Ola Söderström 
Cities in Relations [EPUB ebook] 
Trajectories of Urban Development in Hanoi and Ouagadougou

List of Figures vii
List of Tables x
Acronyms xi
Series Editors’ Preface xiii
Preface and Acknowledgements xiv
1 Comparing Cities in Relations 1
Relating Hanoi, Ouagadougou … and Palermo 4
A Brief Introduction to Two Distant Cousins 5
World-city Research Beyond the West 9
Relational Geographies 12
Comparing Cities 17
The Structure of the Book 26
2 Trajectories of Urban Change in Two Ordinary Cities
31
Regime Change in Hanoi and Ouagadougou 33
Forms of Relatedness 42
Conclusion 55
3 Transnational Policy Relations 60
Mobile Planners and City Networks 63
Concrete and Paper in Hanoi’s Urban Development 64
Ouagadougou’s Competing Worlds of Policy Relations 76
Conclusion 87
4 Public Space Policies on the Move 92
A Repertoire of Translocal Connections 94
Public Space: Understandings, Practices and Things 97
Translocal Connections and Public Space Policy in the Making
103
The Politics of Translocal Connections 108
Traveling Participation and Public Space Design 110
Conclusion 116
5 Connecting to Circuits of Architectural Design 120
Stretched Geographies of Design 121
Circuits of Architectural Design in Hanoi and Ouagadougou
123
Hanoi: Design Spaces of an Emerging Economy 125
Ouagadougou: Architectures of Development 131
Grounding Design 136
Conclusion: Transnational Learning Processes and
‘Banal’ Nationalism 140
6 On Road Interchanges and Shopping Malls: What Traveling
Types Do 145
Modernization as Morality and Power 147
Modernization Through Ouagadougou’s Built Environment
150
Staging New Social Identities in Hanoi’s Shopping Malls
159
Conclusion 166
Conclusion: For a Politics of Urban Relatedness 171
Comparing Processes, Worlds of Relations, and Relational Effects
172
The Evolving Relational Worlds of Cities 175
An Assets-based Politics of Relatedness 178
References 181
Index 196

Ola Söderström is Professor of Social and
Cultural Geography at the Institute of Geography, University of
Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He has published extensively on urban
material culture, visual thinking in urban planning, and urban
globalization. His current research focuses on a comparative
ethnography of contemporary urban ways of life. He is the co-author
of Urban Cosmographies (2009) and the co-editor of
Critical Mobilities (2013) and Re-shaping Cities: How
Global Mobility Transforms Architecture and Urban Form
(2010).