ancient cities

464 Los Angeles, California
likely that London will retain its global city status,
it is possible that the dominance of banking and
finance may prove to be London’s Achilles heel, at
least in the short term; this could result in a major
economic downturn with consequent impacts on
people’s lives. What the implications are for Sassen’s
polarization thesis remains to be seen.
While the impact of the financial crisis and
recession will increase unemployment, it is unclear
whether this will affect the highly skilled and
high-paid groups more than the low-skilled groups.
If it does, it could lead to a slowing or reversal of
the growth of the middle classes and of immigration.
What is very likely is that job losses and
income cutbacks in the high-income sectors of
banking and law will reduce earnings and income
inequalities and increase housing affordability, at
least in the short to medium term. Only time will
tell whether London and New York will recover
their global position or whether there will be a
permanent shift in economic and financial power
toward Southeast Asia.
Chris Hamnett
See also Gentrification; Globalization; Housing; Social
Housing; World City
Further Readings
Atkinson, R. 2000. “Measuring Gentrification and
Displacement in Greater London.” Urban Studies
37(1):149–66.
Beaverstock, J. V., R. G. Smith, and P. J. Taylor. 1996.
“The Global Capacity of a World City: A Relational
Study of London.” In Globalisation Theory and
Practice, edited by E. Kofman and G. Youngs.
London: Cassell.
Buck, N., I. Gordon, P. Hall, M. Harloe, and M.
Kleinmann. 2002. Working Capital: Life and Labour
in Contemporary London. London, Routledge.
Butler, T., C. Hamnett, and M. Ramsden. 2008. “Inward
and Upward: Marking Out Social Class Change in
London, 1981–2001.” Urban Studies 45(1):67–88.
Davidson, M. and L. Lees. 2005. “New-Build
‘Gentrification’ and London’s Riverside Renaissance.”
Environment and Planning A 37:1165–90.
Girouard, Mark. 1985. Cities and People: A Social and
Architectural History. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Greater London Authority. 2002. Creativity: London’s
Core Business. London: Author.
———. 2008. London: A Cultural Audit. London:
Author.
Hall, P. 2007. London Voices, London Lives: Tales from
a Working Capital. London: Routledge.
Hamnett, C. 2003. “Gentrification and the Middle-Class
Remaking of Inner London, 1961–2001.” Urban
Studies 40(12):2401–26.
———. 2003. Unequal City: London in the Global
Arena. London: Routledge.
Hamnett, C. and D. Whitelegg. 2007. “Loft Conversion
and Gentrification in London: From Industrial to
Post-industrial Land Use.” Environment and Planning
A 39(1):106–24.
Hebbert, M. 1998. London: More by Fortune Than
Design. London: Wiley.
Newman, P. and I. Smith. 2000. “Cultural Production,
Place, and Politics on the South Bank of the Thames.”
International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research 24(1):9–24.
Sassen, S. 2001. The Global City: New York, London,
and Tokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Thrift, N. 1994. “On the Social and Cultural
Determinants of International Financial Centres: The
Case of the City of London.” In Money, Power, and
Space, edited by S. Corbridge, N. Thrift, and R.
Martin. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Lo s aN g e L e s, ca L i f o r N i a
In the field of urban studies, Los Angeles is a key
reference case for the analysis of contemporary
urban restructuring. The followers of the Los
Angeles School of Urban Studies ascribe to Los
Angeles a paradigmatic status among postmodern
urban regions. Los Angeles exemplifies a new model
of urbanism, which, in contrast to the teachings of
the Chicago School of Urbanism of the 1920s, is
no longer organized around a central urban core
or a central business district (CBD). Instead, its
polycentric settlement pattern is best characterized
as “dense sprawl.” Less than 1 of 10 jobs and
even fewer of the housing units in the region are
located downtown. But even without an equivalent
to midtown or downtown Manhattan, at
6,000 inhabitants per square mile, the Los Angeles
urban area is the densest metropolitan region in
the United States.
The greater Los Angeles area, also called “the
Southland,” extends over 400 square miles. Los