The Urban Geography Reader

THIS BOOK IS part of the Routledge Urban Reader series. Through its selection of both classic and contemporary works in urban geography, the editors present the different kinds of debate that have stimulated urban geography and that will shape its agenda in the near future. “The thematic structure adopted in the Reader offers a coherent and comprehensive way of engaging with the range and richness of research in urban geography, as well as providing important insights into changes in the urban landscape and the differentiated character of the urban experience” (page 8).
The Reader is organized into seven themes that overlap and interconnect with each other. Part I provides the foundations for urban geography’s basic vocabulary by presenting Burgess’ concentric zone model, Hoyt’s sector model, and Harris and Ullman’s multi-nuclei model and central place theory. Part II (Globalization) presents selections that challenge the claims that globalization is leading to greater homogenization and a decline in local difference. This section also challenges the “economistic tendencies of the globalization literature”, and demonstrates its significant political and sociocultural dimensions. Part III (Restructuring) focuses mainly on the economic transformations that underpin the making of urban landscapes by exploring the importance of the radical, Marxist tradition within urban geography. Part IV (Politics, Governance and Inequality) focuses on the city as a site of political power. It explores the processes by which the formal, hierarchical government of the past is increasingly giving way to a much more complex polycentric and non-hierarchical form of governance, characterized by the increasing involvement of the private and voluntary sectors in the management of the city. Part V (Difference) explores the relationship between social construction of various categories of difference (such as race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and class) and the spatial construction of urban life. Part VI (Form and Symbolism) assesses various theoretical and methodological approaches to the examination of the built environment, and explores the relationship between its symbolic meaning and material form. Part VII (Technologies) examines the mix of the biological and the technical (especially water and telecommunications networks, surveillance technologies and geographical information systems) in the making of urban landscapes.
The editors have tried to rectify omissions on, for example, the post-socialist city and cities in developing countries, by offering recommendations for additional readings at the end of each chapter. Designed to aid understanding, the Reader features extensive editorial input in the form of general, section and individual extract introductions.