Geographies of somewhere: Review essay for urban studies

Abstract

The last ten years have seen the publication of a whole range of US books dealing with the loss of place in one way or the other. The books under review were, in general, written for broad audiences an are, in may cases also, campaign documents. Their success and substantial number indicates an unease, which many academic texts cannot formulate. They are in this way evidence, just as The Rise and Fall of the Great American City” or “Edge Cities” were. This European-based review will critically review these recent books trying to highlight their common threads. While the books are very concerned about the poverty of the current urban and suburban environments, the books lack a substantial discussion of the economic mechanisms reproducing the unde- sired results. They are also unaware of the recent developments in communications and transport technologies, which have a large potential to influence future trends, which will be discussed in the review. Included in the review are a number of transport oriented books, as they formulate a different aspect of the same concern about the built environment.