Is it time to establish a Detroit School of Urban Studies? If so, what defines it? How does thinking about Detroit-like cities change the questions we ask and the answers we pursue in the many disciplines that contribute to urban studies? What do we gain by rallying a community of scholars under the Detroit School banner? What do we lose?
The following readings reflect on the Chicago School, the L.A. School, and the contested place of geographically-focused schools of thought within urban studies:
Beauregard, R. A. (2003). City of superlatives. City & Community, 2(3), 183–199.
Davis, M. (2006). City of quartz: Excavating the future in Los Angeles. New York: Verso.
Dear, M. (2003). The Los Angeles School of Urbanism: An intellectual history. Urban Geography, 24(6), 493–509.
Dear, M., Burridge, A., Marolt, P., Peters, J., & Seymour, M. (2008). Critical responses to the Los Angeles School of Urbanism. Urban Geography, 29(2), 101–112.
Dear, M., & Flusty, S. (1998). Postmodern urbanism. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 88(1), 50–72.
Dear, M. J., & Dishman, J. D. (2002). From Chicago to L.A.: Making sense of urban theory. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage Publications.
Gilmore, S. (1988). Schools of activity and innovation. Sociological Quarterly, 29(2), 203–219.
Halle, D. (Ed.). (2003). New York and Los Angeles: Politics, society, and culture - A comparative view. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.
Hoyt, H. (1933). One hundred years of land values in Chicago. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Judd, D. R., & Simpson, D. (Eds.). (2011). The city, revisited: Urban theory from Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Park, R. E., Burgess, E. W., & McKenzie, R. D. (Eds.). (1925). The city: Suggestions for the investigation of human behavior in the urban environment. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Scott, A. J., & Soja, E. W. (Eds.). (1998). The city: Los Angeles and urban theory at the end of the twentieth century. University of California Press.
Soja, E. W. (1989). Postmodern geographies: The reassertion of space in critical social theory. New York: Verso.