Cities: Changes, Places, Spaces

This publication assembles nine chapters, each of which contains the findings of research undertaken for the author’s master thesis, the capstone project in the 4Cities Master Programme in Urban Studies (http://www.4cities.eu). As many Master theses are only read by a student’s supervisor and others who take part in evaluating the work, and in some rarer cases by future students seeking inspiration for their own work, this book is a collective attempt to save the results of many months of research and analysis from dusty library shelves or forgotten online final resting places. This book presents a mosaic of research that reflects how urban studies as a research field covers the analysis of cities on the ground and up to how cities are connected at a larger spatial scale. At the same time, the influence of local contexts is confirmed, illustrating how the researched phenomena play out differently in historical versus contemporary circumstances, as well as in different social, economic and political contexts. It is especially interesting to note the international (albeit purely European) character of the case studies included: From the Southern European cities of Madrid, Barcelona and Salamanca, to the Western European cities of Berlin, Copenhagen, Manchester, Metz, Magdeburg and Vienna, and the region of Flanders, to the Eastern European cities of Budapest and Szczecin, this publication introduces local contexts and their trajectories of spatial development; be they converging or diverging.