This book is about the soul of the city, embodied in its spaces and people. It traces dynamics in inner city neighbourhoods of South Africa’s post-apartheid capital, Pretoria. Viewing the city through its most vulnerable people and places, it recognizes that urban space is never neutral and shaped by competing value frameworks. The first part of the book invites planners, city-makers, and ordinary urban citizens, to consider a new self-understanding, reclaiming their agency in the city-making process. Through the metaphor of "becoming like children", planning practice is deconstructed and re-imagined. A praxis-based methodology is presented, cultivating four distinct moments of entering, reading, imagining and co-constructing the city. After deconstructing urban spaces and discourses, the second part of the book explores a concrete spirituality and ethic of urban space. It argues for a shift from planning as technocracy, to planning as immersed, participatory artistry: opening up to the "genius" of space, responsive to urban cries, and joining to construct new, soul-full spaces. Local communities and interconnected movements become embodiments of urban alternatives – through resistance and reconstruction; building on local assets; animating local reclamations; and weaving nets of hope that will span the entire city. Providing a concrete methodology for city-making that is rooted in a community-based urban praxis, this book will be of interest to urban planning researchers, professional planners and designers and also grass-root community developers or activists.

This book examines spirituality in Singapore, showing how important the city state is for understanding contemporary global configurations of urban space, religion, and spirituality. Joanne Punzo Waghorne highlights how the formal religious spaces-temples, churches, and mosques-have been confined to allotted sites on the map of Singapore, whereas various “spiritual” organizations, particularly of Hindu origins and headed by a guru, still continue to operate as “societies” classified by the government with other “clubs.” These unconventional religiosities are not confined but ironically make their own places, meeting in ostensive secular venues: high-rise flats, malls, businesses, and community centers, thus existing in the overall space of religion, commerce, and the state. The book argues that State of Singapore also operates between the secular and the religious, constructing an overarching spatial regime that both accommodates and yet rivals the alternate spheres that spiritual movements construct under its umbrella. Both spatial configurations challenge the presumed relationships between myth and reality, religion and commerce, the ethereal and the concrete, the sacred and the secular, on the levels of self, community, and polity. Singapore, now deemed a model for urban development in Asia, also offers an understanding of a new post-secularity and perhaps reveals where the urbanized world is headed.

A Spiritual City provides a broad examination of the meaning and importance of cities from a Christian perspective. Contains thought-provoking theological and spiritual reflections on city-making by a leading scholar Unites contemporary thinking about urban space and built environments with the latest in urban theology Addresses the long-standing anti-urban bias of Christianity and its emphasis on inwardness and pilgrimage Presents an important religious perspective on the potential of cities to create a strong human community and sense of sacred space

Can people use new participatory spaces to reclaim their rights as citizens and challenge structures of political power? This book carefully examines the constraints and possibilities for participatory governance under capitalism. To understand what is at stake in the politics of participation, we need to look beyond the values commonly associated with it. Citizens face a dilemma: should they participate, even if this helps to sustain an unjust system, or not participate, thereby turning down rare opportunities to make a difference? By examining the rationale behind democratic innovation and the reasons people have for getting involved, this book provides a theory of how citizens can use new democratic spaces to challenge political boundaries. Connecting numerous international case studies and presenting original research from Rosario, Argentina, this book offers a crucial corrective to previous research. What matters most is not the design of new models of participation nor is it the supposed radical imagination of political leaders. It is whether people use new spaces for participation to renegotiate what democracy means in practice. Bridging critical urban studies and democratic theory, this book will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of democratic innovations, political economy and urban planning. It will also provide activists and practitioners of participatory democracy with important tools to expand spaces of grassroots democracy.

This book considers and examines the concept of a Smart City in the context of improving the quality of life and sustainable development in Central and Eastern European cities. The Smart City concept has been gaining popularity in recent years, with supporters considering it to be an effective tool to improve the quality of life of the city’s residents. In turn, opponents argue that it is a source of imbalance and claim that it escalates the problems of social and economic exclusion. This book, therefore, assesses the quality of life and its unsustainability in Central and Eastern European cities within the context of the Smart City concept and from the perspective of key areas of sustainable development. Using case studies of selected cities in Central and Eastern Europe and representative surveysof Polish cities, this book illustrates the process of creating smart cities and their impact on improving the quality of life of citizens. Specifically, this book investigates the conditions that a Smart City has to meet to become sustainable, how the Smart City concept can support the improvement of the residents’ quality of life and how Central and Eastern European countries create smartcity solutions. Containing both theoretical and practical content, this book will be of relevance to researchers and students interested in smart cities and urban planning, as well as city authorities and city stakeholders who are planning to implement the Smart City concept. Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Discussions about the Sabbath often center around moralistic laws and arguments over whether a person should be able to play cards or purchase liquor on Sundays. In this volume, popular author Walter Brueggemann writes that the Sabbath is not simply about keeping rules but rather about becoming a whole person and restoring a whole society. Importantly, Brueggemann speaks to a 24/7 society of consumption, a society in which we live to achieve, accomplish, perform, and possess. We want more, own more, use more, eat more, and drink more. Keeping the Sabbath allows us to break this restless cycle and focus on what is truly important: God, other people, all life. Brueggemann offers a transformative vision of the wholeness God intends, giving world-weary Christians a glimpse of a more fulfilling and simpler life through Sabbath observance.

Exploration of postsecularism in theory and practice of urban life, evaluating the secular-to-postsecular shift in terms of public space, building use, governance and civil society.