Industrialization and population explosion are contributing to an urban revolution in the developing countries of the world. Static social and economic conditions, frozen for hundreds of years, are rapidly being overturned. This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of various national programs and the efforts of international agencies directed toward achieving land reform and adequate housing. This is the first book on the subject. Charles Abrams, drawing heavily on his rich store of intimate practical experience, dramatically describes housing situations in Ghana, Turkey, Pakistan, the Philippines, Nigeria, Japan, Singapore, India, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Jamaica, Ireland, Barbados, and Bolivia. His expert knowledge of the legal and financial aspects of land and housing problems is tempered by common sense observation of technical and social aspects, enriched by imaginative human concern, and made effective by a high degree of political realism. Man's Struggle for Shelter will benefit a wide audience of readers. The urban and regional planner, the housing official, the land economist, and government policy planners, both here and abroad, will find this book extremely important.

Examines the role of architecture in the history of global development and decolonization.

Originally published in 1981, Urbanization and Urban Planning in Capitalist Society, is a comprehensive collection of papers addressing urban crises. Through a synthesis of current discussions around various critical approaches to the urban question, the book defines a general theory of urbanization and urban planning in capitalist society. It examines the conceptual preliminaries necessary for the establishment of capitalist theory and provides a theoretical exposition of the fundamental logic of urbanization and urban planning. It also provides a detailed discussion of commodity production and its effects on urban development.

Environmental change presents a new context and new opportunities for transformational change. This timely book will inspire new ways of understanding the relationship between environmental change and human security. A Changing Environment for Human Security: Transformative Approaches to Research, Policy and Action both supports and informs a call for new, transformative approaches to research, policy and action. The chapters in this book include critical analyses, case studies and reflections on contemporary environmental and social challenges, with a strong emphasis on those related to climate change. Human thoughts and actions have contributed to an environment of insecurity, manifested as multiple interacting threats that now represent a serious challenge to humanity. Yet humans also have the capacity to collectively transform the economic, political, social and cultural systems and structures that perpetuate human insecurities. These fresh perspectives on global environmental change from an interdisciplinary group of international experts will inspire readers – whether students, researchers, policy makers, or practitioners – to think differently about environmental issues and sustainability. The contributions show that in a changing environment, human security is not only a possibility, but a choice.

Whether waiting for the train or planning the future city, infrastructure orders—and depends on—multiple urban temporalities. This agenda-setting volume disrupts conventional notions of time through a robust examination of the relations between temporality, infrastructure, and urban society. Conceptually rich and empirically detailed, its interdisciplinary dialogue encompasses infrastructural systems including transportation, energy, and water to bridge often-siloed technical, political-economic and lived perspectives. With global coverage of diverse cities and regions from Berlin to Jayapura, this book is an essential provocation to re-evaluate urban theory, politics, and practice and better account for the temporal complexities that shape our infrastructured worlds.