Harvey Molotch

"You can learn a lot by figuring out how cities get built. That is the fundamental assumption of Urban Fortunes. Compared to some other approaches to an urban sociology, we get physical. We study the land and how real estate becomes a commodity that people put buildings on. We want to learn how the configurations of houses, offices, and factories make some people better off and others worse off. We explore not only how benefits and costs accumulate for individuals but also how they aggregate to create durable differences among places. We try to determine what this then means to people on the ground making a life in the homes and neighborhoods created in this process. That was our goal when we first wrote the book, and here we have a chance to reflect on what we tried to do and how it looks in retrospect and to offer the reader a revised guide to the chapters that follow."--Preface p. vii.

Follows a tour of the bathroom and the sewer system, from the family toilets to municipal water treatment plants. Everybody knows what a toilet is for, but how does it work? This book explains the process from the flush that sends waste down the pipe to the time that clean water is released from treatment plants. The coauthor is Sheila Keenan.

Offers the authors reflections on the quest for security in the United States.

"Based on a systematic comparative study of urban areas in Southern California, this book provides a much-needed examination of the true impacts of local development controls, including the ways that they have and have not made a difference. The authors draw general implications for communities elsewhere and for how to better understand theories of growth and urban governance."--BOOK JACKET.

Molotch takes us on a fascinating exploration into the worlds of technology, design, corporate and popular culture. We now see how corporations, designers, retailers, advertisers, and other middle-men influence what a thing can be and how it is made. We see the way goods link into ordinary life as well as vast systems of consumption, economic and political operation. The book is a meditation into the meaning of the stuff in our lives and what that stuff says about us.