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European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement N◦691895.

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2017.03.002 ; Urbanisation and climate change are urging cities to chart novel paths towards sustainable futures. Many cities are turning to the alluring 'circular economy' (CE) concept to guide this redirection. The CE concept re-imagines how flows of resources moving through economies might be 'closed'. Here, we explore this new 'circular city' agenda by asking: How are cities adopting CE as a strategy?. We found that political leadership, building adaptable future visions, using experimental approaches (such as living labs), developing contextual knowledge about resource use, and engaging with diverse stakeholders to be important. However, we also expose that there is a lack of consensus on what a circular city constitutes and a need to further untangle the how and why of the circular city concept. The research contributes to the field by outlining emergent cases, identifying a set of common policy strategies, conceptualising a circular city and identifying areas for future research.

Many non-scholarly and scholarly accounts on the societies, culture, and political economy of the Middle East post-"Arab Uprisings/Spring" still deal with cities and regions as mere repositories of social, cultural, political, and economic action—despite the spatial turn that has informed social sciences and humanities for more than three decades.[1] Indeed, they often overlook the shaping roles of the built and natural environments in the production of events unraveling in cities and regions of the Middle East. We thus need to understand cities and regions not only as backgrounds and contexts for processes and practices, but rather as environments that have determining impacts on these, and that human interactions also shape. Since its launch in September 2013, Jadaliyya's Cities Page has been committed to producing such informed, empirical, and integrated knowledge, where the spatial engages and intersects with historical, political, economic, technological, legal, social, and cultural analysis. These are some of the questions we committed to address five years ago: How and why does urban space contribute to public action and social movements? What is the relationship between power, space, and resistance? How do different groups utilize space to mobilize and facilitate collective action? Which forces that shape space (physical and technological, as well as social, historical, political, and economic) are combined to guide this action? More broadly, how do specific historical, national policies, and global forces shape cities? How are different inequalities constituted by urban life and how do they reconstitute the city? How do the ordinary practitioners of the city negotiate, navigate, appropriate, resist, and transform urban forms?

Many non-scholarly and scholarly accounts on the societies, culture, and political economy of the Middle East post-"Arab Uprisings/Spring" still deal with cities and regions as mere repositories of social, cultural, political, and economic action—despite the spatial turn that has informed social sciences and humanities for more than three decades.[1] Indeed, they often overlook the shaping roles of the built and natural environments in the production of events unraveling in cities and regions of the Middle East. We thus need to understand cities and regions not only as backgrounds and contexts for processes and practices, but rather as environments that have determining impacts on these, and that human interactions also shape. Since its launch in September 2013, Jadaliyya's Cities Page has been committed to producing such informed, empirical, and integrated knowledge, where the spatial engages and intersects with historical, political, economic, technological, legal, social, and cultural analysis. These are some of the questions we committed to address five years ago: How and why does urban space contribute to public action and social movements? What is the relationship between power, space, and resistance? How do different groups utilize space to mobilize and facilitate collective action? Which forces that shape space (physical and technological, as well as social, historical, political, and economic) are combined to guide this action? More broadly, how do specific historical, national policies, and global forces shape cities? How are different inequalities constituted by urban life and how do they reconstitute the city? How do the ordinary practitioners of the city negotiate, navigate, appropriate, resist, and transform urban forms?

The challenges lying ahead of the urban areas, specifically cities are formidable. These include growing population, air pollution, congestion, energy efficiency and demand for high quality of living. Although they are varied and can appear as seemingly unrelated, they more often appear on international agendas of the United Nations, European Union and various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) under umbrella of sustainability or more often as green agenda. This book is an introduction to the dynamically developing and evolving area of green innovations taking place in contemporary cities, with a specific focus on the European and North American examples. It is divided into three interconnected parts, each prepared by a separate author specialising in the areas like communal services, real estate and information technologies. First, authored by doctor Dominika P. Brodowicz focuses on green urban models and challenges facing 21st century cities. Second, developed by IT specialist and doctoral researcher Przemysław Pospieszny presents green transportation and smart technological innovations. Third, compiled by Professor Zbigniew Grzymała relates to European and American legal requirements and strategies towards eco-cities development. ; This publication was supported by grant funds from the European Union's European Social Fund. The project "Eco-innovations in cities", performed at the Warsaw School of Economics, was commissioned by the Polish National Centre for Research and Development (POKL.04.03.00-00-249/12). ; Przemysław Pospieszny

Most cities enjoy some autonomy over how they tax their residents, and that autonomy is typically exercised by multiple municipal governments within a given city. In this chapter, we document patterns of city-level taxation across countries, and we review the literature on a number of salient features affecting local tax setting in an urban context. Urban local governments on average raise some ten percent of total tax revenue in OECD countries and around half that share in non-OECD countries. We show that most cities are highly fragmented: urban areas with more than 500,000 inhabitants are divided into 74 local jurisdictions on average. The vast majority of these cities are characterized by a central municipality that strongly dominates the remaining jurisdictions in terms of population. These empirical regularities imply that an analysis of urban taxation needs to take account of three particular features: interdependence among tax-setting authorities (horizontally and vertically), jurisdictional size asymmetries, and the potential for agglomeration economies. We survey the relevant theoretical and empirical literatures, focusing in particular on models of asymmetric tax competition, of taxation and income sorting and of taxation in the presence of agglomeration rents.

When cities are involved in litigation, it is most often as defendants. However, in the last few decades, cities have emerged as aggressive plaintiffs, bringing forward hundreds of mass-tort style claims. From suing gun manufacturers for the scourge of gun violence, to bringing actions against banks for the consequences of the subprime mortgage crisis, to initiating claims against pharmaceutical companies for opioid-related deaths and injuries, plaintiff cities are using litigation to pursue the perpetrators of the social harms that have devastated their constituents and their communities. Many courts and commentators have criticized these plaintiff city claims on numerous grounds. They argue that, as a doctrinal matter, cities lack standing, fail to meet causation standards, and stretch causes of action like public nuisance beyond all reasonable limits. Further, they argue that, as a theoretical matter, plaintiff cities are impermissibly using litigation as regulation, overstepping their limited authority as "creatures of the state," and usurping the political and legislative process. This Article demonstrates that each of these critiques is mistaken. Plaintiff city claims are legally, morally, and sociologically legitimate. And, as a practical matter, they are financially feasible even for cash-strapped or bankrupt cities. Moving beyond mere economic accounting, though, plaintiff city claims have value of a different sort: for plaintiff cities, litigation is a form of state building. By serving as plaintiffs and seeking redress for the harms that impact a city's most vulnerable residents, plaintiff cities are demanding recognition not just for those impacted constituents, but also for themselves, as distinct and meaningful polities. In so doing, plaintiff cities are renegotiating the practical and theoretical meaning of cities within the existing political order, and opening up new potential paths for urban social justice.

Divided cities present an intriguing phenomenology in urban design where political and/or cultural circumstances lead to a schism in an otherwise holistic city. The consequence of such division is not only physically present, but also has a long lasting impression on communal and individual identity. This impact is further emphasized by local architecture and how the border is treated in each side of a division. This article uses the island city of Nicosia, Cyprus, located in the Mediterranean, as a case study to better understand how borders in divided cities relate to memory and identity establishment. ; http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/120297/1/Mehdiabadi_DividedCities.pdf

In this article, we analyze different approaches to the term global city and reveal the process of formationof this phenomenon in social sciences. We consider the specifics of such concepts as a global city, aworld city, town information, a creative city. The global city is seen as a factor of influence on the socioeconomicprocesses of the modern world, which determines the impact depending not only on the size ofthe city. The modern urban development goal - to become visible on the world map of politics, economy,allowing the city to develop, involving active and creative actors in their own space. This article discussesthe methods and mechanisms that contribute to changes in the urban space by different examples. Theinstability, volatility of urban space, the dependence on a huge number of factors and side effects ofdecisions are the main problems of the modern management of urban space. For the world city, as asystem that defines and forms these processes, the author introduces the concept of a control point, whichis a landmark, setting the direction of development and changing the dynamics of socio-cultural space.

This chapter presents readers with an opportunity to engage with the concept of uncertainty through the lens of cities and urbanism. Operating within an environment of profound uncertainty relating to the future of humanity, contemporary cities present divergent narratives of hope and despair. They are chronically underfunded and over-burdened, home to deeply divided communities and decrepit infrastructure, and struggling with chaotic unplanned growth and chronic pollution. Yet they have the capacity to assemble social, material and technical actors and relations in novel, experimental and collaborative ways so as to respond to these emergent challenges. These insights lead us to the question, what can we learn from cities about living with, planning and governing uncertainty? The contributing authors answer this question by presenting five perspectives on urban uncertainties. Ranging from looking at the street level and ordinary uncertainty to looking at the governing of uncertain technological futures, to discussing the ethical outcomes of governmental solutions to climate change, the authors excavate the varying ways in which uncertainty stimulates experimental forms of urban development and governance, and with what social and political implications. They conclude with optimism: if a progressive, equitable and ethical socio-political milieu is fostered in cities, it is possible to effectively tackle urban challenges in uncertain cities.

In its more than three decades of history, the European Capital of Culture initiative has become an important instrument for cul-tural urban development. The EU cultural policy guidelines apply in all participating countries-but the design varies greatly from location to location. This volume reflects the approaches in 18 countries, inside and outside the EU, that have already hosted one or more Capitals of Culture. It conveys the assessments of scholars from various disciplines, and from those responsible for the programme on how art and culture deal with local and regi-onal forms of transformation.

"This essay was delivered as one of the popular course of lectures at the invitation of the trustees of the Cooper institute . December 15th, 1877. ; Mode of access: Internet.

In the wake of the end of the cold-war and the demise of the tripartite conceptual division of the First, Second and Third Worlds, the latter concept has been superseded by the notion of the 'Global South'. This notion is a flexible one referring to the developing nations of the once-colonized sections of the globe. The concept does not merely register shifts in geopolitics and in the respective affiliations of nations and the economic transformations that have occurred. It also registers an emergent perception of a new set of relationships between nations of the South. It is the task of this project to explore those 'lateral' south-south cultural connections by mobilizing a network of prominent Global-South universities (UFF, Brazil; UNAM, Mexico; Wits, South Africa; UCAD, Senegal; JNU, India) with other universities in the southern hemisphere (UWA, Australia; SNU, Korea). Erich Auerbach is the Visiting Chair of Global Literary Studies at the University of Tübingen ; Cities of the South, Cities of the North , symposium, ICI Berlin, 14 December 2015

Sustainability has emerged as a major international concern over the past two decades. The complexity of the topic has prompted a vast and varied body of work, comprising three major approaches. Most dominant is the economic paradigm, which has tended to overshadow the ecological and socio-cultural approaches. To a certain extent, this has resulted in the lack of a shared understanding of what sustainability means. However, a common thread that can be identified throughout the mainstream literature describes sustainability as the integration the environment, the economy, and society, now and in the future. The focus of this report is on Australian cities, and their performance towards a more sustainable future. Cities occupy a unique position within the sustainability matrix due to the fact that they tend to concentrate the worst excesses of environmental degradation, economic hardship and social dislocation. Around 60 percent of Australians live in cities, and the trend towards increased urbanisation is continuing. This makes cities an important site for the pursuit of sustainability. Around the world, and within Australia, cities can vary greatly, in terms of population, geography and identity. This provides a serious challenge to any potential nation-wide, city-based sustainability initiative. Due to their diversity, each and every city is likely to have specific concerns relating to sustainability, and will require individual and localised solutions. A sustainability project aimed at measuring the performance of Australian cities needs to address this variability and provide a flexible framework. The most suitable model would be the ABC-indicator model used in the European Sustainability Index Project, which allows for the development of meaningful area-specific indicators in conjunction with a set of core indicators that enable comparisons. The diversity of cities reflects a distinct challenge in addressing sustainability at a comparative level, but a flexible indicator set can tum diversity into an advantage, capitalising on the unique attributes of our major cities. Implementing a sustainability initiative at the city level requires the cooperation and involvement of all three tiers of government. However, the most closely connected sphere of government is the local level. Internationally, the role of local governments has been recognised as a vital component for achieving sustainability because of its intimate connection with its community and surroundings. Localised projects have had a great deal of success in Australia. This highlights the central role of local government authorities in promoting and facilitating sustainable futures for our cities. Local government is important due to its close links to the community, and also to industry in the surrounding area. Sustainability is an issue that affects all sections of society, and thus necessitates the involvement of community, industry and government in a collaborative effort. Partnership has arisen as a key theme in localised discussions of sustainability, reflecting the cross-societal impact of current unsustainable practices. The design and implementation of any city-based sustainability project requires consultation with, and the involvement of all stakeholders if it is to be successful. Ownership of the process must be shared if it is to have a lasting and comprehensive effect. There have been a number of localised sustainability initiatives implemented, both internationally and domestically. The majority of these have involved indicators, which are used to measure progress towards sustainability. This is a vital step, and a better knowledge of our cities' sustainability strengths and weaknesses is critical. However, it must also be recognised that measurement by itself is not good enough unless it is accompanied by positive change, at both the individual and the policy­ making level. Indicators must be able to prompt behavioural change and measure consequences. The major findings of this report, as discussed above, reveal that sustainability is one of the most pressing issues of our time. It is an especially high priority for cities. The diversity of these cities may prove challenging in addressing sustainability concerns, but with a flexible, collaborative approach, localised initiatives can lead the nation towards a more sustainable future. Knowledge and measurement of this progress is vital, but a wealth of information will go to waste if it is not utilised and brought to the attention of the public as well as the nation's decision-makers. The model presented in this report is based upon these conclusions, and is an attempt to negotiate the challenging pathway towards sustainability that lies ahead.

The literature on divided (or contested) cities has expanded rapidly during the past decade, with a handful of iconic sites presiding over the long list of cities wounded by conflict, violence or general unrest. In this article, it is suggested that this literature has overlooked a particular, and increasingly prominent, type of divided city deserving of attention in its own right: the geopolitical fault-line city. The main differences between the "classic" divided city and the geopolitical fault-line city relate to the character and origin of conflict. In divided cities, conflict is mostly local and related to social and spatial justice concerns, discrimination, security and political representation; this makes it somewhat predictable. In geopolitical fault-line cities, on the other hand, the main disputes are about geopolitical alignment, foreign policy, and the overall character of government; such disputes are largely scripted elsewhere, adding a substantial measure of volatility. This article's contribution lies in its provisional theorization of the geopolitical fault-line city in the light of the literature on divided cities. Against a background of powerful ongoing changes in the global information landscape – most notably the increased influence of social media – it illustrates the main characteristics of the geopolitical fault-line city, theorizing its distinctiveness as intrinsically related to the spatio-temporal evolution of information diffusion across the territories of antagonistically predisposed geopolitical alliances.