This collection deals with the transformation of urban movements in the new social, economic and political environments that the rise of globalisation has brought about.

In what ways has global urbanization affected the political process? This book offers a reflection on the transformations of urban politics worldwide in the past four decades, from interpersonal street-level politics to transnational governing institutions. Organized thematically, the book examines urban social movements, diversity politics, environmental politics and security politics at a global level and argues that living in an urban world calls for a profound rethinking of how we act politically. Through ethnographic incursions into the worlds of youth activists, domestic workers, rioters, barrio bandits and peripheral villagers, among others, from Mexico City and Hanoi to Montreal and New York, the book makes a number of theoretical propositions to redefine the field of urban political studies. Extending the view of urban politics beyond municipal and metropolitan institutions to the broader political process in cities, this book will be invaluable to advanced students and scholars interested in our urban future. For, as Boudreau convincingly suggests, global urban life is political life.

What can we learn about collective action across Central and Eastern Europe by focusing on activism within urban spaces? This volume argues that the recent resurgence of urban grassroots mobilisation represents a new phase in the development of post-socialist civil societies and that these civil societies have significantly more vitality than is commonly perceived. The case studies here reflect the diversity and complexity of post-socialist urban movements, capturing also the extent to which the laboratory of urban politics is richly illustrative of the complex nexus of state-society-market relations within post-socialism. The grassroots campaigns and actions reflect the new social cleavages and increased polarisation as a consequence of neoliberal urbanisation and global integration, as well as the transformation of state power and authority in the region. Studying urban activism in Central and Eastern Europe is instructive for urban movements scholars generally, as it forces us to acknowledge the variety of forms that contention can take and the usefulness of embedding the study of urban movements within a larger understanding of civil society.

This edited volume advances our understanding of urban activism beyond the social movement theorization dominated by thesis of political opportunity structure and resource mobilization, as well as by research based on experience from the global north. Covering a diversity of urban actions from a broad range of countries in both hemispheres as well as the global north and global south, this unique collection notably focuses on non-institutionalised or localised urban actions that have the potential to bring about radical structural transformation of the urban system and also addresses actions in authoritarian regimes that are too sensitive to call themselves “movement”. It addresses localized issues cut off from international movements such as collective consumption issues, like clean water, basic shelter, actions against displacement or proper venues for street vendors, and argues that the integration of the actions in cities in the global south with the specificity of their local social and political environment is as pivotal as their connection with global movement networks or international NGOs. A key read for researchers and policy makers cutting across the fields of urban sociology, political science, public policy, geography, regional studies and housing studies, this text provides an interdisciplinary and international perspective on 21st century urban activism in the global north and south.

Providing an overview of urban social movements from a diverse range of both empirical and theoretical perspectives, this Handbook includes not only a critical analysis of the transformations that have occurred in the urban landscape recently, but also sheds light on the strategies implemented by social actors in various socio-political and cultural contexts. It focuses on understanding better how and to what extent collective action around urban issues remains relevant in our modern world. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

An encyclopedia about various topics relating to urban studies.

Migration is no longer a movement from the rural to the urban, but rather from city to city or from the city to the metropolis in this swiftly urbanising world. This book uses new paradigms to explain why urban movements rise from the development of cities and are gradually increasing. It urges new Urban Studies to recognise that the rate of urbanisation occurring in developing regions is higher than that of developed regions and that the change is profound. A multidisciplinary approach is a prerequisite for Urban Studies to understand urban movements and the struggle for urban space in the nearby future of cities worldwide.