|
Sociology-Anthropology 222 Bob Goldman Most critical theories of cities conceptualize their task in terms of the social production of space and its converse the spatial production of the social and cultural. We will adopt perspectives used by sociologists, political economists, and urban designers to look at how spaces are constructed both by adaptations to the physical environment and by the interactions of people -- for example, the work of Jane Jacobs on the sidewalk as a fundamental social space in city life. In a similar fashion we will look at streets and freeways and malls as spaces that structure our everyday lives. We will also devote attention to a fundamental distinction between place and space. Some argue that place vs. space is another way of talking about community vs. capital –- the tension between life spaces and commodity spaces, between neighborhood and real estate. Of course, we can now see that space comes in electronic flavors too. The fully postmodern city of the future may well consist of electronic spaces as a "city of bits." We will spend time on two of the major cities that students in the field have focused on, New York and Los Angeles. New York is often considered the prototype of the modern city, although Zukin will try to show us that current cultural forms are shifting New York City into a new era. Zukin uses an approach characterized by the study of "symbolic economies." By contrast Mike Davis uses a more "political economic" approach in his detailed study of Los Angeles, which although it also exhibits modernist forms, is more frequently thought of today as exemplary of tendencies towards postmodernity. Davis’s book City of Quartz is widely regarded as a contemporary classic of how we can go about studying cities. One of the key features of postmodern urban forms is the centrality of consumption rather than production. In the texts by Jon Goss and Mark Gottdiener, we will look at the question of ‘theme’ or ‘fantasy’ or ‘tourist’ cities which are invariably structured around the mode of consumption. In sharp contrast, we will also look at the growing importance of what Saskia Sassen calls "global cities." The real contrast comes, of course, when we begin to consider the accelerating path of urbanization in the developing countries of the South. Required Books: Readings: Introduction James D. Wright, "Small towns, mass society and the 21st century," Society, November-December, v.38, n.1, pp.3-10. Daniel J. Monti, "Why cities still matter," Society, November-December, v.38, n.1, pp.19-27. Michael Greenberg, "Neighborhoods: slow places in a fast world?" Society, November-December, v.38, n.1, pp.28-32. Leonard Ruchelman, "Cities in the next century," Society, November-December, v.38, n.1, pp.33-38. Witold Rybczynski, City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World. Scribner, 1995. "The measure of a town," pp.35-50. Murray Bookchin, The Limits of the City. NY: Harper, 1974. Pp.1-4; "The rise of the bourgeois city," pp.36-65 Mark Gottdiener, "The rise of urban sociology," and "Contemporary Urban Sociology," pp.101-146 in The New Urban Sociology. NY: McGraw-Hill, 1994. The Modern City -- The Production of Social Spaces Jane Jacobs, "The Uses of Sidewalks: Safety/Contact" from The Death and Life of Great American Cities, NY: Modern Library Edition, 1993, 1961, pp.37-96. Mitchell Duneier. Sidewalk. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2000. Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1982. "In the forest of symbols: some notes on modernism in New York," pp.287-348. Peter Jukes, A Shout in the Street: an excursion into the modern city. 1990. "Paris: Commodities and Bodies," pp.59-97. Place versus Space James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American Dream: the future of housing, work and family life. NY: Norton, 1986. "Reconstructing Domestic Space," p.173-208. Political Economy and Space Joe Feagin and Robert Parker, Building American Cities: The Urban Real Estate Game. 2nd edition. Prentice Hall, 1990. "Skyscrapers and Multiple-Use Projects," pp.101-127; David Harvey, "From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: the transformation of urban governance in late capitalism," pp.50-59 in City Cultures Reader (ed., Malcolm Miles et al.), Routledge, 2000. Towards a Postmodern Metropolis Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. NY: Vintage. 1992. Rob Kling, Spencer Olin, and Mark Poster (eds.) The Emergence of Postsuburbia: POST-SUBURBAN CALIFORNIA: THE TRANSFORMATION OF POSTWAR ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. (University of California Press, 1991.) Gentrification Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1991. "Gentrification, Cuisine and the Critical Infrastructure: Power and Centrality Downtown," pp. 179-215. Joe Feagin and Robert Parker, Building American Cities: The Urban Real Estate Game Neil Smith, "Class Struggle on Avenue B: the lower East Side as wild, wild West," pp. 256-260. excerpted from The New Urban Frontier in City Cultures Reader (ed., Malcolm Miles et al.), Routledge, 2000. Symbolic Economies -- Cultural Spaces of Consumption Ada Louise Huxtable, "Inventing American Reality," New York Review of Books, Dec. 3, 1992, pp. 24-29. "Myths of the Megacities," pp.5-15.
William J. Mitchell. City of Bits. MIT Press. 1995-1997. http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/City_of_Bits/index.html Towards Progressive Change? "Creating Someplace," pp.109-149. (This essay reflects an interest in ‘the new urbanism.’ "The Congress for the New Urbanism views disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society's built heritage as one interrelated community-building challenge. WE STAND for the restoration of existing urban centers and towns within coherent metropolitan regions, the reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs into communities of real neighborhoods and diverse districts, the conservation of natural environments, and the preservation of our built legacy.") "A mercifully brief chapter on a frightening, tedious, but important chapter," [on property taxes] pp. 196-206. Dolores Hayden, "What would a non-sexist city be like? Speculations on housing, urban design and human work," pp.503-518 in The City Reader (ed. Richard LeGates and F. Stout), Routledge, 2000. |
|||