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The Blackwell City Reader

“This new edition covers so much terrain of the urban scholarship that it is truly a very comprehensive and interdisciplinary reader for any course on cities and urban studies.”
—Xiangming Chen, Trinity College

“A rich and varied collection of important articles on cities. Selections range from older classic pieces to more recent insights, and the book provides a nice mix of European and American views of cities, whilst including writings about other areas of the world, especially China. Altogether this is an excellent and exciting collection of major writings.”
—Anthony M. Orum, University of Illinois

“The second edition of The Blackwell City Reader is even better than the first – and that was a milestone. The Reader covers the full spectrum of approaches to the city concisely but with real authority. As a result, it is a vital introduction to thinking about cities in a time when global problems and urban problems have become effectively interchangeable.”
—Nigel Thrift, University of Warwick

Gary Bridge (Edited by), G Bridge (Author), Sophie Watson (Edited by)

9781405189828, Wiley

Paperback / softback, published 19 February 2010

480 pages
24.6 x 17.3 x 2.5 cm, 0.821 kg

Updated to reflect the most current thinking on urban studies, The Blackwell City Reader, Second Edition features a comprehensive selection of multidisciplinary readings relating to the analysis and experience of global cities.

  • Includes new sections of materialities and mobilities to capture the most recent debates
  • The most international reader of its kind, including extensive coverage of urban issues in Asia, China, and India
  • Combines theoretical approaches with a wide range of geographical case studies
  • Organized to be used as a stand-alone text or alongside Blackwell's A Companion to the City

Foreword ix

Acknowledgments x

Introduction 1

Part I Materialities 3

 Introducing Materialities 5

1 The Great Towns 11
 Friedrich Engels

2 Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West 17
 William Cronon

3 The Urban Process Under Capitalism: A Framework for Analysis 32
David Harvey

4 An Introduction to the Information Age 40
Manuel Castells

5 Metropolis: From the Division of Labor to Urban Form 49
Allen J. Scott

6 The Economic Base of Contemporary Cities 60
Ash Amin

7 The Making of Global City Regions: Mumbai: The Mega-City of a Poor Country 72
Sujata Patel

8 Urban Political Ecology, Justice and the Politics of Scale 79
Erik Swyngedouw and Nikolas C. Heynen

9 Moving Cities: Rethinking the Materialities of Urban Geographies 86
Alan Latham and Derek P. McCormack

Part II Mobilities 95

 Introducing Mobilities 97

10 The Metropolis and Mental Life 103
Georg Simmel

11 The Practice of Everyday Life 111
Michel de Certeau

12 The Arcades Project 119
Walter Benjamin

13 The Global City: Introducing a Concept 126
Saskia Sassen

14 Postborder Cities, Postborder World: The Rise of Bajalta California 133
Michael Dear and Héctor Manuel Lucero

15 Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger 138
Arjun Appadurai

16 Connections 144
John Urry

17 Driving in the City 152
Nigel Thrift

18 Urban Transport in Chinese Cities: The Impact on the Urban Poor 159
Zhong-Ren Peng and Yi Zhu

Part III Division and Difference 169

 Introducing Division and Difference 171

19 The Continuing Causes of Segregation 177
Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton

20 The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass and Public Policy 186
William Julius Wilson

21 City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles 193
Mike Davis

22 After Tompkins Square Park: Degentrification and the Revanchist City 201
Neil Smith

23 The S.U.V. Model of Citizenship: Floating Bubbles, Buffer Zones, and the Rise of the “Purely Atomic” Individual 211
Don Mitchell

24 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison 221
Michel Foucault

25 The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference 228
Iris Marion Young

26 City A/Genders 237
Sophie Watson

27 Building Gay Neighborhood Enclaves: The Village and Harlem 243
George Chauncey

Part IV Urban Publics and Urban Cultures 253

 Introducing Urban Publics and Urban Cultures 255

28 The Public Realm 261
Richard Sennett

29 The Death and Life of Great American Cities 273
Jane Jacobs

30 China Urban: Health, Wealth and the Good Life 278
Nancy N. Chen

31 Spatializing Culture: The Social Construction of Public Space in Costa Rica 284
Setha M. Low

32 Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World 293
Sharon Zukin

33 City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London 303
Judith R. Walkowitz

34 Homo Palpitans: Balzac’s Novels and Urban Personality 311
Franco Moretti

35 Writing the City 317
Peter Preston and Paul Simpson-Housley

36 Imagining the Modern City: Light in Dark Spaces 323
James Donald

Part V Urban Politics and Planning 331

 Introducing Urban Politics and Planning 333

37 The Growth of the City 339
Ernest W. Burgess

38 The City of Tomorrow and its Planning 345
Le Corbusier

39 The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília 355
James Holston

40 Urbanism, Colonialism and the World-economy 365
Anthony D. King

41 Six Discourses on the Postmetropolis 374
Edward W. Soja

42 How to Study Urban Political Power 382
John Hull Mollenkopf

43 Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place 391
John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch

44 New Directions in Planning Theory 402
Susan S. Fainstein

45 Cities and the Geographies of “Actually Existing Neoliberalism” 411
Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore

46 China’s Urban Transition: Backward into the Future 419
John Friedmann

47 Planning the Competitive City-Region: The Emergence of Strategic Development Plan in China 428
Fulong Wu and Jingxing Zhang

Index 433

Subject Areas: Geography [RG]
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