Description: It is often overlooked that the initiatives of private individuals and bodies have always been a major feature of urban governance in English and American cities, before, during and after the heyday of 20th-century Welfare States. This book highlights the citizens' continuous participation in a wide range of urban affairs, especially outside institutional frameworks.
Review Quotes: 'Drawing on historical and current perspectives this book provides a fascinating insight into the public and private provision of a range of urban services. Examples are drawn from France, the UK and the US and cover topics such as education, health, security and planning. The book's editors have done a great service in putting this excellent collection together, which should stimulate considerable debate amongst urban historians, political scientists and sociologists.' Mike Goldsmith, University of Salford, UK 'A City of One's Own is a major contribution to the literature about how cities work. The breadth of the contributions in terms ofgeography and policy area coverage is a major plus and the quality of the research and writing is impressive. I have no doubt that this book will be widely read within the field of urban studies.' Evan McKenzie, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA 'The concise articles are very approachable for non academics and even the studies of the privatisation of prisons and the vigilante phenomena in the USA have lessons for urban design solutions of defensible space; similarly health issues such as AIDS prevention, historic feminist claims and for-profit education may have repercussions on future urban design briefs.' Urban Design 'A City of One's Own is an important book that seeks to redress the tendency among contemporary studies of urban governance to portray private actors' interventions in urban affairs as a relatively recent development. The wide range of case studies featured in the collection, that encompasses examples from the 1700s, through to the present day, helps to illustrate this point...' Urban Studies