Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City

The financial crisis has given new impetus to the struggles of oppositional urban social movements that have long emphasized the injustice, destructiveness and unsustainability of capitalist forms of urbanization. Through contributions by urban theorists, sociologists, geographers, political scientists, planners and activists, the volume explores the possibilities for, and constraints upon, critical urban theory and practice today. Ideas are linked by a common theme: the difficulties that are created for people by cities organized for profit, and the existing trends, struggles and movements that might change their course to construct alternative forms of urbanism. The slogan, "cities for people, not for profit," thus sets into stark relief what the authors view as a central political objective for ongoing efforts, at once theoretical and practical, to address the global urban crises of our time.

Author: Neil Brenner
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 12/08/2011
Pages: 296
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780415601788

About the Author

Neil Brenner is Professor of Urban Theory at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. He formerly served as Professor of Sociology and Metropolitan Studies at New York University. He is the author of New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood (Oxford University Press, 2004); co-editor of Spaces of Neoliberalism (with Nik Theodore; Blackwell, 2002); and co-editor of The Global Cities Reader (with Roger Keil; Routledge, 2006). His research interests include critical urban theory, sociospatial theory, state theory and comparative geopolitical economy.

Peter Marcuse, a planner and lawyer, is Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at Columbia University. He is the co-editor of Globalizing Cities (Blackwell, 2000) as well as of States and Cities: The Partitioning of Urban Space (Oxford University Press, 2002) and Searching for the Just City (Routledge, 2009). His fields of research include city planning, housing, homelessness, the use of public space, the right to the city, social justice in the city, globalization, urban history, the relation between cultural activities and urban development, and, most recently, solutions to the mortgage foreclosure crisis. He is beginning work on a book on critical planning, and a companion volume including analytic cases culled from past writings.

Margit Mayer teaches comparative and North American politics at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on comparative politics, urban and social politics, and social movements. She has published on various aspects of contemporary urban politics, urban theory, and (welfare) state restructuring, much of it in comparative perspective. She is co-editor of Politics in European Cities (with Hubert Heinelt; Birkhäuser, 1993), Urban Movements in a Globalising World (with Pierre Hamel and Henri Lustiger-Thaler; Routledge, 2000) and Neoliberal Urbanism and its Contestations - Crossing Theoretical Boundaries (with Jenny Künkel; Palgrave, 2011).