The New Blackwell Companion to the City - Paperback

by Gary Bridge (Editor), Sophie Watson (Editor)

This book considers the state of the city and contemporary urbanisation from a range of intellectual and international perspectives.

• The most interdisciplinary collection of its kind
• Provides a contemporary update on urban thinking that builds on well established debates in the field
• Uses the city to explore economic, social, cultural, environmental and political issues more broadly
• Includes contributions from non Western perspectives and cities

Front Jacket

Drawing together leading scholars from a variety of academic disciplines, this entirely new collection of commissioned essays reports the leading edge of research and analysis into the contemporary urban condition. With more than half of the world's population living in urban environments, cities are places of huge complexity and diversity and the processes, networks, and structures that bind them together reach out across the globe.

This volume considers the state of the city and contemporary urbanization from a range of intellectual and international perspectives. Whilst considering established themes, such as urban divisions and differences, publics and cultures, politics and planning, The New Blackwell Companion to the City also addresses new debates concerning materiality, mobilities, affect, and the environment.

Incorporating international examples from the US to Europe, and China to South Africa, this book explores the economic, social, cultural, environmental, and political issues that flow from and within the modern city.

Author Biography

Gary Bridge is Professor of Urban Studies at the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol. He is the author of Reason in the City of Difference: Pragmatism, Communicative Action and Contemporary Urbanism (2005), and co-editor of Gentrification in a Global Context (with Rowland Atkinson, 2005), and The Blackwell City Reader, second edition (with Sophie Watson, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) and Mixed Communities: Gentrification by Stealth? (with Tim Butler and Loretta Lees, 2012).

Sophie Watson is Professor of Sociology at the Open University and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change. She is the author of City Publics: The (dis)enchantments of Urban Encounters (2006), co-author of Surface City: Sydney at the Millennium (1997), and co-editor of Postmodern Cities and Spaces (1995), Metropolis Now (1994), and The Blackwell City Reader, second edition (with Gary Bridge, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), among other publications.