City Futures: Confronting the Crisis of Urban Development Paperback – 23 May 2008

this is an excellent book which addresses the issue - crisis - of cities and specifically cities of the south. the writer boldly casts a wide net and effectively and incisively presents a range of comprehensive reflections and new perspectives on how we might make sense of the elements and factors which currently inform urban development. the observations are located within the context of the global and the local socio-political environments and those particular circumstances which have come to triangulate a conceptual redefinition of the idea of the city. the issues are complex and far ranging and the writer carries us through an arc which intersects with a diverse repertoire of themes and ideas, from the fundamental challenge of housing, rapid urbanization to higher level speculative theorising. with a measured and lucid style, pieterse successfully brings a modicum of order to the still jumbled plethora of thinking, policies, theory and imagining which have come to characterise our current understanding of contemporary urban development.