Livable Cities?

An exciting book that captures the urban environmental condition through the struggles and knowledge of real people, Livable Cities? reveals how grassroots input can make top-down policy more effective. By focusing on small, seldom-studied communities in such countries as Vietnam, the book illuminates the particular intersection between larger environmental dynamics and their concrete materializations in specific settings.-Saskia Sassen, author of The Global City 2001This is an essential book about a fundamental topic: the urban politics of environmental sustainability. Leading social researchers from around the world provide a rigorous assessment on the conditions under which local societies can contribute to the development of a sustainable global order.-Manuel Castells, co-author of The Local and the Global: Management of Cities in the Information AgeLivable Cities? introduces a fresh and crucial agenda for scholars and activists: how can communities across the world organize to foster both environmental reform and economic well-being-in a word, livability? Urban scholars, development scholars, and those in the growing environmental field will take a keen interest in this book.-Harvey Molotch, co-author of Building Rules: How Local Controls Shape Building Environments and EconomiesPeter Evans opens up a new area of thinking on how global environmental problems arise in the context of cities in the Third World and how they are translated into continuing policy debates and political struggles.-John R. Logan, author of The New Chinese City: Globalization and Market ReformWithin a comprehensive theoretical framework, Livable Cities? studies how particular ecologies of political actors have formed in diverse cities in East Asia, Europe, and Latin America to improve the quality of life in poor communities. With its focus on cities and their disempowered majorities, this book provides a welcome contribution to the politics of another development, one centered on people's well-being.-John Friedmann, co-author of Human Settlements and Planning for Ecological Sustainability: The Case of Mexico City