Alan Harding - Urban Theory: A Critical Introduction to Power, Cities and Urbanism in the 21st Century

A critical introduction to power, cities and urbanism in the 21st century

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Alan Harding and Talja Blokland 2014

First published 2014

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013951657

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-4462-9451-2

ISBN 978-1-4462-9452-9 (pbk)

Editor: Robert Rojek

Editorial assistant: Keri Dickens

Production editor: Katherine Haw

Copyeditor: Richard Leigh

Proofreader: Dick Davis

Marketing manager: Michael Ainsley

Cover design: Francis Kenney

Typeset by: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

This book provides an introduction to urban theory for an audience that does not necessarily have any prior knowledge about this interesting but ill-defined and, some would say, controversial area of academic study. It has been a long time in the making. One of the co-authors started it over a decade ago, when he was fortunate enough to be awarded a UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Professorial Fellowship that, ideally, should have been enough to see the job through. Unfortunately, at the same time, he assumed additional responsibilities for building up a self-funding research centre at Salford University. Times were relatively good. Research funding was plentiful. The book therefore remained half, rather than fully, written at the end of that award. These things happen. The end-of-award report was less enthusiastic than it might have been, but nobody died.

There followed a frustrating few years, book-wise, during which time this same co-author moved to the University of Manchester to head up another self-funding research institute. Times were hard. A combination of global financial crisis and intermittent national (UK) economic recessions saw the virtual disappearance of the sorts of soft (sic) money that has been known to make such a job tolerable. Sometime in 2010, however, this co-author, approaching his wits end about how this book would ever be finished, had a brainwave. He invited his fellow co-author to join him and contribute strands of analysis that he would have been incapable of formulating, far less providing, alone. This co-author had been teaching urban theory classes for a couple of years and was dissatisfied with the textbooks available, yet knew she would never have the competence or the motivation to do anything about this unaided. She therefore welcomed the offer to board this train. But then her life, too, changed. Amongst other things, she became Head of Department and spent much time acquiring the bureaucratic skills needed within a German university. Further delay was inevitable. Nonetheless, three years on, various life-changing events to both participants and too many sleepless nights later, here it is.

In writing the book, we have set ourselves the objectives to inform, to challenge and to make complex ideas accessible. A rapidly changing world brings with it a rapid turnover of ideas. The task of staying abreast of contemporary changes is made that much easier if the reader does not have to track each of them from countless individual sources; a journal article here, a book chapter there. The first challenge we took on, therefore, was to identify, assemble, and describe the body of work that best captures the evolution of urban theory, historically, with a particular focus on the most important contributions, as we see them, that appeared either side of the millennium.