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This dissertation examines how narratives from Mexican and Mexican-American writers interconnect urban landscapes and cultures in the transnational context of the twenty-first century. This study focuses on what I call "trans-urban narratives," a method of literary analysis by comparing the urban environment of Mexico City with three global centers in the U.S.: Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. In these narratives, Mexican writers (Valeria Luiselli and Juan Villoro) and Mexican-American writers (Sandra Cisneros and Alejandro Morales) portray the transitional experience of their protagonists within two global cities, two urban realities located in opposite sides of the U.S./Mexico border. They create bi-national and hemispheric connections through the juxtaposition of urban landscapes from both countries. While in the twentieth century urban narratives focus mainly in one specific urban environment, my project argues that in the twenty-first century the Mexican and Mexican-American literary productions are building transnational spaces within the city that allow the cross-border communication of their cultures.In Chapter One, I examine the intersection, interconnection and fusion of Mexico City and Chicago in post-national narratives. I analyze the short story "Chicago" (2008) by Juan Villoro, focusing on how the main character –a Mexican taxi driver who has lived in the United States– produces a mental map by overlapping the geographies of Mexico City and Chicago. I argue that this alternative cartography draws a new geopolitical space that eliminates cultural boundaries.In Chapter Two, I continue the social, political and cultural exploration of Chicago and Mexico City but through the analysis of Caramelo (2002) by Sandra Cisneros. In this chapter, I argue that the multiple trips between Chicago and Mexico City portrayed in the novel reveal a historical migratory route between these two cities that dislocates the hierarchies between the Global North and the Global South.In Chapter Three, by analyzing Mexican-American writer Alejandro Morales's novel, The Rag Doll Plagues (1992), I introduce the intrinsic mechanisms of spatial decolonization that allow to heal processes of segregation, aberrant social practices, and technological oppression in colonial Mexico City, postmodern Los Angeles, and the dystopian LAMEX.In Chapter Four, I analyze the material and immaterial connections between Mexico City and New York. In Valeria Luiselli's Los ingrávidos (2011), I explore the ghostly, almost ethereal nature (ingravidez) of her protagonists –a young woman living in Mexico City, and the Mexican poet Gilberto Owen in New York. I argue that these characters or urban ghosts represent transitional subjectivities that flow between temporal, spatial and gender contexts: from past memories to present situations; from the overwhelming streets of New York to the secluded space of a house in Mexico City; from a female voice to a male narrative.

"Combining elements of sustainable and resilient cities agendas, together with those from social justice studies, and incorporating concerns about good governance, transparency and accountability, the book presents a coherent conceptual framework for the ethical city, in which to embed existing and new activities to guide local action. Readers from across physical and social sciences, humanities and arts, as well as across policy, business and civil society will find that the application of ethical principles is key to the pursuit of socially inclusive urban futures and the potential for cities and their communities to emerge from national and global challenges"--

AbstractClimate change presents multiple challenges to cities—not only in terms of the resilience and sustainability of the urban fabric, but also in relation to how urban inhabitants imagine they might adapt to a future transformed environment. This article explores imaginative modes of thinking in relation to future cities and climate change, focusing on representations of urban drowning or submergence. It considers, in turn, climate‐change fictions—from J.G. Ballard's 1962 novel The Drowned World to Paulo Bacigalupi's The Drowned Cities, published in 2012; visual representations from Gustave Doré's The New Zealander in 1872 to Alexis Rockman's 2004 Manifest Destiny; and architectural conjecture, from Wolf Hilbertz's Autopia Ampere project from 1970 onwards to CRAB Studio's Soak City in 2009. The article draws out how these imaginaries intersect with theoretical understandings of science fiction and ecology, contending that an emphasis on multiple imaginaries of climate change is critical to expanding the narrow range of possibilities that currently characterize the literature on cities and climate change. Imaginative texts, images and designs mutually inform each other to encourage holistic ways of approaching how we think about the prospect of urban submergence and to incubate radical responses to it.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Where the Streets Are Paved with Gold -- 2. A Theory of Urban Wealth -- 3. Markets -- 4. Competitive Financial Centres -- 5. Economic Growth, Production, and Consumption -- 6. The Ecology of Urban Economies -- 7. Conclusion: The Wealth of Cities -- Bibliography -- Index

Local environments such as cities and neighbourhoods are becoming a focal point for those concerned with environmental justice and sustainability. The Citizens at Risk takes up this emerging agenda and analyses the key issues in a refreshingly simple yet sophisticated style.Taking a comparative look at cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the book examines: the changing nature of urban environmental risks, the rules governing the distribution of such risks and their differential impact, how the risks arise and who is responsible The authors clearly describe the most pressing urban environ

"This handbook presents the great contemporary challenges facing cities and urban spaces in Latin America and the Caribbean. The content of the multidisciplinary book is organized into four large sections focusing on the histories and trajectories of urban spatial development, inequality and displacement of urban populations, contemporary debates on urban policies, and the future of the city in this region. Scholars of diverse origins and specializations analyze Latin American and Caribbean cities showing that, despite their diversity, they share many characteristics and challenges, and that there is value in systematizing this knowledge to both understand and explain them better and to promote increasing equity and sustainability. The contributions in this handbook enhance the theoretical, empirical and methodological study of urbanization processes and urban policies of Latin America and the Caribbean in a global context, making it an important reference for scholars across the world. The book is designed to meet the interdisciplinary study and consultation needs of undergraduate and graduate students of architecture, urban design, urban planning, sociology, anthropology, political science, public administration, and more"--

AbstractThere has been a growing debate in recent decades about the range and substance of urban theory. The debate has been marked by many different claims about the nature of cities, including declarations that the urban is an incoherent concept, that urban society is nothing less than modern society as a whole, that the urban scale can no longer be separated from the global scale, and that urban theory hitherto has been deeply vitiated by its almost exclusive concentration on the cities of the global North. This article offers some points of clarification of claims like these. All cities can be understood in terms of a theoretical framework that combines two main processes, namely, the dynamics of agglomeration/polarization, and the unfolding of an associated nexus of locations, land uses and human interactions. This same framework can be used to identify many different varieties of cities, and to distinguish intrinsically urban phenomena from the rest of social reality. The discussion thus identifies the common dimensions of all cities without, on the one hand, exaggerating the scope of urban theory, or on the other hand, asserting that every individual city is an irreducible special case.