This book focuses on the material city and its institutions and shows that, without recourse to a big new theory, urban leaders have devised mechanisms of ordinary government. They have done so through the resolution of practical and essential problems: providing electricity, drinking water, sanitation, transportation. In the originality of its hypotheses and the precision of the analyses carried out in the four case study cities of Shanghai, Mumbai, Cape Town and Santiago de Chile, this work is addressed to all those interested in the life of cities: politicians, local and central government officials, executives in urban companies, researchers and students.

1: Introduction:; 2: Governing Shanghai:; 3: 'Transforming Mumbai' or the Challenges of Forging a Collective Actor; 4: Governing Cape Town; 5: Santiago de Chile Prototype of the Neo-Liberal City:; 6: Governing Under Constraints:

Dominique Lorrain is director of research at CNRS, (Latts, Ecole des Ponts ParisTech). His research is focussed on transformations of urban public action and more specifically on infrastructure policies. He teaches at Ecole des Ponts, Paris and its joint MBA with Tongji University (Shanghai).