List of Illustrations viii

List of Tables ix

List of Contributors x

Series Editors' Preface xv

Preface xvii

Part I: Introduction 1

1 Understanding the City 3
John Eade and Christopher Mele

Part II: A Middle Ground? Difference, Social Justice, and the City 25

2 Rescripting Cities with Difference 27
Ruth Fincher, Jane M. Jacobs, and Kay Anderson

3 The Public City 49
Sophie Watson

4 Social Justice and the South African City 66
David M. Smith

5 The Dangerous Others: Changing Views on Urban Risks and Violence in France and the United States 82
Sophie Body-Gendrot

Part III: The Global and Local, the Information Age, and American Metropolitan Development 107

6 Power in Place: Retheorizing the Local and the Global 109
Michael Peter Smith

7 Depoliticizing Globalization: From Neo-Marxism to the Network Society of Manuel Castells 131
Peter Marcuse

8 Urban Analysis as Merchandising: The "LA School" and the Understanding of Metropolitan Development 159
Mark Gottdiener

Part IV: Urban Research in Particular Regions of the Globe 181

9 State Socialism, Post-socialism, and their Urban Patterns: Theorizing the Central and Eastern European Experience 183
Chris Pickvance

10 The China Difference: City Studies Under Socialism and Beyond 204
Dorothy J. Solinger and Kam Wing Chan

11 Economic Miracles and Megacities: The Japanese Model and Urbanization in East and Southeast Asia 222
J. S. Eades

Part V: Urban Processes and City Contexts: India and the Middle East 245

12 Cities of the Past and Cities of the Future: Theorizing the Indian Metropolis of Bangalore 247
Smriti Srinivas

13 The Syntax of Jerusalem: Urban Morphology, Culture, and Power 278
Shlomo Hasson

14 Muslim Civil Society in Urban Public Spaces: Globalization, Discursive Shifts, and Social Movements 305
Paul M. Lubeck and Bryana Britts

Part VI: Urban Processes and City Contexts: The United States 337

15 The Bullriders of Silicon Alley: New Media Circuits of Innovation, Speculation, and Urban Development 339
Michael Indergaard

16 Fear and Lusting in Las Vegas and New York: Sex, Political Economy, and Public Space 363
Alexander J. Reichl

17 Efficacy or Legitimacy of Community Power? A Reassessment of Corporate Elites in Urban Studies 379
Leonard Nevarez

18 Dream Factory Redux: Mass Culture, Symbolic Sites, and Redevelopment in Hollywood 397
Jan Lin

Index 419

"Many anthologies on the city exist, but only a few contain both
cutting-edge theoretical essays and rich empirical studies. The
latter focus on cities outside the Western urban canon and will
make Understanding the City even more attractive to urban
scholars." Professor R. Beauregard, New School
University

Understanding the city is an engaging read for those
grappling with new theoretical and conceptual questions about how
cities function.....the essays in this book provide an excellent
foundation for new levels of discourse on urban enviroments and
city life." Area

John Eade is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at
the University of Surrey, Roehampton. He undertook research in
Calcutta before completing his doctorate on Bangladeshi community
politics in London's East End. He directed the Wandsworth
local/global study and his previous publications include The
Politics of Community (1989), Living the Global City
(1997), and Placing London (2000). He is currently directing
a research project on Methodists in the global city and
collaborating on an ESRC-funded program on links between Britain
and Bangladesh.

Christopher Mele is Associate Professor in the Department
of Sociology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is
the author of Selling the Lower East Side: Culture, Real Estate,
and Resistance in New York City (2000). His current research is
a study of the influence of historical patterns of race and class
upon contemporary urban growth and development along the
southeastern coast of the United States.

J. Eade, University of Surrey Roehampton