Urban Change and Citizenship in Times of Crisis

Bryan S. Turner is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Religion Politics and Society at the Australian Catholic University, Honorary Professor and Director of the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity at Potsdam University, Germany, and Emeritus Professor at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York City. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Classical Sociology. He edited the Blackwell Wiley Encyclopedia for Social Theory (2018). He was awarded a Doctor of Letters by Cambridge University in 2009 and received the Max Planck Award in social science in 2015.Hannah Wolf is a researcher and lecturer completing her PhD at the University of Potsdam, coordinator of the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity and associate member at the collaborative DFG-research centre Re-Figuration of Spaces (TU Berlin). Her academic background includes theatre and media studies, anthropology, philosophy and sociology. Her research interests lie in the political and moral economies of housing and home, citizenship, urban sociology and the sociology of everyday life.Gregor Fitzi is co-director of the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity at University of Potsdam, Germany. After his PhD in Sociology at the University of Bielefeld, he was Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology, University of Heidelberg, Germany. Among his recent publications are The Challenge of Modernity. Simmel’s Sociological Theory (Routledge, 2019) and Populism and the Crisis of Democracy, 3 vols, edited with Jürgen Mackert and Bryan S. Turner (Routledge, 2019).Jürgen Mackert is Professor of Sociology and a co-director of the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Pluralism at the University of Potsdam, Germany. His research interests lie in the sociology of citizenship, political economy, closure theory, (neo-)liberalism, settler colonialism, and de-democratisation. His recent publication is Populism and the Crisis of Democracy, 3 vols, edited with Gregor Fitzi and Bryan S. Turner (Routledge, 2019).

"What makes a ‘good’ city? How may the quality of cities be characterized and defined? For years I’ve been wondering why these questions are not on the agenda. This volume covers, for the first time, theoretical, historical and political aspects in an attempt to scrutinize the basis of a successful city. Innovative approaches combine issues of quality with the concern for collectivity under conditions of social change. This book is an essential read for sociologists, and students and scholars with a focus on urban studies, urban policies, planning or design studies."Martina Löw, Professor of Planning and Architecture, Institute of Sociology, Technical University Berlin, Germany"Never has it been more important to explore the nature of urban change and related issues of social and environmental justice. [...] Through the lens of multiple identities, social fragmentation, and fragile institutions the authors, individually and collectively, demonstrate that urbanisation may advance certain freedoms while simultaneously impinging adversely on established civil and political rights. [...] Urbanisation is essentially an uneven process, spatially and temporally, and the chapters capture these divergent trajectories across different cultures. Whether these 'Times of Crisis' are greater than other times the reader must be the judge. Either way, these are stimulating, challenging essays anchored in original research."Richard Rodger, Emeritus Professor of Economic and Social History, University of Edinburgh, and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, UK

• Introduction: Cities between Success and Failure Part 1: Philosophical and Historical Trajectories 1. The Good City and Its True Costs: Planetary Urbanisation Through an Aristotelian Lens 2. Sacred Cities: Ancient and Early Modern Religious Diversity 3. On Immigration and the Meanings of Urban Social Justice in Queens, NY 4. Successful Societies and Policy Discourse: A Meta-Political Engagement with Joan C. Williams’s White Working Class Part 2: Urban Political Collectivities 5. Global Urbanism and the Crisis of Emancipation 6. Changing Political Collectivities in Times of Crisis: Tenant Protest in Berlin and New York 7. Urban Citizenship in Times of Gentrification Part 3: Towards Urban Complexity and Social Quality 8. Urban Complexity and Urban Change : Co-Irritation, Co-Evolution and Co-Design with the Potsdam Lodestar Approach 9. ‘Social Quality’ and the City : A Qualitative Exploratory Comparison in the Cities of Lausanne and Zurich