ancient cities

geographers in a discussion of the advantages and
disadvantages of changing urban housing markets.
In addition, theoretical developments in the
social sciences and humanities raised the issue of
difference based on the construction of gendered
identities. In turn, poststructuralist critique in the
1980s created a strand of feminist research that
moved away from a primary focus on gender and
class systems to acknowledge the parameters
around which identity is formed and the city
experienced.
Postmodernist and
Poststructuralist Influences
Among the first geographers to engage in the
debates surrounding postmodernism, Michael Dear
encouraged geographers to acknowledge its significance
as style, epoch, and method. Postmodernism’s
critique of style, particularly of architecture and
urban design, thus entered urban geography.
Assessment of its impacts varies from David Ley’s
early analysis of postmodern styles as potentially
progressive and Paul Knox’s conclusion that any
radical potential had been lost in its adoption as a
contemporary conventional style.
Harvey’s use of postmodernity in the title of his
book Conditions of Postmodernity (1989) underscores
the extent to which postmodernism is tied
to an epoch for many urban scholars. Whether it is
a phase of the modern or a break from it has been
a matter of dispute. Harvey argues that postmodernity
must be understood in terms of the restructuring
of the capitalist global economy since 1973
and the social and cultural forms that flowed from
consequent changes. Particular attention is given
to the changing role of government in an era of
neoliberalism and the public–private partnerships
that resulted. Other theorists emphasize the radical
break in urbanization and the emergence of the
postmodern metropolis with its fragmented spatialities.
Dear offers Los Angeles as the proper
exemplar of the city in a postmodern era, when—
unlike the Chicago School’s city that is organized
by its central core—urban peripheries organize
what remains of the center. Despite the offer to
move urban theory from Chicago to Los Angeles,
the Los Angeles School of Urbanism has not gained
the stature its proponents desired. Work by a number
of Los Angeles–based urban geographers,
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however, suggests that if Los Angeles is not—as
Allen Scott and Ed Soja claim—the capital of the
twentieth century, it certainly invigorates analysis
of urban population and politics and offers new
ecological perspectives.
The third aspect of postmodernism—method—
draws together the influence of postcolonialism
and poststructuralism as well as feminist theory.
Each issues a challenge to foundational knowledge
by acknowledging multiple voices and situated
knowledge. Poststructuralist theory—a body of
work associated with a diverse group of French
theorists that dates from the 1970s—questions the
transparent relationship between material reality
and the language used to represent them. Michel
Foucault’s studies of the relationship between
knowledge, discourse, representations, and power
influenced geographic research to such an extent
that discourse has become part of a standard
vocabulary for many urban geographers.
Directions in Urban Geography
Although the overall health of urban geography
has been questioned in the recent decades, geographers
remain interested in the integrated nature
of social, cultural, economic, and political aspects
of contemporary life. Ironically, one assessment of
the difficulties faced by urban geography is
described as the “urban problematic,” that is, that
everything is now urban and thus any empirical
analysis of space or society must touch upon the
urban. No longer discrete, “urban” as a category
has lost its meaning. This critique comes primarily
from the political economy perspective and replaced
the examination of urban patterns with a general
engagement with issues of urbanization and urban
systems as underpinned by global capitalism.
Within a relatively short period of time, geographers
shifted from debating the “urban problematic”
to participating in scholarly studies based on
claims to the “rediscovery of the city”—within
contemporary society as well as in academe—and
the “spatial turn” in the social sciences. Whereas
the 1989 entry for urban geography in the American
Association of Geography publication Geography
in America expressed doubt as to urban geography’s
future, the entry for urban geography in
Geography in America at the Dawn of the 21st
Century (2001) expressed certainty as to the