Scott Campbell (home page)Assignments • Student-Written Reading Notes • office hours Canvas siteclass listserv theorist timeline •  Ebooks link

Sep7
Intro

Sep1X-23
German & Chicago
Sep30-Oct7
Harvey & Castells
Oct14
Lefebvre
Oct21
Global
Oct28
Geography
Nov 11
Mod/Int'l
Nov18
Nature
Dec2
Culture
Dec9
Final

last modified: January 12, 2024

 

Course Description
This is a reading seminar on urban theory, with an emphasis on urban intellectual history and critical social theory.  It is intended for both doctoral students and Masters students interested in deepening their theoretical understanding of cities, urbanization and spatial development.  Readings cover both classic texts in urban theory (including from Germany and the "Chicago School"), important late 20th Century writers (with an emphasis on David Harvey and Manuel Castells), and specific themes in urban theory (such as global cities, urban political ecology, and modernism). The goal of the seminar is to understand not only the substance of the readings, but also the structure and development of their arguments.  This course is required for doctoral urban planning students. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the readings and topics, students from other degree programs outside urban planning are also encouraged to attend. (In past years, we have had students from sociology, architecture, history, anthropology, natural resources and political science.) This course is taught every other year (2018, 2020, etc.), alternating with UP660 (Epistemology and Reasoning for Planning Research, taught fall 2017, 2019, etc.). Other theory courses of interest are URP500 (Planning Theory) and UP580 (Metropolitan Structures).

Prerequisites
Doctoral student status or permission of instructor. Masters students in planning, design and architecture should takeURP500 (Planning Theory) -- or the equivalent -- before taking URP700. Please email me if you have questions or are interested in the course.

Required Readings
Readings will include several books, plus articles (via canvas) and online books via ebrary. If you would like to get a head start on reading, I would suggest the David Harvey book (see below). Feel free to also browse the readings in the canvas site (files section).

We will use three main texts:
Harvey, David, Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (Blackwell/Wiley).
Lin and Mele (eds.), The Urban Sociology Reader (Routledge).2nd edition, 2012. [Note: the first edition contains many but not all of the readings in the second edition]
Simon Parker, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City (Routledge). [optional - a very useful, concise companion to urban theory]


see this timeline (pdf file) for an overview of selected course reading authors (and this timeline/chronology of urban planning history).


 

SYLLABUS

  • Note on reading sources:
  • The Urban Sociology Reader (edited by Lin and Mele, Routledge)
  • Spaces of Capital (Harvey, Routledge)
  • [if no source listed, then the reading can be found in Canvas]

Sept 9

Introduction

 

 


Sept 16 - 23

Classic Readings in Urban Theory: the German and Chicago Schools, plus other foundational ideas

Sept. 16: German School [NOTE: earlier start time: 12:30 pm]
Engels, Friedrich. 1845. "The Great Towns", in Condition of the Working Class in England. (online reading)
Tonnies, Ferdinand. Community and Society, in Lin and Mele (eds.), The Urban Sociology Reader (Routledge). [German original via Hathi Trust: Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft] see also this ebrary online version.
Simmel, Georg. The Metropolis and Mental Life, in The Urban Sociology Reader. [also in Canvas]
Weber, Max. 1958. The City. Translated by D. M. a. G. Neuwirth. New York: Free Press; 1st Collier Books edition. (chapter: "The Nature of Cities")
Frisby, David. 2001. Cityscapes of modernity : critical explorations. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Polity Press in association with Blackwell. (Chapter 3: The City Interpreted: Georg Simmel's Metropolis)
Benjamin, Walter. 1969. "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility," in Illuminations. Edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York,: Schocken Books. (originally published 1936).
Parker, Simon, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City (Routledge). pp. 1-19.

see also:

Sennett, R. (Ed.). (1969). Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. ("Introduction") [newly added to Canvas]
Georg Simmel Online (in German and English)
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Berlin – Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt) [film via archive.org)
Benjamin, Walter. 1968. Illuminations. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt [no longer available via ebrary -- will look for alternative source]
Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. [online via archive.org] [summary and full text of the Harvard University Press edition]
Coetzee, JM, 2001, The Marvels of Walter Benjamin, The New York Review of Books, JANUARY 11


Sept. 23: Chicago School (Park, Burgess, Wirth) and beyond
[*NOTE: earlier start time: 12:30 pm]
Park, Robert, Human Ecology, in The Urban Sociology Reader. [also in Canvas]
Burgess, Ernest, The Growth Of The City: An Introduction To A Research Project, in The Urban Sociology Reader. [also in ebrary as a chapter in Marzluff, John, (ed). Urban Ecology : An International Perspective on the Interaction Between Humans and Nature. Boston, MA, US: Springer, 2008, pp. 71-78. [ebrary link]
Wirth, Louis. 1938. Urbanism as a Way of Life, in The Urban Sociology Reader. [also in Canvas]
Gans, Herbert, Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of Life: A Reevaluation of Definitions, in The Urban Sociology Reader (first edition only).
Fischer, Claude, Theories of Urbanism, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Mumford, Lewis. 1937. What is a city? Architectural Record LXXXII (November).
Saunders, Peter. "The Urban as an Ecological Community," in Social Theory and the Urban Question. London: Hutchinson & Co. 1981, pp. 48-79.
Parker, Simon, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City (Routledge). Ch. 3.
Lynch, Kevin. 1974. The Pattern of the Metropolis. In An urban world, edited by C. Tilly. Boston,: Little Brown.

see also:
Claude S. Fischer. 1972. "Urbanism as a Way of Life": A Review and an Agenda. Sociological Methods & Research November 1: 187-242.
Fischer, Claude S. 1995 The Subcultural Theory of Urbanism: A Twentieth-Year Assessment. American Journal of Sociology 101: 543-77.
Park, Robert E. 1925. Suggestions for the Investigation of human Behavior in the Urban Environment. In The City, edited by R. E. Park, E. W. Burgess and R. D. MacKenzie. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Judd, Dennis R., Dick Simpson, and Janet L. Abu-Lughod (eds). 2011. The City Revisited: Urban Theory from Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. Minneapolis, MN, USA: University of Minnesota Press. [ebrary] see, in particular, Ch. 3: Daphne Spain: "The Chicago of Jane Addams and Ernest Burgess: Same City, Different Visions" (pp. 51-62]
Low, Jacqueline, and Gary Bowden, eds. 2013. The Chicago School Diaspora : Epistemology and Substance. Montreal, CA: MQUP. see in particular, the first chapter: "Introduction: The Chicago School as Symbol and Enactment" [ebrary]



Sep 30

David Harvey and a Geographical View of Capitalism
Harvey, David. 2001. Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography. Routledge. Chs. 1-11

Parker, Simon, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City (Routledge). Ch. 6.

see also:
Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey (with both video and audio links)
"A Brief History of Neoliberalism" (Audio of lecture by Harvey)
A 2004 Interview with David Harvey (audio, video, text)
Harvey, David. "Possible Urban Worlds" (Fourth Megacities Lecture, 2000)
Harvey, David. Social Justice and the City (revised version). ebrary.
Harvey, David. 2007. Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. [ebrary]

background on von Thünen:
Johann-Heinrich von Thünen: Balancing Land-Use Allocation with Transport Cost (by Scott Crosier)
Johann-Heinrich von Thünen (Resources) (Krumme, U. Washington)


Oct 7

David Harvey (cont.) and Manuel Castells (from "the Urban Question" to the Internet)

FIRST PART OF CLASS:
Harvey Chs. 12, 14 -18

SECOND PART OF CLASS:

Castells, Manuel. 1977. The urban question : a Marxist approach. (translation of La question urbaine by Alan Sheridan). London: Edward Arnold. [read Section II: "The Urban Ideology, pp. 73-112].

Castells, Manuel. 2010. The Space of Flows (Ch 6), in The Rise of the Network Society (2nd edition). Wiley. [access online via UM Library]. chapter also in Canvas.

see also:
Interview with Manuel Castells, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley (May 9, 2001)

Castells, Manuel. 2009. Power of Identity : Economy, Society, and Culture (2nd Edition). Wiley-Blackwell. [ebrary]


Essay One due (Monday, Oct 10)

 


Oct 14

Henri Lefebvre and the Production of Space
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The production of space. Oxford, UK ; Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell. (Ch: "Plan of the Present Work")
Lefebvre, Henri Interviews: Writings on Cities (No Salvation away from the Centre? / The Urban in Question) 1996

Brenner, Neil. 2000. "The urban question as a scale question: reflections on Henri Lefebvre, urban theory and the politics of scale,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24, 2: 361-378 link
Brenner, N., & Elden, S. (2001). Henri Lefebvre in Contexts: An Introduction. Antipode, 33(5), 763-768. doi: 10.1111/1467-8330.00215
Elden, S. (2004). Understanding Henri Lefebvre : theory and the possible. London ; New York: Continuum. (Ch 5: "Space and History")
Elden, S. (2007). There is a politics of space because space is political: Henri Lefebvre and the production of space. Radical Philosophy Review, 10(2), 101-116.
Gottdiener, Mark. 1994. "Urban Ecology, Economics and Geography: Spatial Analysis in Transition " in The social production of urban space. 2nd ed. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Gottdiener, M. (1993). A Marx for Our Time: Henri Lefebvre and the Production of Space. Sociological Theory, 11(1), 129-134.
Parker, Simon, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience, pp. 19-24.

see also these books in ebrary:
Lefebvre, Henri. 2010. Everyday Life in the Modern World (2nd Edition). London: Continuum International Publishing.
Lefebvre, Henri. 2009. State, Space, World : Selected Essays. (edited by Stuart Elden and Neil Brenner). University of Minnesota Press.
Shields, Rob. 1998. LeFebvre, Love, and Struggle : Spatial Dialectics. Routledge.
Stanek, Lukasz. 2011. Henri Lefebvre on Space : Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory. University of Minnesota Press.
Gardiner, Michael. 2000. Critiques of Everyday Life : Introduction. Routledge.
*Hubbard, Phil. 2006. The city, Key ideas in geography. London: Routledge. (Ch 3, "The Everyday City") [to be scanned and added]

OPTION: review the influences of Lefebvre on Soja's Postmodern Geographies: the Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory) google book version

 


Oct 21

Globalization, Global Cities (see class blog: "Visualizing the Global/National/Local")

John Friedmann, The World City Hypothesis, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Saskia Sassen, Whose City Is It? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims , in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Michael Peter Smith, Power in Place: Retheorizing the Local and the Global [link]
King, Anthony. 1995. Re-presenting world Cities:  cultural theory/social practice, in Paul L., and Peter J. Taylor, eds. 1995. World Cities in a World-System. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Peck, Jamie 2015. Cities beyond Compare? Regional Studies, 49(1), 160–182.
Roy, Ananya. 2015. "What is urban about critical urban theory?" Urban Geography.

background readings:
Peter Hall,  "Megacities, world cities and global cities"
Dicken, Peter. 2004. Geographers and ‘globalization’: (yet) another missed boat? Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29 (1):5-26.J.V. Beaverstock, R.G. Smith and P.J. Taylor, "A Roster of World Cities"
P. Hall, "Christaller for a Global Age: Redrawing the Urban Hierarchy"
Saskia Sassen. The City: Between topographic representation and spatialized power projects Art Journal. Summer 2001. Vol.60, Iss. 2;  pg. 12.
Scott, A. J. (2008). Social economy of the metropolis : cognitive-cultural capitalism and the global resurgence of cities. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. (Ch: 7. "City-Regions: Economic Motors and Political Actors on the Global Stage") [ebrary] -- OR -- Scott, Allen, John Agnew, Edward J. Soja, and Michael Storper. 2001. "Global City-Regions," in Global City-Regions: Trends Theory, Prospects. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press (Scott, Allen, ed.).
Amin, Ash and Nigel Thrift. "Cities in a Distanciated Economy," in Cities: Reimagining the Urban. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc. 2002, pp. Ch. 3: p.51 - p.77.
Brenda S. A. Yeoh and T. C. Chang. Globalizing Singapore: Debating Transnational Flows in the City. in The Urban Sociology Reader.
McCann, E., & Ward, K. (2011). Mobile urbanism : cities and policymaking in the global age. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Globalization and Community series) ("Introduction. Urban Assemblages: Territories, Relations, Practices, and Power") [ebrary]

see also:
Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network, Loughborough University, UK and their on-line publications.
Jan Lin, Globalization and the Revalorizing of Ethnic Places in Immigration Gateway Cities , in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Paul Stoller and Jasmin Tahmaseb McConath, City Life: West African Communities in New York, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Saskia Sassen. 2000. The global city: Strategic site/new frontier American Studies. Summer 2000.Vol.41, Iss. 2/3;  pg. 79.
Saskia Sassen. 2000. New frontiers facing urban sociology at the Millennium. The British Journal of Sociology. Andover: Jan/Mar 2000.Vol.51, Iss. 1;  pg. 143
Storper, Michael. 1997. The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. New York: Guilford Press. (excerpt: Chapter 8, "The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy", pp. 195-220).
Waldinger, Roger. 1996. From Ellis Island to LAX: Immigrant prospects in the American city. The International Migration Review. New York: Winter 1996. Vol.30, Iss. 4;  pp. 1078-86. pdf.
The Guardian: The rise of megacities – interactive [link]

 


Oct 28

The Geographic Imagination: Planetary Urbanization in Debate: Cities and Hinterlands, New and Old(Guests: Profs. Kim Kinder and Sarah Knuth)

This session examines recent debates on planetary urbanization within a much longer history of city-hinterland relations and their theorization. Geographers have explored relations between cities and the multi-scalar transformations of nature upon which they depend using a range of theoretical tools: classic notions of cities and their hinterlands; old and new thinking on cities' role in producing resource frontiers, peripheries, and territorial space; new adapted concepts such as the metabolic rift. We will survey these ideas theoretically and using examples of their concrete realization in particular places and times.

Brenner, Neil and Christian Schmid (2015) "Towards a New Epistemology of the Urban?" City 19.2-3: 151-182

Walker, Richard (2015) "Building a Better Theory of the Urban: A Response to 'Towards a New Epistemology of the Urban?'" City 19.2-3: 183-191

Shaw, Kate (2015) "Planetary Urbanisation: What does it Matter for Politics or Practice?" Planning Theory & Practice 16.4: 588-593

Cronon, William (1991) "Ch. 3: Pricing the Future: Grain," selection in Nature's Metropolis, pp. 97-132

Moore, Jason W. (2000) "Environmental Crises and the Metabolic Rift in World-Historical Perspective," Organization and Environment 13: 123-157

Knuth, Sarah (2016) "Seeing Green in San Francisco: City as Resource Frontier," Antipode 48.3: 626–644

Optional

Brechin, Gray (2006) "Preface," "Introduction," and "Ch.1: The Pyramid of Mining" In Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin, pp. xxix-xxxiv, 1-13, 14-70

 


 
No class Nov 4: Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Annual Conference (Portland OR)

 


Nov 11

Modernism, Modernization & Urban Development: International Perspectives

Holston, James. 1989. The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (read: pp. 41-58 (part of ch2); 74-98 (part of ch3] [in Canvas]. alternate version: google book version (limited view)
(see also this article on Oscar Niemeyer and Brasilia: Michael Kimmelman, 2005. The Last of the Moderns. The New York Times. May 15.)

Mitchell, Timothy. 2002. Rule of experts: Egypt, techno-politics, modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Comments/links: • [ebrary] (read Chapter 3: The Character of Calculability, pp. 80-119).

Robinson, Jennifer. 2006. Ordinary cities: between modernity and development. London ; New York: Routledge. (Introduction, Chs. 1, 2, 4). [Canvas]

Scott, James C.. The Institution for Social and Policy Studies : Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, US: Yale University Press, 2008. (Chapter 3. Authoritarian High Modernism; and Ch. 4, The High-Modernist City. Ch. 9 also included in the Canvas scan, but not required reading for the week). [also, the full text is in ebrary] - note that the titles are sorted alphabetically in the UP650 "bookshelf", and this text is (confusingly) listed NOT as Seeing Like a State, but instead as The Institution for Social and Policy Studies : Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed.

Watson, Vanessa. 2002. The Usefulness of Normative Planning Theories in the Context of Sub-Saharan Africa. Planning Theory 1 (1):27-52. [Canvas]

see also:
Loos, Adolf. "Ornament and Crime," in Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays, translated by Michael Mitchell, edited by Adolf Opel. Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 1998, pp. 167-176.
Le Corbusier. "A Contemporary City," in The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning, translated by Frederick Etchells, New York: Dover, 1987, pp. 163-178.
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We have never been modern. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. [selections]
Perlman, Janice E. 1976. The myth of marginality : urban poverty and politics in Rio de Janeiro. Berkeley: University of California Press. google book version
a selection from Anthony King, such as Spaces of Global Culture, etc.
Taylor, Peter J. Modernities : A Geohistorical Interpretation. Minneapolis, US: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. [ebrary]

 

    Essay Two due Sunday, Nov 20 (revised date)

 


Nov 18

First Nature, Second Nature -or- the Interaction of Cities and the Natural Environment -or- Urban Infrastructure and the Commodification of Natural Resources (see class blog: urbantheorynature.tumblr.com)

introduction: what is "nature"?
McHarg, Ian L. 1969. Design with nature. Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press. (excerpt: pp. 1-29)

Williams, Raymond. 1980. "Ideas of Nature," in Culture And Materialism: Selected Essays. London: Verso, pp. 67-85.

Cronon, William. 1995. The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature. in William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 69-90. [link]

water and the city:
Gandy, Matthew. 2002. Concrete and clay : reworking nature in New York City, Urban and industrial environments. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. (Chapter 1: "Water, Space and Power," pp. 19-75) [NOTE: electronic text also available online via UM Library's NetLibrary.] *do also read the very useful introduction.

Karvonen, A. (2011). Politics of urban runoff : nature, technology, and the sustainable city. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. (Ch 1- The Dilemma of Water in the City). [ebrary]

Kaika, Maria, and Erik Swyngedouw. "Fetishizing the Modern City: The Phantasmagoria of Urban Technological Networks." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 24, No. 1, March 2000, pp. 120-138.

urban political ecology:
Loftus, Alex. 2014. Everyday Environmentalism : Creating an Urban Political Ecology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. [ebrary] [chapters: Introduction: Emerging Moments in an Urban Political Ecology; ]

Nik Heynen, and Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw. 2006. "Urban political ecology: politicizing the production of urban natures," in In the nature of cities : urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolis. Routledge. (Ch. 1, pp. 1-20). [see also google books version]

---

see also:

Corner, James. 2006. Terra Fluxus, in Waldheim, Charles (ed.). Landscape Urbanism Reader. New York, US: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. [ebrary]

Waldheim, Charles. 2006. Landscape Urbanism, in Waldheim, Charles (ed.). Landscape Urbanism Reader. New York, US: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. [ebrary]

Eric Sagara, Emmanuel Martinez and Ike Sriskandarajah. When spark meets sprawl: Building in wildlands increases fire risk. Reveal: from the Center for Investigative Reporting. October 8, 2016. [both a story and a podcast, examining the human-nature interactions when people live in fire zones.]

Smith, Neil (1990). Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell. [link] [also on canvas]
Moore, Steven A. (2001) Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. Journal of Architectural Education 54(3), pp. 130–139.
Jennifer Wolch. 2007. Green Urban Worlds. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97(2), pp. 373–384
Olwig, Kenneth R. "Landscape, Place and the State of Progress," in Progress: Geographical Essays, edited by Robert D. Sack Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2002, pp. 22-60.
Cronon, William. 1991. Nature's metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. 1st ed. New York: W. W. Norton.[excerpt to be selected] -- or selection from
Beatley, Timothy. (1995) Planning and Sustainability: The Elements of a New (Improved?) Paradigm [link to be added]
Wheeler, Stephen M. (2002) The New Regionalism: Key Characteristics of an Emerging Movement.
Arsenault, Raymond. 1984. The End of the Long Hot Summer: The Air Conditioner and Southern Culture. The Journal of Southern History 50 (4):597-628.
Reisner, M. 1993. Cadillac desert: the American West and its disappearing water. revised ed. New York and London: Penguin Books. [chapter excerpts: "A Semidesert with a Desert Heart" and "A Country of Illusion," pp. 1-51.] (see also google book preview)
Monstadt, J. (2009). Conceptualizing the political ecology of urban infrastructures: insights from technology and urban studies. Environment and Planning A, 41(8), 1924-1942.
Robbins, P. (2011). Critical Introductions to Geography : Political Ecology (2nd Edition). Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons [ebrary]
William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel, "Urban Ecological Footprints: Why Cities Cannot Be Sustainable—And Why They Are A Key to Sustainability", in The Urban Sociology Reader (2nd edition).
Angelo, H., & Wachsmuth, D. (2014). Urbanizing Urban Political Ecology: A Critique of Methodological Cityism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. [added 11/12/2014]



 
No class Nov 25: Thanksgiving holiday

Dec 2

Turning the Urban Base vs. Cultural Superstructure on its Head: Culture, Urban Politics and the Future of Social Spaces

NOTE: START TIME 12:45

readings suggested by Dec. 2 student presenters (the first two are in the reader; the remaining readings added to Canvas):

•Sharon Zukin, Whose Culture? Whose City?, in The Urban Sociology Reader (both 1st and 2nd editions).

•Richard Florida, Cities and the Creative Class, in The Urban Sociology Reader (both 1st and 2nd editions).

•Brian Tochterman “Theorizing Neoliberal Urban Development: A Genealogy from Richard Florida to Jane Jacobs,” in Radical History Review, issue 112, p 65 (2012)

•John G. Stehlin & Alexander R. Tarr (2016): Think regionally, act locally?: gardening, cycling, and the horizon of urban spatial politics, Urban Geography DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2016.1232464

•A. K. Sandoval-Strausz, “Latino Landscapes: Postwar Cities and the Transnational Origins of a New Urban America,” Journal of American History (December 2014), 804-831

•Martin F. Manalansan IV, “Race, Violence, and Neoliberal Spatial Politics in the Global City.” Social Text 23, no. 3-4 (Fall-Winter 2005): 141-155

•Josh Sides, “Straight into Compton: American Dreams, Urban Nightmares, and the Metamorphosis of a Black Suburb” American Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 3 2002

optional, see also:

Parker, Simon, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City (Routledge). Chs. 7-8.
Soja, Edward W. 1999. In different spaces: The cultural turn in urban and regional political economy. European Planning Studies. Abingdon: Feb 1999. Vol. 7, Iss. 1; p. 65-75. pdf. (also canvas)
Gottdiener, Mark Hutchison, Ray. 2010. New Urban Sociology (4th Edition) . Boulder, CO: Westview Press. [ebrary]
Teresa P. R. Caldeira, Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation, in The Urban Sociology Reader (both 1st and 2nd editions).
S. E. Merry, Spatial Governmentality and the New Urban Social Order: Controlling Gender Violence through Law, in The Urban Sociology Reader (2nd edition).
Alejandro Portes and Robert D. Manning, The Immigrant Enclave: Theory and Empirical Examples, in The Urban Sociology Reader (2nd edition).
Michael Dear. 2002. Los Angeles and the Chicago School: Invitation to a Debate. City & Community 1(1):5-32, in The Urban Sociology Reader (both 1st and 2nd editions) [also in canvas].

 


Dec 9

Final Session
Parker, Simon, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City (Routledge). Ch. 9.

This last session will provide an opportunity to link common themes from the semester and articulate a set of core questions, principles and debates in urban theory.

TASKEach student is to come to the session with a one-page handout (bring copies for everyone, please) 
that articulates the student's understanding/conceptualization of urban theory. Format is flexible: you can combine text, keywords, questions, illustrations, diagrams, timelines, etc. Be ready to discuss and compare each student's contribution. Creativity and insightfulness  welcomed. You might provide a conceptual map of urban theory.


Essay Three due (Dec 19)

Additional readings may include: Richard Sennett, Neil Smith, Susan Fainstein, Kevin Lynch, Raymond Williams, Alfred Weber,
Losch, Christaller, von Thunen.

 

Sidebar: Economic Foundations of Urban Theory
Chinitz, Benjamin. 1961. Contrasts in Agglomeration: New York and Pittsburgh. Journal of the American Economic Association (May):279-289
Krugman, Paul. "Localization," in Geography and Trade. Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 1991, pp. 35-67.
North, Douglass C. "Location Theory and Regional Economic Growth." Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 63, No. 3, June 1955, pp. 243-258.
Tiebout, Charles M. "Exports and Regional Economic Growth." Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 64, No. 2, April 1956, pp. 160-164.
Tiebout, Charles M. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures." Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 64, No. 5, October 1956, pp. 416-424.
Glaeser, Edward L. "Why Economists Still Like Cities." City Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1996, pp. 70-77.

 


 

 

Internet Links
UP540 (Planning Theory)

Other Theory Readings of Interest (* indicates a useful background book to consider reading this summer)
Bridge, Gary, and Sophie Watson. 2000. A companion to the city, Blackwell companions to geography. Oxford ; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers.
*
Bridge, Gary, and Sophie Watson. 2002. The Blackwell city reader, Blackwell readers in geography. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
* Campbell, Scott, and Susan S. Fainstein. 2003. Readings in Planning Theory. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Certeau, Michel de, Luce Giard, and Pierre Mayol. 1998. The practice of everyday life. New rev. and augm. ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Cronon, William. 1991. Nature's metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W. W. Norton.
Davis, Mike. 1990. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. New York: Verso.
Davis, Mike. 1998. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt.
Dear, M. J., and J. Dallas Dishman. 2002. From Chicago to L.A. : making sense of urban theory. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Dear, M. J. 2000. The postmodern urban condition. Oxford, UK ; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Fainstein, Susan S. 2001. The City Builders: Property Development in New York and London, 1980-2000. 2nd edition. University of Kansas Press.
Harvey, David. 1996. Justice, Nature and the Geography of Differences. Oxford: Blackwell.
* Fainstein, Susan S., and Scott Campbell, eds. 2001. Readings in Urban Theory. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Fishman, Robert. 1982. Urban utopias in the twentieth century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier MIT Press.
Frisby, David. 1986. Fragments of modernity : theories of modernity in the work of Simmel, Kracauer, and Benjamin, Studies in contemporary German social thought. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Frisby, David. 2001. Cityscapes of modernity : critical explorations. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Polity Press in association with Blackwell.
* Hall, Peter. 2001. Cities of Tomorrow : An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century. updated ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The consequences of modernity. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Gottdiener, Mark. 1985. The Social Production of Urban Space. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of Post-Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hayden, Dolores. 2002. Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life. W.W. Norton & Company
Hubbard, Phil, Rob Kitchin, and Gill Valentine (eds). 2004. Key thinkers on space and place. London; Thousand Oaks: Sage.
* Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.
* Jacobs, Jane. 1969. The Economy of Cities. New York: Vintage Press.
Krugman, Paul. 1997. Development, Geography, and Economic Theory (Ohlin Series). MIT Press.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. Critique of everyday life. London ; New York: Verso.
Lefebvre, Henri. 2003. The urban revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
* Mumford, Lewis. 1961. The City in History. New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
Lerup, Lars. 2000. After the city. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Sandercock, Leonie. 1998. Towards cosmopolis: planning for multicultural cities. Chichester, New York: John Wiley.
Park, Robert Ezra. 1927. The city. Chicago, Ill.,: The University of Chicago press.
Rae, Douglas W. 2003. City : urbanism and its end, The Yale ISPS series. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Rybczynski, Witold. 1995. City life : urban expectations in a new world. New York: Scribner.
Sassen, Saskia, ed. 2002. Global Networks, Linked Cities. Routledge.
Saunders, Peter. 1986. Social Theory and the Urban Question. revised ed. New York: Holmes and Meier.
Scott, Allen J., and Edward W. Soja, eds. 1996. The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Sennett, Richard. 1990. The conscience of the eye : the design and social life of cities. New York: Knopf.
Short, John R. 2006. Urban theory : a critical assessment. Basingstoke [England] ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Simmel, Georg, and Kurt H. Wolff. 1950. The sociology of Georg Simmel. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.
Smith, Neil. 1990. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.
Smith, Neil. 2003. American empire : Roosevelt's geographer and the prelude to globalization, California studies in critical human geography ; 9. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sorkin, Michael. 2002. Variations on a theme park: the new American city and the end of public space. New York: Hill and Wang. 2nd ed.
Tilly, Charles, and Willem Pieter Blockmans. 1994. Cities and the rise of states in Europe, A.D. 1000 to 1800. Boulder: Westview Press.
Tuan, Yi-fu. 1977. Space and place : the perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ward, Stephen V. 1998.  Selling Places : The Marketing and Promotion of Towns and Cities, 1850-2000. Routledge.
Wirth, Louis. 1964. Louis Wirth on cities and social life; selected papers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zukin, Sharon. 1995. The Culture of Cities. Blackwell.


Other books we may consider include:
Castells, Manuel, The Castells Reader on cities and social theory (Blackwell/Wiley)
Marshall, Stephen. 2009. Cities design and evolution. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge.
Fainstein, Susan S. 2010. The Just City. Cornell University Press.
Sennett, Richard. 1994. Flesh and stone : the body and the city in Western civilization. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton.
Jacobs, Jane. 1969. The Economy of Cities. New York: Vintage Press.
Sampson, Great American City;
Elden, The Birth of Territory;
Brenner, Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization;
Merrifield, The New Urban Question;
Rae, The End of Urbanism