Proposal: MSU Press Book Series on Global Urban Studies

Proposal: MSU Press Book Series on Global Urban Studies

Series Editor, Laura A. Reese, Global Urban Studies Program

Overall Focus/Theme

The proposed book series will provide cutting edge interdisciplinary research on political, spatial, cultural and economic processes and issues in urban areas across the US and the world, and on the global processes that impact and unite urban areas. The organizing theme of the book series is the reality that behavior within and between cities and urban regions must be understood in a larger domestic and international context. An explicitly comparative approach to understanding urban issues and problems allows scholars and students to consider and analyze new ways in which urban areas across different societies and within the same society interact with each other and address a common set of challenges or issues.

The volumes in the MSU Press series on Global Urban Studies will explore urban issues at three levels, i) urban areas individually in the US and abroad, ii) urban areas in comparative context across regions, nationally, and internationally, and iii) how the forces of globalization change urban areas. Each book in the series will focus on a common and/or emerging issue in cities across the globe, will be edited by a scholar from MSU, and will contain chapters written by scholars across the US and other nations.

The individual books in the series will focus on such topics as:

• Methods for creating economically and environmentally sustainable urban regions based on sustainability efforts across the world;
• Green and Brownfield redevelopment processes and the impacts on both health and economic development in cities in North America and Eastern Europe;
• The urban social and economic impacts of the placement and closure of US military bases across the globe;
• Evaluating the competing demands for, and goals of, mass transit in urban areas across the world to explore how lessons learned in such cities as Toronto, Mexico City, and Moscow can be applied in US cities and in other urban areas across the globe;
• Comparison and assessment of urban governance and administrative structures with particular emphasis on lessons US cities can learn from cities abroad and how western models can be applied (or not) in developing Eastern European local governments;
• The nexus between cities and national security, focusing on urban areas as the front line of defense through their roles in immigration, transportation, border sites, and as symbols of national identity;
• Economic development in a global context focusing on how culture, the arts, tourism, and amenities are developed and enhanced in cities across the globe (a comparison of global creative class approaches).

What these topics have in common is that they address cutting edge issues—environment/brownfields, sustainability, health, economic development, culture, governance, national security—common to urban areas globally, yet illustrate the similarities and differences in conditions, approaches, and solutions across the world. In short, the Global Urban Studies book series takes an interdisciplinary approach to emergent urban issues using a global or comparative perspective.

Planned Books: Volumes 1-2

The first two volumes in the series (in order) will be as follows:

“Building Sustainable Communities: A Global Urban Perspective,” edited by Igor Vojnovic, Department of Geography, Michigan State University. This volume focuses on the need for, the attributes of, and methods for creating sustainable urban areas. Sustainability in this context refers to the ability of an urban entity to maintain itself in an economically stable, livable, and environmentally viable fashion over the long term. Thus, the book will address issues such as urban environmental pressures in industrialized and non-industrialized countries, experiments with “green” economic development, urban environmental designs, and the nexus of urban environments, residential health, social stress and sustainability. Twelve authors external to MSU are already working on chapters that will include visual materials such as maps, geographic information system (GIS) presentations, satellite images and photographs. The expected length of the volume is between 400 and 450 pages. This book will be delivered to the Press (in edited form) in December 2007. An outline of chapters is attached to this proposal.

“Environmental Contamination, Adaptive Reuse, and Public Health: Linking Policy and Science,” edited by Cynthia Jackson-Elmore, Social Work, Richard Hula, Political Science, and Laura Reese, Political Science, Michigan State University. This volume will focus on the intersection of four public policy arenas: land-use, environmental protection/reclamation, public health, and economic development. Chapters in the book will deal with several fundamental questions surrounding the redevelopment of contaminated sites, explicitly exploring the:

• location, remediation, and economic development similarities and differences in cities in North America and Eastern Europe;
• spatial patterns of urban brownfield location and poverty in urban areas;
• assessment of degree and type of remediation across types of cities and neighborhoods;
• examination of different remediation processes and standards across cities in different nations;
• evaluation of the economic development outcomes of projects located on formerly contaminated sites; and,
• role of neighborhood organizations in remediation and development planning.

The expected length of the volume is around 400 pages and the book will be delivered to the Press in December 2008. (Vita for the initial volume authors are attached.

Design Features

Each volume in the series will be edited by a scholar at MSU with chapters contributed by recognized scholars from across the world; special effort will be made to ensure that international contributors are well-represented. The Global Urban Studies Program will provide the MSU editor course release for the semester prior to the delivery of their respective volumes to ensure a high quality product. Chapter contributors will be solicited via a request for proposals published in appropriate scholarly outlets. After authors have been identified, GUSP will support a symposium on campus so that each set of chapter authors can meet, discuss their research plans, get feedback from others, and enable the editor to ensure that individual chapters mesh into a coherent final product. The symposium will include both private and public components so that the MSU research community can benefit from and gain awareness of the Global Urban Studies book series.

Each book will contain 12-15 chapters (depending on length) and will range from 300-450 pages. Because the series is interdisciplinary, some research included will require visual presentations such as photographs and maps. It will be desirable to to include color graphics in some (but likely not all) of the volumes.

Audience and Competition

The audience for the books in the series is primarily scholars and graduate students across a number of different fields due to the interdisciplinary nature of the series and urban studies in general. Specific target disciplines will vary by volume but urban and comparative urban and regional faculty and students will comprise the main market across volumes. Specific disciplines interested in the currently scheduled volumes include: political science, geography, environmental science/policy, urban planning, sociology, and economics. The books will be appropriate for adoption in graduate (masters and PhD) courses that focus on urban and comparative urban issues generally. Volume 1, “Building Sustainable Communities: A Global Urban Perspective,” is appropriate for use in political science, geography, urban planning, sociology and environmental studies courses that focus on urban environment, health and development. Volume 2, “Environmental Contamination, Adaptive Reuse, and Public Health: Linking Policy and Science,” will be appropriate for use in political science, geography, public health, environmental policy, urban planning, and economic development courses.

There are several urban series on the market and, although none are explicitly designed around urban issues in a global context, some contain comparative work. Extant series include:

• ME Sharpe: Cities and Contemporary Society Series
• SUNY Press: The New Inequalities Series and the Public Administration Series
• University of Pittsburgh Press: History of Urban Environment Series
• University of Toronto Press: Series in Public Management and Governance and Cultural Spaces Series
• McGill-Queens University Press: Culture of Cities Series (focuses on globalization and particular cities)
• Temple University Press: Comparative American Cities (no longer active)
• Oxford University Press: Cityscapes Series (individual city focus)

As a group, these urban series tend to focus on single cities in the US or cross-nationally as opposed to how cities across the globe deal with particular common issues or problems. Series that are problem or issue-based tend to compare only US cities. The proposed MSU Press Global Urban Studies book series will focus on common urban issues or problems and explore how they are manifested and addressed in urban areas globally. The ability for policy learning across cities globally will be a central focus of the series.

Building Sustainable Communities:

A Global Urban Context

1) Urban Sustainability

Igor Vojnovic (Michigan State University)

2) Developing Sustainable Policies, the Shanghai Experience

Dan Sui (Texas A&M University) and Wei Tu (Georgia Southern University)

3) Promoting Sustainable Manufacturing in Nagoya:

Exploring the Dynamics in Japan’s Comparative Advantage

Ron Kalafsky (University of Tennessee)

4) Sustainibility, Urban Transitions, and Development: The Case Study of Nang Rong, Thailand

Joe Messina and Perry Varnakovida (Michigan State University)

5) Deconcentration in the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area: Governance, Markets and the Quest for Sustainability

Eran Razin (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

6) Poverty, Vulnerability, and Urban Sustainability in Indian Mega-Cities

Darshini Mahadevia (Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad)

7) Urban Sustainability and Automobile Dependence in an Australian Context

Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy (Murdoch University)

8) Settlement Patterns and Land Use in Nairobi, Kenya: Is There Room for Sustainability?

Jenny Olson, Jiagou Qi, and David Campbell (Michigan State University)

9) The Centrality of Housing to Urban Sustainability

Victoria Basolo (University of California, Irvine)

10) The Role of Ethnicity and Class in Urban Sustainability: Shaping the Detroit Urban Environment

Joe Darden and Igor Vojnovic (Michigan State University)

11) Planning for Sustainability in the Greater Toronto Area

Pierre Filion (University of Waterloo)

12) Growing Sustainable Communities: The Role of Urban Gardens in Rio de Janeiro

Antoinette Winklerprins (Michigan State University)

13) Urban Sustainability in the Face of Globalization: Copenhagen

Eric Clark and Stefan Anderberg (Lund University)

14) Urban Form and Sustainability: Exploring Urban Development Patterns in Lisbon and Porto

Carlos Balsas (Arizona State University)

15) Pursuing sustainable development in Italian waterfront cities: The case of Genoa, Venice and Naples

Elena Franco (Facoltà di Ingegneria, Politecnico di Torino), Zeenia Kotval (Michigan State University), and Giovanna Codato (Facoltà di Ingegneria