Research

Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia

Eds. Chen, Yi-Ling, Shin, Hyun Bang (Palgrave Macmillan US, 2019)

Considering Asian cities ranging from Taipei, Hong Kong and Bangkok to Hanoi, Nanjing and Seoul, this collection discusses the socio-political processes of how neoliberalization entwines with local political economies and legacies of ‘developmental’ or ‘socialist’ statism to produce urban contestations centered on housing. The book takes housing as a key entry point, given its prime position in the making of social and economic policies as well as the political legitimacy of Asian states.

Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Environment: Further Developments and Policy Use

Giles Atkinson, Nils Axel Braathen, Ben Groom and Susana Mourato (OECD Publishing, 2018)

This book explores recent developments in environmental cost-benefit analysis (CBA). This is defined as the application of CBA to projects or policies that have the deliberate aim of environmental improvement or are actions that affect, in some way, the natural environment as an indirect consequence. It builds on the previous OECD book by David Pearce et al. (2006), which took as its starting point that a number of developments in CBA, taken together, altered the way in which many economists would argue CBA should be carried out and that this was particularly so in the context of policies and projects with significant environmental impacts.

Anti-Gentrification: What is to be Done

Ed. Hyun Bang Shin (Dongnyok, 2017) 

In this volume, the editor brings together activists, artists, professionals and academics, who have been at the forefront of fighting gentrification in South Korea in recent years. Chapters visit key issues that are pertinent to the understanding of how gentrification unfolds in South Korea’s uneven geography, and what measures can be envisaged to fight gentrification at both micro and macro scales.

Robustness Tests for Quantitative Research

Eric Neumayer and Thomas Plümper (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

The uncertainty that researchers face in specifying their estimation model threatens the validity of their inferences. In regression analyses of observational data, the 'true model' remains unknown, and researchers face a choice between plausible alternative specifications. Robustness testing allows researchers to explore the stability of their main estimates to plausible variations in model specifications. This highly accessible book presents the logic of robustness testing, provides an operational definition of robustness that can be applied in all quantitative research, and introduces readers to diverse types of robustness tests.

Art and the City

Ed. Jason Luger and Julie Ren (Routledge, 2017) 

This book presents a global perspective on the relationship between art and the city. International and leading scholars and artists themselves present critical theory and practice of contemporary art as a politicised force. It extends thinking on contemporary arts practices in the urban and political context of protest and social resilience and offers the prism of a ‘critical artscape’ in which to view the urgent interaction of arts and the urban politic. 

The Economics of Land Markets and their Regulation

Ed. Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber (Edward Elgar, 2017) 

This important volume brings together seminal papers investigating the framework upon which the economic analysis of land markets is based, stretching from the earliest insights of the founding fathers to current debates and research. Recent work on the process and implications of 'land value capitalisation' and land use regulation is well represented, for due to capitalisation, land is responsible for far more of the distribution of real incomes than is widely recognised.

Endangered City: The Politics of Security and Risk in Bogotá

Austin Zeiderman (Duke University Press, 2016)

Security and risk have become central to how cities are planned, built, governed, and inhabited in the twenty-first century. In Endangered City, Austin Zeiderman focuses on this new political imperative to govern the present in anticipation of future harm. Through ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Bogotá, Colombia, he examines how state actors work to protect the lives of poor and vulnerable citizens from a range of threats, including environmental hazards and urban violence.  

Cities, slums and gender in the global south: towards a feminised urban future

Sylvia Chant and Cathy Mcllwaine (Routledge, 2016)

Developing regions are set to account for the vast majority of future urban growth, and women and girls will become the majority inhabitants of these locations in the Global South. This is one of the first books to detail the challenges facing poorer segments of the female population who commonly reside in ‘slums’. It explores the variegated disadvantages of urban poverty and slum-dwelling from a gender perspective. This book revolves around conceptualisation of the ‘gender-urban-slum interface’ which explains key elements to understanding women’s experiences in slum environments.

Planetary Gentrification

Loretta Lees, Hyun Bang Shin and Ernesto López-Morales (Polity, 2016)

Rich with empirical detail, yet wide-ranging, Planetary Gentrification unhinges, unsettles and provincializes Western notions of urban development. It will be invaluable to students and scholars interested in the future of cities and the production of a truly global urban studies, and equally importantly to all those committed to social justice in cities.

City of Segregation: One Hundred Years of Struggle For Housing in Los Angeles

Andrea Gibbons (Verso, 2018)

City of Segregation documents one hundred years of struggle against the enforced separation of racial groups through property markets, constructions of community, and the growth of neoliberalism. This movement history covers the decades of work to end legal support for segregation in 1948; the 1960s Civil Rights movement and CORE’s efforts to integrate LA’s white suburbs; and the 2006 victory preserving 10,000 downtown residential hotel units from gentrification enfolded within ongoing resistance to the criminalization and displacement of the homeless. Andrea Gibbons reveals the shape and nature of the racist ideology that must be fought, in Los Angeles and across the United States, if we hope to found just cities.

Geographies of Forced Eviction: Dispossession, Violence, Resistance

Katherine Brickell, Melissa  Fernández & Alexander  Vasudevan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)

This book offers a close look at forced evictions, drawing on empirical studies and conceptual frameworks from both the Global North and South. It draws attention to arenas where multiple logics of urban dispossession, violence and insecurity are manifest, and where wider socio-economic, political and legal struggles converge. The authors highlight the need to apply emotional and affective registers of dispossession and insecurity to the socio-political and financial economies driving forced evictions across geographic scales.  

Contested Landscapes of Poverty and Homelessness In Southern Europe

Vassilis Arapoglou (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)

The book uses Athens as a case study to identify the key features of urban anti-poverty policies in Greece and to discuss them in relation to policy developments in the crisis-ridden countries of Southern Europe. The idea of contested landscapes shapes the focus of the book on urban poverty and homelessness. Contested landscapes refer to the complex dynamics between visible and invisible poverty and to competing strategies on how to address them. The book takes a path-dependent view on the development of post-welfare arrangements, devolution, and pluralism that are being shaped by both neoliberal mentality, solidarity and communitarian practices. 

Frontier Road: Power, History, and the Everyday State in the Colombian Amazon 

Simón Uribe (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017) 

Frontier Road uses the history of one road in southern Colombia known locally as the trampoline of death to demonstrate how state–building processes and practices have depended on the production and maintenance of frontiers as inclusive–exclusive zones, often through violent means.

Dystopia's Provocateurs: Peasants, State, and Informality in the Polish-German Borderlands

Edyta Materka (Indiana University Press, 2017) 

Toward the end of the Second World War, Poland's annexation of eastern German lands precipitated one of the largest demographic upheavals in European history. Edyta Materka travels to to her native village in these "Recovered Territories", where she listens carefully to rich oral histories told by original postwar Slavic settlers and remaining ethnic Germans who witnessed the metamorphosis of eastern Germany into western Poland.

Race, Education, and Citizenship: Mobile Malaysians, British Colonial Legacies, and a Culture of Migration

Sin Yee Koh (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) 

Transnational skilled migrants are often thought of as privileged migrants with flexible citizenship. This book challenges this assumption by examining the diverse migration trajectories, experiences and dilemmas faced by tertiary-educated mobile Malaysian migrants through a postcolonial lens. It argues that mobile Malaysians’ culture of migration can be understood as an outcome and consequence of British colonial legacies – of race, education, and citizenship – inherited and exacerbated by the post-colonial Malaysian state.

Cities, Slums and Gender in the Global South: Towards a Feminised Urban Future

Sylvia Chant and Cathy McIlwaine (Routledge, 2016)

Developing regions are set to account for the vast majority of future urban growth, and women and girls will become the majority inhabitants of these locations in the Global South. This is one of the first books to detail the challenges facing poorer segments of the female population who commonly reside in ‘slums’. It explores the variegated disadvantages of urban poverty and slum-dwelling from a gender perspective. This book revolves around conceptualisation of the ‘gender-urban-slum interface’ which explains key elements to understanding women’s experiences in slum environments.

Economics of Planning Policies in China: Infrastructure, Location and Cities

Wen-jie Wu (Taylor & Francis, 2016)

Economics of Planning Policies in China looks at the role that the institutional characteristics of the Chinese planning system and market mechanisms play in transforming and shaping the infrastructure, location and cities with the potential for spatial disparity and inclusive growth. The planning and geographical perspective and evidence make this book a reference for international scholars, policymakers and graduates.

Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions

Ed. Sandeep Bakshi, Suhraiya Jivraj and Silvia  Posocco (Counterpress, 2016) 

Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions contributes to the critical field of queer decolonial studies by demonstrating how sexuality, race, gender and religion intersect transnationally. The volume maps some of the specifically local issues as well as the common ones affecting queer/trans people of colour (qtpoc). The contributions are not delimited by traditional academic style but rather draw on creative inspiration to produce knowledge and insight through various styles and formats, including poetry, essays, statements, manifestos, as well as academic mash-ups. 

Water and Cities in Latin America

Ed. Ismael Aguilar-Barajas, Jürgen Mahlknecht, Jonathan Kaledin, Marianne Kjellén, Abel Mejía-Betancourt (Routledge, 2015)

Approximately 80 per cent of the population of Latin America is concentrated in urban centres. Pressure on water resources and water management in cities therefore provide major challenges. Despite the importance of the issues, there has been little systematic coverage of the topic in book form. This work fills a gap in the literature by providing both thematic overviews and case study chapters.

Water and Cities in Latin America - Spanish edition. 

Gender, Poverty and Development

Ed. Sylvia Chant and Gwendolyn Beetham 
(Routledge, 2015)

Published on the eve of the release of the United Nations’ Post-2015 Development Agenda, this four-volume collection traces gender scholars’ contributions to development policy, research and practice, highlighting the critical interventions that these efforts made along the way.  

Secrecy and Insurgency: Socialities and Knowledge Practices in Guatemala

Silvia Pococco (Alabama University Press, 2014) 

Secrecy and Insurgency deals with the experiences of guerrilla combatants of the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Rebel Armed Forces) in the aftermath of the peace accords signed in December 1996 between the Guatemalan government and guerrilla insurgents. Drawing on a broad field of contemporary theory, Silvia Posocco presents a vivid ethnographic account of secrecy as both sociality and a set of knowledge practices. 

Managing the Transition: Renewable Energy and Innovation Policies in the UAE and Algeria

Dennis Kumetat (Routledge, 2014)

This book discusses renewable energy policy in oil and gas-wealthy Arab states and presents the reader with a well-informed overview of the national energy systems – both conventional and renewable. It also seeks to answer questions on the poor growth prospects by contextualizing the various national renewable energy production efforts in the other energy sectors, national and international power politics and energy markets.

Urban Economics and Urban Policy: Challenging Conventional Policy Wisdom

Paul Cheshire, Max Nathan and Henry Overman (Elgar, 2014)

In this bold, exciting and readable volume, Paul Cheshire, Max Nathan and Henry Overman illustrate the insights that recent economic research brings to our understanding of cities, and the lessons for urban policy-making. The authors present new evidence on the fundamental importance of cities to economic wellbeing and to the enrichment of our lives. They also argue that many policies have been trying to push water uphill and have done little to achieve their stated aims; or, worse, have had unintended and counterproductive consequences. 

Gender, Development and Disasters

Sarah Bradshaw (Edward Elgar, 2013)

The need to ‘disaster proof’ development is increasingly recognised as is the need to engender both development and disaster response. This is the first book to explore what these processes mean for development and disasters in practice.  Through consideration of processes to engender development it problematises women’s inclusion in disaster response and reconstruction. It highlights that while women are now central to both disaster response and development, tackling gender inequality is not. By critically reflecting on gendered disaster response and the gendered impact of disasters on processes of development, it exposes some important lessons for future policy. 

Cross-Border Migration among Latin Americans: European Perspectives and Beyond

Ed. Cathy McIlwaine (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)

This edited book aims to address this neglect in the European context with concentration on the UK case. Conceptually, the volume explores the meanings of diaspora and whether this is an appropriate concept to refer to Latin American migration to Europe in particular. It also examines the utility of transnationality and transmigration in explaining and assessing the realities of the movement of Latin Americans around the world. The book provides important conceptual discussions of some key themes in relation to Latin American migrants in general, such as poverty, negotiating institutions, family life and domestic service and mainly in relation to the European context. Perhaps most importantly in terms of the state of current knowledge on the topic, it uncovers the lives of Latin American migrants in the UK, which have remained largely hidden to date.

Global Cities at Work: New Migrant Divisions of Labour 

Cathy McIlwaine et al. (Pluto, 2010)

This book is about the people who always get taken for granted. The people who clean our offices and trains, care for our elders and change the sheets on the bed. Global Cities at Work draws on testimony collected from more than 800 foreign-born workers employed in low-paid jobs in London during the early years of the new century.  Global Cities at Work breaks new ground in linking London's new migrant division of labour to the twin processes of subcontracting and increased international migration that have been central to contemporary processes of globalisation. Global Cities at Work raises the level of debate about migrant labour, encouraging policy-makers, journalists and social scientists to look behind the headlines. The book calls us to take a politically-informed geographical view of our urban labour markets and to prioritise the issue of working poverty and its implications for both unemployment and community cohesion.

Translocal Geographies: Spaces, Places, Connections

Ed. Katherine Brickell and Ayona Datta

Bringing together a wide range of original empirical research from locations and interconnected geographical contexts from Europe, Australasia, Asia, Africa, Central and Latin America, this book sets out a different agenda for mobility - one which emphasises the enduring connectedness between, and embeddedness within, places during and after the experience of mobility. These issues are examined through the themes of home and family, neighbourhoods and city spaces and allow the reader to engage with migrants' diverse practices which are specifically local, yet spatially global.

Geographies of Development in the 21st Century: an Introduction to the Global South

Sylvia Chant and Cathy McIlwaine (Edward Elgar, 2009)

Geographies of Development in the 21st Century provides a concise yet informative introduction to development in the contemporary Global South. Field research from Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia, El Salvador, the Philippines, Botswana and The Gambia conducted by the authors independently, or in conjunction with one another, is drawn upon to infuse subject matter extending across gender, family, poverty, employment, household livelihoods, the informal economy, housing, migration, civil society, conflict and violence. Reflecting both authors’ enduring interests in the academic–policy interface, the book is also informed by assignments they have undertaken for various international organisations such as the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, UNDP, UNICEF, ILO and the Commonwealth Secretariat. This volume is intended to be an essential companion for undergraduate students taking introductory courses in development and globalisation as well as a useful reference and repository of teaching and learning ideas for those lecturing on the subject. 

Non-Governmental Organizations and Development

David Lewis and Nazneen Kanji  (Routledge, 2009)

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are high profile actors in the field of international development, both as providers of services to vulnerable individuals and communities and as campaigning policy advocates. This book provides a critical introduction to the wide-ranging topic of NGOs and development. It highlights the importance of NGOs in development, but it also engages fully with the criticisms that the increased profile of NGOs in development now attracts.

The Earthscan Reader in Rural-Urban Linkages

Ed. Cecilia Tacoli (Routledge, 2006)

With accelerating urbanisation and growing inter-dependence of rural and urban dwellers on the markets and resources they each offer, rural-urban linkages have become a very important focus in recent years for research and policy relating to local and national economic development, poverty reduction and governance. The emergence of new livelihoods based on diversified income sources and mobility reflects profound social, cultural and economic transformations, and new forms of resource allocation and use. This volume collects the key contributions in the field, covering the conceptual background, the key issues and the current debates, locating different approaches in their wider intellectual and historical contexts. 

Three Generations, Two Genders, One World: Women and Men in a Changing Century

Sylvia Chant and Cathy McIlwaine (Zed Press, 1998)

This book is a diagnostic synthesis of a multi-country, multi-team project researching changing lives around the world. It looks at changes in the values, attitudes, relationships and gender roles of three generations of men and women through in-depth interviews conducted by university students with members of their own families. The methodology used for the interviews was flexible and open-ended, taking an interpretive approach to social development. Individual narratives were collated over a period of time, and then compiled into country reports. 

Women of a Lesser Cost: Female Labour, Foreign Exchange and Philippine Development 

Sylvia Chant and Cathy McIlwaine (London: Pluto, 1995)

This book explores the links among women's employment, migration and household organisation. Female labour-force participation has long been recognised as depending on a broad spectrum of social, economic and demographic factors. Drawing on over 400 interviews with workers, households, and employers in the Philippine Visayas, this book provides insights for theories about women's work, with a focus on implications for gender roles and relations. Looking at three activities critical to the generation of foreign exchange - export manufacturing, international tourism, and sex work - it provides a systematic investigation of the ways in which women's incorporation into different sectors is affected by their social, demographic and economic circumstances, asking whether different jobs are associated with new migration and household patterns.

Natural Resources: Allocation, Economics and Policy

Judith Rees (Routledge, 1990)

An interdisciplinary study of both renewable and non-renewable global resources. The author analyzes the spatial distribution of resource availability, development and consumption and the distribution of resource-generated wealth.