This book explores relationships between war, displacement and city-making. Focusing on people seeking refuge in Somali cities after being forced to migrate by violence, environmental shocks or economic pressures, it highlights how these populations are actively transforming urban space. Using first-hand testimonies and participatory photography by urban in-migrants, the book documents and analyses the micropolitics of urban camp management, evictions and gentrification, and the networked labour of displaced populations that underpins growing urban economies. Central throughout is a critical analysis of how the discursive figure of the ‘internally displaced person’ is co-produced by various actors. The book argues that this label exerts significant power in structuring socio-economic inequalities and the politics of group belonging within different Somali cities connected through protracted histories of conflict-related migration.

This book explores relationships between war, displacement and city-making. Focusing on people seeking refuge in Somali cities after being forced to migrate by violence, environmental shocks or economic pressures, it highlights how these populations are actively transforming urban space. Using first-hand testimonies and participatory photography by urban in-migrants, the book documents and analyses the micropolitics of urban camp management, evictions and gentrification, and the networked labour of displaced populations that underpins growing urban economies. Central throughout is a critical analysis of how the discursive figure of the ‘internally displaced person’ is co-produced by various actors. The book argues that this label exerts significant power in structuring socio-economic inequalities and the politics of group belonging within different Somali cities connected through protracted histories of conflict-related migration.

This book advances the reflexion into how temporary urbanism is shaping cities across the world. Temporary urbanism has become a core concept in urban development, and its application is increasingly crossing the borders of both the North and the Global South. There is a need to reflect upon the diverse ways of understanding and implementing the temporary in the production of space internationally and discuss what this means, for both research and practice. Divided into two sections, the book compiles and reflects upon the various attempts to reframe and reconceptualise temporary urbanism. The first section focuses on reframing and reconceptualising temporary urbanisms. It develops the argument that temporary urbanism allows a reinterrogation of the role of temporalities and non-permanence into the place-making process and hence in the production and reproduction of cities, including the adaptability of existing spaces and production of new spaces. While drawing upon different theoretical and conceptual framings (permeability, assemblage, rhythms, waiting, ...), authors bring insights from various case studies: the Dublin Biennial (Ireland), temporary uses in Geneva (Switzerland), temporary urban settlements in sub-Saharan Africa, refugees’ camp in Beirut (Lebanon) and political protests in Skopje (Republic of Macedonia). The second section looks at unwrapping the complexity and diversity of temporary urbanisms. It aims at securing a better understanding of the complexity and diversity of temporary urbanism, including a dialogue between various experiences both in the Global North and in the Global South. It looks at the implications of temporary urbanism in the delivery of planning and considers how and by whom cities are governed and transformed. Again, a range of examples are mobilised by contributors spanning from temporary uses and projects in London (UK), Santiago (Chile), Paris (France), Vancouver (Canada), Barcelona (Spain), Budapest (Hungary), Beijing (China), Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Milwaukee (USA). This book will be of interests to all researchers, practitioners, and students who want to gain a more thorough understanding of the topic of temporary urbanism, compare its diversity and similarities across different contexts, and reflect on the wider implications of temporary urbanisms for urban transformations.

Maybe the Global Village metaphor has never been more accurate than it is today, where societies join forces in the fight against the COVID 19 pandemic, in a global coordinated effort, possibly never tested before in the known history of Humankind. Although we are sure that in the past some other shared demands have united the different peoples of the world, this has never been so strongly necessary, mainly in what the global scientific community is concerned. This is a fight for the survival of a society. However, we should not lose sight of what we are fighting for. We fight together for people. Not just for the abstract value of Human life, but for life in society as a whole, including its moral and ethical aspects. The topics of this book are based on this claim, on what makes it possible. We do not build our lives in a vacuum, or in distant Invisible Cities, but through a higher value, which represents physical life in society: the City, built by the discipline of Urbanism. This book is a spin-off of the International Research Seminar on Urbanism_SIIU2020. Inspired by the contents of twelve research seminars, a group of researchers from the universities of Barcelona, Lisbon and São Paulo discuss the contemporary agenda of research in Urbanism. Following the conference, a selection of 35 original double-blind peer-reviewed research papers were brought together with different perspectives about such an agenda.

This book explores the interconnections between urbanization and capitalism to examine the current condition of cities due to capitalism. It brings together interdisciplinary insights from leading academics, activists and researchers to envision progressive, anti-capitalist changes for the future of cities. The exploitative nature of capitalist urbanization, as seen in the manifestation of modern cities, has threatened and affected life on Earth in unprecedented ways. This book unravels these threats to ecosystems and biodiversity and addresses the widening gap between the rich and the poor. It considers the future impacts of the capitalist urbanization on the planet and the generations to come and offers directions to imagine and build de-capitalised and de-urbanised cities to promote environmental sustainability. Written in lucid style, the chapters in the book illustrate the current situation of capitalist urbanization and expose how it exploits and consumes the planet. It also looks at alternative habitat practices of building autonomous and ecological human settlements, and how these can lead to a transformation of capitalist urbanization. The book also includes current debates on COVID-19 pandemic to consider post-pandemic challenges in envisioning a de-capitalised, eco-friendly society in the immediate future. It will be useful for academics and professionals in the fields of sociology, urban planning and design and urban studies.

This book deals with slums as a specific question and a central focus in urban planning. It radically reverses the official version of the history of world cities as narrated during decades: slums are not at the margin of the contemporary process of urbanization; they are an integral part of it. Taking slums as its central focus and regarding them as symptomatic of the ongoing transformations of the city, the book moves to the very heart of the problem in urban planning. The book presents 16 case studies that form the basis for a theory of the slum and a concrete development manual for the slum. The interdisciplinary approach to analysing slums presented in this volume enables researchers to look at social and economic dimensions as well as at the constructive and spatial aspects of slums. Both at the scientific and the pedagogical level, it allows one to recognize the efforts of the slum’s residents, key players in the past, and present development of their neighborhoods, and to challenge public and private stakeholders on priorities decided in urban planning, and their mismatches when compared to the findings of experts and the demands of users. Whether one is a planner, an architect, a developer or simply an inhabitant of an emerging city, the presence of slums in one’s environment – at the same time central and nonetheless incongruous – makes a person ask questions. Today, it is out of the question to be satisfied with the assumption of the marginality of slums, or of the incongruous nature of their existence. Slums are now fully part of the urban landscape, contributing to the identity and the urbanism of cities and their stakeholders.

After demolishing the myth of the rock star architect with his book Against Architecture, Franco La Cecla now explores the decisive challenges that cities are going to have to confront in the near future. Urban planning and development has become increasingly inadequate in response to the daily realities of life in our cities. Human, economic, ethnic, and environmental factors are systematically overlooked in city planning and housing development, and anachronistic, sterile, and formalistic architecture almost invariably prevails. Meanwhile, our cities grow out of internal impulses, not only in slums and favelas but through the pressing needs for public spaces which have sprung forth in great events and movements such as Istanbul’s Gezi Park and Occupy Wall Street. Never more than today has democracy played itself out in public spaces, sidewalks, and streets. Urban planners and developers, however, are still prisoners of an obsolete vision of passivity which betrays actual city needs and demands. A new urban science is required which can, first of all, guarantee a civil, dignified life for all—urban development which ensures the right to a humane mode of daily living, which has been and still is completely ignored. “Accustomed as we are to thinking that changes take place online or on a global scale, we sense that they are not made of human bodies in urban spaces and that the mere presence in the square of people claiming their right to the city is a political fact, explosive in nature.” —Franco La Cecla (from Against Urbanism)