This Element offers seven propositions toward a theory of 'Our Urban Planet' that is useful to global urban historians. I argue that historians have much to offer to theorists particularly those involved in debates over planetary urbanization theory and the Anthropocene. We must enlarge our concept of 'urban' to include spaces that make cities possible and that cities make possible and become comfortable with longer temporal frames that nest global urban history within Earth Time. Above all we need to add the crucial dimension of power, redefining cities as spaces that humans produce to amplify harvests of geo-solar energy and deploy human power within space and time. The element uses insights from 'deep history' to set the stage for a 'theory by verb' elaborating the many paradoxes of humans' 6,000-year gamble with the Urban Condition and explaining cities' own intrinsic capacity to outrun their own theorizability.

This Element offers seven propositions toward a theory of 'Our Urban Planet' that is useful to global urban historians. I argue that historians have much to offer to theorists particularly those involved in debates over planetary urbanization theory and the Anthropocene. We must enlarge our concept of 'urban' to include spaces that make cities possible and that cities make possible and become comfortable with longer temporal frames that nest global urban history within Earth Time. Above all we need to add the crucial dimension of power, redefining cities as spaces that humans produce to amplify harvests of geo-solar energy and deploy human power within space and time. The element uses insights from 'deep history' to set the stage for a 'theory by verb' elaborating the many paradoxes of humans' 6,000-year gamble with the Urban Condition and explaining cities' own intrinsic capacity to outrun their own theorizability.

A panoramic study of our Urban Planet that takes readers on a six-continent, six-millennia tour of the world's cities.

Capitalist private property in land and buildings – real estate – is the ground of modern cities, materially, politically, and economically. It is foundational to their development and core to much theoretical work on the urban environment. It is also a central, pressing matter of political contestation in contemporary cities. Yet it remains largely without a history. This Element examines the modern city as a propertied space, defining real estate as a technology of (dis)possession and using it to move across scales of analysis, from the local spatiality of particular built spaces to the networks of legal, political, and economic imperatives that constitute property and operate at national and international levels. This combination of territorial embeddedness with more wide-ranging institutional relationships charts a route to an urban history that allows the city to speak as a global agent and artefact without dispensing with the role of states and local circumstance.

This is a biography of Earthopolis, the only Urban Planet we know of. It is a history of how cities gave humans immense power over Earth, for good and for ill. Carl Nightingale takes readers on a sweeping six-continent, six-millennia tour of the world's cities, culminating in the last 250 years, when we vastly accelerated our planetary realms of action, habitat, and impact, courting dangerous new consequences and opening prospects for new hope. In Earthopolis we peek into our cities' homes, neighborhoods, streets, shops, eating houses, squares, marketplaces, religious sites, schools, universities, offices, monuments, docklands, and airports to discover connections between small spaces and the largest things we have built. The book exposes the Urban Planet's deep inequalities of power, wealth, access to knowledge, class, race, gender, sexuality, religion and nation. It asks us to draw on the most just and democratic moments of Earthopolis's past to rescue its future.

Global urbanization promises better services, stronger economies, and more connections; it also carries risks and unforeseeable consequences. To deepen our understanding of this complex process and its importance for global sustainability, we need to build interdisciplinary knowledge around a systems approach. Urban Planet takes an integrative look at our urban environment, bringing together scholars from a diverse range of disciplines: from sociology and political science to evolutionary biology, geography, economics and engineering. It includes the perspectives of often neglected voices: architects, journalists, artists and activists. The book provides a much needed cross-scale perspective, connecting challenges and solutions on a local scale with drivers and policy frameworks on a regional and global scale. The authors argue that to overcome the major challenges we are facing, we must embark on a large-scale reinvention of how we live together, grounded in inclusiveness and sustainability. This title is also available Open Access.

This is a biography of Earthopolis, the only Urban Planet we know of. It is a history of how cities gave humans immense power over Earth, for good and for ill. Carl Nightingale takes readers on a sweeping six-continent, six-millennia tour of the world's cities, culminating in the last 250 years, when we vastly accelerated our planetary realms of action, habitat, and impact, courting dangerous new consequences and opening prospects for new hope. In Earthopolis we peek into our cities' homes, neighborhoods, streets, shops, eating houses, squares, marketplaces, religious sites, schools, universities, offices, monuments, docklands, and airports to discover connections between small spaces and the largest things we have built. The book exposes the Urban Planet's deep inequalities of power, wealth, access to knowledge, class, race, gender, sexuality, religion and nation. It asks us to draw on the most just and democratic moments of Earthopolis's past to rescue its future.