Theorizing the City

Setha M. Low is professor of environmental psychology and anthropology and director of the Public Space Research Group at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. She is the co-author of Children of the Urban Poor, and of many other books on urban and social issues.

Theorizing the City is a collection of articles in urban anthropology focusing on the relationship between spatial environs and urban cultures from Toronto, Atlanta, and New York to Barcelona, Spo Paulo, Vienna, and Accra (Ghana). Bringing together urban theory and fieldwork, the contributors examine a number of tensions that play out in diverse urban settings. . . . The use of theory helps to bring about some rich connections between the spatial environment and the experiential elements of city life in different parts of the world. (Social Service Review) The best æreadersÆ have three characteristics: the individual selections are of excellent quality, felicitous editing ensures that the selections cohere, and the whole is introduced by a majestic (or at least competent) overview of the field. By this measure, Setha Low has produced a very useful text and one which I will certainly recommend to students. . . . Without exception, the chapters are well written and are likely to provide a sound basis for discussion within class. (JRAI) Taken together, this volume represents a valuable collection of essays that do well to capture the contemporary state of urban anthropology, as well as providing useful theoretical frameworks and methodological examples for understanding and writing about the city. . . . The essays collected here judiciously integrate the particular analytic powers of ethnographic and historical analysis to frame local social processes within transnational and global processes. . . . In particular, this volumeùand the images of the city Low offersùmay serve as an excellent resource for teachers interested in provoking students to think about and understand the cities they (may) inhabit. (H-Urban) These informative essays make clear that anthropology has much to offer to urban theory and public policy debates.  - Nancy Foner (author of From Ellis Islands to JFK: New York's Two Great Waves of Immigration) Using rich comparative material, this volume presents an intriguing anthropological vision of how cities are shaped. A major addition to a comparative anthropology of cities, this volume demonstrates the complex structural and cultural forces that shape urban experience. - Judith Goode (professor of anthropology and urban studies, Temple University) Theorizing the City has become fundamental reading for those students of urban society and culture who wish to better understand twentieth-century city forms and spaces, as well as why certain race, gender, age, and class inequalities continue to be manifested today. - Alejandro Lugo (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

• Acknowledgments and PermissionsIntroduction. Theorizing the City - Setha M. LowPart 1 The Divided City1 The Changing Significance of Race and Class in an African American Community - Steven M. Gregory2 Creating Family Forms: The Exclusion of Mena and Teenage Boys from Families in the New York City Shelter System, 1987-1991 - Ida Susser3 Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation - Teresa P. R. CaldeiraPart 2 The Contested City4 Spatializing Culture: The Social Production and Social Construction of Public Space in Costa Rica - Setha M. Low5 Landscape and Power in Vienna: Gardens of Discovery - Robert RotenbergPart 3 The Global City6 Personal Relations and Divergent Economies: A Case Study of Hong Kong Investment in South China - Josephine Smart and Alan Smart7 Wholesale Sushi: Culture and Commodity in Tokyo's Tsukiji Market - Theodore C. BestorPart 4 The Modernist City8 The Modernist City and the Death of the Street - James Holston9 The Power of Space in the Evolution of an Accra Zongo - Deborah PellowPart 5 The Postmodern City10 Making Place in the Nonplace Urban Realm: Notes on the Revitalization of Downtown Atlanta - Charles Rutheiser11 Discourses of the City: Policy and Responses in Post-Transitional Barcelona - Gary McDonogh12 Spatial Discourses and Social Boundaries: Re-imagining the Toronto Waterfront - Matthew CooperBiological NotesIndex