Read more
"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 2001
"This 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 Age
"Livable 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 Economies
"Peter 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 Reform
"Within 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
List of contents
List of Tables and Illustrations
Preface
Manuel Castells
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: Looking for Agents of Urban Livability in a Globalized Political Economy
Peter Evans
2. Urban Poverty and the Environment: Social Capital and State-Community Synergy in Seoul and Bangkok
Mike Douglass, Orathai Ard-am, and Ik Ki Kim
3. Collective Action toward a Sustainable City: Citizens’ Movements and Environmental Politics in Taipei
Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao and Hwa-Jen Liu
4. Community-Driven Regulation: Toward an Improved Model of Environmental Regulation in Vietnam
Dara O’Rourke
5. Social and Spatial Inequalities in Hungarian Environmental Politics: A Historical Perspective
Zsuzsa Gille
6. "Water, Water, Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink": Land Use and Water Policy in São Paulo, Brazil
Margaret E. Keck
7. Sustainability, Livelihood, and Community Mobilization in the Ajusco "Ecological Reserve"
Keith Pezzoli
8. Political Strategies for More Livable Cities: Lessons from Six Cases of Development and Political Transition
Peter Evans
References
List of Contributors
Index
About the author
Peter Evans is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (1995), and coeditor of Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics (California, 1993), among other books.
Summary
The cities of the developing world are hubs of economic growth, but they are increasingly ecologically unsustainable and, for ordinary citizens, increasingly unliveable. This book explores the issues of livelihood and ecological sustainability in cities of the developing and transitional world.
