasional visionary."

"We need more than platitudes" Jonathan Meades reviews Endless City

Posted at 09:52 PM in architecture & built environment, Books, Europe, housing, London, planning, sustainability, urban culture, urban studies, urban-global | Permalink

URBooks

Manuel Castells: Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age
an exploration of the new forms of social movements and protests that are erupting in the world today, from the Arab uprisings to the indignadas movement in Spain, and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US.
Susanna Snyder: Asylum-seeking, Migration and Church
A ground breaking multidisciplinary study challenging the churches engagement with asylum seekers.
Owen Hatherley: A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys Through Urban Britain
What happens when ruination overtakes regeneration?
P. D. Smith: City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age
the ultimate handbook for the archetypal city
David Harvey: Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution
REBEL CITIES places the city at the heart of both capital and class struggles
Marcuse, Brenner & Mayer: Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City
An important volume promoting alternative, radically democratic and sustainable forms of urbanism.
Kunkel & Mayer: Neoliberal Urbanism and its Contestations: Crossing Theoretical Boundaries
This volume brings a plurality of approaches – from political economic/regulationist to Foucauldian governmentality and post-operatist subject theories – to bear on the broad range of contestations around urban neoliberalism.
Neoliberal Urbanism and its Contestations: Crossing Theoretical Boundaries
Matthew Gandy ed.: Urban Constellations
This collection explores themes such as new forms of political mobilisation, the effects of economic instability, the political ecology of urban nature and the presence of collective memory.
Mark R Gornik: Word Made Global: Stories of African Christianity in New York City
An insightful and prescient portrait of the emerging face of Christianity as it enters its third millennium.
Gareth Millington: 'Race', Culture and the Right to the City: Centres, Peripheries, Margins
Linking debates in 'racial' and ethnic studies to wider concerns with the city and urbanism.
Critical Urban Studies
Atherton, Baker & Reader: Christianity and the New Social Order: A Manifesto for a Fairer Future
Is Britain a broken society? Three contributors tackle the question in this easy-to-read manifesto aimed at the Church, public sphere and academia. They examine the values and direction of British/Western society in view of current political, economic and civil debates, and propose a new Christian agenda for change.
Baker & Beaumont eds: Postsecular Cities: Religious Space, Theory and Practice (Continuum Resources in Religion and Political Culture)
Rapidly diversifying urban locations are the best places to witness the emergence of new spaces in which religions and spiritual traditions are creating both new alliances but also bifurcations with secular sectors.
G. Myers & M.Murray: Cities in Contemporary Africa
Explains how and why cities on the African continent have grown at such a rapid pace, and how long-time urban residents and new-comers interact, negotiate, and struggle over access to limited resources through religion, culture and politics.
Garth Myers: African Cities: Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice
Engages with the vibrancy and complexity of African cities with fresh eyes
Mendieta and Butler: The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (Columbia / SSRC Book)
a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one all-encompassing contemporary concern: what role does or shouldreligion play in our public lives?
David W Smith: Seeking a City with Foundations
Outlines key urban trajectories alongside theological and biblical themes to develop a new vision for urban mission.
Edward Glaeser: Triumph of the City
Triumph of the free market?
Daniel Dorling: Bankrupt Britain: An Atlas of Social Change
a unique atlas giving a comprehensive picture of the effect of the recession on Britain
Laurence Smith: The New North: The World in 2050
The world in 2050 will be radically different from today; Northern countries – notably Canada, Russia and Scandinavia – will rise at the expense of southern ones.
Ricky Burdett: Living in the Endless City
This book will give the reader access to a wealth of ideas and data about Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Istanbul and, by extension, urban life across the globe.
Danny Dorling: So You Think You Know About Britain?
Exploring the key issues that make the headlines Dorling will change the way you think about the country and explain just why you should feel positive about the future.
Michael Symmons Roberts & Paul Farley: Edgelands
A book about the blank spaces on the A-Z, the hinterlands of Britain that are not urban and not yet country: the lost, the liminal and the unloved.
Nigel Copsey (ed): British National Party: Contemporary Perspectives
Recent developments in the far right in Britain, are covered by a range of commentators with a particular focus on the British National Party (BNP).
Claire Freeman: Children and their Urban Environment: Changing Worlds
The book seeks to embrace childhood as a time of freedom, social engagement and environmental adventure and to encourage creation of environments that better meet the needs of children. The authors argue that in doing so, we will build more sustainable neighbourhoods, cities and societies for the future.
Tim Butler: Ethnicity, Class and Aspiration: Understanding London's New East End
a compelling analysis of the importance of aspirations and education in understanding social class and ethnicity in contemporary Britain.
Wesley Howard-Brook: Come Out My People!: God's Call Out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond
A remarkable offering for those who care about the interface of power and faith . . . . I could not put it down, and expect to continue to be instructed by it. --Walter Brueggemann
Nezar AlSayyad: The Fundamentalist City?: Religiosity and the Remaking of Urban Space
This book attempts to establish a relationship between two important phenomena: the historic transition of the majority of the world’s population from a rural to an urban existence; and the robust resurgence of religion as a major force in the shaping of contemporary life in many parts of the world.
Simon Parker: Cities, Politics and Power (Routledge Critical Introductions to Urbanism and the City)
combines a concern with how the cities in which we live are organised and run with a broader focus on cities and urban regions as multiple sites and agents of power.