Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers

Neoliberalism's "market revolution"--realized through practices like privatization, deregulation, fiscal devolution, and workfare programs--has had a transformative effect on contemporary cities. The consequences of market-oriented politics for urban life have been widely studied, but less attention has been given to how grassroots groups, nongovernmental organizations, and progressive city administrations are fighting back. In case studies written from a variety of theoretical and political perspectives, this book examines how struggles around such issues as affordable housing, public services and space, neighborhood sustainability, living wages, workers' rights, fair trade, and democratic governance are reshaping urban political geographies in North America and around the world.

Helga Leitner is Professor of Geography and a faculty member in the Institute for Global Studies and the Interdisciplinary Center for Global Change at the University of Minnesota. She has published two books and has written numerous articles and book chapters on the political economy of urban development, urban entrepreneurialism, the politics of immigration and citizenship, and environmental justice. Her current research interests include immigration and race in the contemporary United States, processes of neoliberalization, and the rise of social justice movements.

Jamie Peck is Professor of Geography and Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The author of Work-Place: The Social Regulation of Labor Markets and Workfare States, and coeditor of Remaking the Global Economy and Reading Economic Geography, he is currently researching the political economy of neoliberalization and the restructuring of low-wage labor markets.

Eric Sheppard is Professor of Geography and member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Global Change at the University of Minnesota. He is coauthor of The Capitalist Space Economy and A World of Difference: Society, Nature, Development, and coeditor of A Companion to Economic Geography and Scale and Geographic Inquiry. His current research examines contestations of neoliberalism and the geographical dynamics of trade and neoliberal globalization.