When Henri Lefebvre published The Urban Revolution in 1970, he sketched a research itinerary on the emerging tendency towards planetary urbanization. Today, when this tendency has become reality, Lefebvre’s ideas on everyday life, production of space, rhythmanalysis and the right to the city are indispensable for the understanding of urbanization processes at every scale of social practice. This volume is the first to develop Lefebvre’s concepts in social research and architecture by focusing on urban conjunctures in Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Dhaka, Hong Kong, London, New Orleans, Nowa Huta, Paris, Toronto, São Paulo, Sarajevo, as well as in Mexico and Switzerland. With contributions by historians and theorists of architecture and urbanism, geographers, sociologists, political and cultural scientists, Urban Revolution Now reveals the multiplicity of processes of urbanization and the variety of their patterns and actors around the globe.

Text by Slavoj Zizek, Edward Soja, Juliet Flower MacCannell, Neil Smith, Dieter Lesage.

First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Drawing upon over a quarter of a century’s worth of research, The Urban Now illuminates our present urban condition. John Rennie Short captures the main features of this moment of urban significance, investigating the city as a crucial arena strategically located between global flows and national surfaces.

The subject of the study is the spontaneous city spreading process of Juba after the end of the civil war in South Sudan (2005). The book presents the complex dynamics of transformations within the new urban settings of post-war Juba. The viewpoint taken while describing these phenomena is the adaptation of an average migrant to a new urban environment. This was not an easy task. At that time the city was characterised by extremely harsh living conditions, harsh even for post-war South Sudan. Despite the difficulties, the city's development was visible. The phenomenon of borderlineness - the closeness of the state's borders - appeared to be helpful in this process. It influenced the effectiveness of human activities, it is an answer to the spontaneous city spreading processes - it brought danger, but most of all, infinite possibilities. The presented material comes from the author's ethnographic research conducted in Juba in 2007 and 2008.

Informality through Sustainability explores the phenomenon of informality within urban settlements and aims to unravel the subtle links between informal settlements and sustainability. Penetrating its global profile and considering urban informality through an understanding of local implications, the authors collectively reveal specific correlations between sites and their local inhabitants. The book opposes simplistic calls to legalise informal settlements or to view them as ‘problems’ to be solved. It comes at a time when common notions of ‘informality’ are being increasingly challenged. In 25 chapters, the book presents contributions from well-known scholars and practitioners whose theoretical or practical work addresses informality and sustainability at various levels, from city planning and urban design to public space and architectural education. Whilst previous studies on informal settlements have mainly focused on cases in developing countries, approaching the topic through social, cultural and material dimensions, the book explores the concept across a range of contexts, including former Communist countries and those in the so-called Global North. Contributions also explore understandings of informality at various scalar levels – region, precinct, neighbourhood and individual building. Thus, this work helps reposition informality as a relational concept at various scales of urbanisation. This book will be of great benefit to planners, architects, researchers and policymakers interested in the interplay between informality and sustainability.

Original, action-oriented humanist practices for interpreting and intervening in the city: a new methodology at the intersection of the humanities, design, and urban studies. Urban humanities is an emerging field at the intersection of the humanities, urban planning, and design. It offers a new approach not only for understanding cities in a global context but for intervening in them, interpreting their histories, engaging with them in the present, and speculating about their futures. This book introduces both the theory and practice of urban humanities, tracing the evolution of the concept, presenting methods and practices with a wide range of research applications, describing changes in teaching and curricula, and offering case studies of urban humanities practices in the field. Urban humanities views the city through a lens of spatial justice, and its inquiries are centered on the microsettings of everyday life. The book's case studies report on real-world projects in mega-cities in the Pacific Rim—Tokyo, Shanghai, Mexico City, and Los Angeles—with several projects described in detail, including playful spaces for children in car-oriented Mexico City, a commons in a Tokyo neighborhood, and a rolling story-telling box to promote “literary justice” in Los Angeles.