Can Neighbourhoods Save the City?

Can Neighbourhoods Save the City? PDF Author: Frank Moulaert
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113695323X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Instead of a top-down approach, this book looks at the impact of bottom-up neighbourhood based initiatives. It analyses and documents a variety of innovative local urban strategies in European cities and their impact on wider urban socio-economic and political restructuring processes.

Can Neighbourhoods Save the City?

Can Neighbourhoods Save the City? PDF Author: Frank Moulaert
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113695323X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Instead of a top-down approach, this book looks at the impact of bottom-up neighbourhood based initiatives. It analyses and documents a variety of innovative local urban strategies in European cities and their impact on wider urban socio-economic and political restructuring processes.

Reconstructing Public Housing

Reconstructing Public Housing PDF Author: Matthew Thompson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1789621089
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Reconstructing Public Housing unearths Liverpool's hidden history of radical alternatives to municipal housing development and builds a vision of how we might reconstruct public housing on more democratic and cooperative foundations. In this critical social history, Matthew Thompson brings to light how and why this remarkable city became host to two pioneering social movements in collective housing and urban regeneration experimentation. In the 1970s, Liverpool produced one of Britain's largest, most democratic and socially innovative housing co-op movements, including the country's first new-build co-op to be designed, developed and owned by its member-residents. Four decades later, in some of the very same neighbourhoods, several campaigns for urban community land trusts are growing from the grassroots - including the first ever architectural or housing project to be nominated for and win, in 2015, the artworld's coveted Turner Prize. Thompson traces the connections between these movements; how they were shaped by, and in turn transformed, the politics, economics, culture and urbanism of Liverpool. Drawing on theories of capitalism and cooperativism, property and commons, institutional change and urban transformation, Thompson reconsiders Engels' housing question, reflecting on how collective alternatives work in, against and beyond the state and capital, in often surprising and contradictory ways.

Can Neighbourhoods Save the City?

Can Neighbourhoods Save the City? PDF Author: Frank Moulaert
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136953221
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
For decades, neighbourhoods been pivotal sites of social, economic and political exclusion processes, and civil society initiatives, attempting bottom-up strategies of re-development and regeneration. In many cases these efforts resulted in the creation of socially innovative organizations, seeking to satisfy the basic human needs of deprived population groups, to increase their political capabilities and to improve social interaction both internally and between the local communities, the wider urban society and political world. SINGOCOM - Social INnovation GOvernance and COMmunity building – is the acronym of the EU-funded project on which this book is based. Sixteen case studies of socially-innovative initiatives at the neighbourhood level were carried out in nine European cities, of which ten are analysed in depth and presented here. The book compares these efforts and their results, and shows how grass-roots initiatives, alternative local movements and self-organizing urban collectives are reshaping the urban scene in dynamic, creative, innovative and empowering ways. It argues that such grass-roots initiatives are vital for generating a socially cohesive urban condition that exists alongside the official state-organized forms of urban governance. The book is thus a major contribution to socio-political literature, as it seeks to overcome the duality between community-development studies and strategies, and the solidarity-based making of a diverse society based upon the recognising and maintaining of citizenship rights. It will be of particular interest to both students and researchers in the fields of urban studies, social geography and political science.

Decent Incomes for All

Decent Incomes for All PDF Author: Bea Cantillon
Publisher:
ISBN: 019084969X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
For more than a decade, organizations such as the IMF, OECD, and the ILO have issued concerns about the trend of increased inequality in rich welfare states, while influential thinkers and think tanks have come to agree on at least one central point: globalization and technological progress have exacerbated the existing inequities in social market economies. Across Europe, despite high social spending and work-related welfare reforms, poverty remains a largely intractable problem for policymakers and the persistent reality for citizens.In Decent Incomes for All, the authors shed new light on recent poverty trends in the European Union and the corresponding responses by European welfare states. They analyze the effect of social and fiscal policies before, during, and after the recent economic crisis and study the impact of alternative policy packages on poverty and inequality. The book also explores how social investment and local initiatives of social innovation can contribute to tackling poverty, while recognizing that there are indeed structural constraints on the increase of the social floor and difficult trade-offs involved in reconciling work and poverty reduction. Differences across countries are, however, stark, which suggests that there are lessons to be learned and policy changes to be applied, if the political will exists.

Community Energy in Germany

Community Energy in Germany PDF Author: Jörg Radtke
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3658393203
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 742

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Book Description
In this ground-breaking book, Jörg Radtke offers for the first time within research, a comprehensive insight into the range of organizational structures of community energy projects in Germany and their contribution to the Energiewende. Based on nationwide quantitative survey data and in-depth analyses of selected case studies of solar, wind and geothermal projects, Radtke documents the social structure and motivations of participating citizens. He examines new forms of material participation, community building and co-determination within the mostly volunteer-led community energy projects based on the civic engagement patterns of active “green citizens”. The author identifies a new form of individualistic participation and collective modes of action in line with new types of project-oriented participation between business, politics and civil society within sustainability transformation processes of the early 21st century.

Handbook of Local and Regional Development

Handbook of Local and Regional Development PDF Author: Andy Pike
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136905375
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 895

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Book Description
The Handbook of Local and Regional Development provides a comprehensive statement and reference point for local and regional development. The scope of this Handbook’s coverage and contributions engages with and reflects upon the politics and policy of how we think about and practise local and regional development, encouraging dialogue across the disciplinary barriers between notions of ‘local and regional development’ in the Global North and ‘development studies’ in the Global South. This Handbook is organized into seven inter-related sections, with an introductory chapter setting out the rationale, aims and structure of the Handbook. Section one situates local and regional development in its global context. Section two establishes the key issues in understanding the principles and values that help us define what is meant by local and regional development. Section three critically reviews the current diversity and variety of conceptual and theoretical approaches to local and regional development. Section four address questions of government and governance. Section five connects critically with the array of contemporary approaches to local and regional development policy. Section six is an explicitly global review of perspectives on local and regional development from Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America. Section seven provides reflection and discussion of the futures for local and regional development in an international and multidisciplinary context. With over forty contributions from leading international scholars in the field, this Handbook provides critical reviews and appraisals of current state-of-the-art conceptual and theoretical approaches and future developments in local and regional development.

The City as a Global Political Actor

The City as a Global Political Actor PDF Author: Stijn Oosterlynck
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135133073X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
This book engages with the thorny question of global urban political agency. It critically assesses the now popular statement that in the context of paralysed and failing nation state governments, cities can and will provide leadership in addressing global challenges. Cities can act politically on the global scale, but the analysis of global urban political agency needs to be firmly embedded in the field of urban studies. Collectively, the chapters in this volume contextualize urban agency in time and space and pluralize it by looking at how urban agency is nurtured through coalitions between a wide range of public and private actors. The authors develop and critically assess the conceptual underpinnings of the notion of global urban political agency from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. The second part contains several (theoretically informed) empirical analyses of global urban political agency in cities around the globe. This book geographically expands analysis by looking beyond global cities in diverse contexts. It is highly recommended reading for scholars in the fields of international relations and urban studies who are looking for an interdisciplinary and empirically grounded understanding of global urban political agency, in a diversity of contexts and a plurality of forms.

Understanding the City

Understanding the City PDF Author: Gülçin Erdi-Lelandais
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443863203
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Henri Lefebvre is undoubtedly one of the most influential thinkers in the field of urban space and its organization; his theories offer reflections still valid for analyzing social relations in urban areas affected by the crisis of the neoliberal economic system. Lefebvre’s ideal of the “right to the city” is now more widely accepted given today’s current cultural and social situation. Most current research on Henri Lefebvre refers solely to his ideas and their theoretical discussion, without focusing on the empirical transcription of the philosopher. This book fills this gap, and proposes examples about the empirical use of Henri Lefebvre’s sociology from the perspective of different cities and researchers in order to understand the city and its evolutions in the context of neoliberal globalization. The book’s main purpose is to revisit Lefebvre’s still-relevant key concepts to propose new comprehensions of the contemporary city. Case studies in this book will show also that the reception of Lefebvrian concepts differs across different contexts, depending on the social and political circumstances of each country. The debates in this book both expand the scope of urban imagination, and help to reinvigorate, unify, and empower shared desires for just urban outcomes. The contributions to this book also illuminate the everyday choices concerning the form and social processes of the city, and the inspiration that they draw from Lefebvre’s theoretical legacy in the realm of urban sociology.

Urban Playground

Urban Playground PDF Author: Tim Gill
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000222160
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
What type of cities do we want our children to grow up in? Car-dominated, noisy, polluted and devoid of nature? Or walkable, welcoming, and green? As the climate crisis and urbanisation escalate, cities urgently need to become more inclusive and sustainable. This book reveals how seeing cities through the eyes of children strengthens the case for planning and transportation policies that work for people of all ages, and for the planet. It shows how urban designers and city planners can incorporate child friendly insights and ideas into their masterplans, public spaces and streetscapes. Healthier children mean happier families, stronger communities, greener neighbourhoods, and an economy focused on the long-term. Make cities better for everyone.

Advanced Introduction to Social Innovation

Advanced Introduction to Social Innovation PDF Author: Frank Moulaert
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1785360388
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Social innovation (SI) has, in the last decade or so, become an important idea and concept in policy, practice and scholarship surrounding human development. It is often seen as an antidote to narrowly defined technological and market-oriented modes of innovation. Its historical significance and development, tied to centuries of struggles for social change, remain under-appreciated and unacknowledged. This Advanced Introduction explores the historical and contemporary meanings of social innovation and its relationship with political and social movements. It develops an understanding of SI as a form of ethical practice for meeting needs, transforming social relations, and collectively empowering communities to shape the future. Additionally, it proposes that ethical research should aim to be socially innovative in this sense and provides concrete suggestions of how this concern can be embodied in action-research and community development methodologies.