Books like The production of space by Henri Lefebvre

Marshall Berman traces how 19th‑century revolutions, key writers, and modernist urban planning reshaped society, arguing that continual adaptation is essential for a truly modern civilization.

**A passionate plea for radical geographers to abandon Karl Marx and embrace anarchism** In *The Anarchist Roots of Geography*, Simon Springer sets the stage for a radical politics of possibility and freedom through a discussion of the insurrectionary geographies that suffuse our daily experiences. By embracing anarchist geographies as kaleidoscopic spatialities that allow for non-hierarchical connections between autonomous entities, Springer configures a new political imagination. (Source: [University of Minnesota Press](https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-anarchist-roots-of-geography))

Summary:With insight into the human side of architecture, this critical assessment displays the shortcomings of modern urban planning as an acclaimed architect issues a passionate charge against the celebrities of the current architectural world: the “archistars. He argues that architecture has lost its way and its true function, as the archistars mold cityscapes to build their brand with no regard for the public good. More than a diatribe against the trade, La Cecla makes a call to rethink urban space and take the cities back from “casino capitalism that has left a string of failed urban projects, such as the Sagrera of Barcelona and the expansion of Columbia University in New York City. Recounting his travels across the globe, La Cecla provides insights to aid in resisting the planners and to find the spirit of a place. These commentaries on the works of past and present masters of urban and landscape will take an important place in continued public discourse for years to come

"Conceived in Paris in 1927 and still in progress in 1940 when Benjamin fled the Nazis, only to find death on the Spanish border. The Arcades Project is his magnum opus: a new theory of history embodied in a new literary and philosophical historiography. With greater concreteness than had ever been achieved in historical narrative, Benjamin's text immerses the reader in the milieu of the Paris arcades - those precursors of today's shopping malls - during the period 1830-1870, when the modern industrial world was taking shape."--BOOK JACKET. "Like the arcades themselves, Benjamin's master-work is a vast montage in which he quotes and reflects on hundreds of topics - fashion, boredom, the collector, advertising, prostitution, photography, the theory of progress. By excavating from printed sources a wealth of details about daily existence in nineteenth-century Paris, Benjamin brings to life a world of things - from luxury goods, building facades, posters, and clothing fashions to barricades, omnibuses, cafes, and exhibition halls."--BOOK JACKET.

This book engages with the politics of social and environmental justice, and seek new ways to think about the future of urbanization in the twenty-first century. It establishes foundational concepts for understanding how space, time, place and nature - the material frames of daily life - are constituted and represented through social practices, not as separate elements but in relation to each other. It describes how geographical differences are produced, and shows how they then become fundamental to the exploration of political, economic and ecological alternatives to contemporary life. Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference speaks to a wide readership of students of social, cultural and spatial theory and of the dynamics of contemporary life. It is a convincing demonstration that it is both possible and necessary to value difference and to seek a just social order.

Spatial Literature

Since the Social Logic of Space was published in 1984, Bill Hillier and his colleagues at University College London have been conducting research on how space features in the form and functioning of buildings and cities. A key outcome is the concept of 'spatial configuration' - meaning relations which take account of other relations in a complex. New techniques have been developed and applied to a wide range of architectural and urban problems. The aim of this book is to assemble some of this work and show how it leads the way to a new type of theory of architecture: an 'analytic' theory in which understanding and design advance together.

This book defines and introduces cultural theory to the field of political and social science. The original source of this theory is in the writings of Mary Douglas. The authors have collected her ideas, into a coherent theory of culture as a trait of institutions of different sizes. It is a great book that challenges much of traditional political science.

"What is the relationship between place and behavior? In this fascinating volume, Tim Cresswell addresses this question by examining "transgressive acts" that are judged as inappropriate, not only because they are committed by marginalized groups, but also because of where they occur. Cresswell looks at graffiti in New York City, the attempts by various "hippie" groups to hold a free festival at Stonehenge during the summer solstices of 1984-86, and the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp in Berkshire, England."--BOOK JACKET.

"Infrastructure is not only the underground pipes and wires that control our cities but also the hidden rules for structuring the spaces all around us--free trade zones, smart cities, suburbs and malls. Extrastatecraft charts the rise of the hidden rules that control this "infrastructure space," and shows how it is creating new forms of power, beyond the reach of government. In a series of fascinating case studies, Easterling visits fields of infrastructure with the greatest impact on our world-- tracking everything from standards for the thinness of credit cards, to the urbanism of mobile telephony as the world's largest shared platform, to the rules for the free zone as the most contagious new world city paradigm. In conclusion, she proposes some unexpected techniques for resisting power in a contemporary world"--

"Engels wrote The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in just two months---beginning toward the end of March 1884 and completing it by the end of May. It focuses on early human history, following the disintegration of the primitive community and the emergence of a class society based on private property. Engels looks into the origin and essence of the state, and concludes it is bound to wither away leaving a classless society. Engels: 'Along with [the classes] the state will inevitably fall. Society, which will reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into th museum of antiquity, by the side of the spinning-wheel and the bronze axe.' In 1890, having gathered new material on the history of primitive society, Engels set about preparing a new edition of his book. He studied the latest books on the subject---including those of Russian historian Maxim Kovalevsky." (back cover)