Showing papers on "Urbanism published in 2004"

Gentrification in a Global Context: The New Urban Colonialism

Abstract: The new urban colonialism / Rowland Atkinson and Gary Bridge -- Mapping neoliberal American urbanism / Elvin K. Wyly and Daniel J. Hammel -- From social mix to the politics of distance : urban policy and gentrification in Canada / Tom Slater -- Heritage and gentrification : remembering 'the good old days' in postcolonial Sydney / Wendy Shaw -- 'Studentification' : the gentrification factory? / Darren P. Smith -- Gentrification in post-communist cities / Ludek Sykora -- Exploring the substance and style of gentrification : Berlin's 'prenzlberg' / Matthias Bernt and Andrej Holm -- Outside the core : gentrification in Istanbul / Tolga Islam -- Gentrification and neighbourhood dynamics in Japan : the case of Kyoto / Yoshihiro Fujitsuka -- Another 'Guggenheim effect'? : central city projects and gentrification in Bilbao / Lorenzo Vicario and P. Manuel Martinez Monje -- Local limits to gentrification : implications for a new urban policy / Kate Shaw -- Poland and Polonia : migration and the re-incorporation of ethnic aesthetic practice in the taste of luxury / Jerome Krase -- Outside the metropole : gentrification in provincial cities or provincial gentrification? / Paul Dutton -- A curious blend? : city revitalization, gentrification and commodification in Brazil / Silvana Rubino -- Out of squalor and towards another urban renaissance? : gentrification and neighborhood transformations in southern Europe / Petros Petsimeris -- The order and simplicity of gentrification, a political challenge / Erik Clark.

Authenticating Queer Space: Citizenship, Urbanism and Governance:

Abstract: The focus of this paper is the impact of the 'new urban order' on sexualised spaces in cities. The paper explores how sexual 'others' are conscripted into the process of urban transformation and, b...

ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF URBANISM: Archaeological Perspectives

Abstract: ▪ Abstract I survey recent literature about early cities in the regional traditions of Southwest Asia, Egypt, South Asia, China, Mesoamerica, Andean South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Greece, and Rome. Major themes include the importance of theorizing individuals and their practices, interests, and emotions; the extent to which the first cities were deliberately created rather than merely emerging as by-products of increasing sociopolitical complexity; internal structure of cities and the interplay of top-down planning and bottom-up self-organization; social, economic, and political relations between cities and their hinterlands; interactions of cities with their physical environments; and the difficult “city-state” concept. Some axes or dimensions for describing settlements are proposed as better than typological concepts.

Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture, Urbanism, Identity

Abstract: This book brings together a series of new and historical case studies to show how different phases of globalization are transforming the built environment. Taking a broad interdisciplinary approach, the author draws on sociological, geographical, cultural and postcolonial studies to provide a critical account of the development of three key concepts: global culture, post colonialism, and modernity. Subsequent case studies examine how global economic, political and cultural forces shape the forms of architectural and urban modernity in globalized suburbs and spaces in major cities worldwide. The first book to combine global and postcolonial theoretical approaches to the built environment and to illustrate these with examples, Spaces of Global Cultures argues for a more historical and interdisciplinary understanding of globalization: one that places material space and the built environment at the centre and calls for new theories to address new conditions.

The Spectacular City: Violence and Performance in Urban Bolivia

Abstract: About the Series ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Becoming Visible in Neoliberal Bolivia 1 1. Ethnography, Governmentality, and Urban Life 29 2. Urbanism, Modernity, and Migration to Cochabamba 53 3. Villa Sebastian Pagador and the Politics of Community 90 4. Performing National Culture in the Fiesta de San Miguel 134 5. Spectacular Violence and Citizen Security 179 Conclusion: Theaters of Memory and the Violence of Citizenship 215 Notes 225 References 239 Index 265

Cities, War, and Terrorism: Towards an Urban Geopolitics

Abstract: List of Plates. List of Figures. List of Tables. List of Contributors. Series Editorsa Preface. Preface. Introduction: Cities, Warfare, and States of Emergency: Stephen Graham (University of Durham). Part I: Cities, War and Terrorism in History and Theory. 1 Cities as Strategic Sites : Place Annihilation and Urban Geopolitics: Stephen Graham (University of Durham). 2 The City--as--Target, or Perpetuation and Death: Ryan Bishop and Gregory Clancey (National University of Singapore National University of Singapore). 3 Shadow Architectures : War, Memories, and Berlin's Futures: Simon Guy (University of Newcastle). 4 Another Anxious Urbanism: Simulating Defence and Disaster in Cold War America: Matthew Farish (University of Toronto). 5 Living (Occasionally Dying) Together in an Urban World: Zygmunt Bauman (University of Leeds and the University of Warsaw). 6 Everyday Techniques as Extraordinary Threats: Urban Technostructures and Nonplaces in Terrorist Actions: Timothy W. Luke (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia). Part II: Urbicide and the Urbanization of Warfare. 7 New Wars of the City : Relationships of a Urbicidea and a Genocidea : Martin Shaw (University of Sussex). 8 Urbicide in Bosnia: Martin Coward (University of Sussex). 9 Strategic Points, Flexible Lines, Tense Surfaces and Political Volumes: Ariel Sharon and The Geometry of Occupation: Eyal Weizmann (an architect based in Tel Aviv and London). 10 Constructing Urbicide by Bulldozer in the Occupied Territories: Stephen Graham. 11 City Streets -- The War Zones of Globalisation: Democracy and Military Operations in Urban Terrain in the Early 21st Century: Robert Warren (University of Delaware). 12 Continuity and Discontinuity : The Grammar of Urban Military Operations : Alice Hills (King's College, London). Part III: Exposed Cities : Urban Impacts of Terrorism and the 'War on Terror'. 13 Urban Warfare: A Tour of the Battlefield: Michael Sorkin (CCNY). 14 The "War on Terrorism" and Life in Cities after September 11, 2001: Peter Marcuse (Columbia University in New York City). 15 Recasting the 'Ring of Steel': Designing Out Terrorism in the City Of London? Jon Coaffee (University of Newcastle). 16 Technology vs. 'Terrorism': Circuits of City Surveillance Since September 11: David Lyon (Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario). 17 Urban Dimensions of the Punishment of Afghanistan by U.S. Bombs: Marc W. Herold (University of New Hampshire in Durham). Epilogue: Stephen Graham. Bibliography. Index

Democracy's Ancient Ancestors: Mari and Early Collective Governance

Abstract: Preface Part I. Introduction: 1. The Mari texts 2. A survey of Mari history 3. The Mari archives and political history 4. A text-based study: comments on methodology Part II. The Tribal World of Zimri-Lim: 5. Tribally organized pastoralists and the Amorrites 6. The primary constituents of the confederacies: Sim'alite gayum and Yaminite li'mum 7. The local leader of tribe and town: the Sugagum in service to the Mari kingdom 8. The chief of pasture: the Merhum 9. The 'Hana' tent-dwellers 10. The other confederacy: the Yaminites Part III. The Archaic State and the Matum 'Land': 11. Urbanism and archaic states 12. The matum: the basic unit of regional politics in the early second millennium 13. Subdividing the major matums: the halsum district 14. Population terminology not tied to political entity 15. Zimri-Lim and the land of the tent-dwellers (mat Hana) Part IV. The Collective and the Town: 16. The towns of the Mari archives 17. The collective face of town or land 18. Elders 19. Heads 20. Words for assembly 21. Imar, Tuttul, and Urgis: old towns with strong collective traditions 22. Mari in third-millenium towns 23. On explaining corporate power Part V. Conclusions: 24. The political world of the Mari archives 25. Before democracy Bibliography Glossaries Indices.

In the tracks of Comparative Urbanism: Difference, Urban Modernity and the Primitive

Abstract: In a globalizing world, the importance of appreciating the wide range of different kinds of cities around the world is becoming increasingly apparent to urban scholars. However, this paper argues that if urban studies is to engage with this diversity of cities, some of the core assumptions which frame urban theory need to be challenged. The concept of urban modernity, for example, has assumed a privileged link between modernity and certain kinds of cities, and relegated other people and places to the category of the "primitive" or the nonmodern. Instead, this paper argues that we could re-activate some resources in the tracks of comparative urbanism, prominent in the middle decades of the 20th century, to provoke a more cosmopolitan account of urban modernity which can learn from the diverse tactics of urban living around the world, and which is more appropriate for contemporary analysis of cities in a globalizing and interconnected world.

Sustaining Urban Networks : The Social Diffusion of Large Technical Systems

Abstract: Part 1. Networks and the Development of Cities. Chapter 2. Gig@City: The Rise of Technological Networks in Daily Life. Chapter 3. "Internetting" Downtown San Francisco: Digital Space Meets Urban Place. Chapter 4. Urban Space and the Development of Networks: A Discussion of the "Splintering Urbanism" Thesis. Part 2. Risks, Crises and the Dependence of Cities Upon Networks. Chapter 5. Social Implications of Infrastructure Network Interactions. Chapter 6. When Networks are Destabilized: User Innovation and the Uk Fuel Crisis. Part 3. Constructing and Deconstructing the Internet. Chapter 7. Internet: The Social Construction of a "Network Ideology". Chapter 8. The Diffusion of Information And Communication Technologies in Lower-Income Groups: Cabinas De Internet In Lima, Peru. Chapter 9. Living in a Network Society: The Imperative to Connect. Part 4. Networks and Sustainable Access to Water. Chapter 10. Conflicts and the Rise of Users' Participation in the Buenos Aires Water Supply Concession, 1993-2003. Chapter 11. Reforming the Municipal Water Supply Service in Delhi:Institutional and Organizational Issues. Chapter 12. Not too Much but Not too Little: The Sustainability of Urban Water Services in New York, Paris, and New Delhi. Part 5. Networks as Institutions. Chapter 13. Networks and the Subversion Of Choice: An Institutionalist Manifesto

Rural Villages as Socially Urban Spaces in Malaysia

Abstract: Summary. In Malaysia, Malay kampung or villages are modernity’s significant other in contemporary discourse. In contrast to this rhetoric, which reinforces a sense of rural–urban difference, this paper argues that Malay kampung are socially urban spaces, in so far as the lived experience of their residents largely conforms to characteristics of social life typically figured as ‘urban’. These include socioeconomic relationships characterised by occupational stratification, consumption and production based on commodification rather than subsistence, and social interactions marked by formal and attenuated social ties as much as informal and intimate relationships. Simultaneously nostalgic and derogatory narratives of modernity and urbanism fix kampung in social memory as sites marginal to and outside urban modernity. By contrast, the evidence presented in this paper suggests that the lives of kampung residents in contemporary Malaysia are substantially and qualitatively urban.

The Emancipatory City: paradoxes and possibilities

Abstract: The Emancipatory City - Loretta Lees Urban (Re)Visions PART ONE: CITIES OF (IN)DIFFERENCE Domesticating Monsters - Susan Ruddick Cartographies of Difference and the Emancipatory City Zero Tolerance, Maximum Surveillance? Deviance, Difference and Crime Control in the Late Modern City - Nicholas Fyfe Impurity and the Emancipatory City - Les Back and Michael Keith Young People, Community Safety and Racial Danger The Emancipatory Community? Place, Politics and Collective Action in Cities - James DeFilippis and Peter North PART TWO: EMANCIPATORY PRACTICES Sites of Public (Homo)Sex and the Carnivalesque Spaces of Reclaim the Streets - Gavin Brown Inventing New Games - David Pinder Unitary Urbanism and the Politics of Space Everyday Rationality and the Emancipatory City - Gary Bridge Urban Escapades - Quentin Stevens Play in Melbourne's Public Spaces PART THREE: UTOPIC TRAJECTORIES The Urban Basis of Emancipation - Jennifer Robinson Spatial Theory and the City in South African Politics Water, Modernity and Emancipatory Urbanism - Matthew Gandy In Search of the Horizon - Geraldine Pratt and Rose Marie San Juan Utopia in The Truman Show and The Matrix Ghosts and the City of Hope - Steve Pile REFLECTIONS The 'Emancipatory' City? - Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift The Right to the City - David Harvey

Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape

Abstract: How do developments in urbanism open up opportunities in the field of landscape? Equally, how does landscape help us conceive of new conditions for urbanism? This text brings together speculations on the future of landscape urbanism by a number of international urbanists, architects, landscape architects and theorists including Abalos & Herreros, Larry Barth, Peter Beard, Florian Beigel, James Corner, Desvigne & Dalnok, Keller Easterling, FOA, Christopher Hight, Detlef Mertins, Mohsen Mostafavi, Ciro Najle, Ocean North and Reiser & Umemoto. Their texts are complemented by projects developed within the framework of the Landscape Urbanism programme at the Architectural Association.

Urban design for sustainability: A study on the Turkish city

Abstract: SUMMARY In line with sustainable development principles, the reactions to modern architecture and planning have led to a new appreciation of traditional cities and urban environments. Considering the extensive neglect and devastation of local values in our cities and towns, urban development practice in Turkey cannot be said to meet the requirements of sustainability. This paper, therefore, will explore the logic of sustainable development and focus on the components of good urban design which are needed to produce it. Since promoting sustainable lifestyles in our towns and cities depends mainly on the design of the physical environment, the paper will propose a set of key design principles that can deliver sustainable urban development through exploring the qualities of ‘traditional urbanism’ in the Turkish cities as well as examining the latest approaches to urban design.

New Urbanism in the Inner City: A Case Study of Pittsburgh

Abstract: This article argues that community development efforts can be significantly improved through careful attention to urban design. One potential design application is New Urbanism, which offers promising principles for integrating affordable housing into inner-city neighborhoods. These points are illustrated through a case study of four New Urbanist projects in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Here, New Urbanists have been involved in community-based, inner-city revitalization efforts for more than two decades. This is often overlooked in a critical literature that focuses only on New Urbanist communities in the suburbs. While it is too early to pronounce final, comprehensive judgments on these Pittsburgh projects, they illustrate an important new direction that is worthy of close study by urban planners, community development officials, scholars of urban affairs, and urban designers. Like the best-selling first edition, this report offers specific design guidance to planners, developers, and others involv...

Sorting places out ? towards a social politics of neighbourhood informatization.

Abstract: This paper examines some of the possible consequences of the introduction of online Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for the social politics of neighbourhoods and the public sphere more generally. Summarizing a number of recent theorizations of neighbourhood informatization, the article provides examples of online GIS in the UK and considers some of the possible implications of the use of such technologies for contemporary debates about citizenship in the context of processes of ‘splintering urbanism’. Arguing that social citizenship is best understood in terms of varying forms of ‘proactive’ or ‘defensive’ engagement, the paper explores the relationship between virtual decision making about neighbourhood choice and the impact of aggregated virtual decisions ‘on the ground’, before going on to consider how differentiated forms of engagement are producing new forms of social exclusion in changing urban spaces.

On The Waterfront: Globalization and Urbanization in Singapore

Abstract: Although many cities aspire to "global-city status," few have been as explicit as Singapore in its quest to create urban landscapes to project its global aspirations. This paper presents the case of the Singapore River development zone as a "hyper-symbol" of Singapore's global urbanism. By creating a world-class riverfront not unlike the acclaimed waterfronts of London, Sydney, or San Francisco, Singapore's urban planners hope to project the city as a venue worthy of world-class tourism and leisure activities, an important node in international circuits of capital, and a vibrant city for both foreign visitors and local residents. Our paper, however, also argues that local forces and influences play a significant role in the waterfront's development. The Singapore River landscape is the negotiated outcome of both globalism and localism—a dialectical landscape formed by dominant global influences on the one hand, and emerging local processes on the other. Fieldwork comprising a questionnaire survey, in-dept...

Cultural planning for urban development and creative cities

Abstract: ...the growing trend of refurbishing and re-branding cities as cultural havens a creative attempt by many local governments to revitalize economies in need of urban renewal mechanisms....Whether or not a city has a cultural heritage to draw upon, or merely a survivalist’s need to succeed, banking on the financial draws of culture – be it artistic, historic, athletic or religious has proved to be a blessing for many urban officials and planners... On the assumption that culture can be a motor of employment growth, governments are directing investment toward new cultural industries and districts, including public spaces whose cultural amenities are intended to harmonize different social interests and improve the quality of urban life

Whither Nationalist Urbanism? Public Life in Governor Sutiyoso's Jakarta

Abstract: This paper shows how Jakarta has been engaged in an unprecedented politics of memory since the collapse of Suharto's regime. It argues that the nationalist discourses of the city dressed in the ideology of 'nationalist urbanism' no longer appear to hold the influence that they once did in the face of the changing regime. This situation has given rise to a sense of 'looseness' at the centre, which in turn has encouraged both the government and the citizens to safeguard their space in the city by ways of remembering and forgetting the past as well as the present.

The Multiplex City: The Process Of Urban Change in the Historic Centre Of Naples

Abstract: This paper deals with the process of urban change that has occurred in the historic centre of Naples during the course of the last decade.The paper takes account of the role played in this process by a number of local actors: the local judiciary, new urban political elites, institutionalized civil society and urban social movements.The first two sets of actors represent what I define as ‘legitimate power’ in the city, while the remaining two groups represent ‘constituent power’. In my account of the process of regeneration in the historic centre of Naples, the former are revealed as protagonists of dynamics of urban change ‘from above’ and the latter of dynamics ‘from below’. The aim of the paper is to contribute to the formulation of a critical perspective on multiplex urbanism, by highlighting the co-existence of multiple dynamics of political mobilization in the public domain of contemporary cities. In particular, the paper tries to show how the mobilization of actors who do not have direct policy comm...

The Image of the Waterfront in Rio de Janeiro: Urbanism and Social Representation of Reality

Abstract: Postmodernity and economic globalization incite countries, regions, and cities to compete for investments, consumers, and resources. In aspiring for a new position in this global market, cities utilize new urban practices that lead them to rediscover and reinvent identities and traditions. In Rio de Janeiro, the mythical dimension of the South Zone is inseparably incorporated to its identity. In evaluating the history of the imagery linked to the beaches and the projects for the waterfront, one may observe a social construction of a reality that is marked by a continuous redesigning of symbols but also by a discontinuity in the history of urban interventions. Although tourism and marketing continually praise the waterfront as a fundamental factor in the image of the city, a continuous public management process never really existed. The city managers must understand the beaches, the waterfront, and development along the shoreline as important resources in a continuous process of social construction of a re...

Environment and the City

Abstract: For the first time at the beginning of the twenty-first century, urban dwellers outnumber rural residents and this trend is set to continue. Consequently one of the most pressing issues of our time is how to square the social and economic development of cities with their environmental limits and those of the wider environment. The theme of the environment and city is topical at every level, from the politics of global trade to local community networks. Environment and the City looks at the evolution of cities in the developed and the developing world and the implications for resource consumption and environmental impacts. It takes a cross-cutting approach with new thinking on multiple geographies – the configuration of networks, exclusion, consumption, risk and ecological footprint. Urban environmental themes and their related social, economic and political agendas are outlined. In turn the environmental impacts and environmental agendas relating to key sectors of the urban economy are discussed. The global context to such issues is then explored before the practical tools and methods of urban environmental management are investigated. The theme of the sustainable city emerges from this – not so much as a standard menu, but as a learning process between all sections of society. This book, a valuable resource, provides a concise, accessible route map for all students interested in the environmental issues emanating from our urban society. Written to aid student understanding, the easily navigable text features boxed practical examples, discussion points, signposts to reading and websites, and a glossary.

Cities between modernity and development

Abstract: The concept of modernity forms a basis for much intellectual work on the cultural politics of cities today. Yet the concept itself carries the traces of its origins in western cities, and in western urban theory. This has had profound consequences for how cities in poorer countries are conceptualised, and has had the effect of diminishing the intellectual resources for imagining the creativity and dynamism of these places. The paper explores the locatedness of the concept of modernity through the work of Walter Benjamin, and suggests how the association of the western city with modernity left cities in other places in a troubled relationship to the modern. The work of urban anthropologies in the 1950s and 1960s presented an opportunity for revitalising urban theory, and reconsidering accounts of urbanism which carried the traces of western ethnocentrism. This was undermined by the emergence of developmentalism, and the consequent division with in urban studies between western urban theory and urb...

Design First: Design-based Planning for Communities

Abstract: Introduction: Key Principles, Concepts and Methods I. History: a. Paradigms Lost: Dilemmas of the Anglo-American City in the 20th century, b. Approaches to Development Control: American and British Principles and Practice, c. Traditional Urbanism: Origins, Parallels and Developments of "New Urbanism" II. Theory: a. Sources of Good Urbanism: European and American Models, b. Public Space versus Cyberspace: Why we need "Real" Urban Space, c. Urban Design Principles: Typologies and Variations, d. Land use, Transportation and Building Form: Zoning v. Design based Ordinances, e. Managed Growth and the Market Economy: Planning Standards and Development Incentives, f. Community-based Design: Building Consensus by Working in Detail III. Practice: a. Setting Goals: Public and Private Agendas, b. Anglo-American Variations: Private Property and the Communal Good, c. The Design Workshop: Participation, Process and Product, d. The Master Plan: Site-specific Solutions, e. Implementation Strategies: Urban Design Guidelines, Economic Development Strategies and Design-based Regulations IV. Case Studies: a. The Region: CORE (Centre of the Region Enterprise) City of Raleigh, N.C., b. The City: West Raleigh, City of Raleigh, N.C., c. The Town: Mint Hill, N.C., d. The Neighbourhood: Haynie-Sirrine, Greenville, S.C., e. The Urban Block: Cornelius N.C. Town Centre V. Afterword

The study of urban form in Germany

Abstract: Urban geography in Germany is unique inasmuch as there was a period of three decades at the beginning of the twentieth century during which geographers focussed their research on urban morphology. In analysing the layout and the building fabric of towns their most important tool was the town plan. This period was followed by periods during which urban functions and urban structures were the major concerns of urban geographers. However, in the second half of the twentieth century there were again innovative contributions to the study of urban form, stimulated by the activities of architects and urban historians, the research of British geographers, such as A.E. Smailes and Berlin-born M.R.G. Conzen, the urban conservation movement, and activities of the study group Die alte Stadt.

The anxious city : English urbanism in the late twentieth century

Abstract: Dedication Foreword by Anthony Vidler Acknowledgements 1: The Anxious City 2: The Picturesque City 3: The Free City 4: The Mediterranean City 5: The City in Ruins 6: The Architecture of Civility 7: America, E14 8: The Museum, The City, and the Space of Flows 9: The Spectacle of Pleasure 10: Staging the City Bibliography

The New Urbanism Versus the Market Process

Abstract: The new urbanism argues that land-use planning should be used to create higher-density development and to promote alternatives to the use of personal automobiles for transportation. The concerns of the new urbanist movement are shown to be misplaced, and the goals of the new urbanism are shown to be in conflict with market incentives, making them difficult to implement in any event. A better policy for more efficient land use would be for governments to plan more effectively for their own infrastructure development while allowing the development of privately-owned land to be guided by market forces.

The Americanization of Australian Planning

Abstract: A broad-brush survey of American influences on the development of Australian planning thought over the past century is presented. Set within a wider appreciation of the Americanization of Australian society, and drawing on cross-cultural urbanism and the international diffusion of planning ideas, the article chronologically explores a series of Australian encounters with American planning from the city beautiful era to the new urbanism. Parallels between American and Australian stories are clearly striking, but a major theme to emerge is the adaptation of American models to new spatial and social settings and the tensions embedded within these encounters. The borrowing process was not uncritical. Many interactions ended unhappily with planning ideology restlessly moving on to new panaceas.

Modern Architecture in Post-Colonial Ghana and Nigeria

Abstract: … an architecture and form of urbanism will emerge closely connected with the set of ideas that have international validity but reflecting the conditions of climate, the habits of the people and the aspirations of the countries lying under the cloudy belt of the equatorial world. Max Fry and Jane Drew, architects, 1956 The concept of architecture, even in its widest traditional sense, is foreign to Africa. John Lloyd, architect, 1966 Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, who had been in and out of West Africa since the 1940s as planners and architects, were optimistic about the role of architecture in the tropics on the eve of independence. In the text of Tropical Architecture in the Humid Zones they championed the development in Africa of the tropical modernism they had pioneered in their own work. In sharp contrast, John Lloyd, writing from Ghana just ten years later, conveyed a sense of the discipline’s estrangement from the context.

Spatial Prescriptions and Social Realities: New Urbanism and the Production of Northwest Landing

Abstract: In this paper I analyze the popularity and proliferation of New Urbanism within the context of a post-industrial urban political economy. By looking at the production of Northwest Landing, a New Urban development, I consider the post-industrial company town as one way to understand how political and economic processes are structured into the landscape. Because it focuses solely on spatial arrangements, and therefore on those who design particular configurations of space, New Urbanism effectively ignores the broader social and economic processes that both constrain and enable particular agents. I suggest that by attending to the broad appeal of New Urbanism without losing sight of the specific context within which projects such as Northwest Landing are created, our focus shifts from simply imagining what a better way of life might look like to critically analyzing the processes that prevent or facilitate the attainment of New Urbanism's normative ideals.