Built Environment City Studies
About the Book Series
The Built Environment City Studies series provides researchers and academics with a detailed look at individual cities through a specific lens. These concise books delve into a case study of an international city, focusing on a key built environment topic. Written by scholars from around the world, the collection provides a library of thorough studies into trends, developments and approaches that affect our cities.
Seoul: Of Islands and Megastructures
1st Edition
By Rafael Luna
December 26, 2025
This book focuses on understanding how a megacity like Seoul can be read as a formal architectural composition and not an endless urban sprawl. In a broader sense, the book discusses the dichotomy between city and urbanization: “city” being an architectural problem of bounded forms, while “urbanism...
Detroit: A City Imagined in Film
1st Edition
By Carmela Cucuzzella, Aristofanis Soulikias
December 22, 2025
Detroit: A City Imagined in Film is a survey of prominent feature films depicting or referring to Detroit, and how they have captured and fed popular perceptions about the Motor City. Detroit, a magnifying glass, through which one sees an exaggerated portrait of America, has rendered itself to the ...
Athens: Notes on Urban Immanence
1st Edition
By Stavros Kousoulas
September 05, 2025
Focusing on the city of Athens, this book examines architecture as something that produces culture and ideology — rather than the opposite. Therefore, this book aims to complement architectural and urban theories that are based only on historical overviews or typological assumptions; to do so, it ...
Barcelona: Urban Commons and Local State Assemblages
1st Edition
By Iolanda Bianchi
June 06, 2025
This book explores the complex relationship between urban commons – understood as a repertoire of collective action that fosters a politics of antagonism – and the local state. It critiques the dominant neo-institutionalist and neo-Marxist perspectives for their deterministic and siloed views, as ...
Athens: A Rapidly Changing Metropolis in the European South
1st Edition
Edited
By Thomas Maloutas
October 18, 2024
This book looks at the current trends in Athens, the capital city of Greece, and focuses on the processes of globalization it has been undergoing during the last two decades. In this time the city has transformed from a low-key, petty bourgeois cohesive and rather isolated city in south-eastern ...
Tehran: From Sacred to Radical
1st Edition
By Asma Mehan
May 27, 2024
This book is an interdisciplinary research work designed to be of interest to a broad range of academics. The book examines the relationship between democracy and the (trans)formations of urban spaces through comparative perspective. It engages with the ideas of ‘modernity’ in architecture and ...
Havana: Mapping Lived Experiences of Urban Agriculture
1st Edition
By Susan Fitzgerald
January 29, 2024
Following the crisis of the Special Period, Cuba promoted urban agriculture throughout its towns and cities to address food sovereignty and security. Through the adoption of state recommended design strategies, these gardens have become places of social and economic exchange throughout Cuba. This ...
Vienna: Still a Just City?
1st Edition
Edited
By Yuri Kazepov, Roland Verwiebe
May 31, 2023
This book explores and debates the urban transformations that have taken place in Vienna over the past 30 years and their consequences in policy fields such as labour and housing, political and social participation and the environment. Historically, European cities have been characterised by a ...
Istanbul: Informal Settlements and Generative Urbanism
1st Edition
By Noah Billig
January 21, 2023
Istanbul: Informal Settlements and Generative Urbanism analyzes two informal housing settlements in Istanbul, Turkey – Karanfilköy and Fatih Sultan Mehmet – to examine how generatively built structures and neighbourhoods can be successfully realized in a modern, burgeoning urban context. ...
Kuala Lumpur: Community, Infrastructure and Urban Inclusivity
1st Edition
By Marek Kozlowski, Asma Mehan, Krzysztof Nawratek
January 21, 2023
Kuala Lumpur is a diverse city representing many different religions and nationalities. Recent government policy has actively promoted unity and cohesion throughout the city; and the country of Malaysia, with the implementation of a programme called 1Malaysia. In this book, the authors investigate ...
Milan: Productions, Spatial Patterns and Urban Change
1st Edition
Edited
By Simonetta Armondi, Stefano Di Vita
January 21, 2023
As a main urban centre of one of the most dynamic European regions, Milan is a key location from which to study narratives of innovations and contemporary productions – old and new manufacturing, tertiary and consumptive sectors, creative and cultural economy – and investigate their influence both ...
Rio de Janeiro: Urban Expansion and the Environment
1st Edition
Edited
By José L. S. Gámez, Zhongjie Lin, Jeffrey Nesbit
January 21, 2023
Using Rio de Janeiro as the case study city, this book highlights and examines issues surrounding the development of mega-cities in Latin America and beyond. Complex dynamics of urbanization such as mega-event-driven development, infrastructure investment, and informal urban expansion are ...