These include the urban economy, housing, basic services, infrastructure, the role of non-state civil society-based actors, planned interventions and contestations, the role of diaspora capital, the looming problem of adapting to climate change, and the increasing spectre of violence in a post 9/11 transnational world. The Reader's thematic structure, where editorial introductions accompany selected texts, examines the issues and concerns that urban dwellers, planners, and policy makers face in the contemporary world.

By asking: 'whose city? whose development?' the Reader rigorously highlights the fractures along lines of class, race, gender, and other socially and spatially constructed hierarchies in global South cities. Emphasizing the historical legacies of colonialism, the Reader recognizes the entanglement of conditions and concepts often understood in binary relations: first/third worlds, wealth/poverty, development/underdevelopment, and inclusion/exclusion. The Reader incorporates both early and emerging debates about the diverse trajectories of urbanization processes in the context of the restructured global alignments in the last three decades. The Cities of the Global South Reader adopts a fresh and critical approach to the fi eld of urbanization in the developing world.

Cities in the global south reader