Urban transformations : geographies of renewal and creative change / edited by Nicholas Wise and Julie Clark.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Economic restructuring and demographic change have in recent years placed much strain on urban areas with the effects falling disproportionately on neighbourhoods that were previously underpinned by industry and manufacturing. This has presented policy makers and city planners with a binary choice: to resist change and stagnate or to change and attempt to keep up with the pace of global demand. This edited book tells the story of how urban transformation impacts on people's lives and everyday interactions-to question where and to whom benefit accrues from these changes. Urban Transformations offers insight into both risk and reward as local communities and public authorities creatively address the challenge of building vital and sustainable urban environments. The authors in this edited collection argue that understanding the specifics of community, space and place is crucial to delivering insights into how, where, when, why and for whom urban areas might successfully transform. The chapters investigate urban change using a range of approaches, and case studies from the four corners of the globe - from the United States to Iran; from the United Kingdom to Canada. The varying scales at which governance or regeneration initiatives operate, the nature and composition of urban communities, and the local or global interests of different private sector actors all raise questions for urban policy and practice. It is important to not only consider the drivers of regeneration, but its beneficiaries need to be identified.

Introduction : geographies of renewal and creative change : assessing urban transformation / Nicholas Wise and Julie Clark -- Writing the past into the fabric of the present : urban regeneration in Glasgow's East End / Julie Clark and Rebecca Madgin -- Urban regeneration in motion : the High Line as a travelling urban imaginary / Ian Riekes Trivers -- Urban revitalization in a neoliberal key : brown field redevelopment in Michigan / Mark D Bjelland and Ian Noyes -- The new main street : planning, politics and change in downtown Kent, Ohio / Jennifer Mapes -- Beyond rail : amenity driven high-density development for polycentric cities / Jennifer L. Kitson, Stephen T. Buckman and David C. Folch -- Creating third places : ethnic retailing and place-making in metropolitan Toronto / Zhixi Cecilia Zhuang -- Place-making and place-breaking on the banks of the Clyde / Georgiana Varna -- Urban renewal in Tehran's neighbourhoods : displacement or potential for identity-building and place-making? / Azadeh Hadizadeh Esfahani -- When community and condos collide : the uneven geographies of housing wealth in mixed-income neighbourhood transformation / Charles Barlow -- Examining the transformation of Regent Park, Toronto : prioritizing hard and soft infrastructure / Shauna Brail, Ekaterina Mizrokhi and Sonia Ralston -- Theorizing neighbourhood inequality : the things we do with theory, the things it does to us / Amie Thurber -- Developing a research agenda to assess local social impacts of sports tourism regeneration in Medulin, Croatia / Nicholas Wise and Marko Perić -- Conclusion : research directions going forwards / Julie Clark and Nicholas Wise.