What is a city? What determines its specificity? What shapes its quality? The evolution of the contemporary city does not follow a linear movement. It is shaped by transformation processes that are directed toward often distant and conflicting goals. Even though cities are inscribed into global processes and networks, they develop their own specific ways of dealing with these conditions. They tend to produce and reproduce their own specificity, their own patterns and character traits. Using the categories of territory, power, and difference -- also lending the book its structure -- the texts analyse different case studies of cities and urbanized territories, ranging from the Canary Islands to Hong Kong and Nairobi, unfolding the distinctiveness of their physical and social existences. With contributions by Roger Diener, Mathias Gunz, Manuel Herz, Jacques Herzog, Rolf Jenni, Marcel Meili, Shadi Rahbaran, Christian Schmid, and Milica Topalovic. 300 illustrations