A new understanding of rural-urban migration and inequality in contemporary China Many of the millions of workers streaming in from rural China to jobs at urban factories soon find themselves in new kinds of poverty and oppression. Yet, their individual experiences are far more nuanced than popular narratives might suggest. Rural Origins, City Lives probes long-held assumptions about migrant workers in China. Drawing on fieldwork in Nanjing, Roberta Zavoretti argues that many rural-born urban-dwellers are—contrary to state policy and media portrayals—diverse in their employment, lifestyle, and aspirations. Working and living in the cities, such workers change China’s urban landscape, becoming part of an increasingly diversified and stratified society. Zavoretti finds that—more than thirty years after the Open Door Reform—class formation, not residence status, is key to understanding inequality in contemporary China.

The fifth edition of the highly successful City Reader juxtaposes the best classic and contemporary writings on the city. It contains fifty-seven selections including seventeen new contributions by experts including Elijah Anderson, Robert Bruegmann, Michael Dear, Jan Gehl, Harvey Molotch, Clarence Perry, Daphne Spain, Nigel Taylor, Samuel Bass Warner, and others – some of which have been newly written exclusively for The City Reader. Classic writings from Ebenezer Howard, Ernest W. Burgess, LeCorbusier, Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs and Louis Wirth, meet the best contemporary writings of Sir Peter Hall, Manuel Castells, David Harvey, Kenneth Jackson. This edition of The City Reader has been extensively updated and expanded to reflect the latest thinking in each of the disciplinary areas included and in topical areas such as sustainable urban development, climate change, globalization, and the impact of technology on cities. The plate sections have been extensively revised and expanded and a new plate section on global cities has been added. The anthology features general and section introductions and introductions to the selected articles. New to the fifth edition is a bibliography listing over 100 of the top books for those studying Cities.

On 9th October 2017, the international conference Suspended Living in Temporary Space was held at the headquarters of the Architecture School of the Polytechnic of Turin. Some scholars, architects but not only, have found themselves reflecting on the role of the architect and architecture within the almost apocalyptic scenario of the great migratory waves following disasters and emergencies, with specific attention to the context of the Mediterranean area. In this scenario, there are those who flee alone and with the whole family, people who leave a promising profession and others who leave almost nothing; unaccompanied minors and adults. For everyone, we must, first and foremost, guarantee the fundamental right of a refuge. It is easy to see how many studies, idea competitions, experimental projects carried out by architects to tackle this problem, but if we refer to common practice, then we must recognize that the role of architecture as a discipline has been decidedly secondary. The contributions collected here testify to this double track, where the most innovative experiments haven’t often interfered with the reality of the facts. The origin of the participants at this conference, Turkey, Spain, Tunisia and Italy, also underlined how the problem of housing emergency is particularly felt and debated in these countries also within the universities.

First published in 1967, Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages is one of the most influential works in the field of Islamic history. Primarily a study of the main cities of the Mamluk state of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries AD, Professor Lapidus' book serves to provide a framework for understanding the long evolution of Muslim political and social institutions and urban societies. The relationships between military rulers, the bourgeoisie and the common people are presented in a study of wide relevance to social history.

Even in the context of rapid material and social change in urban Morocco, women, and especially those from low-income households, continue to invest a lot of work in preparing good food for their families. Through the lens of domestic food preparation, this book looks at knowledge reproduction, how we know cooking and its role in the making of everyday family life. It also examines a political economy of cooking that situates Marrakchi women’s lived experiences in the broader context of persisting poverty and food insecurity in Morocco.

The book deals with a broad range of contemporary and recurring empirical and practical issues encapsulated within the context of demographic inquiry and analysis. The papers included here reflect strands of thoughts and research that find expression in interdisciplinary outlook focussing on sexuality, fertility, gender, morbidity and mortality, migration, maternal and child health and the elderly.