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Ageing in Place in Urban Environments considers together two major trends influencing economic and social life: population ageing on the one side and urbanisation on the other.Both have been identified as dominant demographic trends of the twenty-first century. Cities are where the majority of people of all ages now live and where they will spend their old age. Nevertheless, cities are typically imagined and structured with a younger, working-age population in mind while older people are rarely incorporated into the mainstream of thinking and planning around urban environments. Cities can contribute to vulnerability arising from high levels of population turnover, environmental problems, gentrification, and reduced availability of affordable housing. However, they can also provide innovative forms of support and services essential to promoting the quality of life of older people. Policies in Europe have emphasised the role of the local environment in promoting “ageing in place”, a term used to describe the goal of helping people to remain in their own homes and communities for as long as they wish. However, while this has been the dominant approach, the places in which older people are ageing have often proved to be challenging environments. The book explores the forces behind these developments and how older people have responded.Drawing upon approaches from social gerontology, urban studies, geography, and sociology, this book will be essential reading for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners searching for innovative ways to improve the lives of older people living in urban environments.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

In this conceptual study, the stages of globalization are examined and the future of the post-globalization world order is discussed. The study focuses on the impact of post-globalism on cities, the redefinition of the city, and what it corresponds to both in today's power world, as well as in the future.

Landscape architecture is one of the key professions dedicated to making cities hospitable and healthy places to live, work and play, while respecting and enhancing the natural environments and landscapes we inhabit. This edited collection presents current writing about the pivotal roles that landscape architects play in addressing some of the most pressing problems facing the planet, its environments and its populations through their research, analysis and speculative practice. The book has assembled current writings on recent research structured around five major themes: governance, power and partnership; infrastructure, systems and performance; environment, resilience and climate change; people, place and design; and culture, heritage and identity. As a collection, the chapters demonstrate the diversity of themes and topics that are expanding the scholarly body of knowledge for the discipline and its relevance to the practice of landscape architecture. The contributors to this book are academic researchers and practitioners from the discipline of landscape architecture. The chapters draw on their research, teaching and experience as well as analysis of project examples. Fifty-two contributors from the United Stsates, United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Malaysia, Spain, Colombia, Australia, New Zealand and Canada discuss a diverse range of contemporary themes in urban landscape architecture. Collectively, the contributors demonstrate the breadth of experience, shared concerns and distinct issues that challenge urban landscape architecture and cities in the 21st century.

Globalization, Urbanization, and Civil Society is an interdisciplinary compilation of chapters concerning civil society in the global geopolitical context.The establishment of civil society is essential for urbanism and the global community because it is the sense and essence of development concerning what humankind is, as a collective entity on the globe. This thought-provoking book covers the multidimensional aspects, issues, challenges, and consequences of geopolitics and globalization on civil society, including freedom in the public sphere, alienation, neo-fascism, social cohesion, racial inequality, political narcissism, political-economic exceptionalism, Islamic radicalism, social justice, and resistance. The author brings a fresh and essentially non-Western critical perspective to bear on the fundamental challenges faced by civil society as a result of the globalization of corporate capitalism in the Digital Age, as well as providing a rich perspective on colonialism.This book will appeal to scholars and graduate students of geopolitics and globalization, global development, sociology, international relations, cultural studies, psychology, and philosophy, as well as practitioners and policymakers who are interested in interdisciplinary approaches in the field of global studies.

The starting point of this book is the observation that there is a discrepancy between the lived reality of human beings and the fabricated, planned, and governed ‘reality'of the state apparatus at both the local and national level.The book posits multi-locality as an emerging spatial configuration. The author draws from various theoretical sources, such as Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of state or royal science, the Nietzschean critique of idealism, Hägerstrnad's time-geography, Hintikka's theory of modalities, Lefebvre's urban society, Castel's network society, Foucault's concept of heterotopia, and Bhaskar's and Sartre's theories of presence and absence. He also discusses the implications of Faludi's post-territorialist critique of planning and governance, and of the failure to operationalise the concept quantitively, basing his arguments in the lived experiences of multi-locals as well.The novelty of the book is how it analyses multi-locality from such a wide theoretical perspective: what is the nature and meaning of the different multiple and coexistent places for people, and how is this spatial transformation related to their mobility, everyday practices, and work. How does the presence and absence of places form their identity and their citizenship? He also addresses the inconsistency between multi-locality and traditional statistics and the planning and governance practices based on the assumption of unilocality and discusses the implications of this incongruity.The book will be of interest to scholars in urban studies and planning theory, as well as practitioners developing more adequate practices replacing outdated ones.

To what extent do urban dwellers relate to their lived and imagined environment through aesthetic perceptions, and aspirations? This book approaches experiences of urban aesthetics not as an established framework, defined by imposed norms or legislations, but as the result of a continuous reflexive and proactive gaze, a complex and deep engagement of the mind, body and sensibilities. It uses empirical studies ranging from China, India to Western Europe.Three axes are privileged. The first considers urban everyday aesthetic experiences in the long-term as a historical production, from medieval Italy to a future imagined by science fiction. The second examines the impact of aestheticizing everyday material realities in neighbourhoods, and the tensions and conflicts these engender around urban commons. Finally, the third axis considers these relationships as aesthetic inequalities, exacerbated in a new age of urban development. The book combines local and transnational scales with an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together historians, sociologists, cultural geographers, anthropologists, architects and contemporary art curators. They illustrate the importance of combining different social science methods and functional perspectives to study such complex social and cultural realities as cities. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of humanities and social sciences, cultural and urban studies, architecture and political geography.

The widespread adoption of smartphones has led to an explosion of mobile social media data, more than a billion messages per day that continuously track location, content, and time. Social Media in the Contemporary City focuses on the effects of social media on local communities and urban space in a variety of political and economic settings related to social activism, informal economic activity, public art, and global extremism.The book covers events ranging from Banksy art installations, mobile food trucks, and underground restaurants, to a Black Lives Matter protest, the Christchurch mosque shootings, and the Pulse nightclub shooting. The interplay between urban space, local community, and social media in each case study requires diverse methodologies that are both computational (i.e. machine learning, social network analysis, and natural language processing) and ethnographic (i.e. semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis, and site analysis). The book views social media not as a replacement for the local community or urban space but rather as a translation of the uses and meanings of all three realms.The book will be of interest to students, researchers, and instructors in a number of disciplines including urban design/planning, media studies, geography, and communications.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 licenseThrough a variety of empirical studies, this volume offers fresh insights into the manner in which different forms of communicative action transform urban space. With attention to the methodological questions that arise from the attempt to study such changes empirically, it offers new theoretical foundations for understanding the social construction and reconstruction of spaces through communicative action. Seeing communicative action as the basic element in the social construction of reality and conceptualizing communication not only in terms of the use of language and texts, but as involving any kind of objectification, such as technologies, bodies and non-verbal signs, it considers the roles of both direct and mediatized (or digitized) communication. An examination of the conceptualization of the communicative (re-)construction of spaces and the means by which this change might be empirically investigated, this book demonstrates the fruitfulness of the notion of refiguration as a means by which to understand the transformation of contemporary societies. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, social theorists, and geographers with interests in social construction and urban space.

This book offers a collection of essays that shed light on the urban situation from a variety of scholarly angles. Chapter themes range from examinations of the city through the lens of literature, exploring how literature can be employed to frame the urban experience, to historically informed investigations of the challenges prompted by urbanization along the East Coast of China. Other chapters deal with the experience of the local and the global in the urban context or with the fact that for one and the same city various maps can be drawn to visualize and depict different features. Such maps may range, for example, from dynamic and digital visual representations that mirror real-time data traffic or sound to maps that highlight buildings and infrastructure in a city that originated in distinct historical epochs. The role of cinematic and computerized animations for challenging the existing dominant architectural paradigms is discussed in another chapter. Two contributions further deal with the development and growth pattern of urban agglomerations and one chapter discusses the proliferation of large shopping centers that offer more than just a conventional shopping experience. Finally, two chapters deal with the instrumentalization of monitoring and fortification for promoting the perception of heightened safety and security in the city.

We live in the ‘urban century'. Cities all over the world – in both developing and developed countries – display complex evolutionary patterns. Urban Empires charts the backgrounds, mechanisms, drivers, and consequences of these radical changes in our contemporary systems from a global perspective and analyses the dominant position of modern cities in the ‘New Urban World'.This volume views the drastic change cities have undergone internationally through a broad perspective and considers their emerging roles in our global network society. Chapters from renowned scholars provide advanced analytical contributions, scaling applied and theoretical perspectives on the competitive profile of urban agglomerations in a globalizing world. Together, the volume traces and investigates the economic and political drivers of network cities in a global context and explores the challenges over governance that are presented by mega-cities. It also identifies and maps out the new geography of the emergent ‘urban century'. With contributions from well-known and influential scholars from around the world, Urban Empires serves as a touchstone for students and researchers keen to explore the scientific and policy needs of cities as they become our age's global power centers.

In this volume scholars from around the world discuss the innovative forms of collaboration between public and private actors that contribute to making our cities more liveable. It offers helpful insights into the practices of partnerships and the ways in which partnerships can contribute to a more liveable urban environment. The liveability of our cities is a topic of increasing relevance and urgency. The world's cities are becoming congested and polluted, putting pressure on affordable housing and causing safety to become a major problem. Urban governments are unable to address these major challenges on their own, and thus they seek cooperation with other governments, companies, civil society organizations, and citizens. By focusing on examples such as greenery in the city, affordable housing, safety, neighbourhood revitalization, and ‘learning by doing'in urban living labs, this book asks two key questions. How do partnerships between public andprivate actors contribute to the liveability of cities? Under what conditions are partnerships successful, and when do they fail to yield the desired results?

The Everyday Life of Urban Inequality explores how steadily increasing inequality and the spectacular pace of urbanization frame daily life for city residents around the world. Ethnographic case studies from five continents highlight the impact of place, the tools of memory, and the power of collective action as communities interact with centralized processes of policy and capital. By focusing on situated experiences of displacement, belonging, and difference, the contributors to this collection illustrate the many ways urban inequalities take shape, combine, and are perpetuated.

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.

This book explores the urban, political, and economic effects of contemporary capitalism as well being concerned with a collective analytic that addresses these processes through the lens of disassembling and reassembling dynamics. The processes of contemporary globalization have resulted in the commodification of various dimensions that were previously the domain of state action. This book evaluates the varying international responses from communities as they cope and confront the negative impacts of neoliberalism. In-depth case studies from scholars working in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia showcase how various cities are responding to the effects of neoliberalism. Chapters investigate and demonstrate how the neoliberal processes of dissembling are being countered by positive and engaged efforts of reassembly. From Colombia to Siberia, Chicago to Nigeria, contributions engage with key economic and urban questions surrounding the militarization of state, democracy, the rise of the global capital and the education of young people in slums.This book will have a broad appeal to academic researchers and urban planning professionals. It is recommended core reading for students in Urban Planning, Geography, Sociology, Anthropology, and Urban Studies.

Las súbitas transformaciones sociales que vivimos con incertidumbre plantean preguntas clave, que son comunes a la antropología, filosofía, sociología, arquitectura, urbanismo, economía, ciencias y ecología. Son cuestiones que afectan a toda la humanidad y cuya respuesta implica la construcción de nuevas miradas interpretativas desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar. Este diálogo se produce en la confluencia de la antropología con el urbanismo, desde la conciencia de que el planeta es un bien común. Augé y Montaner parten de la dialéctica entre los conceptos de lugar y no-lugar y desgranan fenómenos como la influencia de los medios de comunicación en la vida cotidiana y la ilusión de la nueva falsa familiaridad; interpretan situaciones y efectos como los procesos migratorios; explicitan dificultades y miedos, como el rechazo a los otros y los movimientos NIMBY; y proponen alternativas, como la utopía de la educación, los nuevos municipalismos o el reconocimiento de la alteridad.

The revised and updated second edition of Introduction to Cities explores why cities are such a vital part of the human experience and how they shape our everyday lives. Written in engaging and accessible terms, Introduction to Cities examines the study of cities through two central concepts: that cities are places, where people live, form communities, and establish their own identities, and that they are spaces, such as the inner city and the suburb, that offer a way to configure and shape the material world and natural environment. Introduction to Cities covers the theory of cities from an historical perspective right through to the most recent theoretical developments. The authors offer a balanced account of life in cities and explore both positive and negative themes. In addition, the text takes a global approach, with examples ranging from Berlin and Chicago to Shanghai and Mumbai. The book is extensively illustrated with updated maps, charts, tables, and photographs. This new edition also includes a new section on urban planning as well as new chapters on cities as contested spaces, exploring power and politics in an urban context. It contains; information on the status of poor and marginalized groups and the impact of neoliberal policies; material on gender and sexuality; and presents a greater range of geographies with more attention to European, Latin American, and African cities. Revised and updated, Introduction to Cities provides a complete introduction to the history, evolution, and future of our modern cities.

Ne parle-t-on pas de'villes mondiales'de'villes mondes'? Face à une situation qui interpelle les différents champs sociaux (politique, économique, urbanistique, architectural, scientifique, intellectuel,...) la contribution des experts en tous genres devient une nécessité afin de questionner ce que l'on peut entendre par domination urbaine.

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.

This book explores how gentrification often reinforces traditional gender roles and spatial constructions during the process of reshaping the labour, housing, commercial and policy landscapes of the city. It focuses in particular on the impact of gentrification on women and racialized men, exploring how gentrification increases the cost of living, serves to narrow housing choices, make social reproduction more expensive, and limits the scope of the democratic process. This has resulted in the displacement of many of the phenomena once considered to be the emancipatory hallmarks of gentrification, such as gayborhoods. The book explores the role of gentrification in the larger social processes through which gender is continually reconstituted. In so doing, it makes clear that the negative effects of gentrification are far more wide-ranging than popularly understood, and makes recommendations for renewed activism and policy that places gender at its core. This is valuable reading for students, researchers, and activists interested in social and economic geography, city planning, gender studies, urban studies, sociology, and cultural studies.

Cet ouvrage est un questionnement sur l'intégration sociale des jeunes filles de cité et les étiquettes qu'on leur accole. Il aborde les conditions d'inclusion et les modes d'exclusion que manifestent divers groupes sociaux en leur direction. De même, il rend compte de motifs culturels contextuels et codifiés qui tendent à identifier le corps féminin comme transgressif, pour le mettre à distance de la société réelle.

Bringing together ideas from the fields of sociology, economics, human geography, ethics, political and communications theory, this book deals with some key subjects in urban design: the multidimensional effects of the spatial form of cities, ways of appropriating urban space, and the different material factors involved in the emergence of social life. It puts forward an innovative conceptual framework to reconsider some fundamental features of city-making as a social process: the place of cities in encounters and communications, in the randomness of events and in the repetition of activities that characterise societies. In doing so, it provides fresh analytical tools and theoretical insights to help advance our understanding of the networks of causalities, contingencies and contexts involved in practices of city-making.In a systematic attempt to bring urban analysis and research from the social sciences together, the book is organised around three vital yet relatively neglected dimensions in the social and material shaping of cities: (i) Cities as systems of encounter: an approach to urban segregation as segregated networks; (ii) Cities as systems of communication: a view of shared spaces as a means to association and social experience; (iii) Cities as systems of material interaction: explorations on urban form as an effect of interactivity, and interactivity as an effect of form.Visit the author's website at: http://socialfabric.city/

An investigation into gentrification and displacement, focusing on the case of Portland, Oregon's systematic dispersal of black residents from its Albina neighborhood.Portland, Oregon, is one of the most beautiful, livable cities in the United States. It has walkable neighborhoods, bike lanes, low-density housing, public transportation, and significant green space—not to mention craft-beer bars and locavore food trucks. But liberal Portland is also the whitest city in the country. This is not circumstance; the city has a long history of officially sanctioned racialized displacement that continues today. Over the last two and half decades, Albina—the one major Black neighborhood in Portland—has been systematically uprooted by market-driven gentrification and city-renewal policies. African Americans in Portland were first pushed into Albina and then contained there through exclusionary zoning, predatory lending, and racist real estate practices. Since the 1990s, they've been aggressively displaced—by rising housing costs, developers eager to get rid of low-income residents, and overt city policies of gentrification.Displacement and dispossessions are convulsing cities across the globe, becoming the dominant urban narratives of our time. In What a City Is For, Matt Hern uses the case of Albina, as well as similar instances in New Orleans and Vancouver, to investigate gentrification in the twenty-first century. In an engaging narrative, effortlessly mixing anecdote and theory, Hern questions the notions of development, private property, and ownership. Arguing that home ownership drives inequality, he wants us to disown ownership. How can we reimagine the city as a post-ownership, post-sovereign space? Drawing on solidarity economics, cooperative movements, community land trusts, indigenous conceptions of alternative sovereignty, the global commons movement, and much else, Hern suggests repudiating development in favor of an incrementalist, non-market-driven unfolding of the city.

In Cities, Raymond Joshua Scannell examines how dramatic changes in the global economy and technology during the latter half of the twentieth century have radically restructured the city as a lived environment. Beginning with the impacts of globalisation on national and regional economies across the planet, Scannell investigates the rapidly changing and amorphous urban environments in which most people live. Cities traces how the actions of urban dwellers carving out lives for themselves are radically transforming paradigms of urban management and are overturning traditional assumptions about what constitutes urban rule and revolt. This exciting book insists on a new vocabulary for human settlements, one that looks centrally at the sort of behaviour that is often relegated figuratively and literally to the urban margins.

Research on gated communities is moving away from the hard concept of a'gated community'to the more fluid one of urban gating. The latter allows communities to be viewed through a new lens of soft boundaries, modern communication and networks of influence.The book, written by an international team of experts, builds on the research of Bagaeen and Uduku's previous edited publication, Gated Communities (Routledge 2010) and relates recent events to trends in urban research, showing how the discussion has moved from privatised to newly collectivised spaces, which have been the focal point for events such as the Occupy London movement and the Arab Spring.Communities are now more mobilised and connected than ever, and Beyond Gated Communities shows how neighbourhoods can become part of a global network beyond their own gates. With chapters on Australia, Canada, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, this is a truly international resource for scholars and students of urban studies interested in this dynamic, growing area of research.

Cities play a pivotal but paradoxical role in the future of our planet. As world leaders and citizens grapple with the consequences of growth, pollution, climate change, and waste, urban sustainability has become a ubiquitous catchphrase and a beacon of hope. Yet we know little about how the concept is implemented in daily life, particularly with regard to questions of social justice and equity. This volume provides a unique and vital contribution to ongoing conversations about urban sustainability by looking beyond the promises, propaganda, and policies associated with the concept in order to explore both its mythic meanings and the practical implications in a variety of everyday contexts. The authors present ethnographic studies from cities in eleven countries and six continents. Each chapter highlights the universalized assumptions underlying interpretations of sustainability while elucidating the diverse and contradictory ways in which people understand, incorporate, advocate for, and reject sustainability in the course of their daily lives.

Si es cierto que cada semana emigran a una ciudad 1,3 millones de personas enel mundo, es muy probable que más de 6.000 millones de personas se concentrenen unas 21 mega ciudades en solo 30 años. Una de las preocupaciones que generaesta tendencia es la complejidad en la gestión de los recursos naturales, lostransportes, la oferta de vivienda y servicios para todos y, desde ese puntode vista, está emergiendo con fuerza el movimiento de las Smart Cities, que prioriza la racionalidad, comodidad y eficiencia en la gestión de la ciudad, deacuerdo a las tecnologías de la información y comunicación. Pero también nos preocupa un aspecto fundamental para la calidad de vida de los habitantes de esas ciudades, partiendo también del conocimiento que nos aportan las Ciencias Sociales y ambientales que estudian desde hace años los fenómenos urbanos: la segmentación social, el aumento de las desigualdades, las amenazas climáticas yde contaminación del aire o el agua y, especialmente, el impacto que esos fenómenos tienen sobre el bienestar social y la salud de las personas.Tenemos muchos retos en ese sentido, y en este libro se abordan de forma exhaustiva teniendo como eje el conjunto de las necesidades humanas, sus contextosde vida, y aquellos aspectos urbanos que más inciden en ellos, pudiendo convertirse en factores de riesgo para la cohesión social y la salud urbana. En estaobra encontramos la fundamentación científica que avala la relación estrechaentre el entorno urbano y la calidad de vida de las personas, analizando espacios como la vivienda, el modelo urbanístico, los transportes, la interacción social y el medio ambiente, siempre desde el punto de vista de las personas y sus necesidades como seres biológicos y sociales. Podemos encontrar también comentarios y propuestas de expertos que ofrecen una visión de conjunto orientadaa la mejora urbana desde un punto de vista global y también casos reales de buenas prácticas, animando a los lectores a completar con sus propias experiencias.También se aporta una visión multidisciplinar -psicología social, ambiental yarquitectura- para definir propuestas de análisis de la realidad urbana, sistemas de planificación integrales y mecanismos de participación ciudadana que apoyen la estrategia de la ciudad para todos, una ciudad construida por y para los ciudadanos, que incorpore las técnicas más innovadoras desde el punto de vista del urbanismo y la arquitectura, pero también de la sostenibilidad medioambiental y la innovación social: ciudades saludables (como recomienda la OMS) ysostenibles (en el marco de la Agencia Europea del Medio Ambiente), pensadaspara la vida y la convivencia.

Urban Ills: Twenty First Century Complexities of Urban Living in Global Contexts is a collection of original research focused on critical challenges and dilemmas to living in cities. Volume 2 is devoted to the myriad issues involving urban health and the dynamics of urban communities and their neighborhoods. The editors define the ecology of urban living as the relationship and adjustment of humans to a highly dense, diverse, and complex environment. This approach examines the nexus between the distribution of human groups with reference to material resources and the consequential social, political, economic, and cultural patterns which evolve as a result of the sufficiency or insufficiency of those material resources. They emphasize the most vulnerable populations suffering during and after the recession in the United States and around the world, and the chapters examine traditional issues of housing and employment with respect to these communities.

​Moderne, funktional differenzierte, gleichzeitig aber vertikal stratifizierte Gesellschaften sind urban geprägt. Ihre Ungleichheitsstrukturen haben nicht nur soziale, sondern auch räumliche Dimensionen, die sich in Differenzen innerhalb von Städten, zwischen verschiedenen Städten, aber auch im Verhältnis zwischen Städten und dem ländlich geprägten Raum bzw. zwischen Zentrum und Peripherie ausdrücken. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes bringen zwei Bereiche der Soziologie, die Sozialstrukturanalyse und die Stadt-und Regionalsoziologie, die empirisch oft kooperierten, aber sich seltener über hierfür relevante Konzepte verständigten, in einen Dialog. Die Beiträge beschreiben und analysieren soziale und räumliche Ungleichheiten in städtischen oder ländlichen Lebenswelten und werfen gleichzeitig die Frage auf, wie die aktuelle Gestalt räumlicher Ungleichheiten konturiert und produziert wird.

This book is an investigation of the cultural phenomenon of branding and its transformational effects on the contemporary spatial – and urban – reality. It develops a novel understanding of the rationale behind the construction of large-scale architectural complexes that relate to corporate brands, and of its tremendous cultural effects. The author suggests that what we see today is the creation of'global mass ornaments', of a thorough ornamentalization of the entire globe.The origins of this are discussed with regard to examples of corporate brand-building from Europe and China (Autostadt Wolfsburg, BMW Welt Munich and Anting New Town). Additional cases are several simulated spaces in Berlin and the space-branding activities of companies like Apple or Prada. Theoretically, the author develops an innovative poststructuralist framework, combining ideas from Gilles Deleuze with the space philosophy of Peter Sloterdijk. He analyzes how the corporate redefinition of space makes the city enter into a mode of virtual urbanity. This idea leads to a notion of a'global urban'and, ultimately, the'global mass ornament'. This concept of a global mass ornament is developed here with reference to Sloterdijk's concept of a world of'spheres'. The latter is used to understand the new mode of spatiality of mediatized spaces. The book makes the point that our world is involved in a process of mass ornamentalization that has only just begun. The concept of the global mass ornament is the first to come to grips with a culture in which branding is effectively changing the physiognomy of the earth. The global mass ornament is a banner for a cultural transformation that employs architecture, sign theory and mechanisms borrowed from traditional advertising and from social media, as well as social processes – and that we have yet to properly understand. This book is a significant step forward in this respect.