A review of original French edition of this book in Journal of Sociology hailed it as the most finished product yet to emerge from new (Marxist) school of French urban sociology... The aim of book is nothing less than to reconceptualize field of urban sociology. It is carried out in two stages: a critique of literature of urban sociology (and urbanization) and an attempt to lay Marxist bases for a reconstructed urban sociology.The problems facing world's cities, whether problems of development or of decay, cannot be solved until they have been diagnosed. The race riots in Detroit, shantytowns of Paris, financial crisis of New York must not be seen in isolation. The mushrooming cities of third world, demolition and urban sprawl at home are located in a network of economics, social welfare and power politics, and decisions we are called upon to make elude us in a fog of ideology.This brilliant exposition of function of city in social, economic and symbolic terms illuminates creation and structuring of space by action--administrative, productive and more immediately human. The interaction of environment and life-style, complex of market forces and state policy against a background of traditional social practice is scrutinized with aim of establishing concepts and research methods that will enable us to come to grips with cities themselves and way in which we view them.Castells draws on urban renewal in Paris, English New Towns, American megalopolis for concrete data in his empirical and theoretical investigation. In this English edition, a new Part V has been added on urban development in America. The chapters on pobladores in Chile and struggle of FRAP in Quebec have been greatly extended and an Afterword traces development of research in past five years.
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