About the Book

The fifth edition of this book presents a balanced review of the ecological arguments that the urban arena produces unique experiential and urban-based cultural effects while exploring the broader political and economic contexts that produce and modify the urban environment. In addition to examining the urban dimensions of such topics as community formation and continuity, minority and majority dynamics, ethnic experience, poverty, power, and crime, it provides an analysis of the spatial distribution of population and resources with regard to the metropolitanization of the urban form and the interaction between urban concentration and development and underdevelopment.

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Contents

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About the Author / Editor

William G. Flanagan grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, half an hour on a good traffic day from Manhattan, in the industrial South End of one of the factory cities of the megalopolis that stretches from Boston to Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Connecticut. He lived and taught in Ireland at the National University in Cork for two years before assuming his present position on the Sociology Faculty of Coe College. He has taught a wide range of classes in sociology, specializing in urban sociology, social conflict, and social change. He is author of Contemporary Urban Sociology and coauthor of Urbanization and Social Change in West Africa (with Josef Gugler). A monograph, “Ireland Now: Tales of Change from the Global Island” was published in 2007. He wrote the “Urban Sociology” entry in the Sage Encyclopedia of Urban Studies (2009). He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

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