Negotiating Resilience With Hard and Soft City

This book explores how cities are shaped by the lived experiences of inhabitants and examines the ways they develop strategies to cope with daily and unexpected challenges. It argues that migration, livelihood, and public health challenges result from inadequacies in the hard city―urban assets, such as land, infrastructure, and housing, and asserts that these challenges and escalating vulnerabilities are best negotiated using the soft city―social capital and community networks. In so doing, the authors criticise a singular knowledge system and argue for a granular, nuanced understanding of cities―of the interrelations between people in places, everyday urbanisms, social relationships, cultural practices, and histories. The volume presents perspectives from the Global South and the Global North and engages with city-specific cases from Africa, India, and Europe for a deeper understanding of resilience.

Part of the Urban Futures series, it will be of great interest to students and researchers of urban studies, urban planning, urban management, architecture, urban sociology, urban design, ecology, conservation, and urban sustainability. It will also be useful for urbanists, architects, urban sociologists, city and town planners, policy makers, and those interested in a deeper understanding of the contemporary and future city.

Binti Singh is an urban sociologist and holds a PhD (in urban studies) and an MPhil (in planning and development) from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Bombay), Mumbai, India. She is currently Dean (Research and Academic Development) at KRVIA, Mumbai, India. She is engaged in diverse international research programmes with universities like the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction, University of Cambridge, UK. She also supervises Masters’ and PhD students in various international universities including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of Virginia, USA. On 12 January 2023, she received an award from the Governor of Maharashtra, India, for her contribution to academic research in cultural sustainability.

Tania Berger is a trained architect and holds a PhD in construction and building sciences, incorporating a strong focus on social science. She heads the cluster Social sPACe based research in built Environment (SPACE) at the Department for Building and Environment at Danube University Krems, Austria, which works on issues of integration in housing on a national level and global urbanisation processes and precarious housing in an international context. She coordinates Erasmus projects in the field of “Capacity Building in Higher Education” with a focus on informal settlements in India and Ethiopia.

Manoj Parmar is currently Director at KRVIA, Mumbai, India. He holds a bachelor’s in architecture from the L.S. Raheja School of Architecture, Mumbai, India, and an M.Arch from the University of Miami, Florida, USA. He has been teaching at KRVIA, Mumbai, since 1992. His academic interests include theoretical writings on architecture and urbanism. He has also been in private practice of architecture and urban design since 1992. In a career spanning more than 30 years, he has worked on numerous private and public housing/institutional commissions across India and has been actively involved in redevelopment projects across the city of Mumbai. He received an award from the Governor of Maharashtra, India, for his contribution to academic research in cultural sustainability on the 12th of January 2023.