Urban communities

Pathways to Sustainable Welfare critically examines how cities can address the dual challenges of climate change and sustainability while ensuring the welfare of their populations. Focused on three Swedish cities, it explores the integration of environmental and welfare concerns in local policies, urban movements and public opinions.

This book addresses questions of pluralism in a time of increasing ethnic, religious and cultural diversity in the public and private spaces of our cities. It analyses different types of regulation — property rights, municipal ordinances and urban planning — and their role in protecting and supporting diversity.

In our post-pandemic world, the international community and national governments are searching for new solutions to build healthy and resilient societies. This timely book focuses on community participation in building healthier populations, with practical examples from the Global North and South.

This collection presents critical and action-oriented approaches to addressing food systems challenges across places, spaces, and scales. With global case studies, it explores the interconnections between the social and ecological dynamics of food systems, exploring efforts to co-construct more equitable and sustainable food systems for all.

The sixth, fully updated edition of this bestselling guide links the theory and practice of community work in an insightful and relatable read for students and practitioners. The textbook features brand new sections on work in health, housing, with children, young people and those with disabilities and the changing role of IT.

How can we design, develop and adapt urban environments to better meet the needs of an increasingly diverse ageing population?  This book highlights the urgent need to address inequalities that shape the experience of ageing in urban environments, and demonstrates that despite obstacles, meaningful social change is achievable locally.

This book provides an introductory overview to the concept of ‘urban informality’, taking an international perspective across the global North and South. It explores theoretical understandings of the term, and looks at how it affects ways of living, such as land use, housing and basic services, working lives and political informality.

This book explores the connections between race, place and space, and their role in maintaining racial hierarchies. Focusing on White residents in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, it employs interviews, participant observation and content analysis to unveil the enduring racial inequality in this supposedly progressive area.

A deep exploration on how questions of time and its organisation affect planning practice, this book questions ‘project speed’: where time to think, deliberate and plan has been squeezed. The authors demonstrate the many benefits of slow planning for the key participants, multiple interests and planning system overall.

This agenda-setting volume disrupts conventional notions of time through a robust examination of the relations between temporality, infrastructure and urban society. With global coverage of diverse cities and regions from Berlin to Jayapura, this book re-evaluates the temporal complexities that shape our infrastructured worlds.

This highly accessible guide equips community work and related professionals and students to make the best use of theory in their work. Linking contemporary theory and practice, the book guides the reader through such diverse areas as young people, adult learning, health, social media and leadership in community work.