Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

One of sociology's original and most fundamental questions is: how does the city shape social life? The answer provided by urban political economy is: as a mechanism in the accumulation of wealth, with all the power and inequality that results. “Political economy” generally refers to the scholarly paradigm that examines how material processes of production and exchange shape and are shaped by decisions made in economic and political institutions; with “urban,” this concern centers around material production of and within cities. Since the 1970s, urban political economy has influenced the field of urban sociology, bringing insights from other disciplines – particularly social geography (with its conceptualization of social space and place) and political science (the focus on government and law) – while retaining sociology's social constructionist framework. Sociology provides an especially hospitable discipline for urban political economy's investigation of the ways in which the city's economic and political relations cohere and evolve across institutional, legal, and territorial domains. Urban political economy emerged as a critique of the urban ecology paradigm, particularly the latter's explanation for the growth and structure of cities and regions. By emphasizing the spatial competition for resources by individuals, groups, and institutions, urban ecology has viewed political ... log in or subscribe to read full text