Britain's Cities: Geographies Of Division In Urban Britain

BRITAIN’S CITIES Since the pioneering work of the nineteenth century by social commentators such as Charles Dickens, reformers such as Charles Booth and Ebeneezer Howard, and political analysts such as Benjamin Disraeli and Frederick Engels, the uneven distribution of life chances has always been topical. Socio-spatial variations in human well-being remain a dominant feature of capitalist societies, with geographic clustering of disadvantage characterizing most cities of the Western world. Major planes of division are apparent in terms of income and wealth, health status, crime rates, in the quality and quantity of housing, and in the nature and availability of employment opportunities, as well as being linked to factors related to gender, age and ethnicity. Britain’s Cities offers a lucid and informative introduction to current processes of urban restructuring and geographies of division within the contemporary British city. A key principle that guides the organization of the book is that the geography of Britain’s cities is the outcome of interaction of a host of public and private economic, social and political forces operating at a variety of spatial scales from the global to the local. Consequently, a proper understanding of the nature of urban division and of the problems of and prospects for local people and places in urban Britain must be grounded in an appreciation of the structural forces and processes that operate on and in combination with contextual factors to condition local urban geographies. The book is structured in two main parts. The first examines the key structural level processes and agencies operating to influence the geography of the contemporary city, and the second part provides a set of empirically informed issue-specific studies of the major planes of division within Britain’s cities. A major feature of the book is the manner in which it combines structural and local level perspectives to illuminate the complex geography of sociospatial division within urban Britain. The book provides a comprehensive and authoritative account of key concepts underlying urban restructuring as well as up-to-date analyses of contemporary conditions within Britain’s cities. Combining conceptual and empirical analyses from leading researchers in the field, Britain’s Cities is essential reading for all interested in the urban geography of modern Britain. Michael Pacione is Professor of Geography, University of Strathclyde. BRITAIN’S CITIES Geographies of division in urban Britain Edited by Michael Pacione London and New York First published 1997 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York,