Enrica Morlicchio - Böcker

This innovative edited volume places global urbanism in the context of the phenomenal growth of cities of the South, investigating their colonial contentiousness and asking how their history plays out in the twenty-first-century phenomenon of urbanisation.Inspired by Antonio Gramsci’s reflections on the problem of the South, it shows that the question of southern urbanism is about the anomalies and growth of southern cities, the histories of struggles, technological and logistical reorientations, new zoning practices of neoliberal capitalism and the remaking of urban geographies towards a possible urban future that aims to be just. Crucially, it asks whether today’s city is a seamless formation of several overlapping phases of growth or if there is a decisive break today, marked by the hyper growth of these cities. To understand the implications of these questions for visions of an urban future, this volume takes a number of southern cities of Asia and Europe as case studies, including Kolkata, Mumbai, Chittagong, Beirut, Athens, Naples and Marseille. It shows how these cities are paradoxically marked by both fractured geographies and new types of popular mobilisations, solidarities and an ethic of protection and care, showing this to be the core of the Southern question, constituting the urban experience of our time.It will appeal to advanced-level students and scholars with interests in urban sociology, Southern urbanisation, postcolonial studies, political science, political economy and urban geography.

Three experienced Italian sociologists explore the structural and cultural dimensions of poverty in their country. Comparing Italy’s regime with other European countries, they consider the interplay of conditions in the labour market, the family and welfare arrangements as causes of poverty.This in-depth analysis explores how forced familialism, unbalanced gender arrangements, territorial cleavages and sluggish growth have rendered Italy vulnerable to financial crisis. As old risks of poverty have worsened, new risks have emerged and children, the working poor and migrants have become the ‘new poor’.Combining theoretical and empirical tools, this is a topical fresh take on the understanding of poverty in Italy that is even more crucial considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cities are now on the front line of dangers associated with the climate crisis, health emergencies, uncontrolled artificial intelligence, escalating warfare, growing authoritarianism and capitalist profligacy. This is especially so for their unprotected populations who, in large numbers, now face a dire future of precarity as powerful elites seek to turn urban assets to their advantage in confronting an uncertain future. For the vast majority of people living in cities, the future is one of foreclosure – a future of dispossession and impoverishment that is lacking a horizon of hope.What pathways remain open for cities to avert a future of foreclosure for people leading modest lives in modest neighbourhoods? To answer this question, this book looks to the popular practices and knowledges that exist within urban communities and neighbourhoods, finding within them elements that are potentially reparative and curative. Here the engagement with time is different, involving repertoires of horizontal relations, affinities of place and restive knowledge capable of making something out of nothing, of bending adversity towards other goals. Here, rich yet neglected ecologies of urban inhabitation – with all their wiles and improvisations – emerge as the ground of future-making. The book offers a body of concepts to encapsulate this threatened yet resistant urbanism, exemplifies its workings in the streets of Kinshasa, Lagos, Mexico City and Naples, and outlines an infrastructural and aesthetic politics to bring out its potential, thereby enabling another future to shine through urban foreclosure.