Anglo-American cities face economic decline, social polarisation and racial conflict. Their fate is increasingly decided by the global actions of transnational corporations and market forces. Community groups find it difficult to gain access to the political system. Ethnic minorities strive for empowerment while indebted city governments battle to maintain basic services. Such is the urban crisis of the 1990s. Fractured Cities describes the political economy of urban change and explores the future of the city.

As cities sprawl across Latin America, absorbing more and more of its people, crime and violence have become inescapable. From the paramilitary invasion of Medell¡n in Colombia, the booming wealth of crack dealers in Managua, Nicaragua and police corruption in Mexico City, to the glimmers of hope in Lima, this book provides a dynamic analysis of urban insecurity. Based on new empirical evidence, interviews with local people and historical contextualization, the authors attempts to shed light on the fault-lines which have appeared in Latin American society. Neoliberal economic policy, it is argued, has intensified the gulf between elites, insulated in gated estates monitored by private security firms, and the poor, who are increasingly mistrustful of state-sponsored attempts to impose order on their slums. Rather than the current trend towards government withdrawal, the situation can only be improved by co-operation between communities and police to build new networks of trust. In the end, violence and insecurity are inseparable from social justice and democracy.

Anglo-American cities face economic decline, social polarisation and racial conflict. Their fate is increasingly decided by the global actions of transnational corporations and market forces. Community groups find it difficult to gain access to the political system. Ethnic minorities strive for empowerment while indebted city governments battle to maintain basic services. Such is the urban crisis of the 1990s. Fractured Cities describes the political economy of urban change and explores the future of the city.

This book provides a thorough analysis of cities and the entire metropolitan region, considering how both are intrinsically linked and influence one other, targeted at architects, students, urban designers and planners, landscape architects, and city and regional officials.

What if divided neighborhoods were causing public health problems? What if a new approach to planning and design could tackle both the built environment and collective well-being at the same time? What if cities could help each other? Dr. Mindy Fullilove, the acclaimed author of Root Shock, uses her unique perspective as a public health psychiatrist to explore ways of healing social and spatial fractures simultaneously. Using the work of French urbanist Michel Cantal-Dupart as a guide, Fullilove takes readers on a tour of successful collaborative interventions that repair cities and make communities whole.

A sprawling megacity of nearly twenty million people, Delhi has forgotten its ecological history, a key part of which is the Ridge, often referred to as Delhi's 'green lung'. At various points, Delhi has been a crucial hub of politics, warfare, trade and religious expansion on regional and global levels. Placing Delhi's environment at the front and centre of its unique history, the book tells the tale of the Ridge, which resonates far beyond the boundaries of India's capital. The Ridge offers a crucial vantage point for viewing these historical and geographical interconnections. Its trees can't be separated from the stones below them, nor the cities that rose and fell around them. Only with this perspective does a clear picture of the Ridge - and Delhi as a whole - emerge.