Order and Disorder: Urban Governance and the Making of Middle Eastern Cities
Edited by Luna Khirfan, Planning, 
University of Waterloo (Canada)
(McGill-Queens University Press, 2017)

As Middle Eastern cities weather the second decade of the twenty-first century, they face a number of challenges to their economic resilience, competitiveness, and internal stability. In this uniquely tense realm for the urban public, an understanding of the dynamics of decision-making processes, citizen power, and the rule of law is critical to the direction of policy in the future. In Order and Disorder, Luna Khirfan weaves a cross-national comparison of Amman and Cairo that dissects the many layers and complexities of urban governance. Through case studies on a diverse array of development projects and their associated challenges, the contributors demonstrate how three actors - the state, the market, and civil society - interact with each other within the same urban political space. [more]

Also see Prof. Khirfan’s article in this collection on participatory planning in Amman, Jordan.

GUHP profile, Editor website

"The Keyi Mappila Muslim Merchants of Tellicherry and the Making of Coastal Cosmopolitanism on the Malabar Coast" in Asian Review of World Histories
by Santhosh Abraham, History
Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai (India)
Vol. 5, no. 2, 2017, 145-162

The Keyi Mappila Muslim merchants of Tellicherry (Thalassery) on the Malabar Coast were one of the few early modern Indian merchant groups who succeeded in carving out a powerful political and social configuration of their own on the western coast of the Indian Ocean during the British period. Today, several branches of Keyi families remain a cultural unit in the Islamic community of Kerala. This article attempts to locate the group in the larger theoretical context of Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism and argues that the Keyis developed a distinct and significant type of coastal cosmopolitanism in an Indian Ocean setting; Chovakkaran Moosa, an influential merchant from a Keyi family during the colonial period, serves as a representative figure. Through their trade and financial relationships with British and local elites, and the characteristic architecture of their warehouses, residences, and mosques, the Keyis successfully integrated the practices of a global cosmopolitan space into a local vernacular secluded commercial space. This article presents a synthesis of a lively coastal urban and local rural cosmopolitanism that included several networks and exchanges, foreign and native collaborations, and an amalgamation of local and external cultural spheres. [full text]

GUHP profile, Author website

“Spatially Polarized Landscapes and a New Approach to Urban Inequality”
in Latin American Research Review
by Zaire Dinzey-Flores, Latino and Caribbean Studies,
Rutgers (USA)
Vol. 52, no. 2, August 2017, 241-252

Displays of wealth and opulence in the face of dire need and poverty have become commonplace as the rich and the poor increasingly share city spaces around the globe. Research shows that it is the perception of inequality, more than raw measures of inequality, that has important political consequences and that is most concerning for social well-being. In this article, I propose a theoretical move from a general, statistically driven conceptualization of inequality to a spatially informed concept that recognizes how people experience inequality. Relying on findings that show that the perception of inequality is most important for life chances, I suggest that it is key to understand not only where inequality is located but how it is spatially distributed. [full text]

GUHP profile, Author website

Historia Urbana e Global
The 2nd International Conference
on Urban Practices
State University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil
15-17 May 2018

GUHP salutes fellow member João Júlio Gomes dos Santos Júnior of the State University of Céara in Fortaleza, Brazil. He and his colleagues have organized what, to our knowledge, is the first conference with “global” and “urban” history in the title. We hope to be able to share a report from the conference for those who are non-Lusophone in future editions of Noteworthy. We also plan to follow in Prof. Gomes dos Santos’s footsteps soon!

The 2nd International Conference on Urban Practices will take place in Fortaleza/Brazil between the May 15th and 17th. It is an initiative from the Research Group on Urban Practices from the State University of Ceará (Universidade Estadual do Ceará – UECE). Aware of the growing of the field of Urban Global History, and feeling the necessity of think our subjects beyond the national frame, we have decided to broadly discuss those issues under the theme of “Urban and Global History: new tendencies and approaches”.

Our meeting will have two keynote speakers, round-tables, a workshop and communication panels to graduate researchers. We are going to receive professors from universities both from Brazil and abroad, such as University of Pittsburgh, University of Illinois, Ohio University, University of São Paulo (USP), Federal University of the Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), State University of the Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Federal University of Ceará (UFC) and the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ). We believe that Conference can be a perfect opportunity to improve networks and create future projects. The complete schedule can be seen at our website.