Introduction: Cities, Texts and Paradigms

Abstract

In the early 1980s, a prominent urban sociologist spelt out what he saw as the distinguishing features of a new paradigm in the study of the city, that had become established over the previous decade. Variously described as ‘the new urban studies’ or ‘urban political economy’, the approach was characterised by a number of assumptions: urbanism (and urbanisation) could not just be taken for granted but required definition and explanation, since they took various forms under various modes of social and economic organisation and political control. The approach was concerned with the interplay between relations of production, consumption, exchange and the structure of power manifest in the state. Urban processes — whether community organisation, class and ethnic politics (or physical and spatial urban form), had to be understood in terms of their structural bases, or how they are conditioned by the larger economic, political and socio-cultural milieu. The approach was connected with social change and this was seen as growing out of conflicts among classes and groups. Changes in the economy were socially and culturally generated and mediated.3