Reading Development

Random readings on society, politics and change – Jorge Carrillo

City-to-City Cooperation and the Promise of a Democratic “Right to the City”

This paper draws on the example of partnerships between Brazilian and Mozambican cities to critique attempts to democratise urban governance and development through city-to-city cooperation. As an expression of the … Continue reading →

Monday, 17 December 2018 · Leave a comment

Advantage or paradox: The challenge for children and young people of growing up urban

The report, Advantage or Paradox: The Challenge for children and young people growing up urban reveals that not all children in cities benefit from the so-called ‘urban advantage’ – the … Continue reading →

Sunday, 2 December 2018 · Leave a comment

Cities and the political imagination

How can we recognize the political in the city? How might urban scholars engage with forms of urban politics outside of established sites of research such as those associated with … Continue reading →

Sunday, 18 November 2018 · Leave a comment

In Search of a Decolonial Urban Transformation

“We ask whether the WBGU report Humanity on the Move, as a major catalyst for urban sustainability science and agency, reproduces ways of thinking that could ultimately contradict the idea of … Continue reading →

Wednesday, 7 November 2018 · Leave a comment

Cities Alive: Water for People

Cities Alive: Water for People presents an economic pathway of addressing the challenges of population growth and climate change in our cities.  To move towards a more sustainable future, it is … Continue reading →

Thursday, 27 September 2018 · Leave a comment

Mapping Society (UCL free book)

From a rare map of yellow fever in eighteenth-century New York, to Charles Booth’s famous maps of poverty in nineteenth-century London, an Italian racial zoning map of early twentieth century … Continue reading →

Monday, 24 September 2018 · Leave a comment

Induced Demand – Linking roads and increased traffic

As the urbanist aphorism goes: Widening roads to reduce congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity. Yet nearly all freeway expansions and new highways are sold to the … Continue reading →

Tuesday, 11 September 2018 · Leave a comment

On the Ways of Knowing and Understanding Informality

In the mainstream international development discourse, one often finds a general dualistic outlook in classifying the concept of (urban) informality, seen to be strikingly different from the formal, regulated economic … Continue reading →

Wednesday, 22 August 2018 · Leave a comment

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 →

Sunday, 12 August 2018 · Leave a comment