The Postmodern Urban Condition

by Dear, Michael J.

• ISBN13: 9780631209881
• ISBN10: 0631209883
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-02-08
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This book will change the way we understand cities. It provides readers with not only an introduction to cities and urbanism in the postmodern world but also overturns many common assumptions about urban structure.

Author Biography

Michael Dearis Professor of Geography and Director of the Southern California Studies Center at the University of Southern California. He was recently a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and held a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989. He received Honors from the Association of American Geographers in 1995. He is the author/editor of ten books including Rethinking Los Angeles (with H. Eric Schockman and Greg Hise, 1996) and Urban Latino Cultures-La vida latina en LA (with Gustavo Leclerc and Paul Villa, 1999)as well as over 100 journal articles and reports.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	vi
List of Tables	viii
Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	x
Introduction	1	(9)
Taking Los Angeles Seriously	10	(15)
Mapping the Postmodern	25	(22)
Postmodern Bloodlines: From Lefebvre to Jameson	47	(23)
The Premature Demise of Postmodern Urbanism	70	(21)
Reading the Modern City: A Colonial History of Los Angeles 1781-1991	91	(26)
Deconstructing Urban Planning	117	(23)
Postmodern Urbanism	140	(26)
A Tale of Two Cities 1. Tijuana	166	(10)
Film, Architecture and Filmspace	176	(23)
A Tale of Two Cities 2. Las Vegas	199	(9)
From Sidewalk to Cyberspace (and back to Earth again)	208	(23)
The Personal Politics of Postmodernity	231	(20)
The Power of Place	251	(10)
The Geopolitics of Postmodernity	261	(24)
Epistemological Politics	285	(32)
Epilogue: Beyond Postmodernism	317	(2)
A Beginner's Guide to Postmodernism	319	(2)
Index	321