Through the study of more than twenty novels produced in Spain from the 1840s to the 1920s, this book explores the literary means by which the social options available to modern Spanish bourgeois citizens were discursively constructed, occasionally before and often concomitantly to their production in reality. As a result, this study is concerned with the interplay of realism and reality in modern Spain. From the earliest folletines of the 1840s to the Modernist novels of the 1920s, the majority of novels written in this eighty-year period are what one might term novelas de costumbres contemporáneas, or novels of contemporary customs, and therefore primarily concerned with faithfully copying and moreover influencing real social norms in the public sphere. In these pages, I argue that the spatial and behavioral discourses in the novels of contemporary customs offer a telling history of the evolving formulation of the Spanish bourgeoisie. The linking of novels and urbanism is hardly arbitrary in the context of nineteenth-century Spain. Urbanism, particularly in the nineteenth century, was as much a verbal construction as the novel, as proven by the lengthy treatises of such prominent Spanish bureaucrats, engineers, architects, and urban planners as Ramón de Mesonero Romanos, Ildefons Cerdà and Carlos María de Castro. For Spanish intellectuals of this era, city planning and the novel functioned as parallel, enmeshed discourses in which to work out what it meant to be middle class and the roles this class ought to play in contemporary society. In this way, they can be considered associated fields of discourse, in the sense described by Michel Foucault in The Archaeology of Knowledge. Foucault's treatise was a call for scholars to reexamine historical fields and question the historical grouping of knowledge(s) into certain discursive unities, and consider whether these might be broken up and new ones conceived.In this vein, this book undertakes a broader and more integrative view of the Spanish nineteenth century, calling into question the boundaries of fields such as etiquette and urban planning, or literature and touristic discourse.

Transforming modernistic urban areas to fit contemporary needs is one of the predominant challenges that postwar European cities face today. Although these transformation processes are highly complex they generate a wide variety of chances to take advantage of existing micro-economies, cultural diversity and spatial structures. Situational Urbanism is an adaptive methodology that identifies new ways of dealing with modernistic urban areas. In order to synthesize the lived experience on the street with the need for long-term planning, this design approach addresses simultaneously spatial, socio-economic, and cultural issues. This results in a variety of innovative and versatile design strategies that deal with post-war urbanism. The volume combines applicable spatial theory, innovative analytical methods and a comprehensive toolkit of flexible design methods for transforming modernist urban areas, ranging over the full array of scales, from the individual house, via the block to the neighbourhood.

There is need for change in our currently unsustainable cities. Carefully outlining paths towards better, sustainable ways of urban living, this book proposes a radical change in the ways we conceive and live our urban environments. Bringing together diverse cultural and disciplinary views on urban sustainability, eighteen leading academics and practitioners in sustainable architecture and urbanism explore global concerns of sustainability and urbanity. This broad range of issues are clearly articulated and linked to concrete places and projects, merging research and cutting-edge design investigations to promote environmentally and culturally sensitive urban futures.

In the writing of urban design history of the twentieth century, functionalist and avant-garde models of the dissolution of the city are dominating. In contrast this book presents projects whose goal is the ideal of a dense and urbane city. Drawing on plans, built examples and theories of dense and urban cities and city districts in the twentieth century, modern examples of urban design are analyzed and highlighted, which until now have been evaluated more as fringe phenomena. These include examples characterized by functional mixture, social openness, spatially defined public spaces, urbanarchitecture, historical reference and a cultural understanding of the city. The book's new evaluation of modern urbandesign history creates opportunities for current planning by offering bestpractice models, which better reflect the striving for urbanity and density.

This open access book draws a theoretically productive triangle between urban studies, theories of cosmopolitanism, and migration studies in a global context. It provides a unique, encompassing and situated view on the various relations between cosmopolitanism and urbanity in the contemporary world. Drawing on a variety of cities in Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa and North America, it overcomes the Eurocentric bias that has marked debate on cosmopolitanism from its inception. The contributions highlight the crucial role of migrants as actors of urban change and targets of urban policies, thus reconciling empirical and normative approaches to cosmopolitanism. By addressing issues such as cosmopolitanism and urban geographies of power, locations and temporalities of subaltern cosmopolites, political meanings and effects of cosmopolitan practices and discourses in urban contexts, it revisits contemporary debates on superdiversity, urban stratification and local incorporation, and assess the role of migration and mobility in globalization and social change.

So far religion has been seen as cause for dramatic developments in the history of cities, it has contributed to the monumentalisation of centres and or has given importance to ex-centric places. Very recently, anthropologists have been discovering religion in the contemporary global city. But still awaiting historical investigation is the specific urban character of religious ideas, practices and institutions and the role of urban space shaping this very ‘religion’ in the course of history. The time-span from the Hellenistic age to Late Antiquity was crucial in the establishment of concepts and institutions of ‘religion’ and witnessed extended waves of urbanisation, Rome being central to this. In addressing this problem, this book fills a significant gap in the scholarship on urban religion across time. Taking seriously the proposition that space is condition, medium and outcome of social relations, the development of ‘urban religion’ in lived urban space and urban culture or urbanity offers a lens onto processes of religious change that have been neglected for the history of religion and for the study of urbanism. The key thesis is that city-space engineered the major changes that revolutionised religions. »This stimulating book makes use of archaeology and history to address religion as an essential component of urban life in both the past and the present. -With a strong basis in the ancient Mediterranean as well as an insightful view of modern urban life, Rüpke emphasizes that the practice and performance of religion at the everyday level is as essential in the creation of an urban ethos as the grand temples and institutions promulgated by the elite.« Monica L. Smith, author of Cities: The First 6,000 Years »Jörg Rüpke offers a characteristically original and learned series of reflections on some of the many ways in which the history of religions and the history of cities might be entangled. Urban Religion offers no single overarching thesis, but it is consistently thought-provoking and suggests many intriguing lines of investigation for the future.« Greg Woolf, Institute of Classical Studies, London

This book looks at the typologies of cities and ideas of urbanity. Focusing specifically on cities in South Asia, it analyses the unique planning concepts, archaeology, art, culture, life, and philosophy of various cities of ancient and modern South Asia. The book explores the concept of urbanity and the idea of an ideal city; it interrogates general notions of urbanity by juxtaposing city life in various periods and geographies of South Asia. By analysing the demography, architecture, rituals, and culture of various cities, it looks at the different spatialities of these places in terms of their size, population, commerce, and philosophy as well as the reasons behind the transformation of these places into urban centres. Drawing from various archeological and literary sources, the volume includes rich details about heterogeneity, rituals, festivals, social stratification, penal systems, famines, and insurrections in ancient cities as well as modern cities like Lahore, Dhaka, and Calcutta, among many others in South Asia. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of ancient and modern history, archaeology, urban studies, urban and town planning, urban sociology, urban geography, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, ancient and medieval architecture, heritage studies, conservation studies, and South Asian studies.