habitus: a sense of place (second edition) – by jean hillier and emma rooksby

BOOK REVIEWS

Jean Hillier and Emma Rooksby 2005: Habitus: A Sense of Place (second edition). Aldershotand Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company.

Habitus: A Sense of Place is a record of the Habitus conference, held in Perth in 2000.This second edition includes a new introduction as well as updated material located inpostscripts at the end of some chapters and in the conclusions. Since its publication in2002, Pierre Bourdieu himself, who inspired the debate at the original conference, andPaul Hirst have both passed away. The introduction to the second edition is a tribute towhat Hillier and Rooksby describe as ‘committed scholarship’ from both intellectuals,and to a great extent this statement is present throughout the book.

The book is divided into five parts. The introduction also includes a contribution byBourdieu on habitus, in which he addresses questions related to the ways in whichhabitus is able to adapt to this ‘fast-changing world’ and whether it is possible to usehabitus ‘efficiently in spatial analysis’ (p. 43). Bourdieu asserts that the notion of habitusis based on a dispositional philosophy of action which is opposed to that of rationalagents. While this dispositional aspect of habitus is contrary to understanding humanaction as mere rational calculation, it does not imply that habitus is not able to change:dispositions are long-lasting, but they are not eternal. Bourdieu is emphatic in stressingthat ‘the vicious cycle of structure producing habitus which reproduced structure adinfinitum is a product of commentators’ (p. 45).

The body of the book is organized in three chapters that broadly respond to questionssuch as whether habitus exists at a macro-level; if habitus can help explain processes ofplace making in fields relating to the built environment; and how ‘durable’ habitus is (p.4). The first section, entitled ‘Politics of Space and Place’, brings together contributionsfrom Ernesto Laclau (democracy, hegemony and power), Paul Hirst (territorial politics),Grahame F. Thompson (international governance), Chantal Mouffe (democratichabitus), Barry Hindess (metropolitan liberalism and government), and Joe Painter(governmentality and regional development strategies). Of all these six well-knowntheorists, only Mouffe roughly relates her views on consensus to democratic habitus, andonly Painter directly reflects on the idea of a regional habitus in the postscript.

The second section, ‘Processes of Place Making’, is a discerning look at possible waysin which habitus relates to place making in the built environment, and probably bestprovides a flavour of the idea of sense of place. The chapters cover ‘the rules of the game’in planning decision-making (Jean Hillier), identity formation in a changing governancelandscape (Patsy Healey), fear and sense of place (Leonie Sandercock), haunted spacesand sense of place (Steve Pile), crime and design in policy making (Ted Kitchen andRichard H. Schneider), architecture and symbolic violence (Kim Dovey), and belongingand identification with space (Neil Leach).

The third section, ‘Decolonising Spatial Habitus’, tackles the question of whetherhabitus is able to change. It covers issues of migration in transnational cities (JohnFriedmann), the transformation of habitus in native cultures (Roxana Waterson), the roleof Australian aboriginal women in recognition claims (Fay Gale), and naming, belongingand decolonization of places (Val Plumwood).

This summary should have given a flavour of the range of papers presented in Habitusand also of the limitations of ordering them around the three chapters of the body of thebook. In some ways the title of the book is misleading because a good number of the

Views expressed in this section are independent and do not represent the opinion of the editors.

Volume 31.2 June 2007 495–503 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

© 2007 The Authors. Journal Compilation © 2007 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published by BlackwellPublishing. 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA

contributions are not primarily concerned with reflecting on the concept of habitus andsense of place, particularly those in the first section. On the contrary, most papers in thesecond and especially the third part are remarkable examples of empirical research andbring Bourdieu’s framework to areas not envisaged in his theory.

Among the strengths of this second edition are the fact that it conveys a more accurateaccount of what is pivotal in Bourdieu’s work, both in the introduction and conclusions,and the fact it has to do with the ways in which habitus is able to change or adapt to newcircumstances. The conclusion is unyielding: habitus is a generative and not adetermining structure. Hillier and Rooksby argue that ‘the treatment of habitus asmultiple, interacting and evolving suggests a development of Bourdieuian theory thatleaves substantial scope for individual agency, in the sense that individuals are notimmersed inextricably in any single habitus, but can move from one to another, and candevelop new adaptive behaviours within a habitus’ (p.14). Moreover, the review of recentwork, and particularly of works focused on mobility between fields, offers a discerningpath into debates about the transformation of habitus as ‘becoming increasinglycommonplace’. Thus, as habitus is embodied history, so the mismatch between habitusand new fields (or changes in the conditions of existence such as liberalization ofmarkets, laicization, democratization of public institutions, etc.), could imply that someof them may appear ill-adapted because they are attuned to an earlier stage. For example,certain habituses may seem more attuned to neoliberal modernity, while others mightseem outdated.

Having said this, this reviewer was puzzled by Hillier and Rooksby’s firmness inaddressing the question as to whether habitus exists at a macro-level. This is not to saythat these are not relevant issues, but the chapters that supposedly deal with these mattersonly vaguely incorporate the concept and, when they do, they do it in a vacuum,somehow outside of Bourdieu’s sociology, i.e. with no references to fields or capitals.Those people who are well versed in Bourdieu’s oeuvre will definitely be able toestablish the rationale behind bringing together these papers on political theory under theumbrella of habitus and international and national politics, but this is not obvious forbeginners.

In conclusion, while I still have some concerns about the first section, there is muchto recommend this book to postgraduates in social and political theory, geography andarchitecture, and anyone in urban planning and urban sociology who wants an insightfulreview of research done using Bourdieu’s framework in a less deterministic way, moreoriented toward emphasizing the ways in which habitus is able to change, adapt or to dealwith the unease or malaise of being ill-adapted to new fields. It is categorically worthreading and engaging with.

María-Luisa Méndez, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile

Peter G. Hall and Kathy Pain (eds.) 2006: The Polycentric Metropolis: Learning fromMega-city Regions in Europe. London: Earthscan Publications

Research framework grants supplied by the European Commission have become a majorsource of transnational research activity across Europe. Many such reports never achievepublic attention and may be buried in the archives, after having served cross-Europeancollaboration. The results of the EU-funded POLYNET research project will definitelymeet a different fate, which is due both to substantial research findings and the colourfulshape in which they appear. The book, edited by Peter G. Hall from UCL/The BartlettSchool of Planning in London and Kathy Pain from the Globalisation and World CitiesGroup (GaWC) at Loughborough University, presents empirical findings on polycentricregions in Europe, namely South East England (including London), the Randstad theNetherlands), Central Belgium, Rhine-Ruhr and Rhine-Main in Germany, the EuropeanMetropolitan Region (EMR) in Northern Switzerland, the Paris Region, and Greater

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International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31.2© 2007 The Authors. Journal Compilation © 2007 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Dublin, Ireland. The subject of inquiry is the global city-region: an extension of theglobal city that constitutes a new spatial formation which is considered a blueprint fordevelopment in other parts of the world. POLYNET research was based on differentstreams and concepts of contemporary urban studies, such as the world-city hierarchyand network, the global city region, and the ‘space of flows’ in the context of ManuelCastell’s network society. Historically, it ties up to concepts like Gottman’s Megalopolisand, basically, the logic of (poly-)centrality per se.

The main hypothesis of POLNYET was that advanced producer services createlinkages between cities far beyond the global city network, and thus help the globalcity-region to emerge. A second hypothesis emphasized knowledge-intensive businessoperations and flows that are associated with a polycentric pattern of urban developmentin each of the regions studied. In this respect, the book focuses both on patterns andprocesses. Methodologically, POLYNET built on the widely known GaWC techniquesof monitoring flows and assessing places in relation to them, yet it expandedthis perspective towards the intra-urban level. The database comprises most recentcollections of traffic, commuter and telecommunications flow data, which have beenintegrated with primary research on business service operations and cross-borderfinancial flows, with much emphasis on the actual flows of information. In addition,several hundred expert interviews have been conducted in the eight regions, in order tograsp those portions of knowledge that cannot be generated statistically, yet requirecareful personal investigation.

The findings of POLYNET are presented in five major sections. Part 1 is relativelyshort and is concerned with the basic premise, conceptualization and rationale for thestudy of the polycentric metropolis. Part 2 includes four chapters (varying in length) onthe quantitative analysis of the eight regions; besides an overview, it gives evidence oncorporate structures and networks, connectivity and the flow of information. Part 3 isdevoted to actors, networks and regions, particularly with respect to the internal structureof regions, the significance of linkages and the relations between people and place, thespaces of flows and those of places. The voluminous Part 4 consists of eight chapterswhere each region is presented with regard to regional identities and policies. Part 5includes the final chapter with the editors’ suggestions on efficient policy responses inand for ‘Europolis’ (consisting of the pentagon between London, Hamburg, Munich,Milan and Paris and hosting about 72m people). The text is supported by more than 100figures, graphs and maps on data and flows.

There is no space here to deal satisfactorily with the breadth and depth of the book’scontent. Leaving aside globalization, technological change and the inherent dynamicsthe regions are exposed to, the interviews particularly reveal an astonishing degree ofstability, e.g. in terms of urban hierarchy, the strong role of the first cities in each region,or the significance of both agglomeration and connectivity for urban-regionaldevelopment.

All in all, this will be the definitive collection on the European polycentric city regionfor a considerable time to come, particularly if the mainly empirical focus of POLYNETis complemented by the large body of conceptual and theoretical literature that has beenpublished earlier on this subject. The book comes in an excellent format, is both atlas andsourcebook, and goes far beyond the pure compilation of case studies. Although itemanated from the work of a large multinational research group — which, as isempirically evident, can always bear erratic dynamics or individuals, it unfolds a highdegree of coherence.

A few issues may remain as open questions. One deals with the options and limitationsof comparison, regarding the case of variation and local specifics. The sample of eightincludes the two first-tier world cities London and Paris and also much smaller regionssuch as Dublin, Northern Switzerland, and Rhein-Main, with highly different nationalcontexts. How does this variation fit together? More important, and as the authors openlyadmit, it is almost impossible to measure the extent of connectivity by primarily mappingbusiness-related travel and communications. It also remains unclear how and where

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morphological and functional polycentricity come together (and where not), which iscertainly one of the major questions for future research. My second point applies toterminology: It may be a personal thing that I have reservations against the ‘mega’ label.It is often misused to describe secular (mega-) trends as if they were god-given. However,the mega-city is currently associated with rapid urbanization particularly in East Asia,bringing about cities or regions that are extremely specific, not only in terms of size andnumbers, but also as regards growth rates, speed of development, levels of social ortemporal inequality, etc. I suggest Dublin or Rhine-Main are definitely somethingdifferent. Is there a more appropriate term for European-style city regions? The bookuses polycentric metropolis, mega-city region (sometimes also polycentric mega-cityregion), europolis and polyopolis. Perhaps less could be more in this particular case.However, this is only a minor point, given the substantial and original contribution thisbook makes to understanding a new urban era.

Markus Hesse, Freie Universität, Berlin

Jamal R. Nassar 2005: Globalization and Terrorism. The Migration of Dreams andNightmares. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Every now and then one comes across a book that is a refutation of itself. Jamal Nassar’sGlobalization and Terrorism. The Migration of Dreams and Nightmares is such a book.Taking issue with culturalist explanations of terrorism that reduce complex cultures andage-old religions to ideologies of violence, Nassar draws on relative deprivation theoryto argue that today’s terrorism is a by-product of the structural inequalities caused byglobalization. The distribution of ideas and images, he argues, gives people across theworld new dreams about their future, dreams about an easy, modern, comfortable life ina consumer’s paradise. Through the media, Nassar postulates, ‘the wealthy and advancedcountries are, in essence, encroaching on the dreams of the poor’ (p. 14). But few peoplemanage to make their dreams come true. When they find that their new ambitions cannotbe fulfilled, their life seems miserable to them, and some become so desperate as to reactwith violence and terror, thus turning their dreams into the nightmares of others. Havingoutlined his basic idea on the root cause of present-day terrorism, one would expect theauthor to present his evidence as to how poverty, global inequality and blocked ambitionshave been the main motivations behind, say, ‘9/11’, the attacks on public transport inMadrid and London, or the bombing of a nightclub in Bali. But nothing of the sorthappens. Instead, Nassar offers chapters on the conflict in Israel/Palestine, on NorthernIreland and Al Qaeda, which, if anything, show that terrorism is rooted in highlypolarized and escalated political conflicts on issues like territory, national sovereignty,and religious identity politics rather than in economic inequality. These case studiesimplicitly confirm the weaknesses of the relative deprivation theory and, to some extenttherefore, save the book from materialist reductionism. At the same time, however, littleremains of the ambition to analyze the relationship between globalization and terrorism.In the discussion on the Middle East and Northern Ireland cases, one gets the impressionthat globalization is simply another word for the American foreign policy regarding thesetwo issues. We hear little about the migration of dreams and even less about globaleconomic inequality.

Nassar’s little book — just over a hundred pages — is clearly written as an easy-to-read introduction to violence committed in the name of Islam for an American public fedon stereotypes about hotheaded Arabs and fanatical Muslims. Other books with a similarpurpose have been published like Jessica Stern’s Terror in the Name of God and MarkJuergensmeyer’s Terror in the Mind of God, and they all follow a comparative approachto remind their readers that non-Muslims are also capable of brutal violence. Nassar hassome interesting points to add. His contention that terrorism, despite the often noticedefforts to dehumanize the enemy, also leads to a better mutual awareness between the two

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parties involved is novel. Since September 11 many Americans have begun to learn moreabout Islam, the Middle East and Afghanistan, even though stereotypes and thesuspension of any inquiry into the causes behind terrorism continue to dominate thepublic debate. Nassar also notes that in terms of fatal casualties, state violence is a muchmore serious problem than the violence we call terrorism. Although he sometimesstresses that point a little too far, for instance when he discusses the Russian atrocities inChechnya without even mentioning Beslan, the fact that states can be far more deadlythat any militant group can ever dream of becoming is a point worth making. In thatrespect the book may serve its purpose. But for someone interested in a moresophisticated analysis of globalization as a factor in today’s terrorism, the book is adisappointment. The discussion on terrorism remains shallow. When it comes to thepolitics of naming, for instance, Nassar hardly has more to say than the worn-out dictumthat one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. The observation that terrorismis a weapon of the weak in modern-day warfare does not prevent Nassar from theanachronism of labelling the Vikings’ invasions in medieval Ireland ‘terrorist raids’.Similarly, his discussion on globalization is at best a brief overview of the variouspositions within the existing literature. And although Nassar warns us not to simplytranslate globalization as ‘westernization’ and criticizes the United States government fordictating its policies elsewhere in the world, he ultimately sees the global world order asone led by the US. Comparing the world to a ship on the high seas, he warns us that, ‘Wein the United States of America do not live in first-class cabins. We live in the captain’scabin’ (p. 19). Being in that position, Nassar says, Americans had better be well-informed about what is happening on the lower decks. I am doubtful whether this bookwill provide a proper manual on how to handle the vessel.

Oskar Verkaaik, University of Amsterdam

Tijen Uguris 2004: Space, Power and Participation: Ethnic and Gender Divisions in Tenants’Participation in Public Housing. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited.

Providing public housing that is economically efficient while adequately and equitablyserving the needs of tenants remains a difficult task for government and policy makers.Space, Power and Participation addresses the use of tenant participation in the provisionof public housing in Britain, examining how interactions between individuals,collectivities and the welfare state may create unequal power relations based on ethnicity,gender and class, as well as evaluating the success of this approach to furtherdemocratize the housing process. The book critically examines who is involved in theparticipation process and how this can be both empowering and disempowering alongethnic, gender and class lines.

The book is divided into three sections. The first examines concepts such ascommunity, citizenship and participation, explaining the way in which they have beenused in the development and planning of estate housing. These notions are theorized inrelation to how they reflect and contribute to social and spatial relations and experiencesof place. It also outlines the way in which the decentralized and neoliberal governancestrategies implemented by Thatcher’s Conservative government have led to changes inBritain’s housing needs, and how this resulted in the increased use of tenantparticipation in the provision and planning of public housing. The second sectionprovides a series of detailed case studies examining three forms of participation in thehousing process: tenant associations in council-managed estates; tenant managementcooperatives; and self-build projects. The case study sites are located throughout twoboroughs of London — Islington and Lewisham. The author’s findings are based onnumerous qualitative in-depth interviews and questionnaires, which provide rich anddetailed accounts of the perspectives and experiences of tenants, as well as professionalsand managers involved in various levels of the decision-making process. Interviewees

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represented a diverse mixture of ethnic, gender and class groups, in attempts to givevoice to the heterogeneous composition of tenants. The final section of the book reflectsupon these findings, evaluates their effectiveness and indicates their importance in futurehousing policy.

Uguris questions the effectiveness of decentralization and popular participation inincreasing the democratization of the housing process. The use of tenant associations(TAs) in council-led housing appeared to be the least effective method of meetingtenants’ needs, since these groups lack voting power. Similarly, input into large-scaledecision-making processes was limited, especially with respect to budget allocation.Tenant Management Co-operative (TMC) members claimed a greater sense ofempowerment, attributed primarily to greater control over both their budget and availableresources. Self-build project tenants reported active roles in much of the decision-makingprocess, including the ability to customize home designs to meet their individual needs.However, this power is restricted by limited budgets, reliance on professionals involvedin the project, and responsibility for incurring any costs through overspending orunforeseen complications during the building process. While distinctly differentapproaches, all three exhibit a common thread. Tenants experiences, regardless ofwhether they lived in a council-led estate, co-op or self-build, varied significantlydepending on social position. Ethnicity, gender and class differences create boundaries,which empower certain individuals, while marginalizing some by constructing them as‘the other’. This is significant, since it these distinctions that directly shape ability toparticipate and access to resources.

The relationship between physical and social space reveals the multidimensionalnature of power and powerlessness, leading to the inclusion of some groups and theexclusion of others. It is important to emphasize that tenants are not a unified group, andmust not be essentialized as individuals who share common goals and interests. Ugurisargues that tenant participation provides the opportunity to be empowering anddeconstruct the barriers — for example, the divisions between public/private, ‘us’/‘them’, male/female — contributing to inclusion and exclusion. However, a significantnumber of major decisions continue to be made by bureaucracy at the central level,ultimately limiting local power. This needs to be recognized by local authorities,acknowledging the diversity of tenant experience, and formulating policy in such a waythat reflects a dynamic, rather than fixed, understanding of community, culture andidentity.

Overall, this piece of research makes a significant contribution towards a betterunderstanding of the complex nature of housing processes and importance of socialdivisions in the inclusion and exclusion of tenants, both from a theoretical and apractical, policy-based perspective. Further development of the role that age, or stage, oflife plays in shaping spatial relations and individual experience would be helpful. Whileethnicity, gender and class are the primary social divisions examined throughout thestudy, age is introduced. For example, youth played a role in territorializing space andshaping group identities that exclude certain minorities in Islington’s council-managedMiranda Estate. This is an interesting point, and there exists an opportunity for furtherresearch on the age distinction and how this contributes to power relations and identitiesthat shape the democratization of the housing process.

Paul Grisé and Jason Hackworth, University of Toronto

Omar M. McRoberts 2003: Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black UrbanNeighborhood. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Streets of Glory by Omar McRoberts is an ethnographic study of the religious institutionslocated in Four Corners, a half square mile ‘subneighborhood’ of Boston’s regionaldistricts of Dorchester and Roxbury. Predominantly African American, and economically

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impoverished, the area is well known for the rich and distinctive bounty of mainlystorefront churches amassed within its limited boundaries.

At the time of his study, there were 29 such institutions, excluding the ‘religiousgatherings that occur in living rooms and spaces rented on a nightly basis’ (p. 6). All butfive were in former retail facilities.

According to McRoberts, the term ‘storefront church’ refers to an ecclesiastical bodythat occupies a commercial space; but he finds the definition overbroad (p. 13) andprefers, instead, ‘particularistic’ or ‘niche’ church. These descriptors better reflect thecollective effort and intent to meet the wide-ranging, yet specific, religious interests,tastes and social needs of a defined group.

The concentration of ‘particularistic’ churches in the same location leads to thegradual appearance of what McRoberts calls ‘religious districts’, a process contrivedprimarily by powerful political and economic ‘wizards’ who work ‘behind the scenes inthe urban Oz’ (pp. 10–11) rather than through church initiatives. Four Corners is a casein point.

In addition to providing an insightful and well-documented overview of thetheological ideas and many of the socio-religious activities characterizing Four Cornerschurches, McRoberts recounts the historical markers that began to signal a changingcommunity and, thus, a changing religious landscape. Before the 1960s, the area was abustling commercial and residential district comprised mainly of whites and Jews (p. 44).But blockbusting, redlining, gentrification and uneven distribution of municipalresources eventually undermined stability: ‘The subsequent downward spiral ofeconomic disinvestment, which produced a glut of cheap vacant commercial storefronts,made this a prime area for the emergence of a new religious district’ (p. 13).

Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are devoted to identifying the ‘great bundle of traits’that makes eachchurch’s spiritual and social offerings cliquishly unique. Surprisingly, denominationalaffiliation is given little weight, although 18 of the 29 religious institutions studiedrepresent Holiness-Pentecostal-Apostolic traditions. Almost half of the congregationsMcRoberts observed were immigrants (six Caribbean, five Latino and three Haitian).Thus, his discussion provides a glimpse of the activities and religious views of anever-increasing, but often marginalized, group of occupants of urban storefront churches.

McRoberts focuses on ‘three unexplored, yet critical ways’ Four Corner’s churchesare ‘meaningfully different’ (p. 59), especially in their interpretation and application ofcertain religious ideas (p. 14). The first dimensional trait the author considers (Chapter4) is how these churches use the popular ‘in the world, but not of it’ biblical motif whichthey richly infuse with certain exilic sentiments in order to appeal to the dislocatedsouthern migrant to the North or immigrant from a foreign land.

In Chapter 5, the author discusses a second dimension: how the churches relate to theirimmediate urban environment (‘the streets’). He discovered that Four Corners churches‘conceive of the street in three ways: as an evil other to be avoided at all cost; as arecruitment ground to be trod and sacralized; and as a point of contact with persons atrisk who are to be served’ (p. 82). Significantly, 13 churches ‘drew a thick line betweenthemselves and the street and avoided all superfluous contact with the latter’ (p. 83); fourothers saw ‘the street’ as a recruitment ground for proselytization (p. 86); and only asmall handful saw the immediate neighborhood as a point of contact for serving those atrisk.

Coterminous with this point is what McRoberts calls ‘church-based activism’(Chapter 6), the third and final dimension. ‘Activism’ is stretched to include an arrayof activities and preachments aimed at personal (‘spiritual’) transformation, socialtransformation and even socialization activities (p. 101). Predictably, most of thechurches did not have specific programs and services aimed at the many social illsafflicting the wider community (e.g., violence, drug addiction, poverty). Thisshortcoming is symptomatic of a larger relational problem between these institutions andtheir hosting community, and McRoberts sympathetically tackles this issue in latersections.

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In the final chapters, McRoberts brings to the fore a point he reiterated throughout thebook, namely, that niche churches, for the most part, are alienated from the neighborhoodin which they reside. For instance, the majority of Four Corners churches ‘lackedawareness of the neighborhood as such’ (p. 82); they were not ‘attached to theneighborhood by membership or mission’ (p. 123); nor did they serve as ‘social spaceswhere neighborhood cohesion’ could be fostered (p. 128).

Although many of the churches apparently live with the ‘perpetual threat of beinginvoluntarily “bounced” out of the neighborhood’ (e.g. due to excessive rent), a factorwhich may undermine any commitment they might otherwise have ‘to a particularneighborhood’ (pp. 56–7), this estrangement appears to be much more substantial thangreedy landlords alone. For example, McRoberts notes that the neighborhood residentsthemselves perceive the presence of these institutions to be a nuisance, at best, and atworst, a hindrance to the revitalization of the entire area (pp. 57–6).

Streets of Glory introduces a provocative model that bears further study, especially asapplied to other urban areas victimized by economic plight and playing host to similarlydiverse ‘religious districts’. Critics may point out that the ‘niche church’ — with itscustomized (“designer brand”) services — is no less popular in flourishing suburbia thancapital-deprived cities. That aside, however, the reader is challenged to re-examine thecherished shibboleth that churches of every stripe benefit the urban poor. In FourCorners, apparently, McRoberts found some exceptions.

Valeria G. Harvell, Abington College, Penn State University

Robert A. Beauregard 2006: When America Became Suburban. University of MinnesotaPress: Minneapolis.

In 1960, the population of metropolitan US was evenly split between cities and suburbs.Previously the cities had dominated. Thereafter the suburbs continued to grow. By 2000two out of every three people in metropolitan regions lived in the suburbs.

This shift is the main context for Robert Beauregard’s latest book. He identifies whathe calls the ‘short American century’, roughly from 1945 to the mid-1970s when theemergence of suburban society and global power went hand in hand. He tries to show thenexus of connections between the decline of industrials cities, suburban growth,domestic prosperity and global dominance. A large body of empirical evidence ismarshaled and Kondratieff cycles are invoked. He argues for a distinction betweendistributive and parasitic urbanization. The former, which spread urban growththroughout the country, was replaced after 1945 with the latter, which has a differentialimpact on cities and suburbs and between rustbelt and sunbelt city regions. The termparasitic was invoked years ago to describe and criticize mass urbanization in thedeveloping world. It has been jettisoned because of its implied value judgments and lackof precision, the same could be said for its usage in this book.

In one chapter Beauregard looks at the role of culture and institutions. He drawsattention to the US ambivalence towards cities, the small regulatory role of governmentsand investor preferences. When tackling the issue of global dominance the author hintsat some of the links between domestic and foreign policies. The arguments for the riseof the interstate highway system and its connections with national security are repeated.

The suburban bias has led, argues Beauregard, to the loss of urbanity. The bourgeoisurbanity that brought vitality to cities is replaced by a civic disengagement. RobertPutnam’s arguments about the unraveling of civic ties are used, a little too uncritically Ifelt.

The author hints at the connections between general economic and political trendswith the mass suburbanization of single-family dwellings and auto dependency.However, the precise causal connections are more suggested than demonstrated. Theauthor keeps putting them together in the same sentence but rarely reveals the

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mechanisms. To be fair, the task is an ambitious one and the author is to be congratulatedfor trying to weave a familiar story, the rise of suburban US, into broader and deeperdiscourses. He covers a range of literature and raises numerous points for discussion andreflection. He is at his best when looking at some of the cultural and political effectsand causes of suburbanization. There clearly are connections between broad economicand political projects and the formation of a suburban society. Baran and Sweezyprovided compelling arguments as early as the mid-1960s. But this book is not so mucha tight argument as a suggestive retelling of familiar ideas.

The author raises the issue of American exceptionalism. Just as a matter of historicrecord, Australia had mass owner occupation at the beginning of the twentieth century.Much of it was and still is low-density suburban sprawl. It was the result of a largedemand for labor in association with a limited supply, which led to strong labor unions,able to leverage living wages and a high standard of living. In other words this form ofearly mass suburbanization was the result of labor’s strength not the power of capital ora project of global dominance. The same built forms can result from very differenteconomic and political processes.

John Rennie Short, Department of Public Policy, University of Maryland.

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habitus: a sense of place (second edition) – by jean hillier and emma rooksby

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