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This introductory chapter presents some collective findings on the novelty and complexity of globalizing Cairo. It launches a set of questions that will lead to more productive, critical, and democratic approaches for producing knowledge about the Middle East. It lays out the specificities of the Cairo School of Urban Studies' agenda and methods, and, in particular, the book's critique and careful appropriation of cosmopolitanism. In brief, the chapter recognizes that cosmopolitanism has often been imbedded in transnationalist, normative, universalist, and imperialist discourses. Nevertheless, when reworked through critical scholarship and public action, cosmopolitanism may inform an emancipatory counter-ethic beyond the limits of nationalism, fear, and narrow identity politics, one that complements the Cairo School's experiments with post-positivist research methodologies. However, first, the chapter returns to the events that confirmed Cairo's reemergence as a critical site for action and inquiry, and which made the release of this book timely.

The Chicago School of urban sociology was not only influential in the U.S., but also instrumental for introducing sociology to China in the early 20th century. Drawing upon archival materials from the University of Chicago’s special collection, this chapter examines Robert Park’s connections to China in the 1930s and highlights the pivotal role of the Chicago School in the education of the first generation of Chinese sociologists. The chapter argues that there is still much to be learned from the Chicago School, such as its effort to formulate a reflective research agenda in The City (1925), and Robert Park’s gesture of comparing cities across time and places. It suggests reviving Park’s comparative spirit and engaging comparison in the next course of urban China studies.

We know from recent work in urban studies that the role of local government in administering cities has changed significantly in recent years. The provision of local public services has gradually been moving out of local government control, becoming the responsibility of networks of charities, volunteers and private organisations, which now have to work in partnership with local authorities to deliver metropolitan public services. This chapter explores the effects of this shift in urban governance on political practice by exploring ethnographically the experience of governing a city under such changing conditions. The analysis takes as its focus environmental policymaking and approaches this set of practices from an ethnographic and anthropological perspective. Building on this ethnography the chapter illustrates how the work of doing politics in Manchester hinges on a tension between a desire for inclusion in decision-making and a parallel resistance to incorporation into specific political networks and regimes.

This chapter explores the evolution of Atlanta’s local food truck movement, contextualizing the rise of this emerging industry within the changing local and state regulatory environment. Through a review of historical documents and a survey of social media outlets, the researchers find that food truck vendors in Atlanta, aided by third sector intermediaries, have thrived by working around, rather than within, the existing regulatory framework. Despite the ability of this new industry to cater to a specific middle and upper class market, food trucks in Atlanta have not increased entrepreneurial diversity or access to new and healthy foods for low-income neighborhoods as some advocates have argued. The Atlanta food truck case exemplifies the problems that restrictive policies can cause by demarcating public and private space in ways that privilege entrenched interests and restrict entrepreneurship and innovation.

This chapter treats the famous incident of December 1976 in which artist Gordon Matta-Clark employed a BB gun to shoot out the windows of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York City during the Idea as Model exhibition. Although his photographic piece Window Blow Out was to have been on display, the institute removed it after the shooting. The author analyzes the artist’s gesture as a political statement that reflects the complex relationship of Matta-Clark to architecture and urbanism. She suggests that it anticipates the turn in his career toward urban activism that was cut short by his untimely death.

The youth’s narratives can add depth to many literatures, and chapter one reviews some of the core assumptions within the fields of youth violence, critical youth studies, and punishment in the juvenile justice system and schools. Chapter one also includes a brief review of the colonial history of Hawai‘i.

This chapter establishes the need for Irish Studies to look beyond the geo-social space of Ireland. By emphasising the central cultural role Paris plays in nineteenth-century literature, it demonstrates the significance the city should play in studies of nineteenth-century Irish literature. This focus on Paris establishes the book’s key lines of inquiry: the connection between the city, economics, self-determination, and the capitalist Bildungsroman.

The introduction of The Rule of Logistics establishes logistics as the way to understand Walmart’s architecture. It outlines some of the key concerns of the book before providing a portrait of the company as much more than just a retailer.

This chapter focuses on the emergence of American urban gothic in literature of the late Antebellum. From roughly 1840 to 1860 a community of writers organized an extant urban gothic vocabulary into a popular and influential subgenre, city-mysteries, which ostentatiously announced their link to the gothic novel. These mysteries were intimately intertwined with urban reportage of the so-called ‘flash press’ among other art forms, especially the stage.

Airport Urbanism concludes with an autobiographical account of the author's relocation to Singapore. Through observations of daily life and interviews with planning officials, the chapter demonstrates the urban design challenges entailed by the influx of short-term visitors and temporary migrants, who account for 40% of the city-state's population. The author argues that the current discipline of urban planning, as well as scholarly approaches to urban development in Asia, need to be reconceptualized in order to engage with the added demands that temporary inhabitants place on urban housing and transport systems. Ultimately, scholars, designers, and policymakers need to work together in order to explore how cities can productively accommodate a growing number of itinerant inhabitants and harmonize their needs with those of full-time residents.

The first chapter traces the emergence of contemporary business logistics out of its roots in both military and managerial contexts. More than simply managing supply chains, contemporary logistics operates between abstract and concrete realms to manage objects in space and time with architectural, infrastructural, and territorial consequences.

The fifth chapter returns to Walmart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, to investigate the urban consequences of the region’s transformation because of the concentration of wealth and management expertise generated by the retailer.

The conclusion of The Rule of Logistics considers some of the implications of logistics for architectural form, the roots of logistics in desire, and infrastructure as a site of collective investment and imagination.

The third chapter inspects both the automation of city making and the geo-political possibilities of architecture itself by first tracing Walmart’s increasingly technologically sophisticated location strategies. Afterwards, it examines what happens to those strategies in practice.