Life in the city can be both liberating and oppressive. The
contemporary city is an arena in which new and unexpected personal
identities and collective agencies are forged and at the same time
the major focus of market forces intent on making all life a
commodity. This book explores both sides of the urban experience,
developing a perspective from which the contradictory nature of the
politics of the city comes more clearly into view.
Dialectical Urbanism discusses a range of urban issues,
conflicts and struggles through detailed case studies set in
Liverpool, Baltimore, New York, and Los Angeles. Issues which
affect the quality of everyday life in the citygentrification and
development, affordable rents, the accountability of local
government, the domination of the urban landscape by new corporate
giants, policingare located in the context of larger political and
economic forces. At the same time, the narrative constantly returns
to those moments in which city dwellers discover and develop their
capacity to challenge larger forces and decide their own conditions
of life, becoming active citizens rather than the passive
consumers.
Merrifield draws on a wide range of sourcesfrom interviews with
activists and tenants fighting eviction to government and corporate
reportsand uncovers surprising connections, for example, between
the rise of junk bonds in the 1980s and urban improvement schemes
in a working-class neighborhood in Baltimore. This lively and
many-sided narrative is constantly informed by broader analyses and
reflections on the city and engages with these analyses in turn. It
fuses scholarship and political engagement into a powerful defense
of the possibilities of life in the metropolis today.
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