Review: The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space

Young Philly Politics has a few intelligent posts that take a critical look at the Daily News' stinkmeister article on homeless people and the Ben Franklin Parkway. One blogger contends that the article prepares the way for the city to sweep out the Parkway before Live8, but I think that would have happened regardless. More interestingly he points out that Philadelphia is nationally recognized for it's homeless programs and criticizes the philly newspapers for not covering this story. Good point. The issue of "the homeless" is important and I'd like to see more serious reporting and discussion about it.

In light of this, I thought I'd throw this out:
H-Net Review: Adrienne Burk on The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space: "Mitchell's contention is that wealthy cities are being refashioned due to global neo-liberal restructuring, leading not to an 'annihilation of space by time,' but rather a collapse of public space itself through the 'constant production and reproduction of certain kinds of places', that is, locations that uphold the 'disneyfication' of public space, allowing unencumbered passage for social elites but criminalizing and/or eradicating the homeless (p. 165, original emphasis)."