Michael Barke – författare

`Introducing Social Geographies' is a major new text offering a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to this important area of human geography. It presents a broad overview of social geography, clearly outlining the key theoretical and political positions, and making extensive use of examples to show how these frameworks can be used to analyse real social issues.The book is ideal for undergraduates first encountering social geography and includes topic overviews, summaries of key points, critiques, boxed case studies and suggestions for further reading.

Using a unique data-rich study of Newcastle’s becoming a metropolitan city region in the nineteenth century, this book explores a new understanding of how successful cities attain a metropolitan status through disruptions of incessant economic advances being ameliorated by myriad social organizations to create a new vibrant urban environment.The book defines the specific process of ‘becoming metropolitan’ by bringing together economic and social urban studies to explain an interactive development that when successful creates a metropolitan city region. In addition, a real example of this is meticulously described through a detailed case study that traces the process across decades to a metropolitan outcome. In doing so, it combines theoretical and empirical understandings within a single text and provides accessible information to a unique and large dataset.Becoming Metropolitan will appeal to graduates and researchers of geography, sociology, planning, and history specializing in cities and urban studies. It will also be valuable to a larger public audience with interest in cities, as ‘metropolitan’ is a commonplace idea easily understood, especially in the case- study city.