Rights to the City Book Series

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About the Book Series

The Rights to the City – a distinctive interdisciplinary book series sponsored by the Urban Affairs Association and published by Routledge | Taylor & Francis – is now actively seeking proposals for monographs and curated edited volumes by both established and early-career researchers.

The series is committed to publishing empirically rigorous, theoretically informed, and practically relevant studies that interrogate processes of urban transformation and the struggles for social justice that they bring about. We invite high-quality proposals that analyze how rights—broadly conceived—are defined, acquired, and sustained by groups, and the institutions that represent them in the city. The editors are particularly interested in books that examine how cities and city-regions can be shaped to yield equitable and sustainable rights, learn from each other, and contribute to enhancing such rights on local, national, and global stages. The series is global in focus. We encourage proposals that push disciplinary boundaries and utilize a variety of methodological approaches to engage the series’ six main themes:

  • governance and policy: the policies, structures, and decision-making processes that shape cities and impact the rights of urban inhabitants;
  • equity, diversity, inclusion: the challenges and opportunities in creating inclusive cities and validating alternative modalities and conceptualizations of urban life;
  • global (in)equalities: the social, spatial, and political manifestations of global inequalities and their impact on urban rights;
  • activism and urban potentialities: the transformative potential of grassroots activism and social movements to shape urban spaces and claim the right to alternative urban futures;
  • sustainability, resilience and adaptation: the relationships between environmental sustainability, resilience, and the rights of urban inhabitants confronted with climate change and other ecological pressures;
  • comparative urbanism: examining urban rights across different geographical and scalar contexts, allowing for cross-pollination of ideas and practices.

The Rights to the City series aims to appeal to a wide readership, including scholars, teachers, practitioners, activists, students, and general audiences. We are committed to providing an author-friendly publication experience that emphasizes timely and robust peer review and offers support to enhance the visibility and impact of work featured in the series. We look forward to hearing from authors interested in advancing our understanding of the social, spatial, and political dynamics of urban society and critically promoting more equitable and inclusive urban futures.

Welcome From the Editor

Welcome to the Rights to the City book series, an exciting new initiative that looks to advance impactful scholarship on some of the most essential issues and ideas in urban studies. Building upon—and moving beyond—Henri Lefebvre’s original treatise on ‘the right to the city’, our focus on rights to the city acknowledges the plurality, contestability, and ambiguity of a complex concept. Rather than something that is codified legally, rights to the city both reflect and embrace an open, progressive orientation towards democratizing urban life in city centers and metropolitan peripheries around the world. The series is therefore interested in books that promote interdisciplinary dialogue and provide theoretical and empirical foundations needed to build more just urban futures.

We intend Rights to the City to be inclusive of diverse voices across the globe, and open to explorations of formal and informal urban politics and policies. Prospective authors should expect to feature in a series with a clear identity, purpose, and a reputation for publishing substantive and impactful research. Potential readers should expect high-quality, rigorous research that engages crucial questions regarding whose right to what city? The series will feature books that go beyond the diagnosis of problems to present constructive strategies to address urban inequities and systemic injustices. In other words, this is a series that aims to be an innovative resource for a range of global scholarly and practitioner audiences in support of critical urban research and action worldwide.

Dr. Jean-Paul Addie, Editor
Urban Studies Institute, Georgia State University

Overview: From Interest to Publication

Preferred Types of Manuscripts

  • Format: Single-authored, co-authored, and edited volumes
  • Audience: Targeted at academic, practitioner, and community organizer audiences
  • Analyses of current urban social struggles that provide demonstrations of effective policy and/or political strategies
  • Comparative urban studies that promote cross-learning and best practices
  • Comprehensive reviews and synthesis of urban-focused theoretical and conceptual debates
  • Historical analyses that inform contemporary urban issues

Series Marketing

Examples of how UAA can help:
  • Social Media: Marketing across social media and related listservs
  • Videos: Hosting video abstracts on the website
  • Interviews: Spotlight author interviews and blog posts
  • Conference Sessions: Special author-meets-critics sessions at UAA and other international conferences on urban affairs
  • Policy Briefs: Disseminate author-generated policy briefs
  • Webinars: Book topic discussions
  • Workshops: How to publish in the series