Urban Studies Books and Journals

Leading the way in urban studies: urban planning, urban geography, land use, urban development, urban design, urban health, urban energy, urban governance and smart urban technologies. 

Springer’s publications in Urban Studies include high impact books, leading journals, monographs, edited volumes, book series, and reference works. Browse our products, join the open access movement, learn more about our unique multi-format publishing model, and benefit from our services.

Editor's Choice

Shrinking Cities in China offers an essential introduction to the phenomenon of shrinking cities in China, highlighting several case studies, qualitative and quantitative methods, and planning responses. As an emerging topic in urbanizing China, cities experiencing population loss have begun attracting increasing attention. All chapters were contributed by leading researchers on the subject in China. Richly illustrated for a better visual understanding of the topic. Another interesting title in our successful series The Urban Book Series!

Juliana Pitanguy, Publishing Editor

Springer: Can you give us an overview of the work you published in the book “Agent-Based Models of Geographical Systems”? 

Michael Batty: There was nothing like it at the time – we thought it was a decent edited collection with little competition but quite niche. We tried to review the field as widely as possible ... and hope this book would have enticed people to build agent based models.

Why is Urban Studies an important area to study?

Because it is extremely broad and it also contains many many different perspectives and the key to understanding cities is to be able to deal and handle with these many perspectives.

What are today’s hottest trends/topics in the field?

Well, AI is getting a lot of mileage – but a key issue is what happens as cities get bigger – we have a love affair with big cities these days. That is very different from 100 years ago when big cities were despised. A big issue is debt and cities I think – the markets and investments.

What are the challenges the field faces today and what can be the possibilities for the future?

The biggest issue is to get some sort of integrated perspective across many different fields.

Professor Michael Batty CBE FRS FBA
Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), University College London, UK

_{Michael Batty is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London where he is Chair of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). He has worked on computer models of cities and their visualisation since the 1970s and has published several books and blogs at www.complexcity.info and www.spatialcomplexity.info. Prior to his current position, he was Professor of City Planning and Dean at the University of Wales at Cardiff from 1979 to 1990 and then Director of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis at the State University of New York at Buffalo (1990-1995). He is a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) and the Royal Society (FRS), was awarded the CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2004 and the 2013 recipient of the Lauréat Prix International de Géographie Vautrin Lud. In 2015 he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for his work on the science of cities. In 2016, he received the Senior Scholar Award of the Complex Systems Society and the Gold Medal of the Royal Town Planning Institute.} 

• Housing Estates in Europe
• Innovation Capacity and the City
  
• Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Areas​​​​​​​
• Balanced Urban Development: Options and Strategies for Liveable Cities
• Social Innovations in the Urban Context
• Inter-group Relations and Migrant Integration in European Cities
• Working, Housing: Urbanizing
• AiREAS: Sustainocracy for a Healthy City
• New Methods for Measuring and Analyzing Segregation
• Counteracting Urban Heat Island Effects in a Global Climate Change Scenario
• Housing Market Dynamics in Africa
• New Vision 2050
• New Methods for Measuring and Analyzing Segregation
• Inter-group Relations and Migrant Integration in European Cities​​​​​​​

• Assessing the quality of the indoor environment of senior housing for a better mobility: a Swedish case study

• Why women own less housing assets in China? The role of intergenerational transfers

• The effect of earthquakes on the housing market and the quality of life in the province of Groningen, the Netherlands

• Risks and interrelationships of subdistrict house prices: the case of Amsterdam

• Assessing social quality of sheltered independent housing: challenges of scale and group mix

• A place of many names: how three generations of Bedouin women express the meaning of home​​​​​​​

• An exploration of concepts and polices on ‘affordable housing’ in England, Italy, Poland and The Netherlands 

• Vacancy in shrinking downtowns: a comparative study of Québec, Ontario, and New England

• Environmental considerations in the Swedish building and construction industry: the role of costs, institutional setting, and information

• Service planning and delivery outcomes of home adaptations for ageing in the UK

• The unraveling of Amsterdam's unitary rental system

• An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Nigeria’s Rapid Urban Transition

• Peri-Urban Land Governance in Developing Countries: Understanding the Role, Interaction and Power Relation Among Actors in Tanzania

• Efficacy in Action: Mobilising Community Participation for Inclusive Urban Development

• On the Question of Using the Concept ‘Slum Tourism’ for Urban Tourism in Stigmatised Neighbourhoods in Inner City Johannesburg

• Urban Health in Johannesburg: Migration, Exclusion and Inequality

• Giving Birth in a Foreign Land: Exploring the Maternal Healthcare Experiences of Zimbabwean Migrant Women Living in Johannesburg, South Africa

• Buzzing on top: Linking wild bee diversity, abundance and traits with green roof qualities

• The state and use of municipal tree inventories in Swedish municipalities – results from a national survey

• Does urbanization explain differences in interactions between an insect herbivore and its natural enemies and mutualists?

• The application of graph theory and percolation analysis for assessing change in the spatial configuration of pond networks

• Habitat selection by an avian top predator in the tropical megacity of Delhi: human activities and socio-religious practices as prey-facilitating tools​​​​​​​

• Effects of ground surface permeability on the growth of linden trees

Springer's Open Choice allows you to publish open access in the majority of Springer’s subscription-based journals.

Juliana Pitanguy

Publishing Editor

juliana.pitanguy@springer.com

Are you interested in publishing in our Urban Studies program? If so, please do contact me.

Springer’s publications in Urban Studies align with Springer Nature’s wider goal of highlighting the best research that can advance our understanding of how to make cities sustainable. This commitment to sustainable cities research is part of the Springer Nature Grand Challenges programme, which aims to deliver the most rigorous research to all who are in a position to take action to solve the urgent global challenges that face us as a society. For more information about this initiative, visit our Grand Challenges portal​​​​​​​.