Publisher's Synopsis
Whereas the dominant model for the study of inner city neighbourhoods in the US has been that of the "urban village" or "ethnic enclave" - natural communities where residents share a common culture and pursue a relatively unified set of interests vis a vis outsiders - this study demonstrates the existence of a different reality within today's inner cities. Now numerous multi-ethnic, highly diversified districts contain sub-groups with varying lifestyles, class interests, goals and ideologies. The author argues that inner-city neighbourhoods have lost their common culture and consensus and have become, instead, a place of diverse groups which intermingle in physical space but pursue disparate lifestyles and conflicting goals.;The book focuses on New York's Lower East Side as an example. For almost a decade, "yuppies", developers, politicians, squatters, the homeless, the police and a broad multi-ethnic population have been caught up in a complex battle over ownership of the district - the outcome of which still remains to be seen. In the Lower East Side, sub-groups vie not only with "outside" interests such as developers, but with one another - in a particularly visible blueprint of similar battles being fought across urban America.;This study aims not only to delineate a new form of urban neighbourhood, but also to embody a new form of neighbourhood study. In an effort to represent a complex and fragmentary situation, it suggests that the single-author ethnography is no longer possible. The way forward, rather, is for a team of single authors to each gain the trust - and an understanding - of a separate group, and to represent this in the finished work.;"The End of the Urban Village" should be of interest to scholars and researchers of the contemporary inner city, as well as for students of urban politics, urban sociology, community studies and planning.
