Introduction

McEachin and Brewer (Chapter 6, this volume) document that the majority of the U.S. population now lives in urban areas. In fact, this has become true world-wide and the proportion of those living in cities continues to grow (Cohen, 2003). Urbanization, though, is a relatively recent historical development. As a result, the very concept of “urban education” only really has begun to evolve over the past half century.