Global Heartland is the account of diverse, dispossessed, and displaced people brought together in a former sundown town in Illinois. Recruited to work in the local meat-processing plant, African Americans, Mexicans, and West Africans re-create the town in unexpected ways. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in the US, Mexico, and Togo, Faranak Miraftab shows how this workforce is produced for the global labor market; how the displaced workers’ transnational lives help them stay in these jobs; and how they negotiate their relationships with each other across the lines of ethnicity, race, language, and nationality as they make a new home. Beardstown is not an exception but an example of local-global connections that make for local development. Focusing on a locality in a non-metropolitan region, this work contributes to urban scholarship on globalization by offering a fresh perspective on politics and materialities of placemaking.

The first in-depth study of the impact of economic and political decentralization on planning practice in developing economies, this innovative volume, using original case study research by leading experts drawn from diverse fields of inquiry, from planning to urban studies, geography and economics, explores the dramatic transformation that decentralization implies in responsibilities of the local planning and governance structures. It examines a range of key issues, including: public and private finance local leadership and electoral issues planning in post-conflict societies. Offering unique insights into how planning has changed in specific countries, paying particular attention to South East Asian economies, India and South Africa, this excellent volume is an invaluable resource for researchers, graduate students and planners interested in urban planning in its international political and economic context.