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The concept of governance has provided many ways to theorise the shifting power relations between the state, interest groups and civil society over the last 30 years. Theorisations have culminated in 'spatial imaginaries' for visualising new governing practices and their associated power relations. By paying attention to these imaginaries, it is possible to see how each theory of governance brings particular spatialities of power to the fore, while necessarily foreclosing others. This foreclosure stems from a failure to visualise diverse and multiple modes of power in governance models and to take in power as a relative and spatially contingent property. This is not only theoretically significant, however; it also has important practical consequences for how we govern effectively in practice. I argue that rather than starting our analyses of governance arrangements with theoretical models which appear to predetermine our understanding of the spatial workings of power, we should instead remain open and attuned to the complex geographies of power that might actually operate in practices of governance on the ground. I suggest that by deploying John Allen's topological approach to power we can achieve a more relational and spatially contingent account of power in practice under the turn to governance. This will give us greater insight into actual governance arrangements and their limitations, exclusions and unevenness.

This edited volume provides a fresh perspective on the important yet often neglected relationship between environmental justice and urban resilience. Many scholars have argued that resilient cities are more just cities. But what if the process of increasing the resilience of the city as a whole happens at the expense of the rights of certain groups? If urban resilience focuses on the degree to which cities are able to reorganise in creative ways and adapt to shocks, do pervasive inequalities in access to environmental services have an effect on this ability? This book brings together an interdisciplinary and intergeneration group of scholars to examine the contradictions and tensions that develop as they play out in cities of the Global South through a series of empirically grounded case studies spanning cities of Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of vulnerable people during flood events, impacts of changes in mobility on well-being and the extent to which frontline services, emergency planning officers and other service providers allocate resources for vulnerable members of the community to meet the challenges posed by floods.


Design/methodology/approach
– In-depth qualitative interviews carried out with 15 vulnerable residents, seven community representatives and eight service providers.


Findings
– Vulnerable people's well-being was negatively affected by the disruption to travel caused by floods, though support from the community to some extent redressed these negative feelings. Whilst there seems to be a strong response from both the community and the local authorities to the mobility needs of vulnerable people during floods, what seems to be missing is an equal response from the private sector in terms of provision of transport services to access goods such as food and money.


Practical implications
– More needs to be done to make sure that communication and support networks are formalised to address the potential unevenness of informal networks. Private companies need to engage more with customers. Improved information and more resilient services such as 4×4 vehicles and doorstep provision of goods and money would directly support vulnerable people who are highly dependent on their services.


Originality/value
– This study is the first in the UK to explore and compare the private experiences of vulnerable people with the views of stakeholders who could support them during floods.

This book rethinks the public, public communication and public action in a globalising and mediated world. It develops novel theoretical perspectives for investigating the formation of publics, focusing on four overlapping processes: claiming publics; personalising publics; mediating publics; and becoming public. Using fascinating case studies, Rethinking the public offers a rich set of methodological resources on which other researchers can draw and foregrounds the need to interrogate the boundaries between theory, research and politics. It is ideal reading for higher level undergraduate and masters programmes in politics, geography, public policy, sociology, social policy, public administration and cultural studies