This collection of essays on the Singaporean writer and artist Arthur Yap is dedicated to his multifaceted creative work and makes it accessible to both general and academic readers. It features new and innovative essays on Yap's prose, poetry and paintings by an international group of scholars and critics. The essays approach Yap's work through literary and analytical methods drawn from postcolonial criticism, ecocriticism, studies of urban spaces, visual art and sexuality, with particular consideration for how his work contributes to a specifically Singaporean form of postcolonial critique.

It's time for America to move beyond zoning, argues city planner M. Nolan Gray in Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. With lively explanations, Gray shows why zoning abolition is a necessary--if not sufficient--condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities. Gray lays the groundwork for this ambitious cause by clearing up common misconceptions about how American cities regulate growth and examining four contemporary critiques of zoning (its role in increasing housing costs, restricting growth in our most productive cities, institutionalizing racial and economic segregation, and mandating sprawl). He sets out some of the efforts currently underway to reform zoning and charts how land-use regulation might work in the post-zoning American city. Arbitrary Lines is an invitation to rethink the rules that will continue to shape American life--where we may live or work, who we may encounter, how we may travel. If the task seems daunting, the good news is that we have nowhere to go but up

The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.

This edited collection critically discusses the relevance of, and the potential for identifying conceptual common ground between dominant urban theory projects – namely Neo-Marxian accounts on planetary urbanization and alternative ‘Southern’ post-colonial and post-structuralist projects. Its main objective is to combine different urban knowledge to support and inspire an integrative research approach and a conceptual vocabulary which allows understanding the complex characteristics of diverse emerging urban spaces. Drawing on in-depth case study material from across the world, the different chapters in this volume disentangle planetary urbanization and apply it as a research framework to the context-specific challenges faced by many `ordinary' urban settings. In addition, through their focus on both Northern- and Southern urban spaces, this edited collection creates a truly global perspective on crucial practice-relevant topics such as the co-production of urban spaces, the ‘right to diversity’ and the ‘right to the urban’ in particular local settings.

Public space and performativity from the perspective of architecture In recent decades, architecture has been seen as a field of practice that contributes greatly to the performativity of public space. In spite of the explosion of virtual communities through social media and the limitations imposed by pandemics, architecture today still holds an active role in (literally) building our societies. Bearing in mind its acute politicisation in past years, Living Politics in the City looks at public space from the perspective of architecture and its effective contribution, not as a prop but as an actual catalyst for embodying politics. The essays gathered here span five continents, activating various disciplinary approaches to architecture and examining it in different contexts: from a Palestinian refugee camp to the most vibrant urban axis in Sao Paolo, from the numerous city squares around the world crowded with rebellious populations, to the proximal politics of housing in Australia. Contributors: Endriana Audisho (University of Technology Sydney), Maja Babic (Charles University ), Alexandra Biehler (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Marseille), Tracey Bowen (University of Toronto Mississauga), Etienne Delprat (Rennes 2 University), Claudia Faraone (IUAV Venice School of Architecture, ETICity), Caterina Frisone (Oxford Brookes University), Catherine Grout (ENSAPL Lille), Pavel Kunysz (University of Liège), Flavia Marcello (Swinburne University of Technology), Eric Le Coguiec (University of Liège), Tova Lubinsky (University of Technology Sydney), Giovanna Muzzi (IUAV Venice School of Architecture, ETICity), Can Onaner (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Bretagne), Shadi Saleh (KU Leuven), Frédéric Sotinel (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Bretagne), Karolina Wilczynska (Adam Mickiewicz University), Ian Woodcock (Swinburne University of Technology) This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Space is both a product and a prerequisite of social relations, it has the potential to block and encourage certain forms of encounter. In Common Space, activist and architect Stavros Stavrides calls for us to conceive of space-as-commons – first, to think beyond the notions of public and private space, and then to understand common space not only as space that is governed by all and remains open to all, but that explicitly expresses, encourages and exemplifies new forms of social relations and of life in common. Through a fascinating, global examination of social housing, self-built urban settlements, street trade and art, occupied space, liberated space and graffiti, Stavrides carefully shows how spaces for commoning are created. Moreover, he explores the connections between processes of spatial transformation and the formation of politicised subjects to reveal the hidden emancipatory potential of contemporary, metropolitan life.

The book explores the interconnections between processes of spatial transformation and processes of political subjectivation, focusing especially on socio-spatial experiences which reveal the potentialities inherent in contemporary metropolitan life. How often do we consider the availability of shared, public space in our daily lives? Governmental efforts in place-such as anti-homeless spikes, slanted bus benches, and timed sprinklers-are all designed to discourage use of already severely limited public areas. How we interact with space in a modern context, particularly in urban settings, can feel increasingly governed and blocked off from common everyday encounters. With Common Space, activist and architect Stavros Stavrides calls for a reconceiving of public and private space in the modern age. Stavrides appeals for a new understanding of common space not only as something that can be governed and open to all, but as an essential aspect of our world that expresses, encourages, and exemplifies new forms of social relations and shared experiences. He shows how these spaces are created, through a fascinating global examination of social housing, self-built urban settlements, street peddlers, and public art and graffiti. The first book to explicitly tackle the notion of the city as commons, Common Space, offers an insightful study into the links between space and social relations, revealing the hidden emancipatory potential within our urban worlds.