World Cities, City Worlds is about how we make sense of cities, those extraordinary places where half the world’s population now lives. It explores ways of seeing, experiencing and thinking about how cities work, how they change and what makes city life tick. Within the book, William Solesbury explores three particular ways of framing cities – through metaphors, icons and perspectives – and, taking six iconic cities (Venice, Mumbai, New York, Tokyo, Paris and Los Angeles), he explores the lure of cities within that context. To make sense of cities, to understand and use them, we need to delve below the surface of the familiar appearance of cities and the commonplace sensations of everyday city life. World Cities, City Worldsprovides fresh insights into cities and city life, from both the past and modern times. It takes us on an exploration of world cities, leading us to new ways of thinking about how cities work.

When living and working in cities, we need to make sense of them in order to get by. We must delve below their surface to understand what makes them tick and how we can best engage with them. This book argues that three tropes can help us: namely, metaphors, icons and perspectives. Metaphorically, we can see the city as a community, a battleground, a marketplace, a machine or an organism. Some cities are iconic; they present us with characteristics that are more generally true of cities and city life, such as Venice, Mumbai, New York, Tokyo, Paris and Los Angeles. Cities can also be viewed from different perspectives: those of artists, analysts, rulers and citizens. This book explores these ways of understanding cities, drawing on rich accounts of cities across the world and through time.

The World’s Cities offers instructors and students in higher education an accessible introduction to the three major perspectives influencing city-regions worldwide: City-Regions in a World System; Nested City-Regions; and The City-Region as the Engine of Economic Activity/Growth. The book provides students with helpful essays on each perspective, case studies to illustrate each major viewpoint, and discussion questions following each reading. The World’s Cities concludes with an original essay by the editor that helps students understand how an analysis incorporating a combination of theoretical perspectives and factors can provide a richer appreciation of the world’s city dynamics.

One billion people worldwide live in slums and that figure is predicted to reach 2 billion by 2030. This new volume from UN-HABITAT unpacks the complex social and economic issues using the novel conceptual framework of the urban divide.

The city is the home of prosperity. It is the place where human beings find satisfaction of basic needs and access to essential public goods. The city is also where ambitions, aspirations and other material and immaterial aspects of life are realized, providing contentment and happiness. It is a locus at which the prospects of prosperity and individual and collective well-being can be increased. However, when prosperity is restricted to some groups, when it is used to pursue specific interests, or when it is a justification for financial gains for the few to the detriment of the majority, the city becomes the arena where the right to shared prosperity is claimed and fought for. As people in the latter part of 2011 gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, in front of London’s St Paul’s cathedral, or in New York’s Zuccotti Park, they were not only demanding more equality and inclusion; they were also expressing the need for prosperity to be shared across all segments of society. What this new edition of State of the World’s Cities shows is that prosperity for all has been compromised by a narrow focus on economic growth. UN-Habitat suggests a fresh approach to prosperity beyond the solely economic emphasis, including other vital dimensions such as quality of life, adequate infrastructures, equity and environmental sustainability. The Report proposes a new tool – the City Prosperity Index – together with a conceptual matrix, the Wheel of Prosperity, both of which are meant to assist decision makers to design clear policy interventions. The Report advocates for the need of cities to enhance the public realm, expand public goods and consolidate rights to the 'commons' for all as a way to expand prosperity. This comes in response to the observed trend of enclosing or restricting these goods and commons in enclaves of prosperity, or depleting them through unsustainable use. The Report maps out major policy steps to promote a new type of city – the city of the twenty-first century – that is a 'good', people-centred city. One that is capable of integrating the tangible and more intangible aspects of prosperity, and in the process shedding off the inefficient, unsustainable forms and functionalities of the city of the previous century. By doing this, UN-Habitat plays a pivotal role in ensuring that urban planning, legal, regulatory and institutional frameworks become instruments of prosperity and well-being.

In a rapidly urbanizing and globalized world, cities have been the epicentres of COVID-19 (coronavirus). The virus has spread to virtually all parts of the world; first, among globally connected cities, then through community transmission and from the city to the countryside. This report shows that the intrinsic value of sustainable urbanization can and should be harnessed for the wellbeing of all. It provides evidence and policy analysis of the value of urbanization from an economic, social and environmental perspective. It also explores the role of innovation and technology, local governments, targeted investments and the effective implementation of the New Urban Agenda in fostering the value of sustainable urbanization.

Analysing cities through spatial understanding, this book explores how different worlds within the city are brought into close proximity and outlines new ways to address some of the ambiguities of cities: their promise, potential and problems.

World's Greatest Cities is an illuminating visual guide to 30 incredible cities around the globe—with annotated 3-D reconstructions and cutaway models that allow you to journey right to the soul of each of them. For thousands of years, cities built by humans have reflected their beliefs, their power, their needs, and their desires. Palaces and prisons, churches and mosques, skyscrapers and suspension bridges are the tracks that history, sometimes glorious, often violent, imprints on these cities. But these cities are also the men and women who inhabit them and who stamp a unique character onto each of them. The spirit of each city is also etched in the daily coming and going of the streets, the hustle and bustle of the markets, and in the unhurried discussions of the cafés. Explore the cities of the world today that leave a lasting impression on those who visit them. These cities offer rich architectural heritage and spectacular natural environments. But above all, they have a vitality that makes them unique. They are cities that know how to grow, transform, and reinvent themselves without losing their essence. Feel the heartbeat of the most vibrant and exciting cities around the globe. Skyscrapers, alongside ancient marvels, are beautifully illustrated and perfectly complement the engaging text that describes the creation and history of these celebrated destinations. Cities dissected are Paris, San Francisco, New York; City, Toronto, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro , London, Barcelona, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Prague, Athens, Moscow, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Dubai, Sydney, Auckland, Cairo, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo and all of their landmark sites.

'This is surely the most impressive and important publication to come out of the UN system for many years.' Peter Adamson, founder, New Internationalist, and author and researcher of UNICEF's The State of the World's Children from 1980 to 1995 The world's governments agreed at the Millennium Summit to halve, by 2015, the number of people who lack access to safe water. With rapidly growing urban populations the challenge is immense. Water and Sanitation in the World's Cities is a comprehensive and authoritative assessment of the problems and how they can be addressed. This influential publication by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) sets out in detail the scale of inadequate provision of water and sanitation. It describes the impacts on health and economic performance, showing the potential gains of remedial action; it analyses the proximate and underlying causes of poor provision and identifies information gaps affecting resource allocation; it outlines the consequences of further deterioration; and it explains how resources and institutional capacities - public, private and community - can be used to deliver proper services through integrated water resource management.

Other Cities, Other Worlds brings together leading scholars of cultural theory, urban studies, art, anthropology, literature, film, architecture, and history to look at non-Western global cities. The contributors focus on urban imaginaries, the ways that city dwellers perceive or imagine their own cities. Paying particular attention to the historical and cultural dimensions of urban life, they bring to their essays deep knowledge of the cities they are bound to in their lives and their work. Taken together, these essays allow us to compare metropolises from the so-called periphery and gauge processes of cultural globalization, illuminating the complexities at stake as we try to imagine other cities and other worlds under the spell of globalization. The effects of global processes such as the growth of transnational corporations and investment, the weakening of state sovereignty, increasing poverty, and the privatization of previously public services are described and analyzed in essays by Teresa P. R. Caldeira (São Paulo), Beatriz Sarlo (Buenos Aires), Néstor García Canclini (Mexico City), Farha Ghannam (Cairo), Gyan Prakash (Mumbai), and Yingjin Zhang (Beijing). Considering Johannesburg, the architect Hilton Judin takes on themes addressed by other contributors as well: the relation between the country and the city, and between racial imaginaries and the fear of urban violence. Rahul Mehrotra writes of the transitory, improvisational nature of the Indian bazaar city, while AbdouMaliq Simone sees a new urbanism of fragmentation and risk emerging in Douala, Cameroon. In a broader comparative frame, Okwui Enwezor reflects on the proliferation of biennales of contemporary art in African, Asian, and Latin American cities, and Ackbar Abbas considers the rise of fake commodity production in China. The volume closes with the novelist Orhan Pamuk’s meditation on his native city of Istanbul. Contributors: Ackbar Abbas, Teresa P. R. Caldeira, Néstor García Canclini, Okwui Enwezor, Farha Ghannam, Andreas Huyssen, Hilton Judin, Rahul Mehrotra, Orhan Pamuk, Gyan Prakash, Beatriz Sarlo, AbdouMaliq Simone, Yingjin Zhang