Social Theory And The Urban Question

First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Social Theory and the Urban Question offers a guide to, and a critical evaluation of key themes in contemporary urban social theory, as well as a re-examination of more traditional approaches in the light of recent developments and criticism. Dr Saunders discusses current theoretical positions in the context of the work of Marx, Weber and Durkheim. He suggests that later writers have often misunderstood or ignored the arguments of these 'founding fathers' of the urban question. Dr Saunders uses his final chapter to apply the lessons learned from a review of their work in order to develop a new framework for urban social and political analysis. This book was first published in 1981.

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.

Openings: the urban question as a scale question? -- Between fixity and motion: scaling the urban fabric -- Restructuring, rescaling and the urban question -- Global city formation and the rescaling of urbanization -- Cities and the political geographies of the "new" economy -- Competitive city-regionalism and the politics of scale -- Urban growth machines : but at what scale? -- A thousand layers: geographies of uneven development -- Planetary urbanization: mutations of the urban question -- Afterword: new spaces of urbanization

This book provides a comprehensive coverage of urban social theory within the history of social thought. It's an accessible and comprehensive coverage of the major social theorists and schools.

A review of the original French edition of this book in the American Journal of Sociology hailed it as "the most finished product yet to emerge from the new (Marxist) school of French urban sociology... The aim of the book is nothing less than to reconceptualize the field of urban sociology. It is carried out in two stages: a critique of the literature of urban sociology (and urbanization) and an attempt to lay the Marxist bases for a reconstructed urban sociology." The problems facing the world's cities, whether problems of development or of decay, cannot be solved until they have been diagnosed. The race riots in Detroit, the shantytowns of Paris, the financial crisis of New York must not be seen in isolation. The mushrooming cities of the third world, demolition and urban sprawl at home are located in a network of economics, social welfare and power politics, and the decisions we are called upon to make elude us in a fog of ideology. This brilliant exposition of the function of the city in social, economic and symbolic terms illuminates the creation and structuring of space by action administrative, productive and more immediately human. The interaction of environment and life-style, the complex of market forces and state policy against a background of traditional social practice is scrutinized with the aim of establishing concepts and research methods that will enable us to come to grips with the cities themselves and the way in which we view them. Castells draws on urban renewal in Paris, the English New Towns, the American megalopolis for concrete data in his empirical and theoretical investigation. In this English edition, a new Part V has been added on urban development in America. The chapters on the pobladores in Chile and the struggle of the FRAP in Quebec have been greatly extended and an Afterword traces the development of research in the past five years. -- Amazon.com.

Taking a thematic approach, this book covers the main aspects of modern urban life taught on undergraduate courses. The key approaches to the city within contemporary social theory are assessed. Tonkiss adopts an international perspective, with examples drawn from places such as New York, Paris and Sydney.

The worldwide financial crisis has sent shock-waves of accelerated economic restructuring, regulatory reorganization and sociopolitical conflict through cities around the world. It has also given new impetus to the struggles of urban social movements emphasizing the injustice, destructiveness and unsustainability of capitalist forms of urbanization. This book contributes analyses intended to be useful for efforts to roll back contemporary profit-based forms of urbanization, and to promote alternative, radically democratic and sustainable forms of urbanism. The contributors provide cutting-edge analyses of contemporary urban restructuring, including the issues of neoliberalization, gentrification, colonization, "creative" cities, architecture and political power, sub-prime mortgage foreclosures and the ongoing struggles of "right to the city" movements. At the same time, the book explores the diverse interpretive frameworks – critical and otherwise – that are currently being used in academic discourse, in political struggles, and in everyday life to decipher contemporary urban transformations and contestations. The slogan, "cities for people, not for profit," sets into stark relief what the contributors view as a central political question involved in efforts, at once theoretical and practical, to address the global urban crises of our time. Drawing upon European and North American scholarship in sociology, politics, geography, urban planning and urban design, the book provides useful insights and perspectives for citizens, activists and intellectuals interested in exploring alternatives to contemporary forms of capitalist urbanization.