Urban Politics in a Global Society

Today, cities around the world house more than half of our global population, and their size and economic power are growing. Nowhere is this more evident than in cities of the so-called “developing” areas of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In many countries of the global south, large cities have already outstripped most northern cities in size, while the functions and administrative powers of all cities—large, medium-sized, and small—are growing as a result of decentralization, democratization, and the initiatives of civil society and community groups at the local level.  These changes are uneven and almost always localized, but they highlight the increasing importance of understanding the politics of cities and the manners in which cities are taking their place globally among the major nodal points in the international political system.  

Urban Politics in a Global Society publishes well-researched and topical books that examine the political aspects of cities and urban development from the vantage points of political science, sociology, economics, geography, environment, planning, and policy. The series focuses especially on cities in the global south, and/or on populations from the global south living in cities in the north.  The series editors will also consider proposals that examine urban politics or approaches to urban development in countries not considered the global south, but where there are lessons, experiences or trends from the global south that resonate or are applicable to cities in the north.  The series editors welcome comparative or single-country studies that address a range of topics, including, but not limited to: urban reform; political opposition or movements; housing and resettlement; health, sanitation and infrastructure; migration, mobility and demographic transitions; poverty and well-being; intergovernmental relations; electoral systems and systems of representation and exclusion; public-private partnerships and relations; financial assistance, investment and revenue generation; and innovations in research strategies and method.