The rate of urbanisation will accelerate in the years ahead. The massive influx of people to cities will result in the demand for more services, expending more resources and generating more waste. The forces of globalisation and better connectivity will hasten this urbanisation process. Although the developed and developing countries in East Asia are at different stages of development, they have to grapple with the common challenge of improving the quality of life for urban residents and making cities liveable. This book brings together a collection of articles that traces the process of urbanisation in selected countries in East Asia, including the achievements and challenges encountered. It seeks to promote the sharing of best practices and experiences that can be a reference for governments and relevant stakeholders to facilitate the process of urbanisation that brings about the greatest benefits to residents and lessens the negative impact on the environment.

This book explores the concept of livable cities, where people enjoy living and being, and examines indicators of citizens' well-being in relation to the urban environment. It is authored by experts from diverse disciplines, providing a citizen-centered perspective on urban well-being in sustainable, environmentally friendly, and climate-neutral (or -positive) cities. The contributions focus on the human and social aspects of cities, developing operational models and frameworks for circular cities, smart resource utilization, and examining contextual factors such as environmental and neighborhood quality, energy transition, climate neutrality, and recycling as factors that influence the well-being of "homo urbanus.” The chapters approach these topics from various analytical perspectives, including conceptual/theoretical, methodological/modeling, policy/planning, and evidence-based case studies. This book will be of interest to scholars in regional and spatial science, urban geography, economics, and related fields, as well as those interested in urban well-being.

This publication is a result of a 2-year innovative, exploratory, and reflective study of cities as unique urban spaces that support life, work, and play. It responds to major issues that affect the quality of life of urban residents. This publication offers practical ways on how urban managers, urban practitioners, businesspeople, and citizens can engage to make cities more livable by building on their distinctive physical, social, cultural, and economic characteristics. With the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations, the book comes at the right time to offer integrated urban development solutions that can translate global development commitments into urban-level actions to achieve livable cities.

We all want cities, where more than half of the world’s population currently live, to be just, successful, clean, fair, green, sustainable, safe, healthy and affordable. Will ‘smart cities’ help achieve these aspirations or undermine them in the time of COVID-19? Phil Allmendinger, a world expert on cities, development, and urban governance, takes a critical approach to the role of ‘smart’ in future cities and the relationship with city development. Considering how technology can support active citizenship, he challenges the commercial drivers of big tech and warns that these, not developments for ‘social good’, may dominate. Focusing on the dangers posed by social media, the platform economy and AI, he sets out what those making decisions on city development need to understand in order to save the planet through active politics and healthy cities.

This book explores the ways in which the broad range of technologies that make up the smart city infrastructure can be harnessed to incorporate more playfulness into the day-to-day activities that take place within smart cities, making them not only more efficient but also more enjoyable for the people who live and work within their confines. The book addresses various topics that will be of interest to playable cities stakeholders, including the human–computer interaction and game designer communities, computer scientists researching sensor and actuator technology in public spaces, urban designers, and (hopefully) urban policymakers. This is a follow-up to another book on Playable Cities edited by Anton Nijholt and published in 2017 in the same book series, Gaming Media and Social Effects.

The idea of resilience is everywhere these days, offering a framework for thriving in volatile times. Dominant resilience stories share an attachment to a mythologized past thought to hold clues for navigating a future that is understood to be full of danger. These stories also uphold values of settler colonialism and white supremacy. What the World Might Look Like examines the way resilience thinking has come to dominate the settler-colonial imagination and explores alternative approaches to resilience writing that instead offer decolonial models of thought. The book traces settler-colonial resilience stories to the rise of resilience science in the 1970s and 1980s, illustrating how the discipline supports the projects of white supremacy and colonialism. Working to unravel the blanket of common sense that shrouds the idea of resilience, the book is equally cautious of settler-colonial antiresilience stories that invoke the idea of death as an antidote to unbearable life. Susie O’Brien argues that, although the dominant narratives of resilience are problematic, resilience itself is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. Appreciating the significance of resilience stories requires asking what worlds and what communities they are meant to preserve. Looking at the fiction of Alexis Wright, David Chariandy, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, O’Brien points to the potential of Black and Indigenous thinking around resilience to figure decolonial possibilities for planetary flourishing. Exposing the complexities and limits of resilience, What the World Might Look Like questions the concept of resilience, highlighting how Black and Indigenous novelists can offer different decolonial ways of thinking about and with resilience to imagine things “otherwise.”

Livable Cities from a Global Perspective offers case studies from around the world on how cities approach livability. They address the fundamental question, what is considered "livable?" The journey each city has taken or is currently taking is unique and context specific. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach to livability. Some cities have had a long history of developing livability policies and programs that focus on equity, economic, and environmental concerns, while other cities are relatively new to the game. In some areas, government has taken the lead while in other areas, grassroots activism has been the impetus for livability policies and programs. The challenge facing our cities is not simply developing a livability program. We must continually monitor and readjust policies and programs to meet the livability needs of all people. The case studies investigate livability issues in such cities as Austin, Texas; Helsinki, Finland; London, United Kingdom; Warsaw, Poland; Tehran, Iran; Salt Lake City, United States; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Sydney, Australia; and Cape Town, South Africa. The chapters are organized into such themes as livability in capital city regions, livability and growth and development, livability and equity concerns, livability and metrics, and creating livability. Each chapter provides unique insights into how a specific area has responded to calls for livable cities. In doing so, the book adds to the existing literature in the field of livable cities and provides policy makers and other organizations with information and alternative strategies that have been developed and implemented in an effort to become a livable city.

The term "smart city" defines the new urban environment, one that is designed for performance through information and communication technologies. Given that the majority of people across the world will live in urban environments within the next few decades, it's not surprising that massive effort and investment is being placed into efforts to devel

This Handbook acts as a state-of-the-art foundation for the field of gender and cities scholarship through in-depth assessments of the latest research within key areas of feminist urban academia. Multidisciplinary in its scope, editors Linda Peake, Anindita Datta and Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyan bring together over 60 feminist scholars to present contemporary research in this important field of study.