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Urban Theory and the Urban Experience brings together classic and contemporary approaches to urban research in order to reveal the intellectual origins of urban studies and the often unacknowledged debt that empirical and theoretical perspectives on the city owe one another.From the foundations of modern urban theory in the work of Weber, Simmel, Benjamin and Lefebbvre to the writings of contemporary urban theorists such as David Harvey and Manuel Castells and the Los Angeles school of urbanism, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience traces the key developments in the idea of the city over more than a century. Individual chapters explore investigative studies of the great metropolis from Charles Booth to the contemporary urban research of William J. Wilson, along with alternative approaches to the industrial city, ranging from the Garden City Movement to ‘the new urbanism'.The volume also considers the impact of new information and communication technologies, and the growing trend towards disaggregated urban networks, all of which raise important questions about viability and physical and social identity of the conventional townscape. Urban Theory and the Urban Experience concludes with a rallying cry for a more holistic and integrated approach to the urban question in theory and in practice if the rich potent.For the benefit of students and tutors, frequent question points encourage exploration of key themes, and annotated further readings provide follow-up sources for the issues raised in each chapter. The book will be of interest to students, scholars, practitioners and all those who wish to learn more about why the urban has become the dominant social, economic and cultural form of the twenty-first century

The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies is a timely intervention into the field of global urban studies, coming as comparison is being more widely used as a method for global urban studies, and as a number of methodological experiments and comparative research projects are being brought to fruition. It consolidates and takes forward an emerging field within urban studies and makes a positive and constructive intervention into a lively arena of current debate in urban theory. Comparative urbanism injects a welcome sense of methodological rigor and a commitment to careful evaluation of claims across different contexts, which will enhance current debates in the field. Drawing together more than 50 international scholars and practitioners, this book offers an overview of key ideas and practices in the field and extends current thinking and practice.The book is primarily intended for scholars and graduate students for whom it will provide an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across the range of disciplines which converge in the study of urbanism, including geography, sociology, political studies, planning, and urban studies.

This title was first published in 2000: Prostitution has always played a crucial symbolic role in the definition of moral and sexual standards and, as such, the figure of the prostitute has been paradigmatic in the history of the sex and the city. Focusing on the geographies of female prostitution in Western societies, this book explores the nature of sites of sex work and the ways they shape the lives of prostitutes (and their clients). In so doing, the book aims not simply to present a static'mapping'of sex work, but seeks to highlight how these public and private ssites are struggled over, with prostitutes often resisting the strategies of social and legal control designed to regulate their working practices. The book consequently engages with a number of contemporary debates in social, cultural and gender geography surrounding the importance of public and private spaces in producing (and reproducing) gender, sex and bodily identities.

Urban Criminology offers an accessible analysis of our urban condition, viewed through the prism of crime, disorder and social harm. This book gathers cutting-edge treatments, research field reports and critical examinations of crime and harm in cities, from the disciplines of urban studies and criminology. The social, economic and political composition of cities and the various inequalities that mark out and drive the problem of crime in many cities today are foregrounded. Readers follow a series of thematic engagements, generating a deeper understanding of a range of key areas that include problems of violence, social and spatial divisions, housing, policing and the role of the urban economy in issues of financial crime.This book comes at a time of rising crime in many cities and complex responses by city administrations and communities. It presents a critical, political thesis – that crime in cities must be understood with reference to the varying social structures, political forces and economic opportunities of cities. These influences intersect to produce dramatic variations in victimisation and attempts at social control, often felt most strongly around class and gender divisions. To understand crime, we must better understand the life of the city. Urban Criminology seeks to present an integrated framework that brings to life these key issues and seeks to enthuse students of our urban condition – to locate the harms within it and to identify ways of reducing the risk of crime.This book is ideal reading for all students with an interest in cities, crime, community life, urban sociology and urban cultures.

Widely recognized as a groundbreaking text, The New Urban Sociology is a broad and expert introduction to urban sociology that is both relevant and accessible to students. Organized around an integrated paradigm, the sociospatial perspective, this text examines the role played by social factors such as race, class, gender, lifestyle, economics, and culture on the development of metropolitan areas, and integrates social, ecological, and political economy perspectives and research into this study. With its unique perspective, concise history of urban life, clear summary of urban social theory, and attention to the impact of culture on urban development, this book gives students a cohesive conceptual framework for understanding cities and urban life.The sixth edition of The New Urban Sociology is a major overhaul and expansion of the previous editions. This edition is packed with new material including an expansion of the sociospatial approach to include the primary importance of racism in the formation of the urban landscape, the spatial aspects of urban social problems, including the issues surrounding urban public health and affordable housing, and a brand new chapter on urban social movements. There is also new material on the importance of space for social groups, including immigrants and the LGBTQ community, as well as the gendered meanings embedded in social space.

City provides an accessible yet critical introduction to one of the key ideas in human geography. While most of the world's population now lives in cities, the definition and theoretical specification of the city nonetheless remains elusive. In this extensively updated second edition, Phil Hubbard considers the different ways that the lived and messy realities of urban life have been approached by geographers, past and present. Situating these in the context of ongoing debates concerning globalization, urban fragmentation and planetary urbanism, this new edition considers how contemporary understandings of cities are being enriched via engagement with feminist, queer and post-colonial perspectives. Drawing on a diverse range of literature and case studies from around the world, and featuring boxed explorations of key concepts, City is an essential guide to urban geography for the experienced researcher and novice alike.

‘Hurry'is an intrinsic component of modernity. It exists not only in tandem with modern constructions of mobility, speed, rhythm, and time–space compression, but also with infrastructures, technologies, practices, and emotions associated with the experience of the ‘mobilizing modern'. ‘Hurry'is not simply speed. It may result in congestion, slowing-down, or inaction in the face of over-stimulus. Speeding-up is often competitive: faster traffic on better roads made it harder for pedestrians to cross, or for horse-drawn vehicles and cyclists to share the carriageway with motorized vehicles. Focusing on the cultural and material manifestations of ‘hurry', the book's contributors analyse the complexities, tensions, and contradictions inherent in the impulse to higher rates of circulation in modernizing cities.The collection includes, but also goes beyond, accounts of new forms of mobility (bicycles, buses, underground trains) and infrastructure (street layouts and surfaces, business exchanges, and hotels) to show how modernity's ‘architectures of hurry'have been experienced, represented, and practised since the mid nineteenth century. Ten case studies explore different expressions of ‘hurry'across cities and urban regions in Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and substantial introductory and concluding chapters situate ‘hurry'in the wider context of modernity and mobility studies and reflect on the future of ‘hurry'in an ever-accelerating world. This diverse collection will be relevant to researchers, scholars, and practitioners in the fields of planning, cultural and historical geography, urban history, and urban sociology.

Bringing together ideas from the fields of sociology, economics, human geography, ethics, political and communications theory, this book deals with some key subjects in urban design: the multidimensional effects of the spatial form of cities, ways of appropriating urban space, and the different material factors involved in the emergence of social life. It puts forward an innovative conceptual framework to reconsider some fundamental features of city-making as a social process: the place of cities in encounters and communications, in the randomness of events and in the repetition of activities that characterise societies. In doing so, it provides fresh analytical tools and theoretical insights to help advance our understanding of the networks of causalities, contingencies and contexts involved in practices of city-making.In a systematic attempt to bring urban analysis and research from the social sciences together, the book is organised around three vital yet relatively neglected dimensions in the social and material shaping of cities: (i) Cities as systems of encounter: an approach to urban segregation as segregated networks; (ii) Cities as systems of communication: a view of shared spaces as a means to association and social experience; (iii) Cities as systems of material interaction: explorations on urban form as an effect of interactivity, and interactivity as an effect of form.Visit the author's website at: http://socialfabric.city/

Widely recognized as a groundbreaking text, The New Urban Sociology is a broad and expert introduction to urban sociology that is both relevant and accessible to the student. A thought leader in the field, the book is organized around an integrated paradigm (the sociospatial perspective) which considers the role played by social factors such as race, class, gender, lifestyle, economics, culture, and politics on the development of metropolitan areas. Emphasizing the importance of space to social life and real estate to urban development, the book integrates social, ecological and political economy perspectives and research through a fresh theoretical approach. With its unique perspective, concise history of urban life, clear summary of urban social theory, and attention to the impact of culture on urban development, this book gives students a cohesive conceptual framework for understanding cities and urban life. In this thoroughly revised 5th edition, authors Mark Gottdiener, Ray Hutchison, and Michael T. Ryan offer expanded discussions of created cultures, gentrification, and urban tourism, and have incorporated the most recent work in the field throughout the text. The New Urban Sociology is a necessity for all courses on the subject.

City provides an accessible yet critical introduction to one of the key concepts in human geography. Always at the heart of discussions in social theory, the definition and specification of ‘the city'nonetheless remains illusive. In this volume, Phil Hubbard locates the concept of ‘the city'within current traditions of social thought, providing a basis for understanding its varying usages and meanings through a critical discussion of the contribution of key authors and thinkers. Written in a lively and accessible style, the individual chapters of City offer a thematic overview of four dominant ways of approaching cities: as lived-in places as imagined spaces as networks of association as technologies of flow. Drawing on a diverse range of literatures and case studies, the book spells out the importance of a geographical perspective on the city, suggesting that it is only by bringing these different ways of mapping the city together that we can begin to make sense of cities.

For the first time Urban Theory and the Urban Experience brings together classic and contemporary approaches to urban research in order to reveal the intellectual origins of urban studies, and the often unacknowledged debt that empirical and theoretical perspectives on the city owe to one another. Both students and urban scholars will appreciate the critical way in which classical and contemporary debates on the nature of the city are presented. Extensive use is made throughout of documentary, literary and cultural sources to bring the different theoretical perspectives to life. Discussion points introduce and explain key concepts and intellectual histories in a jargon free manner. End of chapter further readings have also been annotated to encourage additional study.