This book presents the concept of 'Hybrid Urbanisms' aiming to deconstruct the still-existing and often critiqued dualism of formalised and informalised practices in urban planning and infrastructure delivery.
Using an innovative perspective, the book addresses this issue by focusing on the complex configurations in which both forms always co-exist and compete as powerful social constructs. It unveils the juxtaposition, simultaneity, dependency and intertwining of in-/formalised practices and highlights the relevance of this perspective to better understand urban development, especially in the global South. At the same time, the book focuses on secondary cities of Ghana and Peru that are often overlooked in the existing literature but play a relevant role in global urbanisation quantitively and qualitatively. In offering a comparative perspective on two very diverse geographical contexts, ten empirical studies are framed by a conceptualisation of 'Hybrid Urbanisms' and a concluding systematisation of perspectives on this central aspect of urban development. Taken together, this volume make an innovative contribution on how to produce new and more diverse urban theories of cities of the global South.
This book is essential for scholars, students and practitioners in the fields of urban planning, urban studies, infrastructure studies and international cooperation alike. In addition, it will be of interest to those in the fields of urban sociology, public policy, urban geography and development studies.
This publication was supported by funds from the Publication Fund for Open Access Monographs of the Federal State of Brandenburg, Germany and by the Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Urban Planning of Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg.
Christian Rosen is a sociologist, postdoctoral researcher and principle investigator in the Hybrid Urbanisms project at Technical University of Darmstadt. He obtained his PhD from Frankfurt University. His research interests include urban development practices, especially in the global South, secondary cities, comparative research, political sociology and spatial theory.
Nina Gribat is professor of urban planning at Brandenburg Technical University Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany. Her research interests include hybrid urbanisms and infrastructural delivery configurations in the global South; governance and planning in small towns; and cultural actor networks in rural areas. Nina is a member of the editorial collective of the open-access journal sub\urban zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung (www.zeitschrift-suburban.de).
