Overview

This innovative edited volume places global urbanism in the context of the phenomenal growth of cities of the South, investigating their colonial contentiousness and asking how their history plays out in the twenty-first-century phenomenon of urbanisation. Inspired by Antonio Gramsci’s reflections on the problem of the South, it shows that the question of southern urbanism is about the anomalies and growth of southern cities, the histories of struggles, technological and logistical reorientations, new zoning practices of neoliberal capitalism and the remaking of urban geographies towards a possible urban future that aims to be just. Crucially, it asks whether today’s city is a seamless formation of several overlapping phases of growth or if there is a decisive break today, marked by the hyper growth of these cities. To understand the implications of these questions for visions of an urban future, this volume takes a number of southern cities of Asia and Europe as case studies, including Kolkata, Mumbai, Chittagong, Beirut, Athens, Naples and Marseille. It shows how these cities are paradoxically marked by both fractured geographies and new types of popular mobilisations, solidarities and an ethic of protection and care, showing this to be the core of the Southern question, constituting the urban experience of our time. It will appeal to advanced-level students and scholars with interests in urban sociology, Southern urbanisation, postcolonial studies, political science, political economy and urban geography.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ranabir Samaddar ,  Enrica Morlicchio ,  Sandro Mezzadra
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.840kg
ISBN:  

9781041039549

ISBN 10:   1041039549
Pages:   358
Publication Date:   31 December 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: After Gramsci, City as the Southern Question Part 1: Southern City as Maximum City 1. Southern City and the Rent Question, Calcutta, 1910s-1950s 2. Mumbai’s Southern Question and the Political Economy of Work and Space 3. A Port City to Portray the Image of a Country: City of Chittagong, Bangladesh 4. Mexico City’s Subaltern Spaces as the FIFA World Cup Arrives… Part 2: Expanding Urbanising Worlds 5. Beirut’s Juxtapositions of Chaos and Disorder 6. With Gramsci in the Southern Park, Green Planning in Athens 7. Same but Different? Logistics Workers and Employment Conditions in the Mediterranean Port Cities of Naples and Marseille Part 3: Belonging and Alienation in a Southern City 8. Urban Creation or Fruitful Regeneration, what is Marseilles’ Downtown? 9.A Mediterranean Hub: Immigration and Religious Diversity in Marseilles 10. Buildings Communicate 11. Marginalised Places — Silenced Solidarities: An Autoethnographic Study on Refugees and Solidarity on Lesvos prior to Summer 2015 12. Commercial Sex Life as the Hidden Underbelly of the City and the Dirty History of Kolkata Part 4: Southern City in a Globalised World 13. From Financial Crisis to Refugee Crisis: Management and Resistance in Athens 14. Southern City as a New Urban Frontier 15. South of the South, the Kaohsiung Port City of Taiwan 16. A Living Southern Urbanism in South Africa 17. What is the “South” in Southern City? An Epilogue

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Author Information

Ranabir Samaddar is Professor and Distinguished Chair in Migration and Forced Migration Studies in the Calcutta Research Group, India, and a CIFAR Humanity’s Urban Future Program fellow. Enrica Morlicchio is Professor of Economic Sociology in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, and CIFAR Humanity’s Urban Future Fellow. Sandro Mezzadra is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Bologna, Italy.

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