Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions

Postmetropolis completes Edward Soja’s trilogy aimed at expanding the scope and critical insight of our spatial imaginations. Applying the theoretical frameworks developed in Postmodern Geographies (1989) and Thirdspace (1996), it is the first comprehensive text in the growing field of critical urban and regional studies to deal with the dramatically restructured megacities that emerged worldwide over the last half of the twentieth century. At its core is a lively discussion of six discourses that have coalesced around explaining what Soja calls the postmetropolitan transition, a major sea change in how we live in cities and experience urbanism as a way of life. To provide depth to these discussions, the book begins with a rethinking of the debates on the origins of cities, the geohistorical evolution of urban form, and the dynamic relations between society and space in the specific context of urban agglomerations. In addition to being an innovative text in urban and regional studies and an insightful application of new approaches to interpreting the spatiality of human life, Postmetropolis is also a book about contemporary Los Angeles, a vivid and far-reaching interpretation of its turbulent recent history and geography. The book concludes with a look back to the civil unrest of 1992 to portray the postmetropolis in explosive crisis as well as to draw some hope for the future based on new coalition-based struggles for spatial justice and regional democracy.