ABSTRACT
The history of cities and of thinking about cities has periodically been marked by intense interest in the transformative role of urban social movements and communal action. Such movements get variously interpreted, however, depending upon historical and geographical conditions. The Christian reformism culminating in the social control arguments of Robert Park and the Chicago School of Urban Sociology (evolved during the inter-war years in the United States and exported around the world in the post-war period as standard fare for urban sociologists) contrast, for example, with both the pluralist 'interest group' model of urban governance favored by Robert Dahl and the more radical and revolutionary interpretations arrived at (mainly in Europe and Latin America) during the 1960s and and 1970s (culminating in Castell's magnum opus on The City and the Grassroots).
