Property is central to any historical analyses of production, reproduction and consumption. It lies at the heart of discussions of material culture, class relations and the household economy. Recent work has begun to look beyond the acquisition and possession of goods to examine what the disposal, transmission and giving of property might tell us about changing society and culture. This landmark collection of articles represents a wide range of approaches to and perspectives on the ownership, use and transmission of property in eighteenth and nineteenth-century towns. An introductory essay highlights the importance of property and inheritance in shaping social, cultural, economic and political structures and interactions within and between towns and cities. Writing from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, the contributors then explore in detail the changing meaning of property to households and individuals; the social, economic and geographical contexts of inheritance practices; the geography of wealth; the role of gender in shaping property relations and, perhaps above all, the enduring link between property, the family and the household in urban contexts.

"Twenty years after publication, Urban Fortunes remains the best book on urban sociology around. Starting from a political economy analysis, Logan and Molotch develop a picture of the formative processes creating the contemporary American city while managing to avoid the pitfalls of determinism."—Susan Fainstein, Harvard University

This book analyses the cultural politics of urban development in Gwangju, South Korea, and illustrates the implementation of state-led arts-based urban boosterism efforts in the context of political trauma and the desire for economic growth. The book explores urban development that is complicated by the recent history of democratic uprising in Gwangju, and it examines the dichotomy between cities as growth machines and progressive metropolises. Actor-oriented qualitative research methods are used to show how culture and economies can evolve from territorial conflicts. The author argues that the quest for both growth and social justice can coexist in intertwined ways and create urban development. Moreover, recent events in Gwangju, such as the May 18 Democratic Uprising and massacre, are shown to act as a backdrop for state-led urban boosterism and desire for economic growth at the same time as depicting a resistance to state-corporate marketing plans, which culminates in the eventual emergence of relatively coherent places-of-memory. These convergences and divergences are comparable to the urban boosterism characteristic of Western cities. The book contributes to the dialogue surrounding geography, urban studies, and postcolonial urban development, and will be of interest to academics working in these fields as well as human geography, planning, urban politics and East Asian studies.

Bringing together a selection of readings that represent some of the most important trends and topics in urban scholarship today, American Urban Politics provides historical context and contemporary commentaries on the economy, politics, culture and identity of American cities. This seventh edition examines the ability of highly autonomous local governments to grapple with the serious challenges of recent years, challenges such as the stresses of the lingering economic crisis, and a series of recent natural disasters. Features: Each chapter is introduced by an editor's essay that places the readings into context and highlights their central ideas and findings. Division into three historical periods emphasizes both the changes and continuities in American urban politics over time. The reader is the perfect complement for Judd & Swanstrom's City Politics: The Political Economy of Urban American, 7/e, also available in a new edition (ISBN 0-205-03246-X)

Harvey Molotch's "city as a growth machine" thesis is one of the most influential approaches to the analysis of urban politics and local economic development in the United States. However, the nature and context of urban politics have changed considerably since the growth machine thesis was first proposed more than twenty years ago, and recent attempts to apply it to settings outside the U.S. have revealed conceptual and empirical limitations. This book offers a unique critical assessment of the contribution of the growth machine thesis to research in urban political economy. Written from an interdisciplinary and international perspective, it brings together leading urban studies scholars. These contributors explore three organizing themes: urban growth, discourse and ideology; new dimensions of urban politics; and the growth machine in comparative perspective. These themes not only provide the focus for the critical examinations of the growth machine thesis, but also offer exciting new ways of thinking about and researching urban politics and local economic development. As Harvey Molotch himself notes in this book's concluding chapter, "The growth machine idea makes a substantive argument about the empirical substance of U.S. urban regimes. It asserts that virtually every city (and state) government is a growth machine and long has been. It asserts that this puts localities in chronic competition with one another in ways that harm the vast majority of their citizens as well as their environments. It anticipates an ideological structure that naturalizes growth goals as a background assumption of civic life. In a social science realm where successful empirical generalizations have been few, the growth machine idea robustly and usefully describes reality." Contributors include Thabit Abu-Rass, Keith Bassett, Mark Boyle, Allan Cochrane, Kevin R. Cox, Kyle Crowder, Melissa R. Gilbert, Bob Jessop, Andrew Kirby, Mickey Lauria, Helga Leitner, John R. Logan, Harvey Molotch, Jamie Peck, Stephanie Pincetl, Eric Sheppard, John Rennie Short, Adam Tickell, Rachel Bridges Whaley, and Andrew Wood.

Getting from Here to There? seeks to take the study of sustainable cities into a realm of analysis and critique that has not been seriously investigated in any explicit and systematic manner: the sphere of power and politics. Using detailed case studies of selected urban sustainability programs-some stillborn or short-lived, others celebrated, still others most promising-it focuses on the political agencies shaping them and the structural elements either impeding or facilitating efforts to build sustainable cities. To accomplish this task, the authors utilize three theories or models of urban power-growth coalition, urban regime, and neo-Gramscian hegemonic-to explore the dynamics of power and politics to better understand these cases and to derive important lessons about getting from here to there. These models offer valuable lessons for ongoing or future sustainable city programs, community or business groups, key policy makers, grassroots organizations, mayors, and urban planners involved in or contemplating moving urban sustainability projects forward, as well as students of urban politics and environmental and sustainability researchers.

This reader draws together seminal selections spanning the subfield from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Contributions from Simmel, Wirth, Park, Burgess, Zukin, Sassen, Smith and Castells are amongst the 40 selections.

The volume brings together some of the best of both the most established and the newest urban scholars in political science, sociology, and history, each of whom makes a new argument for rethinking the relationship between cities and the larger project of state-building.

The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography provides an authoritative and comprehensive source of information on the discipline of human geography and its constituent, and related, subject areas. The encyclopedia includes over 1,000 detailed entries on philosophy and theory, key concepts, methods and practices, biographies of notable geographers, and geographical thought and praxis in different parts of the world. This groundbreaking project covers every field of human geography and the discipline’s relationships to other disciplines, and is global in scope, involving an international set of contributors. Given its broad, inclusive scope and unique online accessibility, it is anticipated that the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography will become the major reference work for the discipline over the coming decades. The Encyclopedia will be available in both limited edition print and online via ScienceDirect – featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit http://info.sciencedirect.com/content/books/ref_works/coming/ Available online on ScienceDirect and in limited edition print format Broad, interdisciplinary coverage across human geography: Philosophy, Methods, People, Social/Cultural, Political, Economic, Development, Health, Cartography, Urban, Historical, Regional Comprehensive and unique - the first of its kind in human geography