Book notes
Engaging our readers in preparing book notes
Our Book Notes section has short descriptions of books, papers and reports that we have prepared on all subjects relevant to urban issues. These are summaries rather than reviews. These go into the Book Notes online database that contains all Book Notes since our 1993 editions. It has facilities for searching by author, title, key word, city or country.
As an experiment, we are opening this to our readers so it can draw on a wider pool of knowledge. So we invite you to send us short summaries of new publications you have read that you found interesting – and relevant to urban issues. Authors may submit summaries too, but not promotional material. We welcome your submission on relevant publications published within the last two years. This includes English-language Book Notes and English summaries of publications in Spanish, French or Portuguese. You will be listed as the author of the summary.
If you would like to submit a Book Note, please search the database on this page to ensure that the publication has not already been covered. Please specify the title, author, publisher, year of publication, number of pages, and ISBN (if applicable). For the description, between one and six paragraphs is sufficient. Book Notes can be sent to Jenny.Peebles@iied.org
(For a searchable database of papers in Environment and Urbanization, go to http://eau.sagepub.com/)
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The definition of infrastructure itself has to be expanded beyond cement and pipes to include infrastructure as process, infrastructure as knowledge and in
This is a very fine, very detailed and beautifully presented comparative study of six cities – London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Delhi, Mumbai – each of them among the world’s largest cities, each part of a functioning democracy, each with successes and failures.
DIY Urbanism in Africa: Politics and Practice engages with the fascinating topic of DIY urbanism and draws on cases from sub-Saharan Africa to exp
In the words of the author, the sanitation crisis this book describes is not some abstraction.
The atlas is a study of the spatial logic of informal settlement development and what shapes or is shaped by it.
Our current climate emergency is unfolding within the context of extended urbanization, and the disconnection between theory and policy and politics of climate change has urgent socio-ecological implications.
Nancy Odendaal’s book ‘Disruptive Urbanism’ is concerned with the role that digital platforms could play in the future of African cities.
Tom Goodfellow’s volume is part of the official book series of the Development Studies Association of the UK, ‘Critical Frontiers of Theory, Research, and Policy in International Development Studies.’ It
Displacement affects more than 100 million people worldwide and is often prolonged. Many displaced people seek opportunities in cities.
Crankshaw’s volume builds on earlier work to provide a comprehensive analysis of economic and social inequality in Johannesburg.