Description:

What *is *Urban Theory? How can it be used to understand our urban experiences? Experiences typically defined by enormous inequalities, not just *between *cities but *within *cities, in an increasingly interconnected and globalised world. This book explains: * Relations between urban theory and **modernity **in key ideas of the Chicago School, spatial analysis, humanistic urban geography, and ‘radical' approaches like Marxism * Cities and the transition to informational economies, **globalization**, urban growth machine and urban regime theory, the city as an “actor” * Spatial expressions of **inequality **and key ideas like segregation, ghettoization, suburbanization, gentrification * Socio-cultural spatial expressions of **difference **and key concepts like gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and “culturalist” perspectives on identity, lifestyle, subculture * How cities should be understood as **intersections **of horizontal and vertical – of coinciding resources, positions, locations, influencing how we make and understand urban experiences. Critical, interdisciplinary and pedagogically informed - with opening summaries, boxes, questions for discussion and guided further reading - **Urban Theory: A Critical Introduction to Power, Cities and Urbanism in the 21st Century** provides the tools for any student of the city to understand, even to change, our own urban experiences.