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Lean Logic is David Fleming's masterpiece, the product of more than thirty years' work and a testament to the creative brilliance of one of Britain's most important intellectuals. A dictionary unlike any other, it leads readers through Fleming's stimulating exploration of fields as diverse as culture, history, science, art, logic, ethics, myth, economics, and anthropology, being made up of four hundred and four engaging essay-entries covering topics such as Boredom, Community, Debt, Growth, Harmless Lunatics, Land, Lean Thinking, Nanotechnology, Play, Religion, Spirit, Trust, and Utopia. The threads running through every entry are Fleming's deft and original analysis of how our present market-based economy is destroying the very foundations--ecological, economic, and cultural-- on which it depends, and his core focus: a compelling, grounded vision for a cohesive society that might weather the consequences. A society that provides a satisfying, culturally-rich context for lives well lived, in an economy not reliant on the impossible promise of eternal economic growth. A society worth living in. Worth fighting for. Worth contributing to. The beauty of the dictionary format is that it allows Fleming to draw connections without detracting from his in-depth exploration of each topic. Each entry carries intriguing links to other entries, inviting the enchanted reader to break free of the imposed order of a conventional book, starting where she will and following the links in the order of her choosing. In combination with Fleming's refreshing writing style and good-natured humor, it also creates a book perfectly suited to dipping in and out. The decades Fleming spent honing his life's work are evident in the lightness and mastery with which Lean Logic draws on an incredible wealth of cultural and historical learning--from Whitman to Whitefield, Dickens to Daly, Kropotkin to Kafka, Keats to Kuhn, Oakeshott to Ostrom, Jung to Jensen, Machiavelli to Mumford, Mauss to Mandelbrot, Leopold to Lakatos, Polanyi to Putnam, Nietzsche to Næss, Keynes to Kumar, Scruton to Shiva, Thoreau to Toynbee, Rabelais to Rogers, Shakespeare to Schumacher, Locke to Lovelock, Homer to Homer-Dixon--in demonstrating that many of the principles it commends have a track-record of success long pre-dating our current society. Fleming acknowledges, with honesty, the challenges ahead, but rather than inducing despair, Lean Logic is rare in its ability to inspire optimism in the creativity and intelligence of humans to nurse our ecology back to health; to rediscover the importance of place and play, of reciprocity and resilience, and of community and culture. ------ Recognizing that Lean Logic's sheer size and unusual structure could be daunting, Fleming's long-time collaborator Shaun Chamberlin has also selected and edited one of the potential pathways through the dictionary to create a second, stand-alone volume, Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy. The content, rare insights, and uniquely enjoyable writing style remain Fleming's, but presented at a more accessible paperback-length and in conventional read-it-front-to-back format.
Throughout his distinguished and influential career, David Harvey has defined and redefined the relationship between politics, capitalism, and the social aspects of geographical theory. Laying out Harvey's position that geography could not remain objective in the face of urban poverty and associated ills, Social Justice and the City is perhaps the most widely cited work in the field. Harvey analyzes core issues in city planning and policy--employment and housing location, zoning, transport costs, concentrations of poverty--asking in each case about the relationship between social justice and space. How, for example, do built-in assumptions about planning reinforce existing distributions of income? Rather than leading him to liberal, technocratic solutions, Harvey's line of inquiry pushes him in the direction of a "revolutionary geography," one that transcends the structural limitations of existing approaches to space. Harvey's emphasis on rigorous thought and theoretical innovation gives the volume an enduring appeal. This is a book that raises big questions, and for that reason geographers and other social scientists regularly return to it.
Bringing together ideas from the fields of sociology, economics, human geography, ethics, political and communications theory, this book deals with some key subjects in urban design: the multidimensional effects of the spatial form of cities, ways of appropriating urban space, and the different material factors involved in the emergence of social life. It puts forward an innovative conceptual framework to reconsider some fundamental features of city-making as a social process: the place of cities in encounters and communications, in the randomness of events and in the repetition of activities that characterise societies. In doing so, it provides fresh analytical tools and theoretical insights to help advance our understanding of the networks of causalities, contingencies and contexts involved in practices of city-making. In a systematic attempt to bring urban analysis and research from the social sciences together, the book is organised around three vital yet relatively neglected dimensions in the social and material shaping of cities: (i) Cities as systems of encounter: an approach to urban segregation as segregated networks; (ii) Cities as systems of communication: a view of shared spaces as a means to association and social experience; (iii) Cities as systems of material interaction: explorations on urban form as an effect of interactivity, and interactivity as an effect of form. Visit the author’s website at: http://socialfabric.city/
Space, the City and Social Theory offers a clear and critical account of key approaches to cities and urban space within social theory and analysis. It explores the relation of the social and the spatial in the context of critical urban themes: community and anonymity; social difference and spatial divisions; politics and public space; gentrification and urban renewal; gender and sexuality; subjectivity and space; experience and everyday practice in the city. The text adopts an international and interdisciplinary approach, drawing on a range of debates on cities and urban life. It brings together classic perspectives in urban sociology and social theory with the analysis of contemporary urban problems and issues. Rather than viewing the urban simply as a backdrop for more general social processes, the discussion looks at how social and spatial relations shape different versions of the city: as a place of social interaction and of solitude; as a site of difference and segregation; as a space of politics and power; as a landscape of economic and cultural distinction; as a realm of everyday experience and freedom. Similarly, it examines how core social categories - such as class, culture, gender, sexuality and community - are shaped and reproduced in urban contexts. Linking debates in urban studies to wider concerns within social theory and analysis, this accessible text will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students in urban sociology, social and cultural geography, urban and cultural studies.
The Social Life Of Small Urban Spaces.
This book is the first coherent presentation of the latest research and practices concerned with how recent advances in mobile information and communication technology (ICT) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are utilized to enhance the value of the city and change the way that city planning and management are carried out. Its salient feature is the pursuit of the individual-oriented evaluative point of view regarding the city. This view considers the value of the city to be the total of visit-values individuals feel and appreciate when they visit the city. The visit-value is conceptualized as the intangible asset value of the attractiveness of the city that visitors form in their minds based on their experiences and activities in the city, transactions with city space, and communications with other people. Visitors to the city may well be quite heterogeneous individuals with different motives and preferences. Thus, to enhance the value of the city, quite different visit values of heterogeneous individuals should be enhanced simultaneously, which necessitates the use of ICT and IoT in living spaces. Based on this view, the city utilizing ICT and IoT to enhance the value of the city is called the social city. Whereas many other books deal with the impacts of the advances in mobile ICT on the city, they only discuss how these advances change the infrastructure of the city but do not discuss how these technological advances can be utilized to enhance the city’s value. This book first develops the concept of the social city based on an individual micro-behavioral approach. Then, it presents the latest studies on technological components of the social city, such as the human-sensing technology for estimating individual behavior, decision making, and mood; the visualizing technology of the thermal 3-dimensional environment of the city; and the social-sensing technology using social networking service (SNS) for measuring and creating an atmosphere of city space. Finally, it envisages the future of the social city.
Concern about rising crime rates, high levels of unemployment and anti-social behaviour of youth gangs within particular urban neighbourhoods has reinvigorated public and community debate into just what makes a functional neighbourhood. The nub of the debate is whether concentrating disadvantaged people together doubly compounds their disadvantage and leads to 'problem neighbourhoods'. This debate has prompted interest by governments in Australia and internationally in 'social mix policies', to disperse the most disadvantaged members of neighbourhoods and create new communities with a blend of residents with a variety of income levels across different housing tenures (public and private rental, home ownership). What is less well acknowledged is that interest in social mix is by no means new, as the concept has informed new town planning policy in Australia, Britain and the US since the post Second World War years. Social Mix and the City offers a critical appraisal of different ways that the concept of ‘social mix’ has been constructed historically in urban planning and housing policy, including linking to 'social inclusion'. It investigates why social mix policies re-emerge as a popular policy tool at certain times. It also challenges the contemporary consensus in housing and urban planning policies that social mix is an optimum planning tool – in particular notions about middle class role modelling to integrate problematic residents into more 'acceptable' social behaviours. Importantly, it identifies whether social mix matters or has any real effect from the viewpoint of those affected by the policies – residents where policies have been implemented.
The transformation of child care after welfare reform in New York City and the struggle against that transformation is a largely untold story. In the decade following welfare reform, despite increases in child care funding, there was little growth in New York's unionized, center-based child care system and no attempt to make this system more responsive to the needs of working mothers. As the city delivered child care services "on the cheap," relying on non-union home child care providers, welfare rights organizations, community legal clinics, child care advocates, low-income community groups, activist mothers, and labor unions organized to demand fair solutions to the child care crisis that addressed poor single mothers' need for quality, affordable child care as well as child care providers' need for decent work and pay. Social Reproduction and the City tells this story, linking welfare reform to feminist research and activism around the "crisis of care," social reproduction, and the neoliberal city. At a theoretical level, Simon Black's history of this era presents a feminist political economy of the urban welfare regime, applying a social reproduction lens to processes of urban neoliberalization and an urban lens to feminist analyses of welfare state restructuring and resistance. Feminist political economy and feminist welfare state scholarship have not focused on the urban as a scale of analysis, and critical approaches to urban neoliberalism often fail to address questions of social reproduction. To address these unexplored areas, Black unpacks the urban as a contested site of welfare state restructuring and examines the escalating crisis in social reproduction. He lays bare the aftermath of the welfare-to-work agenda of the Giuliani administration in New York City on child care and the resistance to policies that deepened race, class, and gender inequities.
In the post-war period, Berlin and Naples experienced a phase of profound changes, essentially influenced by external factors: the less rigid urban structure which had been ruined by World War II, resulting in severe changes in the social and economic structure, an uncritical reception and implementation of largely theoretical models of functionalism in urban planning, and in the design of the new public building interventions. On the one hand, between the 1940s and the 1980s, Berlin experienced a considerable loss in population, a political isolation and an urban splitting, as the urban planning institutions, deeply influenced by relevant politics, slowly and thoroughly changed the cityscape. On the other hand, Naples suffered from a new phase of immigration as well as from the parallel densification of the old suburbs and the physical expansion of the city limits without consistent and socially appropriate urban planning measures. This phase of change, so full of contrasts, coincided with the establishment of new democratic systems in the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy, and with the fundamental goal of socially adequate housing in both the West and the East. The research involved a series of historical analyses of the relationship between urban development and social housing for critical reflection and to allow an informed evaluation of the contemporary condition. In particular, it investigated housing settlements realised in Berlin and Naples in the first four decades of the post-war period, which corresponds to the period in which public housing was central in both political and urban planning terms. The book focuses on places of living, the city and the house. Consequently, it investigates the scale of the project and that of the intervention, the relationship between innovation and the cultural reception of urban phenomena and, again, between the stage of the project and the realisation and upkeep of the interventions, between democratic expectations and the adequacy of the administration system. These steps have a direct effect on the social identity that inspires, structures and transforms the planned and then built city, that continuous dialogue between form and content (the past) that occurs, in general, through progressive and mutual adaptations. In the selection of the case studies, we have favoured interventions on the “periphery,” which are those in which theoretical and aesthetic trends have best manifested themselves and in which planning and design cultures could develop most widely. However, the periphery does not necessarily coincide with the geographical edges of the cities: both in Berlin and in Naples, historical events, or the particular topography have naturally shifted the “peripheral” location along a radius that only ideally starts from the city centre and often extends to its inner fringes. Rather, from a sociological point of view, the same interventions generally generate the peripheral condition, that is, marginalisation or social division. This, as we shall see, can be traced both on the large scale of the city and inside the neighbourhood. The materials are arranged in the following way: the text is introduced by a graphic and synthetic presentation of the historical context in Berlin and Naples and the documentation of the twelve case studies. In the second chapter, Comparison, which was mostly developed as the first by the young scholars involved in the project, three theoretical issues highlighted during the seminars are better presented: The ability of the project to involve the social level; the experimentalism of the interventions, in particular in construction technology, social approach and democratic participation; the relationship between public and private in the phases of implementation and the upkeep of the programmes. The third chapter, In-Depth Analysis, includes the contributions of the scientists involved to give a better articulated historical and critical analysis of many of selected case studies and of the wider urban and social context. The closing editorial paper offers a brief overview focusing on a selection of the theoretical nodes that emerged from the comparison of the materials from a contemporary perspective. The publication is the outcome of the homonymous research programme fully funded by DAAD German Academic Exchange Service and runned in 2019 in cooperation between the Technische Universität of Berlin, Department of Architecture (Habitat Unit) with the Università della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli," Dipartimento di Architettura e Disegno Industriale in Aversa (Italy). In der Nachkriegszeit erlebten Berlin und Neapel eine Phase tiefgehender Veränderungen, die im Wesentlichen von externen Faktoren beeinflusst wurde: der aufgelockerten, infolge des Zweiten Weltkriegs ruinierten Stadtform, der starken Veränderung der sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Struktur, der unkritischen Rezeption und Implementierung von stark theoretisch geprägten Modellen des Funktionalismus in der Stadtplanung sowie in der Gestaltung der neuen öffentlichen Bauinterventionen. Auf der einen Seite erlebt Berlin zwischen den 40er und den 80er Jahren einen starken Bevölkerungsverlust, eine politische Isolierung und eine urbane Aufspaltung, indem eine stark politisch beeinflusste Stadtplanung das Stadtbild tief verändert. Auf der anderen Seite leidet Neapel unter einer neuen Einwanderungsphase sowie der parallelen Verdichtung der alten Vorstädte und der physischen Erweiterung der Stadtgrenze, ohne dass konsequente und sozial gemäße stadtplanerische Maßnahmen vorgenommen wurden. Diese kontrastreiche Umbruchsphase stimmt überein mit der Etablierung der neuen demokratischen Regierungssysteme in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland wie auch in Italien und damit mit dem für beide - und im Westen wie im Osten - grundlegenden Ziel des sozial gerechten Wohnens. Das Forschungsvorhaben beinhaltete eine Reihe von historischen Analysen der Beziehung zwischen Stadtentwicklung und sozialem Wohnungsbau zum Zweck der kritischen Reflexion und um eine fundierte Bewertung der jeweiligen zeitgenössischen Bedingungen zu ermöglichen. Insbesondere wurden Wohnsiedlungen untersucht, die in Berlin wie in Neapel in den ersten vier Jahrzehnten nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg errichtet wurden, d.h. in eben dem Zeitraum, in dem öffentlicher Wohnungsbau sowohl unter politischen wie auch unter stadtplanerischen Aspekten zentral war. Das Buch konzentriert sich auf Lebensräume, die Stadt und das Haus. Folglich untersucht es das Ausmaß des Projekts wie das der Intervention, die Beziehung zwischen Innovation und kultureller Rezeption städtischer Phänomene wie auch zwischen dem jeweiligen Stadium des Projekts und der Umsetzung und Aufrechterhaltung der Interventionen und schließlich zwischen den demokratischen Erwartungen und der Leistungsfähigkeit des Verwaltungssystems. Diese Schritte haben direkte Auswirkungen auf die soziale Identität, welche die zunächst geplante und dann gebaute Stadt inspiriert, strukturiert und transformiert, d.h. diesen ständigen Dialog zwischen Form und Inhalt (die Vergangenheit), der im Allgemeinen durch fortschreitende und gegenseitige Anpassungen abläuft. Bei der Auswahl der Fallstudien haben wir Interventionen in der "Perpherie" bevorzugt, da sie es sind, in denen sich theoretische und ästhetische Trends am deutlichsten abzeichnen und in denen sich Kulturen der Planung und des Designs am weitesten entwickeln könnten. Die Peripherie fällt jedoch nicht unbedingt zusammen mit den geografischen Rändern der Städte: sowohl in Berlin wie in Neapel haben historische Ereignisse oder auch die jeweilige Topografie naturgemäß die "periphere" Lage entlang einem Radius verschoben, der nur im Idealfall vom Stadtzentrum ausgeht und sich oft bis an seine Ränder erstreckt. Von einer soziologischen Perspektive aus ist es eher so, dass im Allgemeinen die gleichen Interventionen zu einer peripheren Situation führen. d.h. zu Marginalisierung oder sozialer Aufspaltung. Wie wir sehen werden, gilt dies sowohl im größeren Rahmen für die Stadt wie auch innerhalb eines Stadtviertels. Die Materialien sind folgendermaßen angeordnet: Der Text wird eingeführt durch eine grafische und zusammenfassende Präsentation der historischen Zusammenhänge in Berlin und Neapel und eine Dokumentation zu den zwölf Fallstudien. Im zweiten Kapitel – "Vergleich/Comparison" – , das ursprünglich als erstes Kapitel von den jüngeren Forschern, die am Projekt teilnahmen, entwickelt wurde, werden drei Fragen, die während der Seminare im Mittelpunkt standen, genauer vorgestellt: die Eignung des Projekts dafür, die soziale Ebene mit einzubeziehen; der experimentelle Charakter der Interventionen, insbesondere in der Bautechnologie, im sozialen Ansatz und in der demokratischen Teilhabe; die Beziehung zwischen öffentlichem und privatem Engagement in der Phase der Umsetzung wie der Aufrechterhaltung der Programme. Das dritte Kapitel – "Eingehende Analyse/In-Depth-Analyses" – besteht aus den Beiträgen der beteiligten Wissenschaftler, um so eine klarere historische und kritische Analyse von etlichen der ausgewählten Fallstudien und der weiterreichenden städtischen und sozialen Zusammenhänge zu gewährleisten. Der abschließende Kommentarteil bietet einen kurzen Überblick, der den Schwerpunkt auf eine Auswahl von theoretischen Verknüpfungen legt, die sich aus dem Vergleich der Materialien aus zeitgenössischen Perspektive ergeben. Die Veröffentlichung ist das Ergebnis des gleichnamigen Forschungsprogramms, das vollständig vom DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) finanziert wurde und 2019 in einer Zusammenarbeit der Architektur-Fakultät (Habitat Unit) der Technischen Universität Berlin mit dem Dipartmento di Architettura e Disegno Industriale der Università della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" in Aversa (Italien) durchgeführt wurde. Nel secondo dopoguerra Berlino e Napoli vivono una fase di profondo cambiamento che è condizionato in maniera preponderante da fattori esterni: la parziale disgregazione della forma urbana causata dei bombardamenti bellici, il cambiamento della struttura socio-economica, il recepimento delle teorie funzionaliste nella pianificazione urbana e nella progettazione dei nuovi interventi di edilizia residenziale pubblica. Per un verso, tra gli anni quaranta e gli anni ottanta, Berlino rileva una pesante contrazione demografica, l'isolamento politico, la separazione interna del Muro, gli effetti di una pianificazione urbana fortemente influenzata dal sdoppiato piano politico che deriva dalla fondazione nel 1949 dei due stati tedeschi, la GDR e la DDR. Per altro verso, Napoli osserva una nuova fase di immigrazione che si aggiunge alla naturale crescita demografica del primo dopoguerra, lo sviluppo urbano dei sobborghi e dei principali centri dell’entroterra costiero, l'espansione fisica ma non amministrativa dei confini della città, l’inadeguatezza ed il costante ritardo del piano amministrativo-urbanistico nella gestione dei fenomeni sociali ed urbani. Si tratta in pratica di una fase carica di contrasti che coincide con l'instaurazione delle nuove repubbliche liberali in Germania ed Italia, e con la definitiva affermazione della questione abitativa e della residenza popolare che assurge, in ambito socialista, al rango di elemento funzionale alla stessa costruzione statale. Lo studio indaga la relazione tra sviluppo urbano ed edilizia residenziale pubblica e si propone come strumento per la riflessione critica e per la valutazione informata della condizione contemporanea. Le indagini e le valutazioni storiche che esso raccoglie si concentrano sugli interventi realizzati a Berlino e a Napoli nei primi quarant’anni del dopoguerra, ovvero nel periodo in cui la questione abitativa diviene urgente e centrale per vari ordini di motivi sia in termini politici che urbanistici. Lo sguardo si concentra sui luoghi dell'abitare, la città e la casa; indaga e confronta la scala teorica e quella reale, il rapporto tra innovazione e recezione culturale; confronta i piani del progetto, della costruzione e della successiva manutenzione degli interventi residenziali, tra le aspettative democratiche e l'adeguatezza del sistema amministrativo nel gestirli. Si tratta di passaggi che hanno un effetto diretto sull'identità sociale che, di risposta, ispira e struttura la nuova città attraverso un dialogo tra forma e contenuto (il passato) che procede per progressivi e reciproci adattamenti. Nella selezione dei casi studio sono stati privilegiati interventi di "periferia", ovvero quelli in cui le culture della pianificazione e del progetto, e le tendenze teoriche ed estetiche si sono potute manifestare nella maniera più completa. Come si vedrà, tuttavia, la periferia non coincide necessariamente con i margini geografici delle città: sia a Berlino che a Napoli gli eventi storici o la particolare topografia hanno dislocato la condizione "periferica" lungo un raggio che solo idealmente conduce dal centro della città. Da un punto di vista sociologico, e per la coincidenza di diversi fattori, inoltre, gli stessi interventi residenziali generano al loro interno la condizione periferica che si manifesta generalmente in degrado degli spazi comuni, mancanza di prossimità, emarginazione sociale. I materiali del testo sono organizzati in tre parti: nel primo capitolo Documentation si introduce al contesto storico, amministrativo ed urbanistico e si presentano schematicamente e secondo un criterio uniforme i dodici casi studio selezionati; nel secondo capitolo Comparison, che, come il primo, è stato redatto dai giovani ricercatori coinvolti nel progetto di ricerca, vengono meglio presentate tre questioni teoriche emerse nel corso dei laboratori: la capacità del progetto di coinvolgere il piano sociale; lo sperimentalismo degli interventi, in particolare per tecnologia costruttiva, approccio sociale e partecipazione democratica; il rapporto tra il piano amministrativo-pubblico ed il piano civico-privato nelle fasi di realizzazione e mantenimento dei programmi residenziali. Il terzo capitolo, In-Depth-Analysis, raccoglie i contributi degli studiosi coinvolti per fornire un'analisi storica e critica articolata dei casi di studio selezionati e del più ampio contesto urbano e sociale. Infine, le conclusioni raccolgono e presentano i principali nodi teorici emersi nel corso della ricerca in una prospettiva aperta alla condizione contemporanea. La pubblicazione restituisce e meglio sviluppa sul piano documentale e critico i materiali raccolti nel corso dei due laboratori tenuti nel 2019 presso la Technische Universität di Berlino, Dipartimento di Urbanistica e Sviluppo urbano sostenibile “Habitat Unit,” e l’Università della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli," Dipartimento di Architettura e Disegno Industriale di Aversa, nell’ambito dell’omonimo progetto di ricerca finanziato dal DAAD (Servizio Tedesco per lo Scambio Accademico).