Built Environment City Studies – serie

Using Rio de Janeiro as the case study city, this book highlights and examines issues surrounding the development of mega-cities in Latin America and beyond. Complex dynamics of urbanization such as mega-event-driven development, infrastructure investment, and informal urban expansion are intertwined with changing climatic conditions that demand new approaches to sustainable urbanism. The urban conditions facing 21st century cities such as Rio emphasize the need to revisit urban forms, reintegrate infrastructure, and re-evaluate practices.With contributions from 15 scholars from several countries exploring urbanism, urbanization, and climate change, this book provides insights into the contextual and environmental issues shaping Rio in the age of globalization. Each of the book’s three sections addresses an interdisciplinary range of topics impacting urbanism in Latin America, which will be accessible to researchers and professionals interested in urbanization, urban design, sustainability, planning, and architecture.

Pemba: Spontaneous Living Spaces looks at self-built dwellings and settlements in the case study city of Pemba in the Cabo Delgado region of Mozambique. Self-built houses born from need, in haste and with limited economical resources are often considered to be temporary structures but frequently become an integral part of the urban fabric, representative of a local culture of living. The study is part of the Spontaneous Living Spaces research project, and through a variety of documentation tools, it investigates the evolution of the architectural and urban elements that characterize self-built dwellings in Pemba.The evolution of the spontaneous living culture creates new forms of living in the city connected to local cultural expressions and the environment. These are placed in relation to the traditional and contemporary living cultures, settlement trends and the natural environment. Covering a history of housing in Mozambique and unpacking four settlement types in Pemba, this book is written for academics, professionals and researchers in architecture and planning with a particular interest in African architecture and urbanism.

In the wake of an unparalleled housing crisis at the end of the Second World War, Glasgow Corporation rehoused the tens of thousands of private tenants who were living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in unimproved Victorian slums. Adopting the designs, the materials and the technologies of modernity they built into the sky, developing high-rise estates on vacant sites within the city and on its periphery. This book uniquely focuses on the people's experience of this modern approach to housing, drawing on oral histories and archival materials to reflect on the long-term narrative and significance of high-rise homes in the cityscape. It positions them as places of identity formation, intimacy and well-being. With discussions on interior design and consumption, gender roles, children, the elderly, privacy, isolation, social networks and nuisance, Glasgow examines the connections between architectural design, planning decisions and housing experience to offer some timely and prescient observations on the success and failure of this very modern housing solution at a moment when high flats are simultaneously denigrated in the social housing sector while being built afresh in the private sector.Glasgow is aimed at an academic readership, including postgraduate students, scholars and researchers. It will be of interest to social, cultural and urban historians particularly interested in the United Kingdom.

Pemba: Spontaneous Living Spaces looks at self-built dwellings and settlements in the case study city of Pemba in the Cabo Delgado region of Mozambique. Self-built houses born from need, in haste and with limited economical resources are often considered to be temporary structures but frequently become an integral part of the urban fabric, representative of a local culture of living. The study is part of the Spontaneous Living Spaces research project, and through a variety of documentation tools, it investigates the evolution of the architectural and urban elements that characterize self-built dwellings in Pemba.The evolution of the spontaneous living culture creates new forms of living in the city connected to local cultural expressions and the environment. These are placed in relation to the traditional and contemporary living cultures, settlement trends and the natural environment. Covering a history of housing in Mozambique and unpacking four settlement types in Pemba, this book is written for academics, professionals and researchers in architecture and planning with a particular interest in African architecture and urbanism.

In recent years, Baghdad has been viewed as a battleground for political conflicts; this interpretation has heavily influenced writings on the city. This book moves away from these perspectives to present an interdisciplinary exploration into the urban history of Baghdad through the lens of literature. It argues that urban literature is an effective complementary source to conventional historiography, using in-depth analysis of texts, poems and historical narratives of non-monumental urban spaces to reveal an underexamined facet of the city’s development. The book focuses on three key themes, spatial, nostalgic and reflective, to offer a new approach to the study of Baghdad’s history, with a view to establishing and informing further strategies for future urban developments. Beginning with the first planned city in the eighth century, it looks at the urban transformations that influenced building trends and architectural styles until the nineteenth century. It will appeal to academics and researchers in interdisciplinary fields such as architecture, urban history, Islamic studies and Arabic literature.

This book explores and debates the urban transformations that have taken place in Vienna over the past 30 years and their consequences in policy fields such as labour and housing, political and social participation and the environment. Historically, European cities have been characterised by a strong association between social cohesion, quality of life, economic ambition and a robust State. Vienna is an excellent example for that. In more recent years, however, cities were pressured to change policy principles and mechanisms in the context of demographic shifts, post-industrial transformations and welfare recalibration which have led to worsened social conditions in many cities. Each chapter in this volume discusses Vienna’s responses to these pressures in key policy arenas, looking at outcomes from the context-specific local arrangements. Against a theoretical framework debating the European city as a model of inclusion and social justice, authors explore the local capacity to innovate urban policies and to address new social risks, while paying attention to potential trade-offs.The book questions and assesses the city’s resilience using time series and an institutional analysis of four key dimensions that characterise the European city model within the context of post-industrial transition: redistribution, recognition, representation and sustainability. It offers a multiscalar perspective of urban governance through labour, housing, participatory and environmental policies, bringing together different levels and public policy types.Vienna: Still a Just City? is aimed at academics, researchers and policy-makers in urban studies, including urban sociology, ecology, geography and welfare.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book explores and debates the urban transformations that have taken place in Vienna over the past 30 years and their consequences in policy fields such as labour and housing, political and social participation and the environment. Historically, European cities have been characterised by a strong association between social cohesion, quality of life, economic ambition and a robust State. Vienna is an excellent example for that. In more recent years, however, cities were pressured to change policy principles and mechanisms in the context of demographic shifts, post-industrial transformations and welfare recalibration which have led to worsened social conditions in many cities. Each chapter in this volume discusses Vienna’s responses to these pressures in key policy arenas, looking at outcomes from the context-specific local arrangements. Against a theoretical framework debating the European city as a model of inclusion and social justice, authors explore the local capacity to innovate urban policies and to address new social risks, while paying attention to potential trade-offs.The book questions and assesses the city’s resilience using time series and an institutional analysis of four key dimensions that characterise the European city model within the context of post-industrial transition: redistribution, recognition, representation and sustainability. It offers a multiscalar perspective of urban governance through labour, housing, participatory and environmental policies, bringing together different levels and public policy types.Vienna: Still a Just City? is aimed at academics, researchers and policy-makers in urban studies, including urban sociology, ecology, geography and welfare.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book is an interdisciplinary research work designed to be of interest to a broad range of academics. The book examines the relationship between democracy and the (trans)formations of urban spaces through comparative perspective. It engages with the ideas of ‘modernity’ in architecture and investigates how they might align (or not) with other forms of radical power. This book offers an understanding of the public spaces through political change, power struggle, and autocratic modernity manifested. It addresses the subject of politics in architecture and built environment by examining the various academic literature in urban studies, architectural history, urban anthropology, urban sociology, cultural geographies, planning history, philosophy, and the broader social and political sciences. Followingly, it will be focused on the less well-known traditions of architecture and democratic values drawing upon western and (non)western perspectives to decolonize the notion of public space in the global south. In better words, the book investigates the mechanisms of power struggles and the transformative dynamism of totalization and state-led modernization, which motivates or shapes a creative tension in the form of the city. The topic of the work is novel and aims to examine the relationship between the affordances of public spaces, their micro-histories, and the emergence of critical social events and movements. The breadth of the topic demanded engagement with a rich body of architectural theory and history and relevant texts in urban sociology, colonial and postcolonial studies, political geography, and cultural studies, a challenge to which the book has responded outstandingly. The issue is urgent for policymakers and architects, urban designers, political and cultural geographers, and other practitioners working on the built environment to create more democratic public spaces in the global south.

This book is an interdisciplinary research work designed to be of interest to a broad range of academics. The book examines the relationship between democracy and the (trans)formations of urban spaces through comparative perspective. It engages with the ideas of ‘modernity’ in architecture and investigates how they might align (or not) with other forms of radical power. This book offers an understanding of the public spaces through political change, power struggle, and autocratic modernity manifested. It addresses the subject of politics in architecture and built environment by examining the various academic literature in urban studies, architectural history, urban anthropology, urban sociology, cultural geographies, planning history, philosophy, and the broader social and political sciences. Followingly, it will be focused on the less well-known traditions of architecture and democratic values drawing upon western and (non)western perspectives to decolonize the notion of public space in the global south. In better words, the book investigates the mechanisms of power struggles and the transformative dynamism of totalization and state-led modernization, which motivates or shapes a creative tension in the form of the city. The topic of the work is novel and aims to examine the relationship between the affordances of public spaces, their micro-histories, and the emergence of critical social events and movements. The breadth of the topic demanded engagement with a rich body of architectural theory and history and relevant texts in urban sociology, colonial and postcolonial studies, political geography, and cultural studies, a challenge to which the book has responded outstandingly. The issue is urgent for policymakers and architects, urban designers, political and cultural geographers, and other practitioners working on the built environment to create more democratic public spaces in the global south.

Following the crisis of the Special Period, Cuba promoted urban agriculture throughout its towns and cities to address food sovereignty and security. Through the adoption of state recommended design strategies, these gardens have become places of social and economic exchange throughout Cuba. This book maps the lived experiences surrounding three urban farms in Havana to construct a deeper understanding about the everyday life of this city. Using narratives and drawings, this research uncovers these sites as places where education, intimacy, entrepreneurism, wellbeing, and culture are interwoven alongside food production. Henri Lefebvre’s latent work on rhythmanalysis is used as a research method to capture the everyday beats particular to Havana surrounding these sites. This book maps the many ways in which these spaces shift power away from the state to become places that are co-created by the community to serve as a crucial hinge point between the ongoing collapse of the city and its future wellbeing.

Following the crisis of the Special Period, Cuba promoted urban agriculture throughout its towns and cities to address food sovereignty and security. Through the adoption of state recommended design strategies, these gardens have become places of social and economic exchange throughout Cuba. This book maps the lived experiences surrounding three urban farms in Havana to construct a deeper understanding about the everyday life of this city. Using narratives and drawings, this research uncovers these sites as places where education, intimacy, entrepreneurism, wellbeing, and culture are interwoven alongside food production. Henri Lefebvre’s latent work on rhythmanalysis is used as a research method to capture the everyday beats particular to Havana surrounding these sites. This book maps the many ways in which these spaces shift power away from the state to become places that are co-created by the community to serve as a crucial hinge point between the ongoing collapse of the city and its future wellbeing.

Detroit: A City Imagined in Film is a survey of prominent feature films depicting or referring to Detroit, and how they have captured and fed popular perceptions about the Motor City. Detroit, a magnifying glass, through which one sees an exaggerated portrait of America, has rendered itself to the eye of the cinematographic camera for over a century as background, stage, and even character.Guided by Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space, the authors analyse an array of fiction films filmed and/or set in Detroit from 1928 until today and examine filmic practice as one through which the city has been perceived, conceived, and lived, and thus continually reproduced, socially and materially. The book thus sheds light on how the imaginary around a city can shape or reinforce perceptions that affect it in return, making the reading informative about the tangible power of cinema, the cinematic nature of the city, and ultimately the common threads that weave the story of Detroit.The book is for film lovers, students and enthusiasts of Film Studies, Architecture, and Urban Studies, and all those who are interested in Detroit, its history, places, and culture.

Kuala Lumpur is a diverse city representing many different religions and nationalities. Recent government policy has actively promoted unity and cohesion throughout the city; and the country of Malaysia, with the implementation of a programme called 1Malaysia. In this book, the authors investigate the aims of this programme—predominantly to unify the Malaysian society—and how these objectives resonate in the daily spatial practices of the city’s residents.This book argues that elements of urban infrastructure could work as an essential mediator ‘beyond community’, allowing inclusive social structures to be built, despite cultural and religious tensions existing within the city. It builds on the premise of an empirical study which explores the ways in which different communities use the same spaces, supported through the implementation of a theoretical framework which looks at both Western and Islamic conceptualisations of the notion of community. Through the analysis of Kuala Lumpur, this book contributes towards the creation of more inclusive places in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious communities across the world.

Using Rio de Janeiro as the case study city, this book highlights and examines issues surrounding the development of mega-cities in Latin America and beyond. Complex dynamics of urbanization such as mega-event-driven development, infrastructure investment, and informal urban expansion are intertwined with changing climatic conditions that demand new approaches to sustainable urbanism. The urban conditions facing 21st century cities such as Rio emphasize the need to revisit urban forms, reintegrate infrastructure, and re-evaluate practices.With contributions from 15 scholars from several countries exploring urbanism, urbanization, and climate change, this book provides insights into the contextual and environmental issues shaping Rio in the age of globalization. Each of the book’s three sections addresses an interdisciplinary range of topics impacting urbanism in Latin America, which will be accessible to researchers and professionals interested in urbanization, urban design, sustainability, planning, and architecture.

Istanbul: Informal Settlements and Generative Urbanism analyzes two informal housing settlements in Istanbul, Turkey – Karanfilköy and Fatih Sultan Mehmet – to examine how generatively built structures and neighbourhoods can be successfully realized in a modern, burgeoning urban context. Generative development processes adapt to existing conditions and unfold over time, but there have been relatively few examples in the 20th and 21st centuries. This book evaluates the constructs of living structures, pattern languages and generative urban design processes in relation to Istanbul’s informal settlements. It provides examples of communities making liveable, dynamic and user-adapted neighbourhoods and establishes them as a modern settlement typology in generative urban design theory.

As a main urban centre of one of the most dynamic European regions, Milan is a key location from which to study narratives of innovations and contemporary productions – old and new manufacturing, tertiary and consumptive sectors, creative and cultural economy – and investigate their influence both on spatial patterns and urban policy agenda.Accordingly, this book explores the contentious geographies of innovation, productions and working spaces, both empirically and theoretically in a city that, since the beginning of the 2000s, has been involved in a process of urban change, with relevant spatial and socio-economic effects, within an increasingly turbulent world economy. Through this analysis, the book provides an insight into the complexity of contemporary urban phenomena beyond a traditional metropolitan lens, highlighting issues such as rescaling, urban decentralization and recentralization, extensive urban transformation and shrinkage and molecular urban regeneration. This book is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and scholars focusing on Urban Studies such as Urban Policy, Urban Planning, Urban Geography, Urban Economy and Urban Sociology.

Recent years have seen a growing interest in undetermined and unqualified urban spaces. Understanding cities as spaces for encounter, conflict and otherness, this book argues that this indeterminacy is not marginal but a key characteristic of urban space, and degrees of liberty foster change, creativity, and political action. The urban void is a conceptual construct that aims to render a principle of absence apprehensible, and to describe how it intervenes in place-making in the city. Seville: Through the Urban Void build mostly upon Henri Lefebvre’s work using concepts drawn on the social sciences, in order to articulate a biographic narrative of the Alameda de Hércules in Seville, Spain, which stands both as an outstanding instance of urban space and a very influential urban type. During its long historical span the Alameda has undergone alternating periods of decline and development, revealing the relations between successive urban paradigms and ideas of nature, territory, and the people. For the first time its whole history is told in a single account, which adds new perspectives to its understanding, and brings forward formerly disregarded aspects. This book shows how its liminal nature, which stubbornly persists over time, creates the conditions for creative processes.

This book explores the complex relationship between urban commons – understood as a repertoire of collective action that fosters a politics of antagonism – and the local state. It critiques the dominant neo-institutionalist and neo-Marxist perspectives for their deterministic and siloed views, as well as the insufficient attention they pay to the municipal scale. The book proposes a more nuanced, urban-based, outcome-oriented approach rooted in assemblage theory.The analysis addresses a central question: can urban commons-local state assemblages benefit the politics of urban commons? The book argues that they can, provided they form rhizomatic assemblages. These allow urban commons to retain their self-governing autonomy, even as they lose some of their material autonomy. Conversely, it shows that assemblages can also take arborescent forms, allowing the local state to undermine the self-governing autonomy of the urban commons.Focusing on Barcelona, the book examines how rhizomatic and arborescent assemblages are constructed, as well as the strategies that urban commons can undertake to build rhizomatic assemblages. This book is essential for scholars, policymakers, and activists interested in urban governance, commons theory and transformative politics. It provides both theoretical insights and practical tools for harnessing the dynamics of the urban commons and the local state to drive meaningful socio-political change.

This book looks at the current trends in Athens, the capital city of Greece, and focuses on the processes of globalization it has been undergoing during the last two decades. In this time the city has transformed from a low-key, petty bourgeois cohesive and rather isolated city in south-eastern Europe to an internationally visible metropolis, increasingly unequal and polarized.The book mainly deals with changes in the social structure and the ways that different groups are linked to the city’s built environment. The main issues discussed in the book include the economic identity and the position of Athens in the regional and global urban networks; the reproduction of class and ethnic boundaries and the uneven distribution of different social groups in urban space; the exploration of political processes related to the class vote, including the gender and demographic profile of the city’s electorate; the making of the built environment, the main trends in real estate and the ways they affect the housing market. Athens is not abundantly discussed in the urban studies literature, even though social and spatial changes have been remarkable. As such, this book provides a concise overview of the main socioeconomic and spatial changes in Athens during the last two decades and their significance beyond the case of Athens.This book will be of interest to researchers and students of the built environment, urban studies and urban sociology.

This book focuses on understanding how a megacity like Seoul can be read as a formal architectural composition and not an endless urban sprawl.In a broader sense, the book discusses the dichotomy between city and urbanization: “city” being an architectural problem of bounded forms, while “urbanism” is an infrastructural project of expansion. It is an uncontested reality that urbanization is a continuous global process that has produced nebulous conurbations labeled as megacities. These expand beyond the virtual administrative boundary of any said “city,” producing a discrepancy between an area of administrative control and the real physical condition of human settlement. If there were a better formal understanding of megacities through their typological architectural conditions, then there could be a better assessment of the qualitative state of urbanization. Avant-garde groups from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s such as Team X, the Situationist, the Structuralist, and the Metabolist worked with ideas of megaforms and megastructures to address this issue. Although most of these proposals remained as paper architecture, this book reevaluates some of these ideas for the 21st-century megacity, using Seoul as a case study due to its clear typological formations produced over its diff erent periods of governance. The aim is to present the concept for an infra-architectural hybrid model of typological islands and subterranean megastructure that organizes Seoul as a flexible multi-linear city.This book will be of interest to academics and students of architecture, urban geography and Asian studies.

This book focuses on understanding how a megacity like Seoul can be read as a formal architectural composition and not an endless urban sprawl.In a broader sense, the book discusses the dichotomy between city and urbanization: “city” being an architectural problem of bounded forms, while “urbanism” is an infrastructural project of expansion. It is an uncontested reality that urbanization is a continuous global process that has produced nebulous conurbations labeled as megacities. These expand beyond the virtual administrative boundary of any said “city,” producing a discrepancy between an area of administrative control and the real physical condition of human settlement. If there were a better formal understanding of megacities through their typological architectural conditions, then there could be a better assessment of the qualitative state of urbanization. Avant-garde groups from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s such as Team X, the Situationist, the Structuralist, and the Metabolist worked with ideas of megaforms and megastructures to address this issue. Although most of these proposals remained as paper architecture, this book reevaluates some of these ideas for the 21st-century megacity, using Seoul as a case study due to its clear typological formations produced over its diff erent periods of governance. The aim is to present the concept for an infra-architectural hybrid model of typological islands and subterranean megastructure that organizes Seoul as a flexible multi-linear city.This book will be of interest to academics and students of architecture, urban geography and Asian studies.

Focusing on the city of Athens, this book examines architecture as something that produces culture and ideology — rather than the opposite. Therefore, this book aims to complement architectural and urban theories that are based only on historical overviews or typological assumptions; to do so, it boldly opens architectural discourse to philosophy, affect theory, and social and cognitive sciences.By examining Athens after its denomination as Greek capital in 1834, the moments, actors, and transformations that assist the individuation of the Athenian urban ecologies are problematised. Opting for theoretical speculations, the readers will witness architecture as a collective equipment that produces modes of life that can either enhance or diminish our collective potentials. As such, the ambition of this book is to provide the theoretical and methodological groundings for thorough extrapolations on how new collectivities can be produced.Readers of this book will be exposed to a transdisciplinary approach that identifies and addresses shared problems and concerns regarding the production of contemporary urban environments. This book will also explore theoretical innovations that can inform and trigger new ways of speculative thinking and offers a non-reductionist account of the development of Athens from the perspective of multiple architectural technicities. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of architecture, architectural theory, architectural history, and philosophy.

Kuala Lumpur is a diverse city representing many different religions and nationalities. Recent government policy has actively promoted unity and cohesion throughout the city; and the country of Malaysia, with the implementation of a programme called 1Malaysia. In this book, the authors investigate the aims of this programme—predominantly to unify the Malaysian society—and how these objectives resonate in the daily spatial practices of the city’s residents.This book argues that elements of urban infrastructure could work as an essential mediator ‘beyond community’, allowing inclusive social structures to be built, despite cultural and religious tensions existing within the city. It builds on the premise of an empirical study which explores the ways in which different communities use the same spaces, supported through the implementation of a theoretical framework which looks at both Western and Islamic conceptualisations of the notion of community. Through the analysis of Kuala Lumpur, this book contributes towards the creation of more inclusive places in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious communities across the world.

Baltimore: Reinventing an Industrial Legacy City is an exploration into the reinvention, self-reflection and boosterism of US legacy cities, taking Baltimore as the case study model to reveal the larger narrative. Author Klaus Philipsen investigates the modern urban condition and the systemic problems involved with adapting metropolitan regions into equitable and sustainable communities, covering topics such as growth, urban sprawl, the depletion of cities, social justice, smart city and open data, transportation, community development, sustainability and diversity. Baltimore’s proximity to the US capital, combined with its industrial past, presents the optimum viewpoint to investigate these challenges and draw parallels with cities across the world.

Istanbul: Informal Settlements and Generative Urbanism analyzes two informal housing settlements in Istanbul, Turkey – Karanfilköy and Fatih Sultan Mehmet – to examine how generatively built structures and neighbourhoods can be successfully realized in a modern, burgeoning urban context. Generative development processes adapt to existing conditions and unfold over time, but there have been relatively few examples in the 20th and 21st centuries. This book evaluates the constructs of living structures, pattern languages and generative urban design processes in relation to Istanbul’s informal settlements. It provides examples of communities making liveable, dynamic and user-adapted neighbourhoods and establishes them as a modern settlement typology in generative urban design theory.

As a main urban centre of one of the most dynamic European regions, Milan is a key location from which to study narratives of innovations and contemporary productions – old and new manufacturing, tertiary and consumptive sectors, creative and cultural economy – and investigate their influence both on spatial patterns and urban policy agenda.Accordingly, this book explores the contentious geographies of innovation, productions and working spaces, both empirically and theoretically in a city that, since the beginning of the 2000s, has been involved in a process of urban change, with relevant spatial and socio-economic effects, within an increasingly turbulent world economy. Through this analysis, the book provides an insight into the complexity of contemporary urban phenomena beyond a traditional metropolitan lens, highlighting issues such as rescaling, urban decentralization and recentralization, extensive urban transformation and shrinkage and molecular urban regeneration. This book is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and scholars focusing on Urban Studies such as Urban Policy, Urban Planning, Urban Geography, Urban Economy and Urban Sociology.

In the wake of an unparalleled housing crisis at the end of the Second World War, Glasgow Corporation rehoused the tens of thousands of private tenants who were living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in unimproved Victorian slums. Adopting the designs, the materials and the technologies of modernity they built into the sky, developing high-rise estates on vacant sites within the city and on its periphery. This book uniquely focuses on the people's experience of this modern approach to housing, drawing on oral histories and archival materials to reflect on the long-term narrative and significance of high-rise homes in the cityscape. It positions them as places of identity formation, intimacy and well-being. With discussions on interior design and consumption, gender roles, children, the elderly, privacy, isolation, social networks and nuisance, Glasgow examines the connections between architectural design, planning decisions and housing experience to offer some timely and prescient observations on the success and failure of this very modern housing solution at a moment when high flats are simultaneously denigrated in the social housing sector while being built afresh in the private sector.Glasgow is aimed at an academic readership, including postgraduate students, scholars and researchers. It will be of interest to social, cultural and urban historians particularly interested in the United Kingdom.

Gulf capital flows to Amman, Jordan, in the early twenty-first century and the investment of this capital in large-scale urban developments have significantly transformed the city’s built environment. Therefore, to understand urban transformation in Amman during this period it is important to analyze it against the backdrop of Gulf capital and its integration into Jordan’s economy and the integration of both the country’s economy and Gulf capital into the global capitalist economy. This book analyzes three cases of megaprojects planned for the city in the early twenty-first century: The New Downtown (Abdali), Jordan Gate, and Sanaya Amman. Drawing upon theories on urban development and capitalism, identity, and discourse, and urban development processes and cases in other cities, the book investigates how contemporary megaprojects in Amman fit into the capitalist economy and its modes of production, how capital flows construct a modern image of the city, and how the new image and megaprojects represent the city residents as modern and create Amman as a global city. This book presents a new approach to the study of the urban built environment in Amman, providing a valuable interdisciplinary contribution to the scholarly work on globalizing cities, especially in the Middle East.

Baltimore: Reinventing an Industrial Legacy City is an exploration into the reinvention, self-reflection and boosterism of US legacy cities, taking Baltimore as the case study model to reveal the larger narrative. Author Klaus Philipsen investigates the modern urban condition and the systemic problems involved with adapting metropolitan regions into equitable and sustainable communities, covering topics such as growth, urban sprawl, the depletion of cities, social justice, smart city and open data, transportation, community development, sustainability and diversity. Baltimore’s proximity to the US capital, combined with its industrial past, presents the optimum viewpoint to investigate these challenges and draw parallels with cities across the world.