"...a fantastic, empirically rich and theoretically innovative, exploration of the macropolitical realignment and ongoing spatial restructuring that have taken place since the 1970s. This is cutting–edge urban research: not only students of contemporary cities and their institutional geographies, but municipal policy makers as well as activists concerned with reshaping cities towards more democratic and socially just ends will find this collection indispensable."
Margit Mayer, Freie Universität, Berlin <!––end––>
"This thoughtful and thought–provoking book examines the dynamics and consequences of neoliberal policies in the unstable geography of contemporary cities. The book synthesizes a range of current explorations of urban space and neoliberal ideology, and ends with a new and coherent conceptualization of what is happening on the ground around us." Peter Marcuse, Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University
"Brenner and Theodore have done an excellent job in bringing together an innovative collection of work on urban restructuring – a collection that combines some of the most interesting insights from critical political economy and radical geography to explain important aspects of the spatial reconfiguration of capitalism since the 1970s." Stephen Gill, Professor of Political Science, University of York, Toronto
"Brenner and Theodore have put together a stimulating series of investigations that explore how recent economic strategies, state agendas and spatial logics produce urban landscapes marked by striking levels of inequality and social exclusion. This collection provides a theoretically sophisticated and politically incisive examination of the ways in which restructuring cities have become central to the new geographies of power." William Sites, University of Chicago, author of Remaking New York: Primitive Globalization and the Politics of Urban Community
"This is a stimulatimg text, the ambitious designs of which provide a rich theoretical resource" Peter Sunley, University of Edinburgh for Progress in Human Geography
Exploring the spaces of neoliberalism is clearly a project whose time has come. The current collection of papers does an excellent job in laying out some of the substantive issues involved, the nature of the changes that the neoliberal agenda has conditioned, and the conflicts that its imposition has generated. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
Preface:.
From the New Localism′ to the Spaces of Neoliberalism: Neil Brenner (New York University) & Nik Theodore (University of Illinois at Chicago).
Part I: The Urbanization of Neoliberalism: Theoretical Foundations:.
1. Cities and the geographies of actually existing neoliberalism′: Neil Brenner (New York University) & Nik Theodore (University of Illinois at Chicago).
2. Neoliberalizing space: the free economy and the penal state: Jamie Peck (University of Wisconsin–Madison) & Adam Tickell (University of Bristol).
3. Neoliberalism and socialisation in the contemporary city: opposites, complements and instabilities: Jamie Gough (University of Northumbria).
4. New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy: Neil Smith (CUNY Graduate Center).
Part II: Cities and State Restructuring: Pathways and Contradictions:.
5. Liberalism, Neoliberalism and Urban Governance: A State–Theoretical Pespective: Bob Jessop (Lancaster University).
6. Interpreting Neoliberal Urban Policy: The State, Crisis Management, and the Politics of Scale: Martin Jones (University of Wales) & Kevin Ward (University of Manchester).
7. The city is dead, long live the network′: Harnessing networks for the neoliberal urban agenda: Helga Leitner (University of Minnesota) & Eric Sheppard (University of Minnestota).
8. Extracting Value from the City: Neoliberalism and Urban Redevelopment: Rachel Weber (University of Illinois at Chicago).
Part III: New Geographies of Power: Exclusion and Injustice:.
9. Neoliberal urbanization in Europe: large scale urban development projects and the new urban policy: Erik Swyngedouw (Oxford University), Frank Moulaert (University of Lille) & Arantxa Rodriguez (University of the Basque Country).
10. Retro–Urbanism: Reliving the Dreams of 1980s Neoliberalism in Toronto, Canada: Roger Keil (York University, Toronto).
11. Spatializing injustice in the late entrepreneurial city: Unraveling the contours of Britain′s revanchist urbanism: Gordon MacLeod (University of Durham).
Neil Brenner is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Metropolitan Studies at New York University. He is the co–editor with Bob Jessop, Martin Jones and Gordon MacLeod, of
State / Space: A Reader forthcoming from Blackwell Publishing.
Nik Theodore is Assistant Professor in Urban Planning and Policy and Research Director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
This is the first volume to analyse systematically the role of neoliberalism in contemporary processes of urban restructuring. Drawing upon cutting–edge theoretical work within radical geography, critical urban studies, neo–marxian state theory and critical social theory, contributions by leading scholars map the spaces of neoliberalism that have been forged and contested within contemporary North American and Western European cities.
The volume synthesizes a variety of new theoretical approaches to the critical analysis of contemporary urban transformations while also providing new case study material on the restructuring of urban policy, urban space and urban socio–political struggles in major North American and Western European cities.