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We live in a self-proclaimed Urban Age, where we celebrate the city as the source of economic prosperity, a nurturer of social and cultural diversity, and a place primed for democracy. We proclaim the city as the fertile ground from which progress will arise. Without cities, we tell ourselves, human civilization would falter and decay. In Cities in the Urban Age, Robert A. Beauregard argues that this line of thinking is not only hyperbolic—it is too celebratory by half.

For Beauregard, the city is a cauldron for four haunting contradictions. First, cities are equally defined by both their wealth and their poverty. Second, cities are simultaneously environmentally destructive and yet promise sustainability. Third, cities encourage rule by political machines and oligarchies, even as they are essentially democratic and at least nominally open to all. And fourth, city life promotes tolerance among disparate groups, even as the friction among them often erupts into violence. Beauregard offers no simple solutions or proposed remedies for these contradictions; indeed, he doesn’t necessarily hold that they need to be resolved, since they are generative of city life. Without these four tensions, cities wouldn’t be cities. Rather, Beauregard argues that only by recognizing these ambiguities and contradictions can we even begin to understand our moral obligations, as well as the clearest paths toward equality, justice, and peace in urban settings.

City and regional planners talk constantly about the things of the world—from highway interchanges and retention ponds to zoning documents and conference rooms—yet most seem to have a poor understanding of the materiality of the world in which they’re immersed. Too often planners treat built forms, weather patterns, plants, animals, or regulatory technologies as passively awaiting commands rather than actively involved in the workings of cities and regions.

In the ambitious and provocative Planning Matter, Robert A. Beauregard sets out to offer a new materialist perspective on planning practice that reveals the many ways in which the nonhuman things of the world mediate what planners say and do. Drawing on actor-network theory and science and technology studies, Beauregard lays out a framework that acknowledges the inevitable insufficiency of our representations of reality while also engaging more holistically with the world in all of its diversity—including human and nonhuman actors alike.

The contributors to The City, Revisited trace an intellectual history that begins in 1925 with the publication of the influential classic The City, engaging in a spirited debate about whether the major theories of twentieth-century urban development are relevant for studying the twenty-first-century metropolis.

Contributors: Janet Abu-Lughod, Northwestern U and New School for Social Research; Robert Beauregard, Columbia U; Larry Bennett, DePaul U; Andrew A. Beveridge, Queens College and CUNY; Amy Bridges, U of California, San Diego; Terry Nichols Clark, U of Chicago; Nicholas Dahmann, U of Southern California; Michael Dear, U of California, Berkeley; Steven P. Erie, U of California, San Diego; Frank Gaffikin, Queen's U of Belfast; David Halle, U of California, Los Angeles; Tom Kelly, U of Illinois at Chicago; Ratoola Kunda, U of Illinois at Chicago; Scott A. MacKenzie, U of California, Davis; John Mollenkopf, CUNY; David C. Perry, U of Illinois at Chicago; Francisco Sabatini, Ponticia Universidad Catolica de Chile; Rodrigo Salcedo, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Santiago; Dick Simpson, U of Illinois at Chicago; Daphne Spain, U of Virginia; Costas Spirou, National-Louis U in Chicago.

In the decades after World War II, the United States became the most prosperous nation in the world and a superpower whose dominance was symbolized by the American suburbs. Spurred by the decline of its industrial cities and by mass suburbanization, people imagined a new national identity—one that emphasized consumerism, social mobility, and a suburban lifestyle. The urbanity of the city was lost. In When America Became Suburban, Robert A. Beauregard examines this historic intersection of urban decline, mass suburbanization, domestic prosperity, and U.S. global aspirations as it unfolded from 1945 to the mid-1970s. Suburban expansion and the subsequent emergence of sprawling Sunbelt cities transformed every aspect of American society. Assessing the global implications of America’s suburban way of life as evidence of the superiority of capitalist democracy, Beauregard traces how the suburban ideology enabled America to distinguish itself from both the Communist bloc and Western Europe, thereby deepening its claim of exceptionalism on the world-historical stage.Placing the decline of America’s industrial cities and the rise of vast suburban housing and retail spaces into a cultural, political, and global context, Beauregard illuminates how these phenomena contributed to a changing notion of America’s identity at home and abroad. When America Became Suburban brings to light the profound implications of de-urbanization: from the siphoning of investments from the cities and the effect on the quality of life for those left behind to a profound shift in national identity.Robert A. Beauregard is a professor in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University. He is the author of Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities and editor of Economic Restructuring and Political Response and Atop the Urban Hierarchy.