From reviews of the first edition: "This is perhaps the best theoretically oriented book by a United States urban sociologist since the work of Firey, Hawley, and Sjoberg in the 1940s and 1950s.... Gottdiener is on the cutting edge of urban theoretical work today." --Joe R. Feagin, Contemporary Soci[...]

Organized around an integrated paradigm-the sociospatial perspective-this breakthrough text considers the role played by social factors such as race, class, gender, lifestyle, economics, culture, and politics on the development of metropolitan areas. By moving beyond the traditional city/suburb dic[...]

Consumption as a field of cultural studies overlaps with theories of postmodernism, the social construction of self, commodification in late capitalism, and the role of mass media in daily life. New forms of consumption such as those facilitated by cyberspace, themed environments, the commodificatio[...]