This book is part of a series produced in association with the Open University and forms part of the Open University course DD304: Understanding cities.

This text examines the global nature of cities - cities whose openness has shaped their dynamism and character. It explores cities as sites of movement, migration and settlement where different peoples, cultures and environments combine. Unsettling Cities explores the mix of proximity and difference that exists in the rich and diverse texture of city life. The contributors reveal the association between the changing fortunes of cities and the power and influence of global networks.

Short and accessible, this book interweaves a discussion of the geography of property in one global city, Vancouver, with a more general analysis of property, politics, and the city.

This text offers an international and interdisciplinary analysis of the complex interactions between infrastructure networks and urban spaces. Drawing on case studies and examples from across the globe, it offers a statement on the urban condition.

This book focuses on linguistic landscapes in present-day urban settings. In a wide-ranging collection of studies of major world cities, the authors investigate both the forces that shape linguistic landscape and the impact of the linguistic landscape on the wider social and cultural reality. Not only does the book offer a wealth of case studies and comparisons to complement existing publications on linguistic landscape, but the editors aim to investigate the nature of a field of study which is characterised by its interest in ‘ordered disorder’. The editors aspire to delve into linguistic landscape beyond its appearance as a jungle of jumbled and irregular items by focusing on the variations in linguistic landscape configurations and recognising that it is but one more field of the shaping of social reality under diverse, uncoordinated and possibly incongruent structuration principles.

In Cities of Refuge, a single act of violence resonates through several lives, connecting closeby fears to distant political terrors. At the story’s center is the complex, intensely charged relationship between a twenty-eight-year-old woman and the father who abandoned her when she was young. One summer night on a side street in downtown Toronto, Kim Lystrander is attacked by a stranger. Thrown deep into turmoil, in the weeks and months that follow, she confronts her fear by returning to the night, in writing, searching for harbingers of the incident and clues to the identity of her assailant. The attack also torments Kim's father, Harold, a historian of Latin America. As he investigates the crime on his own, the darkest hours from his past revisit him, and he gradually begins to unravel. Entwined in their stories are Kim’s ailing mother, Marian; Father André Rowe, whose mission to guide others involves him in a decision with troubling consequences; Rodrigo Cantero, a young Colombian man living illegally in the city; and Rosemary Yates, a woman whose faith-based belief in the duty to give asylum to any who seek it, even those judged guilty, draws Harold to her, before a fateful choice changes the future for them all. Cities of Refuge is a novel of profound moral tension and luminous prose. It weaves a web of incrimination and inquiry, in which mysteries live within mysteries, and stories within stories, and the power to save or condemn rests in the forces of history and in the realm of our deepest longings.

Sacred Civics argues that societal transformation requires that spirituality and sacred values are essential to reimagining patterns of how we live, organize and govern ourselves, determine and distribute wealth, inhabit and design cities, and construct relationships with others and with nature. The book brings together transdisciplinary and global academics, professionals, and activists from a range of backgrounds to question assumptions that are fused deep into the code of how societies operate, and to draw on extraordinary wisdom from ancient Indigenous traditions; to social and political movements like Black Lives Matter, the commons, and wellbeing economies; to technologies for participatory futures where people collaborate to reimagine and change culture. Looking at cities and human settlements as the sites of transformation, the book focuses on values, commons, and wisdom to demonstrate that how we choose to live together, to recognize interdependencies, to build, grow, create, and love—matters. Using multiple methodologies to integrate varied knowledge forms and practices, this truly ground-breaking volume includes contributions from renowned and rising voices. Sacred Civics is a must-read for anyone interested in intersectional discussions on social justice, inclusivity, participatory design, healthy communities, and future cities.