Urban areas, despite facing strong forces of homogenization on a global scale, tend to produce and reproduce their own specificity, their own structures and patterns that are evolving through the uneven process of urbanization. With this book ETH Studio Basel documents its long-standing research on cities and urban regions, highlighting key aspects of specificity in the age of global urbanization. The publication presents case studies on Naples, the Nile Valley, Belgrade, Nairobi, Hong Kong, the Canary Islands, Beirut, and Casablanca that are distilling their specificities through careful descriptions, and analyzing their processes of urban transformation through the analytical lenses of three vectors: territory, power, and difference.

Roger Diener, Mathias Gunz, Manuel Herz, Jacques Herzog, Rolf Jenni, Jasmine Kastani, Marcel Meili, Pierre de Meuron, Shadi Rahbaran, Christian Schmid and Milica Topalovic contributed to the book.