We live in the ‘urban century’. Cities all over the world – in both developing and developed countries – display complex evolutionary patterns. Urban Empires charts the backgrounds, mechanisms, drivers, and consequences of these radical changes in our contemporary systems from a global perspective and analyses the dominant position of modern cities in the ‘New Urban World’. This volume views the drastic change cities have undergone internationally through a broad perspective and considers their emerging roles in our global network society. Chapters from renowned scholars provide advanced analytical contributions, scaling applied and theoretical perspectives on the competitive profile of urban agglomerations in a globalizing world. Together, the volume traces and investigates the economic and political drivers of network cities in a global context and explores the challenges over governance that are presented by mega-cities. It also identifies and maps out the new geography of the emergent ‘urban century’. With contributions from well-known and influential scholars from around the world, Urban Empires serves as a touchstone for students and researchers keen to explore the scientific and policy needs of cities as they become our age’s global power centers.

In this book Harvie M. Conn and Manuel Ortiz address the vital work of the urban church as they trace the history of the city around the world, examine the biblical basis for urban mission, unpack the multifaceted identity of the city and discuss particular issues and needs of urban leadership.

This book explores the various ways imperial rule constituted and shaped the cities of Eastern Europe until the First World War in the Tsarist, Habsburg, and Ottoman empires. In these three empires, the cities served as hubs of imperial rule: their institutions and infrastructures enabled the diffusion of power within the empires while they also served as the stages where the empire was displayed in monumental architecture and public rituals. To this day, many cities possess a distinctively imperial legacy in the form of material remnants, groups of inhabitants, or memories that shape the perceptions of in- and outsiders. The contributions to this volume address in detail the imperial entanglements of a dozen cities from a long-term perspective reaching back to the eighteenth century. They analyze the imperial capitals as well as smaller cities in the periphery. All of them are "imperial cities" in the sense that they possess traces of imperial rule. By comparing the three empires of Eastern Europe this volume seeks to establish commonalities in this particular geography and highlight trans-imperial exchanges and entanglements. This volume is essential reading to students and scholars alike interested in imperial and colonial history, urban history and European history.

Providing a succinct overview of historical, present and future perspectives of cities and urbanism, this discerning book examines how the 21st century, regarded as the age of cities, is associated with the current crisis of democracy.

"Originally published in the U.K. in 2014 under the title Ten cities that made an empire, by Allen Lane, London."

This wide-ranging and state-of-the-art new edition reviews the classic contributions to understanding modern and post-modern cities, and is comprehensively updated to take account of the issues and concepts at stake in 21st century urban theory.