A City of One's Own: Blurring the Boundaries Between Private and Public

by Sophie Body-Gendrot, Jacques Carré

Overview

This book highlights the citizens' continuous participation in a wide range of urban affairs, especially outside institutional frameworks. It brings together an interdisciplinary team of French, British and American academics who examine the long and rich history of participation or partnership in British and American urban life (with additional reference to France), showing that both private interests and community groups have long been involved in local policies. Utilizing the concept of governance as the main theoretical framework, the book explores how Western governments and local authorities have negotiated the difficult task of defining the borders between the territories of private and public actors and also in defining the boundaries of state intervention and public interest. Focusing on the blurring of these boundaries, this book presents a re-examination of how cities were developed, both past and present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780754675020
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/28/2008
Edition description:	1
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Drs Sophie Body-Gendrot, Jacques Carré and Romain Garbaye, are all at the Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, France.

Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction, Sophie Body-Gendrot, Jacques Carré and Romain Garbaye. Part 1 Planning: 'Private' and 'public' in the extension of Georgian London's West End, Jacques Carré; Making an inclusive urbanism: New York City's World Trade Memorial, Robert A. Beauregard. Part 2 Housing: The privatization of council-housing in Britain: the strange death of public sector housing?, David Fée; The governance of new communities in Britain, France and North America, 1815-2004: the quest for the public interest?, Stéphane Sadoux, Frédéric Cantaroglou and Audrey Gloor. Part 3 Security: Gated communities: generic patterns in suburban landscapes?, Renaud Le Goix; From self-defence to citizenry involvement participation in law-and-order enforcement in the United States: private spheres and public space, Didier Combeau; The future of prison privatisation in the United States, Franck Vindevogel. Part 4 Health: AIDS prevention by non-governmental organizations: inside the American and French responses, Laura Hobson Faure, Carla Dillard Smith, Gloria Lockett and Benjamin P. Bowser. Part 5 Education: Education management organizations and for-profit education - an overview, and a case study: Philadelphia, Malie Montagutelli; 'We pay the rates!' Catholic voluntary schools and Scottish school boards (1872-1918) Geraldine Vaughan. Part 6 Citizenship: 'To serve and to elect': the Women's Local Government Society, Britain 1888-1918, Myriam Boussahba-Bravard; The '3rd way' and the governance of the social in Britain, Jérôme Tournadre-Plancq. Conclusion: Jane Jacobs revisited?, Sophie Body-Gendrot, Jacques Carré and Romain Garbaye; Index.

Editorial Reviews

'Drawing on historical and current perspectives this book provides a fascinating insight into the public and private provision of a range of urban services. Examples are drawn from France, the UK and the US and cover topics such as education, health, security and planning. The book's editors have done a great service in putting this excellent collection together, which should stimulate considerable debate amongst urban historians, political scientists and sociologists.' Mike Goldsmith, University of Salford, UK 'A City of One's Own is a major contribution to the literature about how cities work. The breadth of the contributions in terms ofgeography and policy area coverage is a major plus and the quality of the research and writing is impressive. I have no doubt that this book will be widely read within the field of urban studies.' Evan McKenzie, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA 'The concise articles are very approachable for non academics and even the studies of the privatisation of prisons and the vigilante phenomena in the USA have lessons for urban design solutions of defensible space; similarly health issues such as AIDS prevention, historic feminist claims and for-profit education may have repercussions on future urban design briefs.' Urban Design 'A City of One's Own is an important book that seeks to redress the tendency among contemporary studies of urban governance to portray private actors' interventions in urban affairs as a relatively recent development. The wide range of case studies featured in the collection, that encompasses examples from the 1700s, through to the present day, helps to illustrate this point...' Urban Studies

From the Publisher