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Cities in Relations
Trajectories of Urban Development in Hanoi and Ouagadougou
‘Cities in Relations is a book of immense methodological and political importance. At a time when neoliberalism and globalization are thought to shape much of urban life, Ola Söderström offers a more imaginative way to grasp what is distinctive about worldly cities. The book is an invitation to urban studies to think again about the bases for comparison in a world where cities beyond the West have to negotiate different ways of being global.’ 'The idea that urbanism is relational is by now taken for granted, but what is far less common are detailed accounts of the forms, politics and implications of relationality, especially for cities too often neglected in urban theory. Through detailed and nuanced discussion of two quite different contexts – Hanoi and Ouagadougou - Söderström’s rigorous and lively book provides an insightful investigation of the variegated and increasingly translocal politics of urban development, and offers important contributions to debates on both relational and comparative urbanism.’
—John Allen, Professor of Economic Geography, The Open University, UK
—Colin McFarlane, Reader in Human Geography, Durham University, UK
Ola Söderström (Author)
9781118632819, Wiley
Hardback, published 11 April 2014
230 pages
23.8 x 16.1 x 1.8 cm, 0.431 kg
“This would be especially valuable in continuing the study of urban developments in the post-communist environment.” (Geographica Helvetica, 1 May 2015)
Cities in Relations advances a novel way of thinking about urban transformation by focusing on transnational relations in the least developed countries.
List of Figures vii List of Tables x Acronyms xi Series Editors’ Preface xiii Preface and Acknowledgements xiv 1 Comparing Cities in Relations 1 Relating Hanoi, Ouagadougou … and Palermo 4 A Brief Introduction to Two Distant Cousins 5 World-city Research Beyond the West 9 Relational Geographies 12 Comparing Cities 17 The Structure of the Book 26 2 Trajectories of Urban Change in Two Ordinary Cities 31 Regime Change in Hanoi and Ouagadougou 33 Forms of Relatedness 42 Conclusion 55 3 Transnational Policy Relations 60 Mobile Planners and City Networks 63 Concrete and Paper in Hanoi’s Urban Development 64 Ouagadougou’s Competing Worlds of Policy Relations 76 Conclusion 87 4 Public Space Policies on the Move 92 A Repertoire of Translocal Connections 94 Public Space: Understandings, Practices and Things 97 Translocal Connections and Public Space Policy in the Making 103 The Politics of Translocal Connections 108 Traveling Participation and Public Space Design 110 5 Connecting to Circuits of Architectural Design 120 Stretched Geographies of Design 121 Circuits of Architectural Design in Hanoi and Ouagadougou 123 Hanoi: Design Spaces of an Emerging Economy 125 Ouagadougou: Architectures of Development 131 Grounding Design 136 Conclusion: Transnational Learning Processes and “Banal” Nationalism 140 6 On Road Interchanges and Shopping Malls: What Traveling Types Do 145 Modernization as Morality and Power 147 Modernization Through Ouagadougou’s Built Environment 150 Staging New Social Identities in Hanoi’s Shopping Malls 159 Conclusion 166 Conclusion: For a Politics of Urban Relatedness 171 Comparing Processes, Worlds of Relations, and Relational Effects 172 The Evolving Relational Worlds of Cities 175 An Assets-based Politics of Relatedness 178 References 181 Index 196
Conclusion 116
Subject Areas: Geography [RG]
