The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality
Broadly defined as ‘ways of getting things done’, these invisible yet powerful informal practices tend to escape articulation in official discourse. They include emotion-driven exchanges of gifts or favours and … Continue reading
Local Governments Are Changing the World
Innovative governance is happening; governments are increasingly willing to grant autonomy for economic growth. Combine that with the profits that result from building cities; land values in Chicago, for example, … Continue reading
Informal economies around the world
This paper aims to present a comprehensive survey of the literature on the economics of informality. First, we focus on studies that aim to provide measures of informality using different … Continue reading
Beyond neoliberalism: resilience, the new art of governing complexity
David Chandler – Resilience, as a framework informing governance, relies on an ontology of emergent complexity. This article analyses how complexity operates not only as a critique of liberal modes of … Continue reading
Can smart cities be equitable?
City planners have sometimes been accused of promoting digital conveniences that favor the rich and exclude the poor. But as cities around the world are already demonstrating, it is possible … Continue reading
What Can ‘Disruptive Urban Technologies’ Tell Us about Power, Visibility and the Right to the City?
If urban scholars are to go beyond an approach that addresses the creation of the technological city as a slash-and-burn approach, aiming to radically reorder the social in the mode … Continue reading
Know Your City: Slum Dwellers Count
In February 2018, Slum Dwellers International (SDI) launched a landmark publication titled “Know Your City: Slum Dwellers Count,” showcasing the extraordinary contribution of the Know Your City (KYC) campaign to … Continue reading
The city politics of an urban age: urban resilience conceptualisations and policies
Around the globe, cities seek to improve their resilience to face the stresses and shocks that are expected from global climate change and other threats. In implementing urban resilience policies, … Continue reading
Future cities: renarrating human agency
The media coverage of Hurricane Harvey’s impact on the city of Houston in August 2017 reveals an ‘Anthropocenic’ sensibility, which tends to deny our ability to solve pressing environmental and … Continue reading
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