Category: book review

Newcomers: Gentrification and Its Discontents, by Matthew L. Schuerman, Chicago, Illinois, University of Chicago Press, 2019. Reviewed by: Dennis E. Gale, Stanford University That’s right. It’s another book about American gentrification. And lo, the author, a senior editor at New York’s WNYC radio, defines his use of the G-word at the outset, a courtesy too… Continue reading Take a Look at this Preview of an Upcoming Book Review: “Newcomers: Gentrification and Its Discontents”, reviewed by Dennis E. Gale

The Immigrant Rights Movement: The Battle over National Citizenship. Walter J. Nicholls, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019. Reviewed by: Kevin Lujan Lee, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Urban scholars of social movements sometimes can be too quick to embrace the local as the privileged scale for social change and to overlook the role of… Continue reading Take a Look at this Preview of an Upcoming Book Review: “The Immigrant Rights Movement”, reviewed by Kevin Lujan Lee

How States Shaped Postwar America: State Government and Urban Power. Nicholas Dagen Bloom, (2019), The University of Chicago Press, 367 pp., $35.00 (cloth). Reviewed by: Elizabeth M. Marcello, Columbia University Nicholas Dagen Bloom's How States Shaped Postwar America provides an important — and he claims, overlooked — history of the impact of state governments on… Continue reading Take a Look at this Preview of an Upcoming Book Review: “How States Shaped Postwar America”, reviewed by Elizabeth M. Marcello

No Little Plans : How Government Built America’s Wealth and Infrastructure, by Ian Wray, New York, Routledge, 2019 Reviewed by: John Walls, Urban Planner (Retired) Ian Wray’s book is important because it provides a lucid explanation for the global decline of the United States. It also helps explain why current politics are increasingly toxic. The… Continue reading Take a Look at this Preview of an Upcoming Book Review: “No Little Plans”, reviewed by John Walls

International Financial Centres after the Global Financial Crisis and Brexit, by Youssef Cassis and Dariusz Wojcik (Eds), Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2018. Reviewed by: Simone Franzi Virginia, Polytechnic Institute and State University How was the geography of global finance affected by the Global Financial Crisis (GFC)? Cassis and Wojcik’s book, International Financial… Continue reading Take a Look at this Preview of an Upcoming Book Review: “International Financial Centres after the Global Financial Crisis and Brexit”, reviewed by Simone Franzi

The Geopolitics of Spectacle: Space, Synecdoche, and the New Capitals of Asia, by Natalie Koch. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. Reviewed by: Kyle T. Evered, Michigan State University In her 2018 book The Geopolitics of Spectacle: Space, Synecdoche, and the New Capitals of Asia, political geographer Natalie Koch confronts today’s spectacle-scapes of monumental urban development… Continue reading Take a Look at this Preview of an Upcoming Book Review: “The Geopolitics of Spectacle: Space, Synecdoche, and the New Capitals of Asia”, reviewed by Kyle T. Evered

After the Projects: Public Housing Redevelopment & the Governance of the Poorest Americans, by Lawrence J. Vale, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019. Reviewed by: Rachel Garshick Kleit, Ohio State University HOPE VI takes different forms in cities across America. Lawrence Vale’s After the Projects makes an argument that a complexity of forces creates quite varied redevelopment… Continue reading Take a Look at this Preview of an Upcoming Book Review: “After the Projects: Public Housing Redevelopment & the Governance of the Poorest Americans”, reviewed by Rachel Garshick Kleit

The Political Economy of Capital Cities by Heike Mayer, Fritz Sager, David Kaufmann, and Martin Warland (London and New York, Routledge, 2018) Reviewed by: Sabina E. Deitrick, University of Pittsburgh “Not all capital cities are alike,” Sir Peter Hall began a chapter on capital cities in a 2006 volume by David Gordon. The Political Economy of… Continue reading Take a Look at this Preview of an Upcoming Book Review: The Political Economy of Capital Cities, reviewed by Sabina E. Deitrick

Reclaiming Cities as Spaces of Middle Class Parenthood, by Johanna Lilius (Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) Reviewed by: Jeffrey A. Raffel, University of Delaware Reclaiming Cities as Spaces of Middle Class Parenthood is written on two levels. First, the book is a study of why middle class parents, despite the image of cities as poor places to raise children, choose to stay in the city of Helsinki, Finland after having children, and how the… Continue reading Take a Look at this Preview of an Upcoming Book Review: Reclaiming Cities as Spaces of Middle Class Parenthood, reviewed by Jeffrey A. Raffel

City of Segregation: One Hundred Years of Struggle for Housing in Los Angeles, by Andrea Gibbons (Brooklyn, NY, Verso, 2018) Reviewed by: Tyler Haupert, Columbia University In City of Segregation Andrea Gibbons traces the roles of racial discrimination and white supremacy in producing and maintaining the residential segregation of African Americans in Los Angeles from the… Continue reading Book Review Preview: City of Segregation