Departing from conventional narratives centered on economic stagnation and social secularism, this book offers a fresh perspective on Mediterranean urbanities. It posits their correlation with housing and welfare regimes, societal transformations, local governance structures, and deficiencies in spatial planning. The analysis within delves into the neglected potential for mitigating regional disparities, conducting a meticulous examination of environmental disparities, economic imbalances, and overarching social inequalities in Southern European regions. The outcome aims to furnish an integrated, and potentially holistic, understanding of spatial divisions between cities and their surrounding territories.

This book delves into the neglected potential for mitigating regional disparities, conducting a meticulous examination of environmental disparities, economic imbalances, and overarching social inequalities in Southern European regions.

Processes driving urban growth are inherently related to multiple socio-economic factors, making the analysis of urban form and functions a challenging and complicated endeavour. Several fundamental factors and contextual indicators contribute to identify the main determinants of urban growth, that include economic and demographic variables, the socio-spatial structure, territorial patterns, institutional, religious and cultural attributes. Understanding spatio-temporal patterns of economic resilience can support the adoption of explicit developmental policies addressing specificities and local weaknesses of regional contexts.Thirty years after the seminal work entitled 'The Mediterranean City in Transition' by Lila Leontidou, the present contribution re-formulates a narrative framework interpreting the medium-term evolution of Southern European cities and generalises this frame to the analysis of other metropolitan areas with similar morphological and functional characteristics worldwide. Going beyond traditional Mediterranean discourses grounded on economic backwardness, social secularism, and demographic mix, an original interpretation of Mediterranean urbanities is proposed related to the local governance, real estate bubbles, land-use mix, and deregulation in urban expansion. Focusing on socioeconomic development processes in the Northern Mediterranean, the lost opportunity to reduce regional disparities and to give value to scenic and cultural values of the cities and the surrounding countryside are additional issues considered in this vision. Basing on a narrative analysis of ecologically fragile and socially fragmented Mediterranean contexts, the pervasiveness of a structural crisis - affecting regional and country economic systems, while infiltrating in the institutions, local governance systems, and the society, is finally debated as a contribution to a better understanding of complex urbanities worldwide.

The first volume of the series covers the key themes of political sociology as these have emerged in the course of the (sub-)discipline's development: state formation; legitimation; power; regulation, and inequality. The widening of the focus of political sociology from the nation-state and from models of power based on agents' wills and explicit agendas is reflected in the selection. The volume includes both 'standard' and highly-influential contributions - such as Elias on violence, Habermas on legitimation crisis or Lukes on power - and works that are perhaps less well known, but which represent a representative cross-section of themes and debates in the area. The historical formation of the state and its shifting spatial reach are covered in the first and final sections respectively. In between, both substantial issues - e.g. the changing nature of social policy and welfare regimes - and a wide range of theoretical and conceptual issues - are discussed by leading representative of the vying positions within the field.

An A-to-Z reference to writers of the New York School, including John Ashbery, who is often considered America's greatest living poet. Examines significant movements in literary history and its development through the years.