African urbanisation at the confluence of informality and climate change
(Temporary open access) Africa contributes the least to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it faces climate change’s harshest consequences. Ramifications of climate change pose daunting multi-scalar urban challenges, specifically because … Continue reading
Invisible Labor: Precarity, Ethnic Division, and Transformative Representation in Landscape Architecture Work
[Behind paywall] For designers concerned with social and spatial justice, it is necessary to expand the context of landscape work beyond a site’s physical and historic narratives to include the … Continue reading
Gentrification through the ages – A long-term perspective on urban displacement, social transformation and resistance
Gentrification is one of the most striking urban developments of our time, radically impacting residential, consumption and investment patterns, and urban culture more broadly. Commonly explained as the transformation of … Continue reading
Writing Across Contexts: Urban Informality and the State in Guinea-Bissau, Estonia, and Germany
Urban research has long related informality to a lack of state capacity or a failure of institutions. This assumption not only fails to account for the heterogeneous institutional relations in … Continue reading
Vertical informality: The case of Kufr Aqab in East Jerusalem
This paper explores the phenomenon of vertical informality, an under-studied form of informal housing at large scale, and the role of developers within vertical informality. We investigate the case of … Continue reading
Cities and the SDGs: Realities and possibilities of local engagement in global frameworks
City action is critical to achieving global visions for sustainability such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, SDG ‘localisation’ is complex procedure, with divergent outcomes depending on context … Continue reading
Urban informality, politics and power in Egypt
“The Egyptian military regime of Abd al-Fattah el-Sisi has announced as part of its Vision 2030 its intention to eliminate informal urban areas. The regime has identified these areas – … Continue reading
Southern Theory without a North: City Conceptualization as the Theoretical Metropolis
There have been calls to broaden urban theory to incorporate learnings from the Southern or ordinary cities (periphery). These calls are often placed as a counter to the hegemony of … Continue reading
Reading Development 