Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

The construction of putative revenue-generating arenas and entertainment complexes is as ubiquitous as it is controversial in urban America. Thus, Building Downtown Los Angeles is an essential study of the dialectics among capital, development, and oppositional politics. Saito (Univ. of Southern California) deftly applies historical and sociological approaches--drawing from government archives, fieldwork, and oral histories from community organizers and developer staffers alike--to interrogate the contested building of downtown LA's Convention Center, the Staples Center (now Crypto.com Arena), and L.A. Live, and the failed move to construct an adjacent NFL stadium. Elaborating on the analytic of "racial-spatial formation" in his account of city-corporate machinations, coalitional opposition, and subsequent public policy, he demonstrates how the construction of urban spaces and meanings about race are mutually constitutive. Race scholars will appreciate the further rearticulation of and revisions to Michael Omi and Howard Winant's foundational Racial Formation in the United States (1986) refracted through the lens of space and capital. Urban studies practitioners can dive into the timeliness of Saito's approach to gentrification and displacement. Policymakers, community organizations, and social justice advocates will find the focus on negotiating community benefits agreements generative.Summing Up: Essential. General readers through graduate students; professionals.

Focusing on the 21st-century processes of global urbanization, this study traces the different trajectories of global city building. Challenging mainstream unilinear theories, Murray (urban planning, Univ. of Michigan) adopts a multilinear framework to examine the shifting patterns of complex, multifaceted global urban growth. He presents a panoramic view of global urbanisms and shows how city building in recent decades has followed multiple paths and how, at the same time, the contemporary world of cities is interconnected. He looks at the nature of city growth in North America and Europe, Asia and Africa, South America, and the Persian Gulf, which manifests a variety of urbanisms, such as tourist-entertainment cities, shrinking cities, and instant cities, among others. He provides a typology of cities consisting of competitive world-class cities, postindustrial cities in decline, megacities of hypergrowth, and fast-track urbanism. Murray argues that urban transformation is neither linear nor cumulative but multidirectional, and emphasizes the need for planning for sustainable urbanism. This well-researched book makes an outstanding contribution to urban and policy studies.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

An exploration into the complexities of how race and racism operate within prisons, with particular attention to solitary confinement, Way Down in the Hole by Hattery and Smith (both, women and gender studies, Univ. of Delaware) considers the relationship between inmates and correctional officers. The authors explore the vast complexities that exist in rural communities, urban areas, and all spaces where race and prisons overlap. The book's many concise chapters expose the racism and white supremacy inherent to solitary confinement in US prisons. The book is especially powerful for how it highlights the dehumanization of solitary confinement and gives voice to those forced to experience it. In describing prisoners' time spent in solitary confinement, the authors show great compassion for their subject participants and intellectual rigor in dissecting how race has and does impact prison populations in the US. The book concludes by relating the history of slavery and sharecroppers to current times, serving as a reminder to all of the need to address solitary confinement and minimize its impact. This powerful, eye-opening study is ideal for all readers interested in criminology, law, sociology, criminal justice, and prison reform.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.