For the antagonist, private communities are icons of post-consensus, fragmenting civic society, enclosing and excluding by contractual constitution and sometimes by walls and gates. For others they are simply an efficient new way of organizing urban life.
"Private Cities" brings together an international team of authors in an attempt to construct an interdisciplinary discourse on the global spread of private communities based upon empirical evidence. Case studies from the US, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe and China are used to explore local and global explanations of the phenomenon. Two distinct propositions emerge from the analysis, firstly that private neighborhoods are a manifestation of the processes bound up in the globalization of culture and economy. Alternatively they can be seen to emerge and adapt locally. Unifying the chapters is the notion that private neighborhoods are a new territorial form of organization on a local scale.
The volume takes an institutionalist approach, developing a model in which cities are shaped by the interplay of local and global processes and evolve at the interface of spontaneous and planned order. It seeks to draw together the various themes, propositions and hypotheses in a way that clarifies the questions asked in different ways by different social science perspectives and in a way that poses researchable questions and new agendas.

For the antagonist, private communities are icons of post-consensus, fragmenting civic society, enclosing and excluding by contractual constitution and sometimes by walls and gates. For others they are simply an efficient new way of organizing urban life. Contributed to, and edited by, an international team of leading authors, this revealing book constructs an interdisciplinary discourse on the global spread of private communities based upon empirical evidence. Case studies from the US, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe and China are used to explore local and global explanations of the phenomenon. Taking an institutionalist approach, this informative textbook for undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers alike, develops a model in which cities are shaped by the interplay of local and global processes, and evolve at the interface of spontaneous and planned order. It draws together the various themes, propositions and hypotheses in a way that clarifies the questions by different social science perspectives and that poses researchable questions and new agendas.

In the most comprehensive and detailed cultural-geographic study ever conducted of the American Indian reservations in the forty-eight contiguous states, Klaus Frantz explores the reservations as living environments rather than historical footnotes. Although this study provides well-researched documentation of the generally deplorable living conditions on the reservations, it also seeks to discover and highlight the many possibilities for positive change.
Informed by both historical research and extensive fieldwork, this book pays special attention to the natural resource base and economic outlook of the reservations, as well as the crucial issue of tribal sovereignty. Chapters also cover the demography of American Indian groups and their socioeconomic status (including standard of living, employment, and education). A new afterword treats some of the developments since the book's initial publication in German, such as the effects of the 1988 Indian gaming law that allowed Indian reservations to operate gambling establishments (with mixed success).
"Provides a good overview of the basic questions and problems facing reservation Indians today."--Peter Bolz, "Journal of American History" (on the German edition)