Second Edition: Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-first Century

Posted by on November 5, 2004

[posted from Comm-Org listserv]

From: [email protected]

Friends and Colleagues:

A second edition of our book, Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-first Century, will be published in December by the University Press of Kansas. It will be available for courses that begin in January. Faculty in many disciplines (political science, sociology, economics, history, urban planning, geography, social work, and others) — as well as many policymakers and political activists — found the first edition (published in 2001) useful. We benefited from their comments and have incorporated many suggestions in the new edition. You can get more information, including ordering information, about the book at the following website: http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/drepla.html. It will also be available on Amazon.Com.

Place Matters received very positive reviews in academic journals (including Contemporary Sociology, City and Community, Urban Affairs Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Politics, Economic Geography, and the Journal of the American Planning Association) as well as American Prospect, Neal Peirce’s syndicated column, and many other more general publications. It was also an honor to receive the Michael Harrington Award from the American Political Science Assn. for the “outstanding book that demonstrates how scholarship can be used in the struggle for a better world.”

For the second edition, we have kept the same themes and chapter structure, but have updated the facts and examples and incorporated a great deal of new research on cities, regions, poverty, inequality, sprawl, urban politics, and urban movements done over the past four years. We have added a section about the impact of the Bush Administration’s policies on cities and metro areas, including a discussion of 9/11 and its consequences. We have also updated the policy agenda and the political analysis that suggests how the U.S. can forge a political majority to address the urban crisis. In addition, we have added a section in which we respond to critics — friendly and otherwise — of the first edition.

Todd, John and I enjoyed collaborating on the book. Working together on the second edition was stimulating because there’s been so much interesting research, policy discussion, and political activity around the issues we raise in the book. We’d appreciate getting any comments or questions you have about the book. Thanks.

Peter Dreier