The book analyzes the impact of urban movements on government and public policies in a context of rapid urban transformations, public policy crises and increasing social inequalities. The essays show how the impact of the movements is increasing and has effects both in the orientation of the policies, as in their form of management and its effects. The authors are leading scholars from universities and research centers in Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.

In recent years, European societies and territories have witnessed the spatial impacts of a severe financial and socio-economic crisis. This book builds on the current debate concerning how cities and urban regions and their citizens deal with the consequences of the recent financial and socio-economic crisis. Cities in Crisis examines the political and administrative implications of austerity measures applied in southern European cities. These include cuts in local public spending and the processes of privatization of local public assets, as well as issues related to the re-scaling, recentralization or decentralization of competencies. Attention is paid to the rise of new ‘austerity regimes’, the question of their legitimacy and their spatial manifestations, and in particular to the social consequences of austerity. The contributions to this book lay the foundation for recommendations on how to improve and consolidate qualified governance arrangements in order to better address rapid economic and social changes. Such recommendations are applicable to cities and urban regions both within and outside of Europe. It identifies possible approaches, tools and partnerships to tackle the effects of the crisis and to prepare European cities for future challenges.

This book examines two civic initiatives in Europe and analyses their evolution through the institutionalisation of their practices, local public effects, and established models for action at broader scales. Drawing from the concepts of civic action, problematic situations, public problems, and experience, this book coins the concept of direct civic action to explore civic initiatives beyond sectorial categories. It draws from the histories, everyday activities, and encounters with new problematic situations of a Slovak and a French initiative. It analyses the institutionalisation of their internal practices, their public cultural services, the models for action they establish in broader networks of initiatives, and how institutionalisation affects their experimentation and innovation. This book uses two case studies of civic initiatives in France and Slovakia, examining how the experimental and institutionalised approaches to problematic situations of civic initiatives are associated with the generation and continuative reproduction of public goods and policies. It also explores how local initiatives establish national and international networks and models for direct civic action. This book is aimed at scholars interested in civic initiatives, urban planning, public policies, innovation studies, and urban sociology. It is intended to engage members of civic initiatives by offering insights into organisational dynamics and their impact on public issues. Furthermore, it appeals to public officials and policy-makers who aim to establish policies that promote civic initiatives and encourage direct civic action.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, politics of austerity in Europe have engendered far-reaching socioeconomic and political transformations. The recent refugee ‘crisis’ has also deeply affected the sociopolitical terrain. Contrary to past arguments about the reduced significance of the nation state, Europe is experiencing a resurgence of nationalisms. Simultaneously, often as a counter-response, several European cities are experiencing an emergence of social practices that claim urban politics as a dynamic field of action and contestation potentially transcending national boundaries. In the past, such practices tended to focus mainly on claims for the 'right to the city'. Currently, however, we observe a greater range of argumentations that re-signify the arena of urban citizenship. Through the entanglement of different scales and actors, emerging practices of solidarity and needs-based claims, and alliances between differently entitled subjects, involving both natives and foreigners, challenge and reshape institutions of governance and reactivate the field of urban politics against austerity and securitisation. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue in Citizenship Studies.

This book offers a unique perspective on urban processes affecting tourist spaces and city centres. Economic, social and environmental uncertainty has been commonplace since March 2019, when mobility slowed down across the globe. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated trends that have been investigated in urban space for years. The incorporation of technologies, the expansion of tourism and the introduction of policies that in part want to advance sustainability are generating processes of reorganisation of territories that are driving changes. These changes will affect models of city, urbanism and society. This publication is directed to a wide spectrum of people interested in urban processes, tourism and social change in the context of the Post-Pandemic Covid-19. In particular, the book is aimed at researchers, undergraduate and postgraduate students, consultants, public administrations and the public interested in the recent challenges that are affecting developed and developing societies.

European cities are on the rise, and are taking advantage of the opportunities of the European integration and globalization processes. But they also face economic changes, social inequalities, poverty and a new set of constraints. Taking examples through the European Union, European Cities explores the impact of the transformation of the nation states on cities and the change of local societies and local governments. It argues that new modes of urban governance are emerging, and that cities are becoming collective actors within European governance. European Cities shows why and how the bulk of European cities still appear to be original forms of compromise, aggregation, representation of diverse interests, and culture. Different modes of governance are gradually being structured in most middle size European cities despite processes of social exclusion segregation accompanied by the increased mobility of some citizens. Are Europeans going to invent a new form of institutionalized and territorialized capitalism, of which medium-sized European cities will be one of the pillars and one of the actors ? Failing that, the effects of changing scales could be expressed as profound transformations of the European urban model. European Societies Series Series Editor: Colin Crouch Very few of the existing sociological texts which compare different European societies on specific topics are accessible to a broad range of scholars and students. The European Societies series will help fill this gap in the literature, and attempt to answer questions such as: Is there really such a thing as a 'European model' of society? Do the economic and political integration processes of the European Union also imply convergence in more general aspects of social life, like family or religious behaviour? What do the societies of Western Europe have in common with those further to the east? This series will cover the main social institutions, although not every author will cover the full range of European countries. As well as surveying existing knowledge in a way that will be useful to students, each book will also seek to contribute to our growing knowledge of what remains in many respects a sociologically unknown continent.

Alternative Takes to the City presents the mosaic of relations and socio-spatial conditions which compose the plurality of contemporary everyday space(s) in cities, offering "a view from below". It proposes a multidisciplinary and gendered approach to the (relational) spatialities and temporalities of the everyday, of new mobilities and of global and local networks which constitute urban life in contemporary cities. The book raises an empirically informed theoretical proposition which springs from the multiplicity of everyday experiences, as a laboratory for understanding recent socio-spatial, political and ideological transformations. Each chapter takes forward the theoretical argument based on one or more examples of concrete cities, in order to unveil the complexity and diversity of the urban condition in changing conjunctures, in which local practices connect and collide with global developments.