The City (key Ideas In Geography)

"The City" provides an accessible yet critical introduction to one of the key concepts in human geography. Always at the heart of discussions in social theory, the definition and specification of 'the city' nonetheless remains illusive. In this volume, Phil Hubbard accordingly seeks to locate the concept of 'the city' within current traditions of social thought, providing a basis for understanding its varying usages and meanings through a critical discussion of the contribution of key authors and thinkers.
Written in a lively and accessible style, the individual chapters of "The City" offer a thematic overview of four dominant ways of approaching cities: as lived-in places, as imagined spaces, as networks of association and as technologies of flow. This book thus considers some of the most important currents in contemporary debates about urban spatiality, considering the decisive contributions of key feminist, post-structural and post-modern theorists to understandings of the city. Situating these traditions within the rich heritage of urban studies and urban sociology, the book develops the argument that none of these approaches, when taken alone, helps us grasp the uniqueness of 'the urban' as distinct from 'the rural'. The book thus spells out the importance of a geographical perspective on the city, suggesting that it is only by brining these different ways of mapping the city together that we can begin to make sense of cities.
Drawing on a diverse range of literatures and case studies, "The City" provides a short but incisive guide to the state-of-art in urban studies. In the process, it shows how contemporary approaches to the study of the city frame the 'urban question'in ways that are distinctive to those developed in past decades. Suggesting that much has been gained in the process, but also that much has been lost, the book argues that academics need to reconsider what is truly distinctive about urban space. Promoting the argument that we need to take space seriously again in urban studies, this book thus represents an important intervention in contemporary debates surrounding society and space.