Through research with residents, activists, and urban planners, Newman weaves together a detailed ethnography of grassroots mobilization with a structural analysis of neoliberal urbanism. He examines the Jardins d’Éole as a way of tackling larger questions: “How do people—from residents to planners—create ‘vibrant’ urban spaces, and how are such places reproduced in everyday life, and for what political end” (p. xviii)? As officials and social-movement actors build more ecologically sound cities, who then has the right to them?

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