Comparative Urbanism

This essay intervenes in contemporary discourse on the philosophy of education by reframing the city as an educational space. It argues that Walter Benjamin's city writing presents a methodology of critique that triangulates post-critical immanent engagement and critical dialectic. This essay explores Benjamin's method in relation to a central tension in educational theory: how to balance the immediacy of lived experience and author's individual identity with the structural demands of historical critique. The argument unfolds in three theoretical acts: first, by staging the dialectical tension between post-critical immanence and Jameson's totalizing mode of critical theory, with Benjamin as a mediating figure between the two; second, by presenting Benjamin's philosophy of the city as a model for the educational force of critique; and third, by offering a comparative analysis of Jameson's reading of John Portman's Bonaventure Hotel alongside Benjamin's depiction of Naples, to reveal how these urban forms produce divergent pedagogical models. The essay concludes by underscoring the relevance of Benjamin's philosophy to contemporary post-critical discourse. Between post-critical immanence and historical dialectics For Jameson, the postmodern crisis of legibility demands a strategy of orientation. He argues that the disorientation produced by late capitalism cannot be addressed without "locating the individual in the global system" (Jameson, 1991, p. 52). Borrowing the term "cognitive mapping" from urban planner Kevin Lynch (1960), Jameson defines his pedagogical imperative: to render the invisible totality of global capital perceptible. Just as the strategic placement of landmarks and pathways makes the city intelligible, so too must global systems be diagramed to become legible. As Toscano and Kinkle state, Jameson's searches for "a representational practice adequate to the highly ambitious task of depicting social space and class relations in our epoch of late capitalism" (Toscano & Kinkle, 2015, p. 2). Architectural language plays a privileged role in this context, forming the template for cognitive mapping. As Jameson explains, architecture is paradigmatic in postmodern cultural production due to its immediate proximity to the economic base (Jameson, 1991, p. 36). As a superstructural expression directly connected to land values and material costs, the built environment reflects economic forces in the organization of social space. Architectural language thus can play a potentially critical role in promoting cognitive legibility because it reflects the role of capitalist forces within the social field by revealing ideological contradictions in spatial forms. Jameson concedes that the "highly ambitious" representational goal of cognitive mapping may be ultimately unachievable, given the scale of global capital (Toscano & Kinkle, 2015, p. 2). However, his pedagogical imperative rests upon this very ambition, because education, for Jameson, is a field of mediation that must expose the role of structural forces in the unfolding of historical processes. Jameson asserts that human nature itself is not given but "the consequence and projected afterimage of a certain state or structure of production and appropriation" (Jameson, 1991, p. 367). Thus, understanding the role of these economic patterns equips learners with the cognitive tools necessary for orienting within the systemic totality-as the very condition of coherent individual formation.

Urban theory and geographic thought are, by nature, incomplete and continually evolving, yet they remain heavily shaped by those who occupy, speak from, and reinforce the center. While past efforts to address planetary knowledge asymmetries had gained some momentum-particularly in response to racial disparities and exclusions in academia-such initiatives are now increasingly under attack, especially within Anglo-American contexts. In an era defined by the rise of AI and algorithmic bias in scholarly work-coupled with the impact of right-wing authoritarianism and geopolitical instability on the ecology of civic and critical spaces-domains that once fostered dissent, dialogue, and inclusion are steadily shrinking. Within this context, justice is no more a distant aspiration but an urgent and immediate imperative. It is this critical premise that grounds the inquiry of this paper. Rooted in a liberatory ethos, it begins with a provocation to move beyond the "epistemic center" and "metasteward" in Urban Studies. It then examines ambivalent entrapments experienced by Black and African urbanists, highlighting the need for pluralization as an epistemic act of redress. Finally, the paper calls for sustained self-reflection on our roles as scholars, whether or not we come from or occupy positions of power and privilege.

The Street Vendors Act, 2014 entails a provision for the creation of vending zones and novending zones to regulate street vending activities. The provision restricts the entitlements of vendors to carry out trade and business, and prevent them from choosing their preferred zones. The social cost of moving to a new system under the law makes them worse from their earlier position in the market. Based on the Coasian understanding of "the problem of social cost", an attempt has been made here to show that this zoning system to be implemented under the law is not optimal for it restricts vendors from making independent decisions to vend in a zone of their choice; induces rent-seeking; interferes in the free market, and hence impacting the efficiency of the individual vendor and the market to operate freely.

This paper theoretically discusses the concept of paradiplomacy and evaluates the Mato Grosso International Relations Group (Nurimat) as a paradiplomatic actor. Methodologically, it is based on documentary and bibliographic research. The structure and functioning of Nurimat are presented, along with its role in two practical cases: the cooperation agreement with the South China Agricultural University (SCAU) to establish the Brazil-China Centre for Research in Sustainable Technology and Agribusiness Innovation of Mato Grosso (BCAgriMT) and the creation of the Centre for Chinese Language and Agricultural Science and Technology Development. The article argues for the importance of paradiplomacy in foreign policy, its relationship with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE), and the potential for advancing research in this emerging field. It is observed that Nurimat, universities, and other potential new actors are examples to be considered in the development of international relations by subnational agents. The article discusses that there is no direct competition between the state and subnational actors in paradiplomacy. However, the perception of paradiplomatic activities as "low politics" marginalizes this process, resulting in a limited understanding of the role of subnational actors and their impact on international politics. The research indicates that cooperation within BRICS offers fertile ground for studying  paradiplomacy and the effectiveness of educational policy, focusing on partnerships between universities, subnational actors, and their impact on education and innovation.
Keywords: Paradiplomacy; Subnational actors; International cooperation; Educational policy

During the last century, the transformation of Istanbul's urban structure from monocentric to multi-centric and its rapid population growth resulted in neighbourhood patterns which are spread across a large spectrum according to their location and their cultural, socio-economic and historical backgrounds. In urban settings, the potential environment is reinterpreted by its users, and is realized through the application of the space and time-specific societal norms within the context of technological advances. The present study investigates the selected neighbourhood patterns from historical to westernized, modern, postmodern (gated) and Manhattanized forms. According to the results of the study, although some of the historical, westernized and modern neighbourhoods have been preserved to a large extent, the haphazard development of high-rise residential buildings has caused traffic congestion, pollution, an increased income gap and changes in land values, and has thus produced functional transformations in their immediate surroundings. In addition, this unnecessary increase in housing density is not only harmful for the city's famous silhouette but also for its traditional neighbourhood relationships. In order to allow a physically, economically and socially more balanced development of the city, it is necessary to control its

This monumental volume consists of eighty-six separate papers (including an 'Introduction' and a 'Conclusion') and represents the work of about that many individual authors. (Some participants presented more than one paper, but this is balanced by a few instances of joint authorship.) The conference was intended to : . . . enable researchers in different disciplines to meet in an attempt to bridge the gaps between them by personal contact and discussion. . . .we envisaged discussion on a very broad front indeed.. . .* The orientation of the conference was archaeological; most of the articles are by archaeologists; and contributions by nonarchaeologists, whether ethnologists, sociologists, geographers, or modern town plannersrelate to this archaeological orientation, by implication if not by specific explication. While the settlement-urban theme and the archaeological orientation unify the effort, a 'very broad front' of interests is, indeed, represented in the collected articles of the volume. This breadth is seen in wide-ranging geographical coverage, a chronological gamut of almost all human history, numerous crossdisciplinary alliances, and varying interpretations of data. Given this omnibus aspect of Man, settlement and urbanism, together with the elephantine size of the book, a reviewer might be

We identify and explore the parallels and differences between gated communities and land invasions as forms of residential territory in cities of the South. Using the case of Cape Town, South Africa, the parallel narratives regarding the reasons for invading or gating land are analysed and placed in contrast with an inconsistent state response. For while both `gaters' and `invaders' are driven by similar desires for a secure home and private autonomy, the state responds very differently, regulating the former as rational residents, and disparaging the latter as unreasonable criminals. Thus, we explore the legitimacy of the two territories, challenging traditional responses to gated communities and land invasions, and arguing for an understanding of both as reflective of citizens' desires for secure homes. Although gated communities and land invasions represent diverse housing types, we suggest that it is useful to analyse them in direct empirical relation. In doing so, we do not narrowly conceptualise Southern cities as slum nuclei or divided postcolonial citadels , but as complex and contradictory sites in which diverse residents and urban processes function in the context of state (dis)engagement.

THE MIND OF Lewis Binford is nimble and constantly evolving. In part, one can map Binford\u27s prodigious intellectual growth by looking at the research trajectories of his students, who often continue on paths they began under his tutelage. In my case, certainly, this is very true. When I arrived at the University of New Mexico in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Binford was exploring the nature of the archaeological record: how to understand past human organization at a supra-ethnographic scale, what we might learn from bones and site structure, and how to reliably give meaning to the archaeological record. This chapter, harking back to the early 1980s, focuses on the latter and attempts to organize some of the many thoughts that have been offered on the notion initially known as middle-range theory. Fundamental questions in archaeology are: What is it? How old is it? Why did people make it? Why did they stop making it? What do these patterns in artifacts, structures, and so forth ...

The rapid integration of digital platforms into urban life has given rise to the concept of platform urbanism, highlighting the co-constitutive relationship between cities and platforms. While platform urbanism has emerged as an important approach for understanding contemporary cities, the field lacks a robust comparative perspective. To address this gap, we synthesize comparative approaches from platform studies and urban studies to outline a typology of comparative lenses for examining the co-constitution of platforms and cities. We identify three key broad comparative approaches: cross-city comparison of platforms, cross-platform comparison within cities, and simultaneous comparison across both platforms and cities. For each dimension, we propose four analytical approaches: genetic, generative, connective, and integrative comparisons. This yields a 12-cell matrix of comparative strategies, each illuminating different aspects of how platforms and cities shape one another. We illustrate these approaches with examples from short-term rental platforms. The framework highlights understudied areas, particularly the need for more cross-platform comparisons within cities and comparisons across both platforms and cities simultaneously. The proposed comparative lens enables a more nuanced understanding of how diverse platforms interact with varied urban contexts to produce distinct socio-spatial outcomes. This framework lays the groundwork for future comparative research to unpack the complex dynamics of platform urbanism across contexts.

Long-entrenched grand narratives have tied inequality in large human aggregations to generally linear trends, a direct outcome of domestication, then fostered by population growth and/or stepped scalar transitions in the hierarchical complexity of human institutions. This general pattern has been argued to short-circuit or reverse only in the context of cataclysmic disasters or societal breakdowns. Yet, for the most part, these universal deterministic frameworks have been constructed from historical or ethnographic snapshots in time and afford little systematic attention to human institutions or agency. Here, we leverage quantitative, temporally defined archaeological, and ethnographic data from a suite of global regions, most of which transitioned through the process of urbanism and complex hierarchy formation, to examine shifts in degrees of inequality over time. Although broad temporal patterns are evidenced, the regional trends in inequality are neither linear, uniform, nor triggered immediately or mechanically by Malthusian dynamics or scalar increases.
Key words: governance | grand narratives | inequality | urbanism | wealth

Significance
Inequality is a central focus of contemporary scholarship. How did it reach its current extent? Is inequality a natural consequence of modernization, scalar growth, and/or Malthusian forces? Or, were increases in degrees of economic inequality less linearly driven such that the factors that underpinned rises in the potential degrees of inequality were not necessarily realized? Drawing on a large global sample of house sizes compiled principally from archaeological contexts, we assess alternatives with broad analytical implications. For the past, as in the present, variance in the institutions in governance is advanced as one key factor with implications on the degree to which household wealth inequalities were manifest.

International governmental networks used to be centralized. However, the formal and informal decentralization of diplomatic relations through local governments and regions has placed the subnational governments as international actors. The subnational parallel pursuit of international relations has been termed paradiplomacy. Knowing "why or how" subnational governments engage in paradiplomacy is relevant because international networks have the potential to foster innovation, cooperation, transfer of knowledge, and international aid. However, not all jurisdictions engage in international relations despite the potential symbolic and material benefits. Scholars have explained local engagement in international relations through economic, cooperative, and political considerations. Without denying their explanatory power, we hypothesize that organizational structures, specifically local prointernational structures, foster paradiplomacy, while political support discourages paradiplomatic activities. To investigate subnational variation in paradiplomacy engagement, we rely on a survey covering all 5565 Brazilian municipalities in 2012. Findings suggest the existence of local pro-international structures is positively correlated with municipal international projects and municipal participation in international networks.

Academic discourses on housing financialization view the state as playing a pivotal facilitation role, primarily through establishing institutional arrangements conducive to global financial interests. Drawing on a Poulantzian-inspired reading of capital and the state as a social relation, this paper evidences a more complex and dialectical state-investor nexus in housing financialization, shaped by contingent and path-dependent dynamics. By juxtaposing Athens and Barcelona-two cities profoundly impacted by the global financial crisis (GFC) and socio-spatially reshaped by consequential debt management politics-we identify a variety of state interventions that pertain to different kinds of structural or strategic selectivities across spatial scales that both facilitate and constrain the financialization of housing at different points in time. In Athens, the central state initially protected local financial interests from debt securitization and indebted households from home repossessions, while simultaneously preparing the ground for future financialization that has recently taken off amid economic recovery and a major touristification drive. In Barcelona, the central state's restructuring of the banking system and its facilitation of mass mortgage repossessions that enabled international investors to decisively enter the city's housing market, generated powerful urban social movements at the regional and city scale that won new local policies for affordable housing provision. In both cities, financial actors were able to recalibrate their investment strategies in fluctuating institutional and market settings. We conclude that the trajectory of housing financialization and state-investor relations is far more variegated and open to alternative pathways than generally understood, reinforcing the need for more nuanced understandings of the path-dependency of the process.

Large-scale urban greening projects such as river renaturalisation offer enormous benefits both in social and ecological terms. For instance, they reduce heat-island effects and flood-proclivity and increase urban biodiversity. Yet, environmental justice scholarship shows that who benefits from these projects is a question that still needs consideration. Often, environmental action comes alongside economic-induced displacement and thus increased social vulnerability, a phenomenon that has been named Green Gentrification. For instance, projects such as New York’s Highline, Seoul’s Cheonggycheon Restoration or Barcelona’s Rambla significantly increased their city’s green spaces, but also displaced thousands due to sudden land value and rent price increase. While analyses have prioritised single-case studies of both local and city scales, there is still much to be learned from the comparisons at the project level. This study tries to untangle the linkages between design and green gentrification. It explores what could be key design criteria that explain why gentrification is a typical result of large-scale urban greening projects. For this, the study uses a Most Different Systems Design (MDSD) comparative analysis of two river renaturalisation interventions: Parques del Río in Medellín, Colombia and Madrid Río in Madrid, Spain. Results indicate that designers could mitigate gentrifying outcomes of projects by explicitly addressing what I name areas of strategic decision: integration of resident’s identity, tools to control land speculation, prioritising regeneration over beautification and ensuring tenancy protection frameworks. Findings indicate that there is an urgent need for an ‘equity-shift’ in urban environmentalism, where planners and designers understand that justice is at the core of sustainability, and prioritise decision with that set of ideas in mind.

The human development working paper (HDWP) series of UNDP's Bratislava Regional Centre (BRC) is a medium for sharing recent research that has been commissioned or conducted by BRC staff and partners, and is related to human development. This research could subsequently be revised for publication as part of reports, articles in professional journals, or book chapters. These working papers seek to promote professional debates on human development issues, especially among the developing and transition economies of Europe and Central Asia. The findings, interpretations and conclusions are strictly those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of UNDP, the United Nations, or its member states. Likewise, the data presented in these papers may not be consistent with those presented in human development reports, or other official UNDP publications.

Around the end of 2019, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, the first confirmed cases of COVID-19 were identified, and from then on, the world we were used to knowing changed globally. The role of population density, in relation to the spread of the pandemic, has been widely scrutinised in urban studies, believed to be the triggering variable. However, the results so far are inconclusive. This paper suggests instead to shift the focus to sociospatial vulnerabilities, as the effects of the pandemic's spread have been more severe in urban units which feature long-standing inequalities. The paper's aim is, therefore, twofold: on the one hand it aims at contributing to the debate on population density and COVID-19 in urban areas, and, on the other hand, to analyse the pandemic's spread in relation to socio-spatial vulnerabilities. Different cities across the globe are drawn into a comparative project, where the pandemic's spread is analysed in relation to variables of Population Density (PD) and a Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), by employing correlation matrices. The results suggest that there is no significant correlation between density and the spread of COVID-19. Instead, a positive correlation is in place when analysing the pandemic's diffusion with socio-spatial inequalities.

Version of record at https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/place-and-performance-in-ancient-greece-rome-and-china/theories-of-place-across-time-and-space/BF329D333CD049F21B84CB79393512C3

Russell opens the book with a plea for a new approach to the comparative study of ancient cities. Past scholars – with Rykwert as the foremost example – have pointed to claims in ancient Chinese and Roman literary materials that link cities with the cosmos. They have, furthermore, used these claims to argue that, in both ancient Rome and China, the idea of the city as a microcosmos is what led to what we might call ‘placemaking’, the process by which abstract space is made meaningful to humans. Rather than disproving these claims, Russell shows the limited reach of the literary materials. First, whatever the texts claim, real cities are never scaled-down models of the cosmos: whereas the texts may seek to imbue features of the human landscape with symbolic meaning, these are most often later ascriptions, explaining features of the city that have arisen for much more concrete, mundane reasons. Second, starting from the observation that both ancient China and ancient Rome are civilisations that take great pride in their past traditions, Russell shows how the theories that associate cities with cosmological ideas are, in fact, classicising constructions of a fairly late date (last two centuries BCE), part of a growing body of technical literature, that itself was spurred into being by the cultural and intellectual changes that attended Chinese unification and Roman imperial expansion. Thus, the similarities between Roman and Chinese cities turn out to hinge on highly abstract and relatively marginal concepts of space. By showing this, Russell frees up the field for a historical investigation of cities, not as spaces but as concrete, complex places with multiple and constantly evolving social meanings. This mode of investigation gets fully underway in subsequent chapters of the book.

In the rapid urbanization process, indigenous villagers' social capital might be affected by the flooding-in of rural migrants and more importantly by the government's urbanization policies. Based on survey data collected from fifteen Beijing villages in 2011 and 2012, we study the relationship between social capital and urbanization for indigenous villagers in the urban fringe of Beijing. We find that the bottom-up urbanization measured by migrant-local ratio weakened social networks and social trust. However, the top-down urbanization measured by designating policy zone promoted social networks and social trust.

This chapter discusses how insurgent citizenship can emerge in traditionally technical realms such as infrastructure planning and risk management. First, we define the relationships between the concepts of infrastructure, planning and citizenship through a brief literature review on citizen participation in infrastructure provision. Then, through a case study of a flood monitoring project conducted under the RISE program, we discuss the value of (i) the participation of local insurgent planners in the development of programs that aim to improve health and wellbeing in the context of informal urbanisation, and (ii) the use of planning approaches that challenge centralised planning by incorporating local volunteers in data-collection and community-based perspectives. Through this case study we present citizen science as a tool for insurgent planning. We critically review and examine findings from a series of interviews with RISE fieldworkers-here seen as insurgent planners-and questionnaires administered with community members. These indicate that the relationship between fieldworkers and communities supported the development of a community-based data collection framework and contributed to community agency and infrastructure design practices. Furthermore, the expanded role of the fieldworkers as insurgent planners, identified through the discussion, suggests that their work in participatory data-collection led to the emergence of insurgent practices within the community. The findings reveal that participatory practices such as the citizen science approach represent new ways for communities to fight for their right to the city and shape their own futures.

BRICS 113 1. South Africa would only qualify for one if Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni were regarded as a single urban agglomeration. 11 10 PART A: CHAPTER 1 BRICS CITIES : FACTS & ANALYSIS 2016 CITIES IN THE BRICS: A COMPARATIVE OVERVIEW sumptions behind the data mix which are open to question. For example, the Fortune 500 and the Forbes Global 2000 global firm rankings are different, as a result of the varying criteria used to determine the strength of firms.

We explore two approaches to social
inequality — social class and spatial inequality —
in relation to the distribution of neighbourhood
plazas at ancient Teotihuacan, a large premodern
urban centre in the Basin of Mexico. We use the digitized
map from the Teotihuacan Mapping Project
to identify publicly accessible plazas and 3-temple
complexes across the city, and we measure spatial
access to these facilities for elite and non-elite residents.
Our findings are twofold. First, Teotihuacan
had a large amount of assembly space, and all
Teotihuacanos had good access to it, irrespective
of class. This finding is consistent with a collective
model of Teotihuacan government. Second, there
is significant inequality in spatial access to service
facilities between elites and non-elites, with elites
living closer to facilities. This pattern of accessibility
suggests both relatively high quality of life for the
residents of Teotihuacan as well as the maintenance
of hierarchical inequality within the city.

How powerful are Canada’s big city mayors? Do mayors have the power to lead in Canada’s cities? What does mayoral power in Canada look like, and what can we learn about Canadian urban politics by examining it? This project explores these and other questions by engaging in the first broad study of urban mayors in Canada. It is often said that Canada has “weak” mayors, or a “weak mayor system” – terms borrowed from an American context referring to the limited executive power of Canadian mayors relative to many of their American peers. This study examines the Canadian mayoralty in its own context, through close examination of the role and power of the mayor in ten Canadian cities. Mayoral power is examined “on paper,” comparing the legal and institutional powers of mayors across cities; and, “in practice,” informed by interviews with mayors and those who work most closely with them. A new model for understanding mayoral power is advanced. This project finds that Canada does not have “w...

The Panagia Houses, one of the building complexes at Mycenae, located to the southwest of the Citadel, were interpreted by the excavators as a group of three independent units. They were constructed and occupied during the Late Helladic (LH) IIIB phase, with two main phases distinguishable in the archaeological record, followed by a reoccupation phase. Careful analysis of the archaeological data published by Mylonas-Shear, which focused on the arrangement of individual units, formality of layout, access and movement patterns, and visibility, suggests that the group should be interpreted rather as a single complex, developed during the period of the maximum expansion of the settlement. The building was gradually expanded to form an extended household, with primary living space surrounded by a number of additional rooms for storage, work and habitation. It was composed of a rectangular main unit, surrounded by an extension formed around a small inner courtyard. The movement between the two levels was organised through a system of connected rooftops, with trapdoors and staircases ensuring access to the various rooms of the complex. During the LH IIIB Early phase, Mycenae was hit by a devastating earthquake. Much of the town was left in ruin, but the Panagia Houses were rebuilt, although in a smaller form, with the main unit abandoned and the courtyard inside the extension transformed into the main room of the complex. The status of the complex probably changed, but it was still inhabited by a middle-class family, who possessed a number of valuables and took part in the palatial mobilisation system. The household probably suffered in a widespread fire which destroyed Mycenae at the end of LH IIIB. Its remains were then used as two small dwellings by the survivors of the catastrophe. The history of the complex reflects the changing vicissitudes of the Lower Town of Mycenae.

This analysis focuses on key mortality indicators in Papua Province, emphasizing significant improvements in infant mortality rates (IMR) and life expectancy, while also highlighting ongoing challenges. Despite a reduction in IMR from 105 per 1,000 live births in 1980 to 19 in 2010, recent stagnation necessitates further efforts, particularly in remote regions where healthcare access is limited. The province's life expectancy, ranging from 62 years in Merauke to 69.6 in Mimika, remains below the national average due to healthcare disparities. Additionally, the under-five mortality rate, calculated at 188 per 1,000 children, along with high malnutrition rates among infants, underscores the critical need for improved healthcare services, nutrition, and vaccination coverage. Overall, these indicators reflect both progress and significant public health challenges in Papua, necessitating targeted interventions to enhance maternal and child health outcomes.

This work pursues a new explanatory framework for understanding some of the variance and homogeneity of informal work between cities in the Global South. Rooted in a materialist approach to informality, it seeks to explain the dynamics of informal work in different urban contexts via a novel application of the global division of labour, termed the global division of urban informal labour. Through a comparative analysis of the urban labour regimes of Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Mexico City, Mexico, the work argues that each city's respective location within the global capitalist system largely determines the nature of their informal economies. It posits that a city's informal labour regime is shaped by whether a city's economy is predominantly defined by financial, industrial or extractive capital, and explores the ramifications of the financialised economy of Mexico City and the extractivist economy of Freetown for shaping informal work in each city. Such an approach attempts not only to explain urban and labour regime variance but also to highlight the essential and foundational nature of informal work in global capitalism today. It also seeks to aid in the task of recentering capitalism and class considerations into understandings of the internal and external dynamics of Global South cities in general.

The Affective Agency of Public Space explores the pivotal role that public spaces play in fostering social inclusion and community cohesion within various settings, including Europe and the United States. This scholarly work underscores the critical importance of developing inclusive public zones that enhance urban life and promote integration and interaction among diverse community groups. It also confronts and debunks common myths about ‘different people,’ actively addressing misconceptions while promoting the recognition of diverse identities and voices. Through a comparative lens, the book presents insightful case studies that illustrate its core themes. Serving as a timely and important academic resource, this text is indispensable for urban planners, educators, architects, designers, and sociologists committed to progressive urban planning methodologies.

The research project „Learning Economies. Modelling Community-Led Local Development for the Sustainable Economic Trajectories оf the Negotin аnd Zlatibor Regions” is a policy oriented project that provides a platform for interdisciplinary scientific collaboration on identification and construction of a Community-Led Local Development (CLLD) intervention model on the regional sustainable development paths.The project is part of the “Executive Programme for Scientific and Technological Cooperation Between the Italian Republic and The Republic of Serbia for the Years 2016-2018” as a "Joint Research Project of Particular Relevance" ("Progetti di Grande Rilevanza" aisensi della I. 401/90)

A Companion to Cities in the Greco-Roman World offers in-depth coverage of the most important topics in the study of Greek and Roman urbanism. Bringing together contributions by an international panel of experts, this comprehensive resource addresses traditional topics in the study of ancient cities, including civic society, politics, and the ancient urban landscape, as well as less-frequently explored themes such as ecology, war, and representations of cities in literature, art, and political philosophy.

Detailed chapters present critical discussions of research on Greco-Roman urban societies, city economies, key political events, significant cultural developments, and more. Throughout the Companion, the authors provide insights into major developments, debates, and approaches in the field. An unrivalled reference work on the subject, the volume focusses on both the archaeological (spatial, architectural) as well as the historical (institutions, social structures) aspects of ancient cities, and makes Greco-Roman urbanism accessible to scholars and students of urbanism in other historical periods, up to the present day.

Part of the authoritative Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series, A Companion to Cities in the Greco-Roman World is an excellent resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and lecturers in Classics, Ancient History, and Classical/Mediterranean Archaeology, as well as historians and archaeologists looking to update their knowledge of Greek or Roman urbanism.

Overview • We researched 126 centres for this edition of the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI 30). The number of financial centres in the main index has increased from 114 to 116 with the addition of Kigali and Lagos. There are 10 associate centres awaiting potential inclusion in the main index. • Among the top 40 centres, only two fell more than 10 rank places, and six rose more than 10 places. • Overall the average rating fell 12.9 points (2.05%). While a small change, this is the third consecutive fall in the average rating. • These factors suggest that there remains some lack of confidence in the world economy. The fact that overall ratings continue to fall against the levels that we saw in 2019 reflects the continuing uncertainty around international trade, the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, and geopolitical and local unrest. • Asia/Pacific centres generally fell in the ratings in GFCI 30, and assessments from people based in Asia/Pacific suggest that they judge Chinese centres in particular less favourably than before. This might suggest that the economic gains in the region arising from covid-19 may be levelling off. • North American centres performed well in GFCI 30. This is likely to reflect renewed optimism about the US and Canadian economies as they move forward from the pandemic. • The relatively strong performance of New York and London suggests that the financial services sectors in these cities managed to sustain their performance despite radical changes in working practices during the last 18 months. GFCI 30 Results Leading Centres • New York leads the ranking, with London second. Both centres fell only slightly in the ratings. • Hong Kong and Singapore in third and fourth positions fell 25 points in the ratings. • San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Paris entered the top 10 in GFCI 30, with falls in the ratings and rankings for other leading Asian centres. • Nine of the top 10 centres in the index fell in the ratings. Western Europe • London continues to lead in the region, dropping only three points in the ratings. This reflects confidence in the longer-term prospects for the centre. • Other leading Western European centres had mixed results, with Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Stockholm, Hamburg, and Munich moving up the rankings while Frankfurt, Zurich, Edinburgh, Luxembourg, Stuttgart, and Brussels fell back, as centres compete following Brexit.

Sustainability in planning and development consists one of the main issues placed on the agendas of planners, development and decision makers. Since the beginning of the 1990’s, and particularly after Rio de Janeiro summit 1992 and, later, Agenda 21 of the UN, public awareness has grown. The notion of sustainability is based on environmental and ecological considerations which lead us as people, communities and states, to look at what is happening to our environmental system in a holistic approach. Part of this environment is the urban system, which includes the environmental, physical, social and economic fabrics.

This paper delves into gentrification and segregation in 21st-century Mexico City, connect- ing a critical visual photo-documentation approach to understanding contemporary urban relationships and social identities. It integrates Charles Morris’ triadic model (syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic levels) in analyzing photo-documentary images. These models help identify urban elements as visual narratives, contributing to segregation and gentri- fication. The study focuses on Mexico City, specifically the San Nicolás Totolapan neigh- borhood, using this method to interpret images in context and assess their impact on constructing meanings and representations. The research outcomes offer valuable insights for informed decision-making in architectural and urban design. This work contributes to understanding and addressing the issues of gentrification and segregation in Mexico City’s urban landscape.

Currently Latin American cities are seeing simultaneous processes of reinvestment and redevelopment in their historic central areas. These are not just mega scale interventions like Porto Maravilha in Rio or Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires or the luxury renovations seen in Santa Fé or Nueva Polanco in Mexico City, they include state-led, piecemeal, highrise interventions in Santiago, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Panamá, and Bogotá, all of which are causing the displacement of original populations and thus are forms of gentrification. Until very recently, these processes have been under conceptualized and little critiqued in Latin America, but they deserve careful scrutiny, along with new forms of neighbourhood organisation, activism and resistance. In this introduction, we begin that task, drawing on the work begun in an Urban Studies Foundation-funded workshop on Global Gentrification held in Santiago, Chile in 2012. Our aim is not just to understand these urban changes and conflicts as gentrification, but to empirically test the applicability of a generic understanding of gentrification beyond the usual narratives of/from the global north. From this investigation we hope to nurture new critical narratives, be sensitive enough to engage with indigenous theoretical narratives, and understand the dialectical interplay between state policies, financial markets, local politics and people. The papers in this special issue deal with the core issues of state power, urban policies (exerted at metropolitan and neighbourhood levels), an enormous influx of financial investment in derelict neighbourhoods, which produces exclusion and segregation, significant loss of urban heritage from rapidly 'renewing' neighbourhoods, and even some institutional arrangements that make possible anti-displacement activism and self-managed social housing production.

Historic cities arose under the influence of many factors that shaped the ancient city with its distinctive characteristics and values. When planning cities, it was taken into account to provide comfort to their users, preserve the surrounding environment, and not consume its resources. This was reflected in the historic city by directing its streets, securing its boundaries, providing sources of fresh water, and paving roads. Then, the historic cities went through many stages of deterioration, decline or prosperity till today.
Recently, the concept of green cities has emerged, which aims to sustain buildings and preserve the environment, through a set of standards based on adapting and reducing the phenomenon of climate change. Therefore, the study came with the aim of rooting historic cities from the perspective of green cities by applying green city standards. Then, develop solutions to overcome the problems of cities in a way that ensures the transition to green with respecting their characteristics and values.
The study relied on the use of analytical methodology to analyze the characteristics of historic cities and green cities standards, then the applied methodology to embrace these characteristics and standards in historic cities in the light of current threats to support their green transformation. From the study, it was found that the historic cities were green cities, but as a result of modernity, environmental changes and changing activities, they no longer meet the standards of green cities. Therefore, the study suggested a proposal for converting to green through a set of measures.

Este trabajo profundiza en la gentrificación y la segregación en la Ciudad de México del siglo XXI, conectando un enfoque crítico de foto-documentación visual para entender las relaciones urbanas contemporáneas y las identidades sociales. Integra el modelo triádico de Charles Morris (niveles sintáctico, semántico y pragmático) en el análisis de imágenes documentales. Estos modelos ayudan a identificar los elementos urbanos como narra- tivas visuales, que contribuyen a la segregación y la gentrificación. El estudio se centra en Ciudad de México, concretamente en el barrio de San Nicolás Totolapan, utilizando este método para interpretar las imágenes en su contexto y evaluar su impacto en la cons- trucción de significados y representaciones. Los resultados de la investigación ofrecen valiosas perspectivas para la toma de decisiones informadas en el diseño arquitectónico y urbano. Este trabajo contribuye a comprender y abordar los problemas de la gentrifi- cación y la segregación en el paisaje urbano de la Ciudad de México.

Prof. Vanessa Watson is one of the most prolific Global South planning theorists. Her research and writing on Southern cities and the complexities of urban politics is unprecedented. In particular, Watson’s work on “conflicting rationalities”, “deep difference” and “seeing from the South” presented a new way of thinking about co-production and participatory processes. It emphasises the idea that ‘place matters’ and Global North concepts and approaches cannot be ‘universalised’ to the African continent. Her ongoing critique of the neoliberal African ‘world class cities’, as an aspirational European or North American city, has informed key gaps in planning and land regulations across the continent. To address this gap through planning education, Watson was amongst the founding members of the Association of African Planning Schools (AAPS). AAPS has currently established a network of close to 50 planning schools in the continent. She is also a founder of the African Centre for Cities at University of Cape Town, which has grown to become a pioneering research centre across the continent. Through her sustained commitment, several collaborative pursuits, through Association for African Planning Schools and African Centre for Cities, and between academia and civil society, were conducted leading to new ways of thinking about the African city. AAPS and Watson have been instrumental in rethinking planning pedagogy and curriculum for the Global South- a milestone achievement given the pressures of complying with European and American norms.

Scholarship on African cities represents a growing yet still scarce subfield in urban studies, especially considering the scale and variety of African urbanisation patterns. The purpose of this Virtual Special Issue is to review the scholarship published on urban Africa in Urban Studies over the past five decades. In this Editorial, we reflect on the contributions of African urban scholarship and present a selection of articles to highlight the ways in which it has shaped key fields of urban studies. We also note the challenges that underpin ongoing lacunae in urban knowledge production and suggest directions for future work. This discussion provides a lens on our understandings of the urban condition in Africa and the general trajectory of urban scholarship.

This paper examines the morphologies of Villages-in-the-City (ViCs) in Kunming in China and Hanoi in Vietnam, that are undergoing rapid urbanisation and urban transformation. In China, the term Chengzhongcun refers to development of rural settlements that have been included in the urban districts arising from city expansion. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the phrase Làng trong phố is used to describe settlements in urban areas that used to be rural villages. Both types of settlements share many common characteristics linked to rural background, and to social and economic policies in these two countries. The findings illustrate that spatial transformations are generated by fundamental economic and social changes, and that the influences of land policies and roles played by local government in each country have significant impacts on the formation of the ViCs. Although the planning processes are managed though top-down systems, the diverse practices and small scale and costeffective tactics contribute to the transitions of the ViCs. The morphological differences between ViCs development in two countries are due to differences in management modes and land use rights. The outcome of this paper contributes to the deeper understanding about similarities and differences of ViCs in the Global South.

If planners and public administrators are to conduct well-informed and publicly responsive project reviews, they need accurate information, trustworthy sources, an involved citizenry, and clearly formulated issues to addess. These conditions of project review are precarious, though, for they are shaped by social and political-economic inequalities of power, wealth, information, and expertise. Indeed, planners, administrators, and affected citizens too can ordinarily expect to face systematically and inequitably structured agendas in their practical work of project review. Such biased agenda-setting operates through the management of public consent, belief, trust, and attention to suppress responsive, informed project review discussions. By anticipating such obstacles, planners, public administrators, and citizens alike may counteract such agenda-setting and thus foster democratic and accountable project review processes. Anticipating and encouraging practical responses to inequitabl...

Policies for inclusive urbanisation in China Urbanisation in China has long been held back by various restrictions on land and internal migration but has taken off since the 1990s, as these impediments started to be gradually relaxed. People have moved in large numbers to richer cities, where productivity is higher and has increased further thanks to agglomeration effects. In the process, the rural-urban income differential has narrowed. Urbanisation also entails costs, however, notably in the form of congestion, all the more so as public transport provision has not kept up. Demand for living space is set to continue to increase as living standards improve, putting pressure on land prices. This can be offset by relaxing the very stringent restrictions on the use of agricultural land for building. For migrants to better integrate in the cities where they work, their access and that of their families to education, health and other social services must continue to improve, in particular via further changes to the registration system, coupled with more market-based rules on land ownership and use. This Working Paper relates to the 2013 OECD Economic Survey of China (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/china).

The aim of this paper is to extend the classical recurrence theorem of A.Y. Khintchine, as well as certain multiple recurrence results of H. Furstenberg concerning weakly mixing and almost periodic measure preserving transformations, to the framework of C *-algebras A and positive linear maps Φ : A → A preserving a state ϕ on A. For the proof of the multiple weak mixing results we use a slight extension of a convergence result of Furstenberg in Hilbert spaces, which is derived from a non-commutative generalization of Van der Corput's "Fundamental Inequality" in Theory of uniform distribution modulo 1, proved in Appendix A.

Tosi, S., & Vitale, T. (2011). Osservare la questione settentrionale: politica della piccola città. In S. Tosi, & T. Vitale (a cura di), Piccolo nord. Scelte pubbliche e interessi privati nell'Alto milanese (pp. 5-32). Milano-Torino : Bruno Mondadori. ... There are no files associated with this item.

This themed section brings together papers that were first presented at the conference 'Cultural pluralism in cities of the "global South"' held at the European University Institute in Florence on 20 and 21 March 2019. The three contributions explore the formation, representation and management of cultural diversity (broadly defined to include ethnic, racial, linguistic and religious diversity, today and in the past) in cities outside the West and how these processes get entangled with definitions and redefinitions of the nation and national identity (Triandafyllidou 2017). In doing so, they focus on a set of themes-the politics of cultural diversity, the transformation of the urban 'global South' 1 and the ongoing project of nation building-which, to date, have been addressed largely in isolation. Some general explanations can be offered for the lack of sustained scholarly attention to the interconnections between our three key themes. On the one hand, because the field of urban studies has often used globalisation as an overarching point of departure or reference, it has tended to sideline the nation (Therborn 2011). On the other hand, because much research on cities in the 'global South' has focused on pressing issues, such as the effect of rapid demographic growth on the built environment or local responses to economic and infrastructural challenges, until relatively recently there has been (understandably) limited scrutiny of the significance of the politics of culture and diversity at the urban scale in this part of the world. 2 We believe that exploring the complex linkages between cultural diversity, the city, and the nation can provide important insights into the major challenges facing cities in the 'global South', including those with explicit 'global city' aspirations.

The primitive model of ionic systems is investigated within a field-theoretic description for the whole range of size-, λ, and charge, Z, ratios of the two ionic species. Two order parameters (OP) are identified, and their relations to physically relevant quantities are described for various values of λ and Z. Instabilities of the disordered phase associated with the two OP's are determined in the mean-field approximation (MF). In MF a gas-liquid separation occurs for any Z and λ = 1. In addition, an instability with respect to various types of periodic ordering of the two kinds of ions is found. Depending on λ and Z, one or the other transition is metastable in different thermdynamic states. The instabilities found in MF represent weak ordering of the majority of the instantaneous states, and are identified with structural loci associated with pretransitional effects.