How can we envision cities to become more sustainable and inclusive?

We need a set of alternative global urban strategies that address various forms of urban exclusion and survival and bottom-up experiences of sustainable development. In this way we can establish how sustainable cities that prioritize social inclusion of vulnerable and excluded groups will look like. We propose here that the kind of sustainable urban development towards social inclusions is conceptually underpinned by agencies of urban dwellers in various urban settlements and neighborhoods, which scholars and activists are increasingly observing and analysing as everyday urban forms of socio-cultural practices and heterogeneous infrastructural constellations.

Main goal:

The book Inclusive cities in times of global urban transformations: Intersectionalities, infrastructures and sustainable development aims to collect scholarly and activist observations of the everyday urban forms that can potentially lead to reframe our thinking about global urban transformations for sustainable development. We envision to establish a platform where the critical urban scholarship and activities unpack the relationship between urban and social transformations and address questions of power relationships and political equality that underlie existing vulnerability, exclusion and marginalization of urban dwellers. We hope this book will lay a ground for the platform to kickstart discussions on urban social justice and inclusion, not just within the academic circles, but more specifically in city planning, policy development and public debates that shape our common urban futures.

How?

In summer 2021, a call for chapters was published which resulted in the collection of 32 chapters for the final book. Covering different urban settings in the Global North and South, the topics addressed include

• Recognizing intersectional urban inequalities
• Inclusive and sustainable city making –infrastructure and everyday experience
• Resistance and confinement
• Food systems and urban in- and exclusion
• Digital urban inclusion and citizenship
• Mobility, immobility and disability
• Urban displacement and resettlement
• Pandemics amplifying spatial inequities
• Tourism, tourists and residents

Who?

The INCLUSIVE CITIES BOOK is edited by Prof. Ajay Bailey and Dr. Kei Otsuki, International Development Studies, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University.