Lean Logic is David Fleming's masterpiece, the product of more than thirty years' work and a testament to the creative brilliance of one of Britain's most important intellectuals. A dictionary unlike any other, it leads readers through Fleming's stimulating exploration of fields as diverse as culture, history, science, art, logic, ethics, myth, economics, and anthropology, being made up of four hundred and four engaging essay-entries covering topics such as Boredom, Community, Debt, Growth, Harmless Lunatics, Land, Lean Thinking, Nanotechnology, Play, Religion, Spirit, Trust, and Utopia. The threads running through every entry are Fleming's deft and original analysis of how our present market-based economy is destroying the very foundations--ecological, economic, and cultural-- on which it depends, and his core focus: a compelling, grounded vision for a cohesive society that might weather the consequences. A society that provides a satisfying, culturally-rich context for lives well lived, in an economy not reliant on the impossible promise of eternal economic growth. A society worth living in. Worth fighting for. Worth contributing to. The beauty of the dictionary format is that it allows Fleming to draw connections without detracting from his in-depth exploration of each topic. Each entry carries intriguing links to other entries, inviting the enchanted reader to break free of the imposed order of a conventional book, starting where she will and following the links in the order of her choosing. In combination with Fleming's refreshing writing style and good-natured humor, it also creates a book perfectly suited to dipping in and out. The decades Fleming spent honing his life's work are evident in the lightness and mastery with which Lean Logic draws on an incredible wealth of cultural and historical learning--from Whitman to Whitefield, Dickens to Daly, Kropotkin to Kafka, Keats to Kuhn, Oakeshott to Ostrom, Jung to Jensen, Machiavelli to Mumford, Mauss to Mandelbrot, Leopold to Lakatos, Polanyi to Putnam, Nietzsche to Næss, Keynes to Kumar, Scruton to Shiva, Thoreau to Toynbee, Rabelais to Rogers, Shakespeare to Schumacher, Locke to Lovelock, Homer to Homer-Dixon--in demonstrating that many of the principles it commends have a track-record of success long pre-dating our current society. Fleming acknowledges, with honesty, the challenges ahead, but rather than inducing despair, Lean Logic is rare in its ability to inspire optimism in the creativity and intelligence of humans to nurse our ecology back to health; to rediscover the importance of place and play, of reciprocity and resilience, and of community and culture. ------ Recognizing that Lean Logic's sheer size and unusual structure could be daunting, Fleming's long-time collaborator Shaun Chamberlin has also selected and edited one of the potential pathways through the dictionary to create a second, stand-alone volume, Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy. The content, rare insights, and uniquely enjoyable writing style remain Fleming's, but presented at a more accessible paperback-length and in conventional read-it-front-to-back format.

Bringing together ideas from the fields of sociology, economics, human geography, ethics, political and communications theory, this book deals with some key subjects in urban design: the multidimensional effects of the spatial form of cities, ways of appropriating urban space, and the different material factors involved in the emergence of social life. It puts forward an innovative conceptual framework to reconsider some fundamental features of city-making as a social process: the place of cities in encounters and communications, in the randomness of events and in the repetition of activities that characterise societies. In doing so, it provides fresh analytical tools and theoretical insights to help advance our understanding of the networks of causalities, contingencies and contexts involved in practices of city-making. In a systematic attempt to bring urban analysis and research from the social sciences together, the book is organised around three vital yet relatively neglected dimensions in the social and material shaping of cities: (i) Cities as systems of encounter: an approach to urban segregation as segregated networks; (ii) Cities as systems of communication: a view of shared spaces as a means to association and social experience; (iii) Cities as systems of material interaction: explorations on urban form as an effect of interactivity, and interactivity as an effect of form. Visit the author’s website at: http://socialfabric.city/

This book is the first coherent presentation of the latest research and practices concerned with how recent advances in mobile information and communication technology (ICT) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are utilized to enhance the value of the city and change the way that city planning and management are carried out. Its salient feature is the pursuit of the individual-oriented evaluative point of view regarding the city. This view considers the value of the city to be the total of visit-values individuals feel and appreciate when they visit the city. The visit-value is conceptualized as the intangible asset value of the attractiveness of the city that visitors form in their minds based on their experiences and activities in the city, transactions with city space, and communications with other people. Visitors to the city may well be quite heterogeneous individuals with different motives and preferences. Thus, to enhance the value of the city, quite different visit values of heterogeneous individuals should be enhanced simultaneously, which necessitates the use of ICT and IoT in living spaces. Based on this view, the city utilizing ICT and IoT to enhance the value of the city is called the social city. Whereas many other books deal with the impacts of the advances in mobile ICT on the city, they only discuss how these advances change the infrastructure of the city but do not discuss how these technological advances can be utilized to enhance the city’s value. This book first develops the concept of the social city based on an individual micro-behavioral approach. Then, it presents the latest studies on technological components of the social city, such as the human-sensing technology for estimating individual behavior, decision making, and mood; the visualizing technology of the thermal 3-dimensional environment of the city; and the social-sensing technology using social networking service (SNS) for measuring and creating an atmosphere of city space. Finally, it envisages the future of the social city.

In the post-war period, Berlin and Naples experienced a phase of profound changes, essentially influenced by external factors: the less rigid urban structure which had been ruined by World War II, resulting in severe changes in the social and economic structure, an uncritical reception and implementation of largely theoretical models of functionalism in urban planning, and in the design of the new public building interventions. On the one hand, between the 1940s and the 1980s, Berlin experienced a considerable loss in population, a political isolation and an urban splitting, as the urban planning institutions, deeply influenced by relevant politics, slowly and thoroughly changed the cityscape. On the other hand, Naples suffered from a new phase of immigration as well as from the parallel densification of the old suburbs and the physical expansion of the city limits without consistent and socially appropriate urban planning measures. This phase of change, so full of contrasts, coincided with the establishment of new democratic systems in the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy, and with the fundamental goal of socially adequate housing in both the West and the East. The research involved a series of historical analyses of the relationship between urban development and social housing for critical reflection and to allow an informed evaluation of the contemporary condition. In particular, it investigated housing settlements realised in Berlin and Naples in the first four decades of the post-war period, which corresponds to the period in which public housing was central in both political and urban planning terms. The book focuses on places of living, the city and the house. Consequently, it investigates the scale of the project and that of the intervention, the relationship between innovation and the cultural reception of urban phenomena and, again, between the stage of the project and the realisation and upkeep of the interventions, between democratic expectations and the adequacy of the administration system. These steps have a direct effect on the social identity that inspires, structures and transforms the planned and then built city, that continuous dialogue between form and content (the past) that occurs, in general, through progressive and mutual adaptations. In the selection of the case studies, we have favoured interventions on the “periphery,” which are those in which theoretical and aesthetic trends have best manifested themselves and in which planning and design cultures could develop most widely. However, the periphery does not necessarily coincide with the geographical edges of the cities: both in Berlin and in Naples, historical events, or the particular topography have naturally shifted the “peripheral” location along a radius that only ideally starts from the city centre and often extends to its inner fringes. Rather, from a sociological point of view, the same interventions generally generate the peripheral condition, that is, marginalisation or social division. This, as we shall see, can be traced both on the large scale of the city and inside the neighbourhood. The materials are arranged in the following way: the text is introduced by a graphic and synthetic presentation of the historical context in Berlin and Naples and the documentation of the twelve case studies. In the second chapter, Comparison, which was mostly developed as the first by the young scholars involved in the project, three theoretical issues highlighted during the seminars are better presented: The ability of the project to involve the social level; the experimentalism of the interventions, in particular in construction technology, social approach and democratic participation; the relationship between public and private in the phases of implementation and the upkeep of the programmes. The third chapter, In-Depth Analysis, includes the contributions of the scientists involved to give a better articulated historical and critical analysis of many of selected case studies and of the wider urban and social context. The closing editorial paper offers a brief overview focusing on a selection of the theoretical nodes that emerged from the comparison of the materials from a contemporary perspective. The publication is the outcome of the homonymous research programme fully funded by DAAD German Academic Exchange Service and runned in 2019 in cooperation between the Technische Universität of Berlin, Department of Architecture (Habitat Unit) with the Università della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli," Dipartimento di Architettura e Disegno Industriale in Aversa (Italy). In der Nachkriegszeit erlebten Berlin und Neapel eine Phase tiefgehender Veränderungen, die im Wesentlichen von externen Faktoren beeinflusst wurde: der aufgelockerten, infolge des Zweiten Weltkriegs ruinierten Stadtform, der starken Veränderung der sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Struktur, der unkritischen Rezeption und Implementierung von stark theoretisch geprägten Modellen des Funktionalismus in der Stadtplanung sowie in der Gestaltung der neuen öffentlichen Bauinterventionen. Auf der einen Seite erlebt Berlin zwischen den 40er und den 80er Jahren einen starken Bevölkerungsverlust, eine politische Isolierung und eine urbane Aufspaltung, indem eine stark politisch beeinflusste Stadtplanung das Stadtbild tief verändert. Auf der anderen Seite leidet Neapel unter einer neuen Einwanderungsphase sowie der parallelen Verdichtung der alten Vorstädte und der physischen Erweiterung der Stadtgrenze, ohne dass konsequente und sozial gemäße stadtplanerische Maßnahmen vorgenommen wurden. Diese kontrastreiche Umbruchsphase stimmt überein mit der Etablierung der neuen demokratischen Regierungssysteme in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland wie auch in Italien und damit mit dem für beide - und im Westen wie im Osten - grundlegenden Ziel des sozial gerechten Wohnens. Das Forschungsvorhaben beinhaltete eine Reihe von historischen Analysen der Beziehung zwischen Stadtentwicklung und sozialem Wohnungsbau zum Zweck der kritischen Reflexion und um eine fundierte Bewertung der jeweiligen zeitgenössischen Bedingungen zu ermöglichen. Insbesondere wurden Wohnsiedlungen untersucht, die in Berlin wie in Neapel in den ersten vier Jahrzehnten nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg errichtet wurden, d.h. in eben dem Zeitraum, in dem öffentlicher Wohnungsbau sowohl unter politischen wie auch unter stadtplanerischen Aspekten zentral war. Das Buch konzentriert sich auf Lebensräume, die Stadt und das Haus. Folglich untersucht es das Ausmaß des Projekts wie das der Intervention, die Beziehung zwischen Innovation und kultureller Rezeption städtischer Phänomene wie auch zwischen dem jeweiligen Stadium des Projekts und der Umsetzung und Aufrechterhaltung der Interventionen und schließlich zwischen den demokratischen Erwartungen und der Leistungsfähigkeit des Verwaltungssystems. Diese Schritte haben direkte Auswirkungen auf die soziale Identität, welche die zunächst geplante und dann gebaute Stadt inspiriert, strukturiert und transformiert, d.h. diesen ständigen Dialog zwischen Form und Inhalt (die Vergangenheit), der im Allgemeinen durch fortschreitende und gegenseitige Anpassungen abläuft. Bei der Auswahl der Fallstudien haben wir Interventionen in der "Perpherie" bevorzugt, da sie es sind, in denen sich theoretische und ästhetische Trends am deutlichsten abzeichnen und in denen sich Kulturen der Planung und des Designs am weitesten entwickeln könnten. Die Peripherie fällt jedoch nicht unbedingt zusammen mit den geografischen Rändern der Städte: sowohl in Berlin wie in Neapel haben historische Ereignisse oder auch die jeweilige Topografie naturgemäß die "periphere" Lage entlang einem Radius verschoben, der nur im Idealfall vom Stadtzentrum ausgeht und sich oft bis an seine Ränder erstreckt. Von einer soziologischen Perspektive aus ist es eher so, dass im Allgemeinen die gleichen Interventionen zu einer peripheren Situation führen. d.h. zu Marginalisierung oder sozialer Aufspaltung. Wie wir sehen werden, gilt dies sowohl im größeren Rahmen für die Stadt wie auch innerhalb eines Stadtviertels. Die Materialien sind folgendermaßen angeordnet: Der Text wird eingeführt durch eine grafische und zusammenfassende Präsentation der historischen Zusammenhänge in Berlin und Neapel und eine Dokumentation zu den zwölf Fallstudien. Im zweiten Kapitel – "Vergleich/Comparison" – , das ursprünglich als erstes Kapitel von den jüngeren Forschern, die am Projekt teilnahmen, entwickelt wurde, werden drei Fragen, die während der Seminare im Mittelpunkt standen, genauer vorgestellt: die Eignung des Projekts dafür, die soziale Ebene mit einzubeziehen; der experimentelle Charakter der Interventionen, insbesondere in der Bautechnologie, im sozialen Ansatz und in der demokratischen Teilhabe; die Beziehung zwischen öffentlichem und privatem Engagement in der Phase der Umsetzung wie der Aufrechterhaltung der Programme. Das dritte Kapitel – "Eingehende Analyse/In-Depth-Analyses" – besteht aus den Beiträgen der beteiligten Wissenschaftler, um so eine klarere historische und kritische Analyse von etlichen der ausgewählten Fallstudien und der weiterreichenden städtischen und sozialen Zusammenhänge zu gewährleisten. Der abschließende Kommentarteil bietet einen kurzen Überblick, der den Schwerpunkt auf eine Auswahl von theoretischen Verknüpfungen legt, die sich aus dem Vergleich der Materialien aus zeitgenössischen Perspektive ergeben. Die Veröffentlichung ist das Ergebnis des gleichnamigen Forschungsprogramms, das vollständig vom DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) finanziert wurde und 2019 in einer Zusammenarbeit der Architektur-Fakultät (Habitat Unit) der Technischen Universität Berlin mit dem Dipartmento di Architettura e Disegno Industriale der Università della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" in Aversa (Italien) durchgeführt wurde. Nel secondo dopoguerra Berlino e Napoli vivono una fase di profondo cambiamento che è condizionato in maniera preponderante da fattori esterni: la parziale disgregazione della forma urbana causata dei bombardamenti bellici, il cambiamento della struttura socio-economica, il recepimento delle teorie funzionaliste nella pianificazione urbana e nella progettazione dei nuovi interventi di edilizia residenziale pubblica. Per un verso, tra gli anni quaranta e gli anni ottanta, Berlino rileva una pesante contrazione demografica, l'isolamento politico, la separazione interna del Muro, gli effetti di una pianificazione urbana fortemente influenzata dal sdoppiato piano politico che deriva dalla fondazione nel 1949 dei due stati tedeschi, la GDR e la DDR. Per altro verso, Napoli osserva una nuova fase di immigrazione che si aggiunge alla naturale crescita demografica del primo dopoguerra, lo sviluppo urbano dei sobborghi e dei principali centri dell’entroterra costiero, l'espansione fisica ma non amministrativa dei confini della città, l’inadeguatezza ed il costante ritardo del piano amministrativo-urbanistico nella gestione dei fenomeni sociali ed urbani. Si tratta in pratica di una fase carica di contrasti che coincide con l'instaurazione delle nuove repubbliche liberali in Germania ed Italia, e con la definitiva affermazione della questione abitativa e della residenza popolare che assurge, in ambito socialista, al rango di elemento funzionale alla stessa costruzione statale. Lo studio indaga la relazione tra sviluppo urbano ed edilizia residenziale pubblica e si propone come strumento per la riflessione critica e per la valutazione informata della condizione contemporanea. Le indagini e le valutazioni storiche che esso raccoglie si concentrano sugli interventi realizzati a Berlino e a Napoli nei primi quarant’anni del dopoguerra, ovvero nel periodo in cui la questione abitativa diviene urgente e centrale per vari ordini di motivi sia in termini politici che urbanistici. Lo sguardo si concentra sui luoghi dell'abitare, la città e la casa; indaga e confronta la scala teorica e quella reale, il rapporto tra innovazione e recezione culturale; confronta i piani del progetto, della costruzione e della successiva manutenzione degli interventi residenziali, tra le aspettative democratiche e l'adeguatezza del sistema amministrativo nel gestirli. Si tratta di passaggi che hanno un effetto diretto sull'identità sociale che, di risposta, ispira e struttura la nuova città attraverso un dialogo tra forma e contenuto (il passato) che procede per progressivi e reciproci adattamenti. Nella selezione dei casi studio sono stati privilegiati interventi di "periferia", ovvero quelli in cui le culture della pianificazione e del progetto, e le tendenze teoriche ed estetiche si sono potute manifestare nella maniera più completa. Come si vedrà, tuttavia, la periferia non coincide necessariamente con i margini geografici delle città: sia a Berlino che a Napoli gli eventi storici o la particolare topografia hanno dislocato la condizione "periferica" lungo un raggio che solo idealmente conduce dal centro della città. Da un punto di vista sociologico, e per la coincidenza di diversi fattori, inoltre, gli stessi interventi residenziali generano al loro interno la condizione periferica che si manifesta generalmente in degrado degli spazi comuni, mancanza di prossimità, emarginazione sociale. I materiali del testo sono organizzati in tre parti: nel primo capitolo Documentation si introduce al contesto storico, amministrativo ed urbanistico e si presentano schematicamente e secondo un criterio uniforme i dodici casi studio selezionati; nel secondo capitolo Comparison, che, come il primo, è stato redatto dai giovani ricercatori coinvolti nel progetto di ricerca, vengono meglio presentate tre questioni teoriche emerse nel corso dei laboratori: la capacità del progetto di coinvolgere il piano sociale; lo sperimentalismo degli interventi, in particolare per tecnologia costruttiva, approccio sociale e partecipazione democratica; il rapporto tra il piano amministrativo-pubblico ed il piano civico-privato nelle fasi di realizzazione e mantenimento dei programmi residenziali. Il terzo capitolo, In-Depth-Analysis, raccoglie i contributi degli studiosi coinvolti per fornire un'analisi storica e critica articolata dei casi di studio selezionati e del più ampio contesto urbano e sociale. Infine, le conclusioni raccolgono e presentano i principali nodi teorici emersi nel corso della ricerca in una prospettiva aperta alla condizione contemporanea. La pubblicazione restituisce e meglio sviluppa sul piano documentale e critico i materiali raccolti nel corso dei due laboratori tenuti nel 2019 presso la Technische Universität di Berlino, Dipartimento di Urbanistica e Sviluppo urbano sostenibile “Habitat Unit,” e l’Università della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli," Dipartimento di Architettura e Disegno Industriale di Aversa, nell’ambito dell’omonimo progetto di ricerca finanziato dal DAAD (Servizio Tedesco per lo Scambio Accademico).

This book examines urban experience from the vantage point of the global South. Drawing upon narratives coming from three key axes—communities, neighbourhoods, and market places—it lays bare the specificities of urban experience in contemporary Surat. It discusses a host of issues, including the ambiguity of urban experience, its uncomfortable ties with frames of the capital, and the politics of urban belonging that operate at multiple levels, shaping the contours of urban society. Musing on the subjectivities pertaining to the social and the spatial in a milieu of a fast-transforming urban landscape of Surat, Gujarat, the book is an exploration of how people perceive and associate with their surroundings, how they aspire, how they stigmatise others, the relation between the city and its migrants and castes, and at a broader level, between the capital and the city. An important contribution to the study of cities, the volume sheds light on how urban experience can be approached as a socially and spatially embedded concept. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of social history, urban sociology, urban studies, global South, and South Asia.

In this textbook, governance aspects are presented and explained in a comprehensible way at different levels: After a look at the roots of the governance discussion in economics and political science, political and economic negotiation and problem-solving processes are discussed on the macro level "Orders of Governance" and institutional and normative framework conditions are considered; on the meso level "Cooperation", forms of steering and control as well as cooperation and coordination of social economy enterprises are dealt with; and on the micro level "Interactions", governance is dealt with from the perspective of the actors and their interactions.