This book has a central purpose: to begin to restore balance to our
perspective on cities and urbanization by emphasizing their cultural
context. A full treatment of what we mean by this is given in the
Introduction, and in varying ways the individual authors also articulate
their understanding of the notion. We ourselves understand culture to
embody not only elements that reflect continuity, but those that arise
from change as well, and we have therefore wanted to emphasize the
continuous interaction that goes on between the making of cities and the
making of culture.
The Introduction has other purposes. One is to review the literature of
urban studies critically. Our survey of the literature is organized around
the principal objects of analysis in urban studies, disciplinary orientations
to them, and collective and particular failures to recognize the relevance of
cultural context. Another goal is to elaborate the problems that face any
study using cultural context in an explanatory fashion. The last section of
the Introduction tells how and why the papers have been organized as they
have been in this book. The contents of the papers are summarized to
provide an overview of the collection at a glance.