The Blackwell City Reader

by Editor: Gary Bridge (University of Bristol); Editor: Sophie Watson (The Open University)

• ISBN13: 9780631225140
• ISBN10: 0631225145
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-11-01
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Cities are firmly back on the agenda. This Reader brings together work by prestigious academics, literary figures, and other intellectuals, which challenges established ways of thinking about urban life. Looking towards the future of urban studies, the editors have selected both canonical texts and those that will surprise and intrigue the reader. They have organized the material in a manner that breaks down conventional categories and boundaries while still covering the field comprehensively. An overall introduction and focused introductions to each section help to develop a new framework for interpreting cities. The volume is interdisciplinary, including pieces not only from the field of urban studies, but also from literature, cultural studies, philosophy, gender studies, design, and planning. Its approach is global, with nonwestern and Western cities, colonial and postcolonial cities, and megacities all represented. While it can be used alone, the Reader has been designed to accompany A Companion to the City (Blackwell Publishing, 2000), which is comprised of specially commissioned pieces organized within the same framework by Bridge and Watson.

Author Biography

Gary Bridge is Senior Lecturer in the School of Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. He is the co-editor of A Companion to the City (Blackwell Publishing, 2000).

Sophie Watson is Professor of Sociology at the Open University. She is the co-author of Surface City: Sydney at the Millennium (1997) and co-editor of Postmodern Cities and Spaces (Blackwell Publishing, 1995), Metropolis Now (1994) and A Companion to the City (Blackwell Publishing 2000), among other publications.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	xiii
Part I: Reading City Imaginations	1	(104)
Introduction	3	(8)
The Metropolis and Mental Life	11	(9)
Georg Simmel
from The City of Tomorrow and its Planning	20	(10)
Le Corbusier
from The Image of the City	30	(9)
Kevin Lynch
from Dreaming the Rational City	39	(7)
M. Christine Boyer
Bodies in Space/Subjects in the City	46	(6)
Antony Vidler
from City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn	52	(8)
W. J. Mitchell
Literary Geography: Joyce, Woolf and the City	60	(11)
Jeri Johnson
The Hem of Manhattan	71	(5)
Djuna Barnes
from Bleak House	76	(4)
Charles Dickens
from Dubliners	80	(6)
James Joyce
from Mrs Dalloway	86	(4)
Virginia Woolf
from The Sea Wall	90	(3)
Marguerite Duras
from Beirut Blues	93	(12)
Hanan al-Shaykh
Part II: Reading Urban Economies	105	(130)
Introduction	107	(9)
The Urban Process Under Capitalism: A Framework for Analysis	116	(9)
David Harvey
An Introduction to the Information Age	125	(10)
Manuel Castells
from Metropolis: From the Division of Labor to Urban Form	135	(12)
Allen J. Scott
Flexibilization Through Metropolis: The Case of Postfordist Seoul, Korea	147	(14)
Myung-Rae Cho
from Globalization and its Discontents	161	(10)
Saskia Sassen
from Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West	171	(17)
William Cronon
Six Discourses on the Postmetropolis	188	(9)
Edward W. Soja
from Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World	197	(11)
Sharon Zukin
Reinventing the Johannesburg Inner City	208	(11)
Lindsay Bremner
from The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project	219	(6)
Susan Buck-Morss
from The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy	225	(4)
J. K. Gibson-Graham
from Changing the Rules: The Politics of Liberalization and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania	229	(6)
Aili Mari Tripp
Part III: Reading Division and Difference	235	(98)
Introduction	237	(7)
The Growth of the City	244	(7)
Ernest W. Burgess
from City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterning of Class in the US	251	(10)
Ira Katznelson
from The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy	261	(9)
William Julius Wilson
Bastee Eviction and Housing Rights: A Case of Dhaka, Bangladesh	270	(9)
Mohammed Mahbubur Rahman
After Tompkins Square Park: Degentrification and the Revanchist City	279	(11)
Neil Smith
City A/genders	290	(7)
Sophie Watson
Bodies-Cities	297	(7)
Elizabeth Grosz
from Geographies of Disability	304	(11)
Brendan Gleeson
from Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization	315	(8)
Richard Sennett
from City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles	323	(10)
Mike Davis
Part IV: Reading City Publics	333	(116)
Introduction	335	(7)
from The Fall of Public Man	342	(9)
Richard Sennett
from The Death and Life of Great American Cities	351	(6)
Jane M. Jacobs
Spatializing Culture: The Social Construction of Public Space in Costa Rica	357	(10)
Setha M. Low
The Right to the City	367	(8)
Henri Lefebvre
from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison	375	(8)
Michel Foucault
from The Practice of Everyday Life	383	(10)
Michel de Certeau
from The Arcades Project	393	(8)
Walter Benjamin
from Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics	401	(9)
Rosalyn Deutsche
from City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London	410	(9)
Judith R. Walkowitz
from The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women	419	(11)
Elizabeth Wilson
The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference	430	(10)
Iris Marion Young
The Overexposed City	440	(9)
Paul Virilio
Part V: Reading Urban Interventions	449	(110)
Introduction	451	(5)
From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism	456	(8)
David Harvey
from Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place	464	(13)
John R. Logan
Harvey L. Molotch
from Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century	477	(13)
Peter Hall
from Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies	490	(12)
Patsy Healey
Between Modernity and Postmodernity: The Ambiguous Position of US Planning	502	(11)
Robert Beauregard
from The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia	513	(11)
James Holston
from Urbanism, Colonialism, and the World-economy	524	(11)
Anthony D. King
The Dark Side of Modernism: Planning as Control of an Ethnic Minority	535	(7)
Oren Yiftachel
from Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City	542	(7)
Jane M. Jacobs
Mega-cities and the Urban Future: A Model for Replicating Best Practices	549	(10)
Akhtar A. Badshah
Janice E. Perlman
Index	559