Figures xi Acknowledgements xii Introduction 1 Defining the urban 7 Defining the contours of an alternative field of urban political studies 15 Organization of the book 19 1 Where are the Global Urban Politics? 23 Where are the urban politics? From municipalism to a new political ontology 25 Where are politics? Urban life is political life 33 Changing relations to space: bounded and networked political spaces 34 Changing relations with time: non-linear conceptions of political change 38 La Paz, Bolivia 43 Changing relationship with affective rationalities: from calculative decision-making to affective politics 45 Where is the global in urban politics? Uneven connections and power relations 53 Informalization of the state 58 Conclusion 61 2 Global Urban Social Movements: Emerging Forms of Political Action 65 What are global urban social movements? 70 Why and how do we become politically engaged? Discordant moments, mobility practices and continuity with everyday life 78 Emerging forms of urban political mobilization 90 Youthfulness and urban political action 92 'Open-ended urbanisms' 96 Dégagisme or the politics of anti-power 98 Conclusion 100 3 Global Diversity Politics: Thinking Citizenship 102 Cities as 'difference machines': from managing diversity in cities to difference as constitutive of urbanity 105 The routes of undocumented immigrants, the neighbour and the identity card 109 The smuggling routes of socio-economic crisis, patriarchy and urbanity 113 Rethinking citizenship 116 Conclusion 125 4 Global Environmental Politics: Multiple Conceptions of Time 127 Local environmental conflicts: engaging various conceptions of time 132 The temporalities of the 'project': directional trajectory and duration 136 The temporalities of financing: pace 137 The temporalities of inhabiting new spaces: cycles 139 The temporalities of environmental degradation: directional trajectory clashing with circular metabolic cycles 141 Alternative temporalities and political action 142 Global environmental politics: articulating metabolic flows at various speeds and scales 144 A changing conception of time affecting the political process 147 Conclusion 148 5 Global Urban Security Politics: Re-emerging Rationalities of Action 150 Urban nightmares: home security and alien invasions 153 Affective micro-politics and re-emerging forms of political action 157 Conclusion 167 Conclusion: Global Urban Politics and the Informalization of the State 171 Critical urban studies: pragmatism between postcolonialism and structuralism 176 Political action and moral ambiguity: thinking in terms of stabilizing regimes 179 Notes 185 Bibliography 191 Index 207.