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Externalities, the market, power structure and the urban agenda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Extract

Urban history stands at a point of unprecedented opportunity. This paper is designed to outline the nature of that opportunity and to initiate a discussion on the manner in which urban historians can make important intellectual and cultural contributions to current debates. To understand this situation it is necessary to examine the origins of the urban history which dominated the 1960s and 1970s, and then to show how the political and cultural context of the 1970s and 1980s provided first challenge and then opportunity to those who believe that the study of towns and cities, of urbanism as such is a worthwhile activity.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

Notes

1 This paper originated from a paper given to a joint meeting of the Historical Geography Research Group and the Urban History Group in University College London, in September 1989. It is offered here as a discussion paper not as a fully documented survey of the work of the past 30 years. My thanks to all who took part in the discussion at that meeting and to David Reeder for inviting me to present the paper.

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