This urgent book brings our cities to the fore in understanding the human input into climate change. The demands we are making on nature by living in cities has reached a crisis point and unless we make significant changes to address it, the prognosis is terminal consumption.
Providing a radical new argument that integrates global understandings of making nature and making cities, the authors move beyond current policies of mitigation and adaption and pose the challenge of urban stewardship to tackle the crisis.
Their new way of thinking re-orients possibilities for environmental policy and calls for us to reinvent our cities as spaces for activism.
This accessible guide provides a stimulating analysis of the governance of the night-time economy in cities for practitioners and newcomers alike.
Drawing on a wide range of case studies of after dark activity in cities around the world, it reviews labour, environmental services, healthcare, the role of leaders including night mayors, managers and commissioners, and the influence of both public and private sectors.
Offering invaluable insights for the future of night-time governance during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, this book deepens our understanding of the benefits, challenges and impacts of a neglected aspect of the economy.
The COVID-19 virus outbreak has rocked the world and it is widely accepted that there can be no return to the pre-pandemic society of 2019. However, many suggestions for the future of society and the planet are aimed at national governments, international bodies and society in general.
Drawing on a decade of research by an internationally renowned expert, this book focuses on how cities and communities can lead the way in developing recovery strategies that promote social, economic and environmental justice.
It offers new thinking tools for civic leaders and activists as well as practical suggestions on how we can co-create a more inclusive post COVID-19 future for us all.
The 21st century has been characterised by great turbulence, climate change, global pandemic, and democratic decay.
Drawing on post-structural political theory, this book explores two dominant concepts used to make sense of our disturbed reality: the state and the network. The book explains how they are inextricably interwoven, while showing why they complicate the way we interpret our present.
In seeking a better understanding of today’s world, this book argues that we need to pull apart the familiar lines of our maps. By looking beneath and across these lines, an ‘unmapping’ presents new insights and opportunities for a better future.
Luck greatly influences a person’s quality of life. Yet little of our politics looks at how institutions can amplify good or bad luck that widens social inequality. But societies can change their luck.
Too often debates about inequality focus on the accuracy of data or modeling while missing the greater point about ethics and exploitation. In the wake of growing disparity between the 1% and other classes, this book combines philosophical insights with social theory to offer a much-needed political economy of life chances.
Timcke advances new thought on the role luck plays in redistributive justice in 21st Century capitalism.
As debates around ethnic identity and inequality gain both political and media interest, this important book is the first to offer in-depth analysis from the last three UK population censuses focusing on the dynamics of ethnic identity and inequalities in contemporary Britain. While providing a comprehensive overview, it also clarifies concepts associated with greater ethnic diversity, increased segregation, exclusive growth of minority groups through immigration and a national identity crisis.
The contributions, all from experts in the field based at or affiliated to the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity, highlight persistent inequalities in access to housing, employment, education and good health faced by some ethnic groups. The book will be a valuable resource for policy makers and researchers in national and local government, community groups, academics, students, and will act as an authoritative text to cite in reports, dissertations and funding applications.
Through a close look at major British cities, using Birmingham as a case study, the book explores the origins of Britain’s acute urban decline and sprawling exodus; the reasons why ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ in cities of the future and the potential for smart growth, mixed communities and sustainable cities. Based on live examples and hands-on experience, this extremely accessible book offers a unique ‘insider’ perspective on policy making and practical impacts. It will attract policymakers in cities and government as well as students, regeneration bodies, community organisations and environmental specialists.
America has been at war for most of the 20th and 21st centuries and during that time has progressively moved towards a vicarious form of warfare, where key tasks are delegated to proxies, the military’s exposure to danger is limited, and special forces and covert instruments are on the increase. Important strategic decisions are taken with minimal scrutiny or public engagement.
This compelling account charts the historical emergence of this distinctive tradition of war and explains the factors driving its contemporary prominence. It contrasts the tactical advantages of vicarious warfare with its hidden costs and potential to cause significant strategic harm.
This original book builds on the author’s research in Phoenix cities to present a vivid story of Europe’s post-industrial cities pre- and post- financial crisis. Using varied case studies the book explores how policy responses to the economic crisis have played out in different European cities, with their contrasting conditions, history and performance generating contrasting reactions. The book compares changes between Northern and Southern European countries, bigger and smaller cities, over the past ten years. Across the continent social cohesion, community investment and social enterprise have gained momentum as Europe’s crowded, resource-constrained cities face up to environmental and social limits faster than other less densely urban countries, such as the US. The author presents a compelling framework to show that Europe’s cities are creating a new industrial economy to combat environmental and social unravelling.
Drawing on classical and emerging research perspectives, this comprehensive book provides an up-to-date review of local government in Europe.
Featuring an impressive range of contributors from both eastern and western Europe, the book addresses three main topics: territorial reforms, democratic empowerment of citizens and the role of local leadership, as well as new trends in local finances.
Acknowledging their inherent diversity, the book examines the ways that local governments have responded to shared challenges, such as climate change, increasing populism and democratic deficit in order to identify both the variety and communalities between the country-specific features. In doing so, it provides a rich picture of the latest trends in local government, as well as pointing the way for future developments.
