Stunning satellite images of one hundred cities show our urbanizing planet in a new light to reveal the fragile relationship between humanity and Earth Seeing cities around the globe in their larger environmental contexts, we begin to understand how the world shapes urban landscapes and how urban landscapes shape the world. Authors Karen Seto and Meredith Reba provide these revealing views to enhance readers’ understanding of the shape, growth, and life of urban settlements of all sizes—from the remote town of Namche Bazaar in Nepal to the vast metropolitan prefecture of Tokyo, Japan. Using satellite data, the authors show urban landscapes in new perspectives. The book’s beautiful and surprising images pull back the veil on familiar scenes to highlight the growth of cities over time, the symbiosis between urban form and natural landscapes, and the vulnerabilities of cities to the effects of climate change. We see the growth of Las Vegas and Lagos, the importance of rivers to both connecting and dividing cities like Seoul and London, and the vulnerability of Fukushima and San Juan to floods from tsunami or hurricanes. The result is a compelling book that shows cities’ relationships with geography, food, and society.

Winner of the 2022 Urban Affairs Association Best Book Award. City visions represent shared, and often desirable, expectations about our urban futures. This book explores the history and evolution of city visions, placing them in the wider context of art, culture, science, foresight and urban theory. It highlights and critically reviews examples of city visions from around the world, contrasting their development and outlining the key benefits and challenges in planning such visions. The authors show how important it is to think about the future of cities in objective and strategic ways, engaging with a range of stakeholders – something more important than ever as we look to visions of a sustainable future beyond the COVID-19 crisis.

Visions of the City is a dramatic history of utopian urbanism in the twentieth century. It explores radical demands for new spaces and ways of living, and considers their effects on planning, architecture and struggles to shape urban landscapes. The author critically examines influential utopian approaches to urbanism in western Europe associated with such figures as Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier, uncovering the political interests, desires and anxieties that lay behind their ideal cities. He also investigates avant-garde perspectives from the time that challenged these conceptions of cities, especially from within surrealism. At the heart of this richly illustrated book is an encounter with the explosive ideas of the situationists. Tracing the subversive practices of this avant-garde group and its associates from their explorations of Paris during the 1950s to their alternative visions based on nomadic life and play, David Pinder convincingly explains the significance of their revolutionary attempts to transform urban spaces and everyday life. He addresses in particular Constant's New Babylon, finding within his proposals a still powerful provocation to imagine cities otherwise. The book not only recovers vital moments from past hopes and dreams of modern urbanism. It also contests current claims about the 'end of utopia', arguing that reconsidering earlier projects can play a critical role in developing utopian perspectives today. Through the study of utopian visions, it aims to rekindle elements of utopianism itself. A superb critical exploration of the underside of utopian thought over the last hundred years and its continuing relevance in the here and now for thinking about possible urban worlds. The treatment of the Situationists and their milieu is a revelation. David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, City University of New York Graduate School

Throughout Nanjing’s history, writers have claimed that its spectacular landscape of mountains and rivers imbued the city with “royal qi,” making it a place of great political significance. City of Virtues examines the ways a series of visionaries, drawing on past glories of the city, projected their ideologies onto Nanjing as they constructed buildings, performed rituals, and reworked the literary heritage of the city. More than an urban history of Nanjing from the late 18th century until 1911 — encompassing the Opium War, the Taiping occupation of the city, the rebuilding of the city by Zeng Guofan, and attempts to establish it as the capital of the Republic of China — this study shows how utopian visions of the cosmos shaped Nanjing’s path through the turbulent 19th century.

Covering a range of North American and European cities, but focusing on Belfast's social, economic and political developments, this collection considers the role of long-term urban planning in the development of cities.The major cities of the West are characterised by division, uneven development and unequal distribution of jobs. In Belfast these general Western urban characteristics are extended and heightened by association with a long-standing political crisis and low-intensity conflict. Covering a range of North American and European cities, but focusing on Belfast's social, economic and political developments, this collection considers the role of long-term urban planning in the development of cities.The authors integrate global debates on urban development and summarise contemporary theories on cities and their future. An assortment of interventions and delivery mechanisms are considered, and among the key topics covered are urban economies and social exclusion; the planning of city regions; the sustainable city; urban regeneration; the role of culture in remaking cities; and the future governance of cities. By viewing the subject from a local perspective, as well as in an international context, the authors provide a stimulating critique which will guide policy makers, planners, students and others concerned with urban regeneration.

A collection of the latest work on the city, presenting contemporary theories, methods and perspectives in an accessible format for upper-level undergraduates and postgraduates in geography, cultural studies and sociology.