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This article analyses the relations between the rise of authoritarianism and urban development in neoliberal capitalism, based on case studies in Istanbul and São Paulo, employing the approach of comparative urbanism. We present the concept of Neo-Liberal Authoritarian Urbanism (NAU), to discuss the accentuation of coercion and loss of social legitimacy in urban politics in the post-2008 crisis context. In both cities, there is a violent steering of urbanistic projects that involve State-finance-real estate market coalitions, and result in socio-territorial exclusion and private appropriation of land as a financial asset. The accumulation by dispossession characteristic of neoliberal urbanism is even more accentuated, with a multi-scalar dimension, in which the connections between local private interests and the globalized reproduction of capital advance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how early career academics negotiate precarity in the higher education sector in the United Kingdom under the amplified uncertainties brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our preliminary findings based on the semi-structured interviews with nine early career academics (six women and three men) shed light on varying experiences of early career academic precarity with regard to working and life routines, and their participation in the job market. We argue that early career academics' gender, employment status, and their university affiliations influence the degree to which they are able to instrumentalise and negotiate precarity during the pandemic in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to examine the processes of gentrification from a somewhat different point of view. It focuses on 'renovation' and 'regeneration projects', as well as the gentrification concept with regard to urban policies that have particularly enriched the holders of capital in the historic neighbourhoods of Istanbul. Gentrification, happening alongside with renovation and regeneration, reveals significant problems in the social structure of the city such as displacement, social polarization, social inequality and damage to the historical environment. This paper contributes to the expansion of the understanding of gentrification concept with a case study that is outside the scope of 'usual suspects', while theorizing the role of the Turkish state during urban transformation processes through the everyday struggles and conflicts that unfold on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]