Architecture and the urban are connected to challenges around violence, security, race and ideology, spectacle and data. This multidisciplinary collection of 36 chapters provides the reader with an extensive resource of case studies and ways of thinking for architecture and urban space to become more emancipatory.

"For architecture and urban space to have relevance in the 21st Century, we cannot merely reignite the approaches of thought and design that were operative in the last century. This is despite of, or because of, the nexus between politics and space often being theorized as a representation or by-product of politics. As a symbol or an effect, the spatial dimension is depoliticized. Consequently architecture and the urban are halted from fostering any systematic change as they are secondary to the event, and therefore incapable of performing any political role. We can no longer afford to reduce space to a neutral backdrop of political realities. This project explores how architecture and urban space can unsettle the unquestioned construct of the spatial politics of governing. Considering both ongoing and unprecedented global problems - from violence and urban warfare, the refugee crisis, borderization, detention camps, terrorist attacks to capitalist urbanization, inequity, social unrest and climate change - this handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary research focussed on the complex nexus of politics, architecture and urban space. Volume I starts by pointing out the need to explore the politics of spatialization to make sense of the operational nature of spatial oppression in contemporary times. The operative and active political reading of space is disseminated through five thematics: Violence and War Machines; Security and Borders; Race, Identity and Ideology; Spectacle and the Screen; and, Mapping Landscapes and Big Data. This first volume of the handbook frame cutting-edge contemporary debates, and present studies of actual theories and projects that address spatial politics. This handbook provides comprehensive and multidisciplinary research focused on the complex nexus of politics, architecture and urban space"--

For architecture and urban space to have relevance in the 21st Century, we cannot merely reignite the approaches of thought and design that were operative in the last century. This is despite, or because of, the nexus between politics and space often being theorized as a representation or by-product of politics. As a symbol or an effect, the spatial dimension is depoliticized. Consequently, architecture and the urban are halted from fostering any systematic change as they are secondary to the event and therefore incapable of performing any political role. This handbook explores how architecture and urban space can unsettle the unquestioned construct of the spatial politics of governing. Considering both ongoing and unprecedented global problems – from violence and urban warfare, the refugee crisis, borderization, detention camps, terrorist attacks to capitalist urbanization, inequity, social unrest and climate change – this handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary research focused on the complex nexus of politics, architecture and urban space. Volume I starts by pointing out the need to explore the politics of spatialization to make sense of the operational nature of spatial oppression in contemporary times. The operative and active political reading of space is disseminated through five thematics: Violence and War Machines; Security and Borders; Race, Identity and Ideology; Spectacle and the Screen; and Mapping Landscapes and Big Data. This first volume of the handbook frames cutting-edge contemporary debates and presents studies of actual theories and projects that address spatial politics. This Handbook will be of interest to anyone seeking to meaningfully disrupt the reduction of space to an oppressive or neutral backdrop of political realities.

The Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics provides a comprehensive statement and reference point for urban politics. The scope of this handbook’s coverage and contributions engages with and reflects upon the most important, innovative and recent critical developments to the interdisciplinary field of urban politics, drawing upon a range of examples from within and across the Global North and Global South. This handbook is organized into nine interrelated sections, with an introductory chapter setting out the rationale, aims and structure of the Handbook, and short introductory commentaries at the beginning of each part. It questions the eliding of ‘urban politics’ into the ‘politics of the city’, reconsidering the usefulness of the distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ urban politics, considering issues of ‘class’, ‘gender’, ‘race’ and the ways in which they intersect, appear and reappear in matters of urban politics, how best to theorize the roles of capital, the state and other actors, such as social movements, in the production of the city and, finally, issues of doing urban political research. The various chapters explore the issues of urban politics of economic development, environment and nature in the city, governance and planning, the politics of labour as well as living spaces. The concluding sections of the Handbook examine the politics over alternative visions of cities of the future and provide concluding discussions and reflections, particularly on the futures for urban politics in an increasingly ‘global’ and multidisciplinary context. With over forty-five contributions from leading international scholars in the field, this handbook provides critical reviews and appraisals of current conceptual and theoretical approaches and future developments in urban politics. It is a key reference to all researchers and policy-makers with an interest in urban politics.

Increasing urbanization and increasing urban density put enormous pressure on the relationships between people and place in cities. Built environment professionals must pay attention to the impact of people–place relationships in small- to large-scale urban initiatives. A small playground in a neighborhood pocket park is an example of a small-scale urban development; a national environmental policy that influences energy sources is an example of a large-scale initiative. All scales of decision-making have implications for the people–place relationships present in cities. This book presents new research in contemporary, interdisciplinary urban challenges, and opportunities, and aims to keep the people–place relationship debate in focus in the policies and practices of built environment professionals and city managers. Most urban planning and design decisions, even those on a small scale, will remain in the urban built form for many decades, conditioning people’s experience of their city. It is important that these decisions are made using the best available knowledge. This book contains an interdisciplinary discussion of contemporary urban movements and issues influencing the relationship between people and place in urban environments around the world which have major implications for both the processes and products of urban planning, design, and management. The main purpose of the book is to consolidate contemporary thinking among experts from a range of disciplines including anthropology, environmental psychology, cultural geography, urban design and planning, architecture and landscape architecture, and the arts, on how to conceptualize and promote healthy people and place relationships in the 21st-century city. Within each of the chapters, the authors focus on their specific areas of expertise which enable readers to understand key issues for urban environments, urban populations, and the links between them.

As an evolving and contested field, urban design has been made, unmade, and remade at the intersections of multiple disciplines and professions. It is now a decisive moment for urban design to reflect on its rigour and relevance. This handbook is an attempt to seize this moment for urban design to further develop its theoretical and methodological knowledge base and engage with the question of "what urban design can be" with a primary focus on its research. This handbook includes contributions from both established and emerging scholars across the global North and global South to provide a more field-specific entry point by introducing a range of topics and lines of inquiry and discussing how they can be explored with a focus on the related research designs and methods. The specific aim, scope, and structure of this handbook are appealing to a range of audiences interested and/or involved in shaping places and public spaces. What makes this book quite distinctive from conventional handbooks on research methods is the way it has been structured in relation to some key research topics and questions in the field of urban design regarding the issues of agency, affordance, place, informality, and performance. In addition to the introduction chapter, this handbook includes 80 contributors and 52 chapters organised into five parts. The commissioned chapters showcase a wide range of topics, research designs, and methods with references to relevant scholarly works on the related topics and methods.

Is it truly the "end" of public space? This handbook presents evidence that the answer is "no". In cities in different parts of the world, people still use public space to pursue activities of their choice. The book is divided into seven sections. The first section presents three emerging types of public space. Each of the subsequent five sections focuses on a type of activity: recreation, commerce, protest, living and celebration. These sections are international in scope, presenting cases of activities in Brazil, China, Colombia, DR Congo, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Libya, Taiwan, Turkey and the U.S. The closing section, composed of three chapters, presents research methods for studying public space. Graduate students, faculty members and researchers in social science, architecture, landscape architecture, geography and urban design will find the book useful for understanding, studying and designing urban public space.

This volume examines how urban potentiality emerges in performances that reclaim the city, acting as an emancipatory force when dominant patterns of urban behaviour are thrown into crisis. It can result in establishing new habits of inhabiting city space, collective experiences shaping practices of urban commoning, re-inventing community relations, and freeing collaboration from capitalist expropriation. Instead of problematizing such radical change through the modernist belief in heroic unique acts, we need to explore the power dissident performances acquire when repeated. In search of an emancipatory politics of urban potentiality, commoning thus has the ability become a collective ethos based on mutuality and equality rather than merely a relatively fair way of sharing urban infrastructures. In this book, the leading social and urban theorist Stavros Stavrides draws on a wide range of classic and historical thought on the urban question and social transformation. Drawing from research in Latin American urban movements, from activist participation in urban struggles in Greece, and citizen initiatives developed in Europe, this book expands the discussion on the potentialities of urban commoning to demonstrate how an emancipatory urban future may be achieved.

When designing, planning and building urban spaces, many contradictory and conflicting actors, practices and agendas coexist. This book propounds that, at present, this process is conducted in an artificial reality, 'Concept City', characterized by a simplified and outdated conception of space. It provides a constructive critique of the concepts, underlying the practices of planning and architecture and, in order to facilitate more dynamic, inclusive and subtle practices, it formulates a new theory about space in general and public urban space in particular. The central notions in this theory are temporality, experiment and conflict, which are grounded on empirical observations in Helsinki, Manchester and Berlin. While the book contextualizes Lefebvre's ideas on urban planning and architecture, it is in no way limited to Lefebvrean discourse, but allows insights to new theoretical work, including that of Finnish and Swedish authors. In doing so, it suggests and develops exciting new approaches and tools leading to 'experiential urbanism'.

Heritage, Memory and Identity in Postcolonial Board Games is a unique edited collection that explores the interplay of heritage, memory, identity and history within postcolonial board games and their surrounding paratexts. It also examines critiques of these games within the gamer communities and beyond. Drawing on a range of international contributions, examples and case studies, this book shows how colonialism-themed games work as representations of the past that are influenced by existing heritage narratives and discourses. It also considers the implications of using colonial histories in games and its impact on its audience, the games’ players. Heritage, Memory and Identity in Postcolonial Board Games will be relevant to scholars and postgraduate students in the fields of game studies, game design or development, heritage studies, postcolonial criticism, media studies, and history. It will also be beneficial to practicing game developers.