Description
Book SynopsisMartin J. Murray offers a groundbreaking guide to the multiplicity, heterogeneity, and complexity of contemporary global urbanism. He identifies and traces four distinct pathways that characterize cities today.
Trade ReviewMany Urbanisms is an excellent work of synthesis, and Murray is a gifted writer. In this book, he integrates a massive amount of urban theory literature in order to emphasize the differences between cities and to challenge the notion of a North to South order within contemporary urbanization. -- Jason Hackworth, author of
Manufacturing Decline: How Racism and the Conservative Movement Crush the American Rust BeltThis well-researched book makes an outstanding contribution to urban and policy studies...Highly recommended. * Choice *
A fantastic and thoroughly enjoyable book. * Urbanities *
Highly readable and sharply argued. * Contemporary Sociology *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: Rethinking Global Urbanism at the Start of the Twenty-First Century
Part I. Conventional Urban Theory at a Crossroads1. The Narrow Preoccupations of Conventional Urban Studies
2. The Universalizing Pretensions of Mainstream Urban Studies: Generic Cities and the Convergence Thesis
Part II. Trajectories of Global Urbanism at the Start of the Twenty-First Century: A First Approximation3. Globalizing Cities with World-Class Aspirations: The Emergence of the Postindustrial Tourist-Entertainment City
4. Struggling Postindustrial Cities in Decline
5. Sprawling Megacities of Hypergrowth: The Unplanned Urbanism of the Twenty-First Century
6. Building Cities on a Grand Scale: The Instant Urbanism of the Twenty-First Century
Part III. The Future of Urbanism7. Conclusion: Urban Futures
Notes
Bibliography
Index
