This compelling new textbook scrutinizes urban politics through a theoretical and empirical lens to provide readers with a clear understanding of the relationship between political, spatial and economic issues on the urban environment. Taking a truly global analysis, the book uses international comparative case studies from cities across the world including London, Beijing, Austin, and Vancouver. Engaging in style and thorough in its coverage of the key issues, this book draws on ideas and theories from human geography, politics, sociology, economics, and development.

"Ugo Rossi and Alberto Vanolo take us on a journey around the ascent and crisis of urban liberalism, providing a clear and highly readable analysis of key issues and debates in the field of urban political geography." - Ola Söderström, Université de Neuchâtel "It is in the city trenches that the crises, contradictions, and counterpolitics of neoliberalization are finding some of their most vivid and consequential expressions, where new worlds are being imagined, made, and unmade. This has yet to be mapped. But in Urban Political Geographies, we have a timely and astute field guide to this unfolding process." - Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia How can we think about the urban within a political and geographical framework? This compelling textbook scrutinizes urban politics through a theoretical and empirical lens to provide readers with a clear understanding of the relationship between political, spatial and economic issues relating to the urban environment. Taking a truly global analysis, the book uses international comparative case studies from cities across the world including, London, Beijing, Austin and Vancouver. It draws on ideas and theories from human geography, politics, sociology, economics and development. Engaging in style and thorough in its coverage of the key issues, the book is essential reading for students and scholars looking for a book that deals with contemporary urban debates from a political, economic and geographical perspective.

With a current population inflow into cities of 200,000 people per day, UN Habitat expects that up to 75% of the global population will live in cities by 2050. Influenced by forces of globalization and global change, cities and urban life are transforming rapidly, impacting human welfare, economic development and urban-regional landscapes. This poses new challenges to urban governance, while emerging city networks, advancing geo-technologies and increasing production of continuous data streams require governance actors to re-think and re-work conventional work processes and practices. This book has been written to enhance our understanding of how governance can contribute to the development of just and resilient cities in a context of rapid urban transformations. It examines current governance patterns from a geographical and inclusive development perspective, emphasizing the importance of place, space, scale and human-environment interactions, and paying attention to contemporary processes of participation, networking, and spatialized digitization. The challenge we are facing is to turn future cities into inclusive cities that are diverse but just and within their ecological limits. We believe that the state-of-the-art overview of topical discussions on governance theories, instruments, methods and practices presented in this book provides a basis for understanding and analyzing these challenges.

This book examines the political and economic trajectories of cities following the 2008 financial crisis. The authors claim that in this era—which they dub "late neoliberalism"—urban spaces, institutions, subjectivities, and organizational forms are undergoing processes of radical transformation and recomposition. The volume deftly argues that the urban political horizon of late neoliberalism is ambivalent; marked by many progressive mobilizations for equality and justice, but also by regressive forces of austerity, exploitation, and domination.

Brings political geography to life—explores key concepts, critical debates, and contemporary research in the field. Political geography is the study of how power struggles both shape and are shaped by the places in which they occur—the spatial nature of political power. Political Geography: A Critical Introduction helps students understand how power is related to space, place, and territory, illustrating how everyday life and the world of global conflict and nation-states are inextricably intertwined. This timely, engaging textbook weaves critical, postcolonial, and feminist narratives throughout its exploration of key concepts in the discipline. Accessible to students new to the field, this text offers critical approaches to political geography—including questions of gender, sexuality, race, and difference—and explains central political concepts such as citizenship, security, and territory in a geographic context. Case studies incorporate methodologies that illustrate how political geographers perform research, enabling students to develop a well-rounded critical approach rather than merely focusing on results. Chapters cover topics including the role of nationalism in shaping allegiances, the spatial aspects of social movements and urban politics, the relationship between international relations and security, the effects of non-human actors in politics, and more. Global in scope, this book: Highlights a diverse range of globally-oriented issues, such as global inequality, that demonstrate the need for critical political geography Demonstrates how critiques of political geography intersect with decolonial, feminist, and queer movements Covers the Eurocentric origins of many of the discipline’s key concepts Integrates advances in political geography theory and firsthand accounts of innovative research from rising scholars in the field Explores both intimate stories from everyday life and abstract concepts central to contemporary political geography Political Geography: A Critical Introduction is an ideal resource for students in political and feminist geography, as well as graduate students and researchers seeking an overview of the discipline.

Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene: Interruptions and Possibilities centres on how to organize anew the articulation between emancipatory theory and political activism. Across its theoretical and empirical chapters, written by leading scholars from anthropology, geography, urban studies, and political science, the book explores new political possibilities that are opening up in an age marked by proliferating contestations, sharpening socio-ecological inequalities, and planetary processes of urbanization and environmental change. A deepened conversation between urban environmental studies and political theory is mobilized to chart a radically new direction for the field of urban political ecology and cognate disciplines: What could emancipatory politics be about in our time? What does a return of the political under the aegis of equality and freedom signal today in theory and in practice? How do political movements emerge that could re-invent equality and freedom as actually existing socio-ecological practices? The hope is to contribute discussions that can expand and rearrange critical environmental studies to remain relevant in a time of deepening depoliticization and the rise of post-truth politics. Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene will be of interest to postgraduates, established scholars, and upper level undergraduates from any discipline or field with an interest in the interface between the urban, the environment, and the political, including: geography, urban studies, environmental studies, and political science.

A prizewinning political scientist traces the origins of urban-rural political conflict and shows how geography shapes elections in America and beyond Why is it so much easier for the Democratic Party to win the national popular vote than to build and maintain a majority in Congress? Why can Democrats sweep statewide offices in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan yet fail to take control of the same states' legislatures? Many place exclusive blame on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. But as political scientist Jonathan A. Rodden demonstrates in Why Cities Lose, the left's electoral challenges have deeper roots in economic and political geography. In the late nineteenth century, support for the left began to cluster in cities among the industrial working class. Today, left-wing parties have become coalitions of diverse urban interest groups, from racial minorities to the creative class. These parties win big in urban districts but struggle to capture the suburban and rural seats necessary for legislative majorities. A bold new interpretation of today's urban-rural political conflict, Why Cities Lose also points to electoral reforms that could address the left's under-representation while reducing urban-rural polarization.