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This chapter outlines the book’s rationale and approach in addition to its general argument. It introduces the reader to what the author has described as a ‘paradox’ of parkour, whereby parkour and freerunning is hyper-conformist to the values of consumer capitalism whilst its free practice is excluded and marginalised from urban space. Before offering methodological commentary on the book’s ethnographic approach and outlining the structure of the book, it looks how this paradox is a product of late-capitalism’s own making – making reference to processes of deindustrialisation, neoliberalism and the rise of consumer capitalism.

This chapter lays out the blueprint the Maryland State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped followed in meeting the expectations of readers with print disabilities. The chapter also discusses the challenges both state and local public libraries face in meeting the current and future expectations of these clients and presents a scenario of a hybrid service in which state and local public libraries work together to meet client expectations.

Reports the process and strategies the library used to reinvent itself as a community-centered institution. Presents possible approaches for a collaborative, inclusive library service by state/federal sponsored and public libraries.

The Maryland Library successfully met client expectation through creating a community-centered library. Public libraries offer many inclusive services that, combined with the specialized service of a state/federally sponsored library, could provide equitable information access for clients with diverse, individual information needs.

This case study presents a successful library service for a complex, continually changing client population and proposes collaborative partnerships for special and local public libraries.

Georg Simmel described how a person can be a stranger, a member of two cultures but belong to neither (1950). Being a stranger though, goes beyond belonging. Strangeness goes to the soul of who we truly are: it defines our beliefs, delimits our practices, and gives depth to our everyday lives. Strangeness allows and sometimes forces us to cross the borders from the safe confines of our normal lives into the murkiness of the unknown social reality beyond it.

This chapter considers the role and potential of sensory urbanism as an approach to exploring people's sensorial experiences and understandings of their local environments. Such an approach is warranted given the influential role of the senses in developing and affecting experience of the urban environment. Debate about the role of the senses in shaping urban experience has progressed in recent years and increasingly is taking place across disciplines (Adams & Guy, 2007). Pallasmaa (2005, p. 40) describes this sensory urban engagement when he says:I confront the city with my body … I experience myself in the city, and the city exists through my embodied experience. The city and my body supplement and define each other. I dwell in the city and the city dwells in me.