Focusing on a series of pivotal issues confronting Canadian cities and city-dwellers today, this volume address key themes in urban studies:the interaction between social relations and urban landscape, the status of the city in the new world economy, and the sociocultural complexity of urban populations. The fifteen essays presented here reflect the current preoccupations and perspectives of critically oriented urban researchers in Canada. The essays in Part 1, 'People, Places, Cultures,' examine the nature of urban space and the links between this space and social relations, illustrating the fundamental principle that urban spaces are 'built values' and 'built politics' - physical expressions of social process. Part 2, 'The Economy of Cities,' explores recent fundamental shifts in the economic character of Canadian cities, whose effect on the social and physical landscapes has been as dramatic as the explosive onset of industrialism was in the last century. Part 3, 'Urban Social Movements,' focuses on the practices of social movements, including those oriented to gender, race, and the environment.


Consisting largely of applied case studies, rather than broad thematic essays, City Lives and City Forms presents an overall argument for focused critical research in the urban field and suggests possible directions for the future.