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“Driven by a remarkable roster of emerging and established voices, this is a tremendous and definitive collection that seeks to make sense of how architecture can deliver positive outcomes for human experience, public urban life and improved social conditions in complex and subtly varying built environments. A massive new reference work, this is a dynamic and playful collection that weaves state of the art contributions across the fields of architecture, urban studies with others from related disciplines as they are brought into dialogue with questions of social vulnerability, interstitality and the accommodation of social fragility. This is a timely and enduring gift to students of the urban-social and physical condition.”

Professor Rowland Atkinson, Chair in Inclusive Societies, University of Sheffield, UK

“Since the dawn of modernity, the call for 'what is to be done' has been followed by prescriptions and occasionally manifestoes, proposing strategies to address the ongoing crisis project now reaching a global scale. Nikolina Bobic and Farzaneh Haghighi’s groundbreaking collection, a follow-up to their previous handbook, compiles essays, each presenting a close examination of diverse aspects of the power triangle, including the world financial machination, media technologies, and the rise of populist politics. Each chapter attempts to reveal the scaffolding of our contemporary global spectacle, transcending traditional town and country trajectories. What sets apart the book’s take on this rather timely project is a call for resistance against ecological issues and sustainability problems, integral to neoliberal economic and political system. Bobic and Haghighi aim at presenting a project of hope amidst forces attempting to ensnare the dialectics between architecture and the capitalistic modernization of the urban.”

Gevork Hartoonian, Emeritus Professor of Architectural History, University of Canberra, Australia

“The challenge of creating new architectural practices that do not reproduce previous oppressions is a daunting enterprise, but one that this volume takes on with fresh insights. Surprises emerge by turning a critical eye on participatory design—a much needed critique—to new forms of dissent and collaboration that punctuate the 36 contributions from across the world and drawing upon multiple disciplines. Most importantly 'architectural' interventions and resistances are integrated into generating political theory as well as action, a feat that is difficult but crucial for the transformation in the world-making professions. Familiar concerns such as ecological sustainability, climate change, successful parks and waterfront urban development are reframed to reveal their critical potential through tracing the spatial politics of their social production. Spatial justice is a major theme and framework of analysis for reconsidering well-worn concepts such as the commons, communing and the common, and new concepts such as surrounds extend our vocabulary. The volume ends with a nod to the technological advances that might bring design closer to our everyday lives.”

Dr. Setha Low, Distinguished Professor, Psychology, Anthropology, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Women's and Gender Studies, The City University of New York, USA

“Countering techno-utopian takes on ‘smart cities’ and the like and avoiding the hubris in much architectural and urban theory, the Handbook encompasses detailed analyses of all kinds of spaces – designs, places, discourses, practices – where transformative actions have been possible. The book is a reminder that architecture and urbanism can provide platforms – variously configured, provisional, agonistic – for imagining and projecting societal change. Maybe we can really be optimistic for design again.”

Professor Paul Walker, Faculty of Architecture, Building & Planning, University of Melbourne, Australia

“No one should be surprised about the role that architecture plays when it comes to issues like inequity, discrimination and power, but opening the hood to see how these things operate in real-life situations is by no means easy, and has for too long been ignored. This remarkable collection of essays proves the importance of that work. It is an impressive and timely collection of contemporary voices on contemporary issues.”

Professor Mark Jarzombek, Department of Architecture, School of Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA

"This second volume of the Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space and Politics is impressive in breadth and clear in message. Including more than thirty chapters written by a stellar international cast of scholars, it convincingly argues that given contemporary societal challenges, we need to rethink the boundaries of the discipline and the role of the architect – to reclaim the agency of architecture and urbanism. Doing so, this compendium argues, will fuel a slow revolution towards more ethical, collective and ecological ways of living."

Professor Janina Gosseye, Professor of Building Ideologies, Faculty of Architecture and Built Environment, TU Delft, The Netherlands

"As a follow-up to the first volume's analysis of architecture as a tool of oppression, this urgent volume opens the door to a liberating space of resistance and affirmation. In the wave of autocratization washing over the world, Bobic and Haghighi insist that the boundaries of architecture must be questioned and expanded to find methods and theories that operate on the planetary scale. In this elegantly assembled handbook, 36 contributions show how 'democratic turnarounds' can be actualized through architecture and urban space. This important and vivid book is a must for everyone who searches for a meaningful future of architecture."

Professor Helena Mattsson, Professor in History and Theory, KTH School of Architecture, Sweden

"This volume should be on the bookshelf of anybody who is interested in the built environment. The contributors provide an exhilarating definition of architecture and urban space - everything from skateboarding to shanties. The contributors are hale from all around the world. As a result, they present tremendous diversity. There's something here for everybody."

Professor D. Medina Lasansky, Cornell AAP (Architecture, Art, Planning), USA

"Finally, architecture in its full political materiality! Finally, a cry to situate ourselves and our practices. This extremely ambitious and fundamentally useful collection of texts ushers us into a new era for architecture: it can no longer be conceivable to detach architecture and place-making from its political role towards its own world-making. Ethical, social, planetary, geographical, historical: the positions of this volume are an intricate tapestry of worldviews, all of which however are united through their astonishingly honest sense of responsibility for the past but more importantly for the future."

Dr. Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Professor of Law & Theory, University of Westminster, UK / Artist / Fiction Author

"This well-crafted anthology covers global examples of social movements, identity struggles, and creative activism. It offers readers unique theoretical and empirical insights into the kaleidoscopic relationships between urban architecture, spatial politics, and social justice. How can common citizens reimagine, and reshape, political and economic systems amidst deepening social and ecological crises? What critical role do participatory and embodied forms of architecture play in challenging realities of exclusion and injustice? These are some of the many compelling questions that this collection conjures up, concluding with a due reminder that it is humans, not algorithms, who should decide on more inclusive futures."

Professor Martin Zebracki, Professor of Human Geography and Social Inclusion, University of Leeds, UK

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