ABSTRACT
The material on urban society and culture in Part Two and urban space in Part Three raises important issues about how cities should be governed and the economy of cities. The conflicts related to gated communities and sprinklers that douse homeless people that Mike Davis discusses in Part Two (p. 195) pose political questions: what should government, particularly local government, do when different groups want to use urban space in different ways? Richard Florida (p. 143) argues that to compete economically, cities must attract creative individuals. The selections by William Julius Wilson (p. 117) in Part Two and Ali Madanipour (p. 186) in Part Three illustrate how sociological issues of race and class and issues of urban space are intimately related to economic questions and questions of urban politics and governance. If Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles cannot vote because of their questionable immigration status, their voices will not be heard and local policies will not be responsive to them. The economy of a Parisian suburb will suffer if Franco-Algerian residents are discriminated against in the local labor market. Part Four focuses on these questions of urban politics, governance, and economics. In Elizabeth Strom and John Mollenkopf (eds), The Urban Politics Reader (London: Routledge, 2006) in the Routledge Urban Reader Series, there are additional readings on urban politics.
