Latest Posts

Future Cities Finance Initiative Announced in Partnership with Level39

Cities are clearly the topic of the moment, be it Smart/Future/Sustainable/Computable, the concept is moving towards a new understanding of our urban world and with it an opening up of new social and economic opportunities. There has never been a better time to look into the research and commercial opportunities…

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Future Cities Finance Initiative Announced in Partnership with Level39

Cities are clearly the topic of the moment, be it Smart/Future/Sustainable/Computable, the concept is moving towards a new understanding of our urban world and with it an opening up of new social and economic opportunities. There has never been a better time to look into the research and commercial opportunities…

(Visited 467 times, 1 visits today)
Continue reading »

Mediating Emotion

Everyday life is full of emotion. We react to situations, conversations, sudden events and elements of our environment in affective ways. As the Neuropsychologist Antonio Damasio complellingly argued[1], emotions, such as pleasure and preference, are intrinsic aspects of making decisions, from the mundane to the extraordinary. Above all, however emotion […]

The post Mediating Emotion appeared first on CEDE.

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A hive plot of hospitality received by Coalition Special Advisers

With political transparency an increasingly topical subject in the wake of press scandals and allegations of official coverup, it is a useful exercise to examine any data reflecting the interaction between our leaders and our purveyors of news. Since taking power the UK coalition government has published records of hospitality received by Special Advisers – […]

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A hive plot of hospitality received by Coalition Special Advisers

With political transparency an increasingly topical subject in the wake of press scandals and allegations of official coverup, it is a useful exercise to examine any data reflecting the interaction between our leaders and our purveyors of news. Since taking power the UK coalition government has published records of hospitality received by Special Advisers – […]

Continue reading »

A hive plot of hospitality received by Coalition Special Advisers

With political transparency an increasingly topical subject in the wake of press scandals and allegations of official coverup, it is a useful exercise to examine any data reflecting the interaction between our leaders and our purveyors of news. Since taking power the UK coalition government has published records of hospitality received by Special Advisers – […]

Continue reading »

GIS Course Note 01: Spatial is Special




Image 1. Dr.Adam Dennett introduced the course outline on 2nd October, 2013

From this academic term, Networking City is doing a teaching assistant role for ‘GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND SCIENCE’ course which is set up by CASA for their provocative master programme ‘MResAdvanced Spatial Analysis & Visualisation’ and Bartlett students. In this year, the course is opened to Urban Planning and DPU students of Bartlett, so thirty students registered, while fifteen students who were mostly from the CASA had an opportunity last year.

Dr. Adam Dennett, the lecturer, briefly showed the outline of the course and explained the meaning of studying spatial analysis, definition of Geographic Information System, linkage between GIS and scientific research, the difference between GISystems and GIScience, and short history of GIS.

During one hour his lecture, the most impressive part was what the meaning of information is in Geography and Urban studies, and how it can make an impact on decision making process. When he illustrated the structure of how one spatial data could be developed to information, knowledge and wisdom, and could be the initial point which change our environments, he emphasised not to make a graphic image by GIS programmes but to consider the meaning behind the data.

After the lecture, the students had two-hour practical session. They operated the main programmes of the course: Arc-GIS, QGIS and R on UCL computers, and checked how they can set up the programmes on their own laptops. In order to learn basic knowledge and functions of Arc-GIS, Adam recommended registering My Virtual CampusTraining on ESRI homepage and complete its modules.

 

Continue reading »

GIS Course Note 01: Spatial is Special




Image 1. Dr.Adam Dennett introduced the course outline on 2nd October, 2013

From this academic term, Networking City is doing a teaching assistant role for ‘GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND SCIENCE’ course which is set up by CASA for their provocative master programme ‘MResAdvanced Spatial Analysis & Visualisation’ and Bartlett students. In this year, the course is opened to Urban Planning and DPU students of Bartlett, so thirty students registered, while fifteen students who were mostly from the CASA had an opportunity last year.

Dr. Adam Dennett, the lecturer, briefly showed the outline of the course and explained the meaning of studying spatial analysis, definition of Geographic Information System, linkage between GIS and scientific research, the difference between GISystems and GIScience, and short history of GIS.

During one hour his lecture, the most impressive part was what the meaning of information is in Geography and Urban studies, and how it can make an impact on decision making process. When he illustrated the structure of how one spatial data could be developed to information, knowledge and wisdom, and could be the initial point which change our environments, he emphasised not to make a graphic image by GIS programmes but to consider the meaning behind the data.

After the lecture, the students had two-hour practical session. They operated the main programmes of the course: Arc-GIS, QGIS and R on UCL computers, and checked how they can set up the programmes on their own laptops. In order to learn basic knowledge and functions of Arc-GIS, Adam recommended registering My Virtual CampusTraining on ESRI homepage and complete its modules.

 

Continue reading »

Perfecting bike share: Some day we’ll all ride to work – Salon


Salon

Perfecting bike share: Some day we’ll all ride to work
Salon
In a paper published in the Journal of Transport Geography this summer, Oliver O’Brien, James Cheshire and Michael Batty, of University College London’s Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis, compared the design and use of bike share systems in 38

Continue reading »

Perfecting bike share: Some day we’ll all ride to work – Salon


Salon

Perfecting bike share: Some day we’ll all ride to work
Salon
In a paper published in the Journal of Transport Geography this summer, Oliver O’Brien, James Cheshire and Michael Batty, of University College London’s Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis, compared the design and use of bike share systems in 38

Continue reading »

Perfecting bike share: Some day we’ll all ride to work – Salon


Salon

Perfecting bike share: Some day we’ll all ride to work
Salon
Last year, a German landscape architect named Alexander Dunkel built an unusual map of San Francisco. Harnessing data from Flickr to map both geotags (where a photo was taken) and tags (what a photo was taken of), Dunkel was able to chart the city’s …

and more »

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Perfecting bike share: Some day we’ll all ride to work – Salon


Salon

Perfecting bike share: Some day we’ll all ride to work
Salon
In a paper published in the Journal of Transport Geography this summer, Oliver O’Brien, James Cheshire and Michael Batty, of University College London’s Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis, compared the design and use of bike share systems in 38

and more »

Continue reading »

Big data, big ball-ache

Big data, yeah? It’s great isn’t it? Doesn’t everyone just love to have loads of big data all over the place? Got 30 million customers in the UK, have you? Each of those customers purchasing thousands of products a year, yeah? Screw it, lets just store ALL that information in a massive database. It’s big […]

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IR: State-Driven and Citizen-Driven Networks

Our work exploring how social media can be used to study events around the world has resulted in a new publication in the  Social Science Computer Review entitled “International Relations: State-Driven and Citizen-Driven Networks.” In essence what we are attempting to do is compare traditional international relations (e.g. from the United Nations General Assembly voting patterns) to those arising from the bottom up interactions (i.e from people on the ground). The abstract of the paper is below along with some of the images that accompany the paper.

The international community can be viewed as a set of networks, manifested through various transnational activities. The availability of longitudinal datasets such as international arms trades and United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) allows for the study of state-driven interactions over time. In parallel to this top-down approach, the recent emergence of social media is fostering a bottom-up and citizen driven avenue for international relations (IR). The comparison of these two network types offers a new lens to study the alignment between states and their people. This paper presents a network-driven approach to analyze communities as they are established through different forms of bottom-up (e.g. Twitter) and top-down (e.g. UNGA voting records and international arms trade records) IR. By constructing and comparing different network communities we were able to evaluate the similarities between state-driven and citizen-driven networks. In order to validate our approach we identified communities in UNGA voting records during and after the Cold War. Our approach showed that the similarity between UNGA communities during and after the Cold War was 0.55 and 0.81 respectively (in a 0-1 scale). To explore the state- versus citizen-driven interactions we focused on the recent events within Syria within Twitter over a sample period of one month. The analysis of these data show a clear misalignment (0.25) between citizen-formed international networks and the ones established by the Syrian government (e.g. through its UNGA voting patterns).

Full reference:

Crooks, A.T., Masad, D., Croitoru, A., Cotnoir, A., Stefanidis, A. and Radzikowski, J. (2013), International Relations: State-Driven and Citizen-Driven Networks, Social Science Computer Review. DOI:10.1177/0894439313506851

If you don’t have access to Social Science Computer Review, send us an email and we can send you an early version of the paper. This is also only part of our work on using multiple networks to explore international relations. One can of course also explore the networks in more detail. For example in the figure below we plot the actual transfer of arms between states during the 2001 and 2011 period. One can clearly see how different states are connected with Syria however, Russia has connections to many states.

Arms transfers
Or if we explore Twitter hastags and add an edge between any pair of hashtags when they are used in the same tweet we can explore an emergent ontology of topic labels users associate with each other. For example, the #Allepo hashtag is associated with other hashtags which appear to local events, including “#civilian”, “#airstrike”, “#hunger”, “#pictures”, many of which are only connected to the #Aleppo hashtag as shown below.

Continue reading »

IR: State-Driven and Citizen-Driven Networks

Our work exploring how social media can be used to study events around the world has resulted in a new publication in the  Social Science Computer Review entitled “International Relations: State-Driven and Citizen-Driven Networks.” In essence what we are attempting to do is compare traditional international relations (e.g. from the United Nations General Assembly voting patterns) to those arising from the bottom up interactions (i.e from people on the ground). The abstract of the paper is below along with some of the images that accompany the paper.

The international community can be viewed as a set of networks, manifested through various transnational activities. The availability of longitudinal datasets such as international arms trades and United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) allows for the study of state-driven interactions over time. In parallel to this top-down approach, the recent emergence of social media is fostering a bottom-up and citizen driven avenue for international relations (IR). The comparison of these two network types offers a new lens to study the alignment between states and their people. This paper presents a network-driven approach to analyze communities as they are established through different forms of bottom-up (e.g. Twitter) and top-down (e.g. UNGA voting records and international arms trade records) IR. By constructing and comparing different network communities we were able to evaluate the similarities between state-driven and citizen-driven networks. In order to validate our approach we identified communities in UNGA voting records during and after the Cold War. Our approach showed that the similarity between UNGA communities during and after the Cold War was 0.55 and 0.81 respectively (in a 0-1 scale). To explore the state- versus citizen-driven interactions we focused on the recent events within Syria within Twitter over a sample period of one month. The analysis of these data show a clear misalignment (0.25) between citizen-formed international networks and the ones established by the Syrian government (e.g. through its UNGA voting patterns).

Full reference:

Crooks, A.T., Masad, D., Croitoru, A., Cotnoir, A., Stefanidis, A. and Radzikowski, J. (2013), International Relations: State-Driven and Citizen-Driven Networks, Social Science Computer Review. DOI:10.1177/0894439313506851

If you don’t have access to Social Science Computer Review, send us an email and we can send you an early version of the paper. This is also only part of our work on using multiple networks to explore international relations. One can of course also explore the networks in more detail. For example in the figure below we plot the actual transfer of arms between states during the 2001 and 2011 period. One can clearly see how different states are connected with Syria however, Russia has connections to many states.

Arms transfers
Or if we explore Twitter hastags and add an edge between any pair of hashtags when they are used in the same tweet we can explore an emergent ontology of topic labels users associate with each other. For example, the #Allepo hashtag is associated with other hashtags which appear to local events, including “#civilian”, “#airstrike”, “#hunger”, “#pictures”, many of which are only connected to the #Aleppo hashtag as shown below.

Continue reading »

Book – Urban Fabrics Inside Out

Two new publications set out to investigate the urban structure from a different angle than the ever same physical structure perspective. Whilst it might not as such mark a general shift in the way cities or urban areas are investigated these two publication both take a very strong position stressing the social aspects, the experiential and the lived city. It is about people, individuals as much as society and culture.

Both books are part of much larger ongoing research project supported by large national bodies, but operating internationally.

The first of the two books is Suburban Constellations. Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century. edited by Roger Keil published by Jovis. It is in fact some kind of half time summary of the ongoing project (2010-2017) Global Suburbanisms: governance, land, and infrastructure in the 21st century. Here the group not only reports on findings, but it is also a tool to define the status quo and look ahead at what is to be achieved further down the line. The project is mainly supported by Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada but investigates case studies from around the world. One of the very striking themes in this project is to bring case studies of all those areas of urban sprawl from around the globe together and compare/contrast them.

The second book is Handmade urbanism: from community initiatives to participatory models : Mumbai, São Paulo, Istanbul, Mexico City, Cape Town edited by Marco L. Rosa and Ute E and published by Jovis. Weiland and is a publication that draws on the Urban Age project at home at LSE and famously sponsored by Deutsche Bank. Here the Project is already into its sixth year and a number of books where published in its context. Most prominently the Endless City (2008) and Living in the Endless City (2011) both by Burdett and Sudjic. This new publication specifically focuses on the Urban Age Award which is organised by the Alfred Herrhausen Society as part of the Urban Age Conferences. With a focus on what is happening on the ground it is based on interviews with different stakeholders in each of the projects world cities. Those five cities are Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Cape Town. The editor of this new publication Ute Weiland has for the past five years coordinated said awards and worked closely with the local contributors in all five cities.

What is special on those two publications is the angel they portrait the urban world and the focus they chose for the respective research projects. The main topic is the rapid urbanisation, the fact that 80% of the world’s population will be living in urbanised areas by 2050 that urban means collective and that cities are in constant flux.

The publisher house Jovis has already a bit of a history with similar publications. There is for example Matthew Gandy’s Urban Constellations (2011) as one of the recent publications in this area. In fact Keil does specifically refer to Gandy in his introduction and the two books even share partly the same title.

Suburban Constellations. Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century. being a work in progress brings together a body of writings much more experimental and investigative in comparison. Whilst this might be interpreted as a lack of focus or clear scope at times, it does surprise the reader with raw concepts and very direct lines thought making for a joyful read. Further more it does not require to be read from cover to cover, rather it can be picket up to read just one of the essays and read others maybe later.

It is structured along four topics: Foundations, Themes, Essay and Images and Regions. The first topic presents some ‘foundational thinking on suburbanisation’. The second topic ‘elaborated on those themes with emphasis on redevelopment, risk, boundaries, water, sewage, and transportation. These topics intertwined with the research project’s main points of Land, Governance and Infrastructure. Whilst this organisational structure whilst they might make sense from a project point of view it not as easily accessible for the generally interested reader.

book coverImage taken from the bad-news-beat.org / The waste lands of Fort Mcmurray AB.

The are pieces like “Forth McMurray, the Suburb sat the End of the Highway” by Clair Major describing the context of one of Canada’s two purely business driven settlements just north of Edmonton fuelled by the large oil sands. Or on the other hand an Essay by Alan Mabin “Suburbanisms in Africa” where he discusses not just the suburbs as places but mainly suburban as a term and its meaning in a culturally very different context. He for example points out how difficult it is to translate the term suburb or indeed suburbanises to other languages. For example in places such the urbanised areas of South Africa where beside the local/traditional languages plus English, French and Portuguese all compete for the meaning full expression such terminologies become very fluid in deed creating a complex concept of their own undermining all efforts to frame the topics with key terms.

The project plans a very comprehensive dissemination strategy including conferences and article, but also summer schools. So there will be much more to come from this project and research collective. Preview PDF for this publication is available HERE.

book spreadImage taken from the perfact.org / Book spread Handmade Urbanism showing sketch illustrations.

Handmade urbanism: from community initiatives to participatory models : Mumbai, São Paulo, Istanbul, Mexico City, Cape Town has its focus on what is happening on the ground in each of the five metropolis regions and is being supported by the worldwide operating initiative Urban Age Award sponsored by Deutsche Bank.

The premise of the initiative is that empowering the local population and supporting them to organise their own projects will lead to more sustainable and lasting projects and increases the communities resilience. These aspects are investigated through the interviews and discussions each locations is portrayed by. This is frased by Wolfgang Nowak, the initiator of the Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award in his interview as: “I am not one of these people, like a Florence Nightingale, who stands and gives out soup to the poor (she has in fact done a whole lot more, for people and science). What we want is to enable the poor no longer to accept soup queues and produce their own soup.” (annotation added)

The book structure is organised along the cities. This main body is introduced by a series of essays creating a context for the project. These are by Wolfgang Nowak, Ute E. Wieland and Richard Sennett. These essays are not extensive in length, but try to be very concise.

The main part of the book presents a range of information about each location. There are basic statistics and data key figures information, and a short introduction to each of the three shortlisted projects. This is then followed by a series of interviews with local stakeholders. Experts from the jury, the local government as well as the project initiators.

The book also comes with a cd so you can in addition watch the documentary about the award and hear a bit more about community-driven initiatives. Runtime only 5:30. Also the publisher offers a online preview in PDF for this publication, available HERE.

Both books provide a good overview and outline of these kind of projects. Both projects have a large scope but the struggle between global level of organisation and local level of operation is very apparent. It leaves the reader wondering what exactly do we take from all this? Urban Constellations is the one that makes for a good read with experimental thoughts and Handmade Urbanism is the more descriptive discussion type of publication.

Graphically the two books have very different approaches. Handmade Urbanism translates the topic literally and all illustrations are hand drawn sketches and symbols. Urban Constellations makes extensive use of photographs documenting places mainly views onto or into suburbs. It however a rather weak part of the book, the illustrations do not live up to the surprises the essays manage to challenge the readers with.

book coverImage taken from the Perfact / Handmade Urbanism book cover.

Keil, R. ed., 2013. Suburban Constellations. Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century., Berlin: Jovis Verlag.
Rosa, M.L. & Weiland, U.E. eds., 2013. Handmade urbanism: from community initiatives to participatory models : Mumbai, São Paulo, Istanbul, Mexico City, Cape Town, Berlin: Jovis Verlag.

Continue reading »

Book – Urban Fabrics Inside Out

Two new publications set out to investigate the urban structure from a different angle than the ever same physical structure perspective. Whilst it might not as such mark a general shift in the way cities or urban areas are investigated these two publication both take a very strong position stressing the social aspects, the experiential and the lived city. It is about people, individuals as much as society and culture.

Both books are part of much larger ongoing research project supported by large national bodies, but operating internationally.

The first of the two books is Suburban Constellations. Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century. edited by Roger Keil published by Jovis. It is in fact some kind of half time summary of the ongoing project (2010-2017) Global Suburbanisms: governance, land, and infrastructure in the 21st century. Here the group not only reports on findings, but it is also a tool to define the status quo and look ahead at what is to be achieved further down the line. The project is mainly supported by Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada but investigates case studies from around the world. One of the very striking themes in this project is to bring case studies of all those areas of urban sprawl from around the globe together and compare/contrast them.

The second book is Handmade urbanism: from community initiatives to participatory models : Mumbai, São Paulo, Istanbul, Mexico City, Cape Town edited by Marco L. Rosa and Ute E and published by Jovis. Weiland and is a publication that draws on the Urban Age project at home at LSE and famously sponsored by Deutsche Bank. Here the Project is already into its sixth year and a number of books where published in its context. Most prominently the Endless City (2008) and Living in the Endless City (2011) both by Burdett and Sudjic. This new publication specifically focuses on the Urban Age Award which is organised by the Alfred Herrhausen Society as part of the Urban Age Conferences. With a focus on what is happening on the ground it is based on interviews with different stakeholders in each of the projects world cities. Those five cities are Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Cape Town. The editor of this new publication Ute Weiland has for the past five years coordinated said awards and worked closely with the local contributors in all five cities.

What is special on those two publications is the angel they portrait the urban world and the focus they chose for the respective research projects. The main topic is the rapid urbanisation, the fact that 80% of the world’s population will be living in urbanised areas by 2050 that urban means collective and that cities are in constant flux.

The publisher house Jovis has already a bit of a history with similar publications. There is for example Matthew Gandy’s Urban Constellations (2011) as one of the recent publications in this area. In fact Keil does specifically refer to Gandy in his introduction and the two books even share partly the same title.

Suburban Constellations. Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century. being a work in progress brings together a body of writings much more experimental and investigative in comparison. Whilst this might be interpreted as a lack of focus or clear scope at times, it does surprise the reader with raw concepts and very direct lines thought making for a joyful read. Further more it does not require to be read from cover to cover, rather it can be picket up to read just one of the essays and read others maybe later.

It is structured along four topics: Foundations, Themes, Essay and Images and Regions. The first topic presents some ‘foundational thinking on suburbanisation’. The second topic ‘elaborated on those themes with emphasis on redevelopment, risk, boundaries, water, sewage, and transportation. These topics intertwined with the research project’s main points of Land, Governance and Infrastructure. Whilst this organisational structure whilst they might make sense from a project point of view it not as easily accessible for the generally interested reader.

book coverImage taken from the bad-news-beat.org / The waste lands of Fort Mcmurray AB.

The are pieces like “Forth McMurray, the Suburb sat the End of the Highway” by Clair Major describing the context of one of Canada’s two purely business driven settlements just north of Edmonton fuelled by the large oil sands. Or on the other hand an Essay by Alan Mabin “Suburbanisms in Africa” where he discusses not just the suburbs as places but mainly suburban as a term and its meaning in a culturally very different context. He for example points out how difficult it is to translate the term suburb or indeed suburbanises to other languages. For example in places such the urbanised areas of South Africa where beside the local/traditional languages plus English, French and Portuguese all compete for the meaning full expression such terminologies become very fluid in deed creating a complex concept of their own undermining all efforts to frame the topics with key terms.

The project plans a very comprehensive dissemination strategy including conferences and article, but also summer schools. So there will be much more to come from this project and research collective. Preview PDF for this publication is available HERE.

book spreadImage taken from the perfact.org / Book spread Handmade Urbanism showing sketch illustrations.

Handmade urbanism: from community initiatives to participatory models : Mumbai, São Paulo, Istanbul, Mexico City, Cape Town has its focus on what is happening on the ground in each of the five metropolis regions and is being supported by the worldwide operating initiative Urban Age Award sponsored by Deutsche Bank.

The premise of the initiative is that empowering the local population and supporting them to organise their own projects will lead to more sustainable and lasting projects and increases the communities resilience. These aspects are investigated through the interviews and discussions each locations is portrayed by. This is frased by Wolfgang Nowak, the initiator of the Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award in his interview as: “I am not one of these people, like a Florence Nightingale, who stands and gives out soup to the poor (she has in fact done a whole lot more, for people and science). What we want is to enable the poor no longer to accept soup queues and produce their own soup.” (annotation added)

The book structure is organised along the cities. This main body is introduced by a series of essays creating a context for the project. These are by Wolfgang Nowak, Ute E. Wieland and Richard Sennett. These essays are not extensive in length, but try to be very concise.

The main part of the book presents a range of information about each location. There are basic statistics and data key figures information, and a short introduction to each of the three shortlisted projects. This is then followed by a series of interviews with local stakeholders. Experts from the jury, the local government as well as the project initiators.

The book also comes with a cd so you can in addition watch the documentary about the award and hear a bit more about community-driven initiatives. Runtime only 5:30. Also the publisher offers a online preview in PDF for this publication, available HERE.

Both books provide a good overview and outline of these kind of projects. Both projects have a large scope but the struggle between global level of organisation and local level of operation is very apparent. It leaves the reader wondering what exactly do we take from all this? Urban Constellations is the one that makes for a good read with experimental thoughts and Handmade Urbanism is the more descriptive discussion type of publication.

Graphically the two books have very different approaches. Handmade Urbanism translates the topic literally and all illustrations are hand drawn sketches and symbols. Urban Constellations makes extensive use of photographs documenting places mainly views onto or into suburbs. It however a rather weak part of the book, the illustrations do not live up to the surprises the essays manage to challenge the readers with.

book coverImage taken from the Perfact / Handmade Urbanism book cover.

Keil, R. ed., 2013. Suburban Constellations. Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century., Berlin: Jovis Verlag.
Rosa, M.L. & Weiland, U.E. eds., 2013. Handmade urbanism: from community initiatives to participatory models : Mumbai, São Paulo, Istanbul, Mexico City, Cape Town, Berlin: Jovis Verlag.

Continue reading »
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