Renewing Urban Critical Theories by Biagi, Francesco;

Short description:

This book presents an interdisciplinary and international re-evaluation of urban critical theories, bringing together key, global perspectives on contemporary urban studies. Appealing to scholars across disciplines, and politically-engaged individuals interested in critical theoretical analyses of urban and spatial transformations.

Long description:

This book presents an interdisciplinary and international reevaluation of urban critical theories, bringing together key perspectives from around the world on contemporary urban studies.

Engaging with a wide range of issues related to the urban question – including urban sprawl, housing, and the accelerating rates of urbanization globally – it weaves together interconnected dimensions of urban inequality, analyzing how class, gender, and race serve as fundamental axes shaping contemporary social phenomena. The book also possesses a crucial capacity to integrate various interrelated issues within urban studies while fostering dialogue between established scholars and emerging researchers, ultimately seeking to move beyond the confines of the Global North by devoting only one-third of its content to this context, while emphasizing perspectives from other regions and problematizing the imperialism issue in an urban context. Additionally, it aspires to offer a book that not only serves an academic audience but also possesses a broader, accessible character, appealing to politically engaged individuals, including those involved in progressive political parties and social movements.

As such, the volume will appeal to scholars across disciplines, as well as politically engaged individuals, who are interested in critical theoretical analyses of contemporary urban and spatial transformations, as well as the phenomenon of planetary urbanization. Its primary objective is to bring together diverse perspectives and ongoing debates on the urban question.

Table of Contents:

Preface  Section 1: Theory and Problems  1. If Urban History Had Been Written Including Women’s Contributions, the Cities Would Be Different.  2. Considering the Urban from the Periphery: The New Urban Issue?  3. Space and Politics in Centre and Periphery: Ginige Vernon Stanley de Silva’s Heretical Thoughts on Country, City and Communism.  4.The Peripheral Condition as the New Urban Question in the Crisis of Capital.  5. Resurfacing the Urban Margins: Rediscovering Danilo Montaldi as an Urban Sociologist.  Section 2: The Production of Space as Essential Human Productive Force  6. The Production of Space as the History of the Urban.  7. Lefebvre and the Contradiction of Modernity: A Contribution to the Critique of Capital's Spatial Functionalism.  8.The Hypermodern City of Late Capitalism and the Suspension of Human Temporality: On Henri Lefebvre's Unfinished Philosophical Project of Articulating Time and Space.  9. Should we defend the right to the city? Urban struggles and ‘fragmented rights to the city’.  10. Rethinking the Urban Commons with the Production of Space.  Section 3: Unveiling Urban Perspectives Beyond the Global North’s Bubble  11. China, Infrastructure and Global Urbanization: Critique of the Capital Circuits Hypothesis based on Brazil-China Relations.  12. Capitalism, Racism and the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil: Notes on an Announced Tragedy.  13. Between the Historicist and the Dehistorised: The Stories of the National Capital Region, India.  14. The Art of Seeing. On Lefebvre, Images, and Chilean Fascism.