ABSTRACT
Reading 5A Elijah Anderson: ‘Streetwise’ 216
Reading 5B Iain Bruce: ‘Gay sites and the pink dollar’ 217
1 Introduction
The politics of a city can be understood in many different ways. We can think of politics as being about the way a city is administered and governed-as we shall in Chapters 6 and 7-or we can see politics as being about the struggles and conflicts in the city over resources and services. We can also see politics as being about daily life and the possibilities or constraints that enable or disable city-dwellers in living the ways that they want. The differentiation of urban space itself produces struggles over resources and services of the city as we began to see in the previous chapter. Some areas have good housing, transport or open spaces
while others do not. Some of these resources are tied to specific places, like schools and hospitals, while others are not, such as clean air or knowledge.
