| Abstract: | Sea changes generate tides of big ideas about cities. Postmodernity, like modernity before it, framed urban speculations spanning the gamut from liberation to purgatory and everything in between. And it is no accident that both focused the hopes and fears of the age on cities. For cities have long constituted the crucible of lived human experience vis-à-vis other humans, as well as the built and natural worlds. Taking stock involves a process of assessing what has come to pass, and what has not; in addition, it involves analyzing the topography of the present, always with an eye on that which is to come. This essay introduces the collection of articles published as a group in this symposium—and mark the first decade of the new millennium as well as the tenth anniversary of the publication of Edward Soja's Postmetropolis. At a decade's remove from both, how do urban geographers take stock of the urban condition? |
