The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the UN General Assembly in 2015 represents the latest attempt by the international community to live up to the challenges of a planet that is out of control. Sustainable Development Goal 11 envisages inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities around the world by the year 2030. This globally agreed vision is part of a trend in international policy toward good urban governance, and now awaits implementation. Fourteen original contributions collectively examine how this global vision has been developed on a conceptual level, how it plays out in various areas of (global) urban governance and how it is implemented in varying local contexts. The overarching hypothesis presented herein is that SDG 11 proves that local governance is recognised as an autonomous yet interrelated part of the global pursuit of sustainable development. The volume analyses three core questions: How have the normative ideals set forth in SDG 11 been developed? What are the meanings of the four sub-goals of SDG 11 and how do these relate to each other? What does SDG 11 imply for urban law and governance in the domestic context and how are local processes of urban governance internationalised? The Globalisation of Urban Governance makes an important scholarly contribution by linking the narrative on globalisation of good urban governance in various social sciences with legal discourse. It considers global governance and connects the existing debate about cities and their place in global governance with some of the most pertinent questions that lawyers face today.

"Reigning theories of urban power suggest that in a world dominated by footloose transnational capital, cities have little capacity to effect social change. In City Power, Schragger challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that cities can and should pursue aims other than making themselves attractive to global capital. Using the municipal living wage movement as an example, Schragger explains why cities are well-positioned to address issues like income equality and how our institutions can be designed to allow them to do so"--

"The authors contribute to the field of urban governance and globalization through an empirically-based exploration of determinants of the performance of cities. They construct a preliminary worldwide database for cities, containing variables and indicators of globalization (at the country and city level), city governance, city performance (access and quality of infrastructure service delivery), as well as other relevant city characteristics. This city database, encompassing hundreds of cities worldwide, integrates existing data with new data gathered for this research. The findings suggest that good governance and globalization (at both the country and city level) do matter for city-level performance in terms of access and quality of delivery of infrastructure services. The authors also find that globalization and good city governance are significantly related with each other. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that there are complex interactions between technology choices, governance, and city performance, as well as evidence of a nonlinear (U-shaped) relationship between city size and performance, challenging the view that very large cities necessarily exhibit lower performance and pointing instead to potential agglomeration economies. The framework also suggests a way of bridging two seemingly competing strands of the literature, namely viewing the city as a place or as an outcome. The authors conclude by pointing to the need for expanding the database and the econometric framework, and suggest research directions and policy implications emerging from this initial investigation on governance and the city. "--World Bank web site.

Cities have been some of the most visible manifestations of the evolution of globalization and population expansion, and global cities are at the cutting edge of such changes. Critical Dialogues of Urban Governance, Development and Activism examines changes in governance, property development, urban politics, and community activism in two key global cities: London and Toronto. By taking these two cities as empirical cases, the book engages in constructive dialogues about the forms, governmental mechanisms and practices, and policy and community-based responses to the concerns facing modern urban centers. Through three central issues, governance, real estate and housing, and community activism and engagement, the authors seek to understand London and Toronto from a nuanced perspective, promoting critical reflection on the experiences and evaluative critiques of each urban context, providing insight into each city's trajectory and engaging critically with wider phenomena and influences on the urban governance challenges in cities beyond.

This book is about the role that ideas, institutions, and actors play in structuring how we govern cities and, more specifically, what projects or paths are taken. Global changes require that we rethink governance and urban policy, and that we do so through the dual lens of theory and practice.

With a current population inflow into cities of 200,000 people per day, UN Habitat expects that up to 75% of the global population will live in cities by 2050. Influenced by forces of globalization and global change, cities and urban life are transforming rapidly, impacting human welfare, economic development and urban-regional landscapes. This poses new challenges to urban governance, while emerging city networks, advancing geo-technologies and increasing production of continuous data streams require governance actors to re-think and re-work conventional work processes and practices. This book has been written to enhance our understanding of how governance can contribute to the development of just and resilient cities in a context of rapid urban transformations. It examines current governance patterns from a geographical and inclusive development perspective, emphasizing the importance of place, space, scale and human-environment interactions, and paying attention to contemporary processes of participation, networking, and spatialized digitization. The challenge we are facing is to turn future cities into inclusive cities that are diverse but just and within their ecological limits. We believe that the state-of-the-art overview of topical discussions on governance theories, instruments, methods and practices presented in this book provides a basis for understanding and analyzing these challenges.