The Secret Life of Cities: The Social Reproduction of Everyday Life

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of photographs
List of figures
List of tables
Authors\' Acknowledgements
Publisher\'s Acknowledgements
1 Only connect: everyday life in the city
	Hang on, I’m breaking up
		The main themes
	Mismatches and their consequences
		The ‘school run\'
		Walk to school parent’s pledge
		Homes for the workers?
		‘Off the edge’ cities
		Hypermobility and environment
	Characterising the problem: four dimensions
		Employment
		Housing provision
		Movement
		Social reproduction
	The road to the present: the dynamics of urban growth
	Ideal solutions: new towns and compact cities
		New towns
		Compact cities
	Conclusions
2 Being there
	Introduction
	Fragments of the city: housing provision, employment, households and movement
		Housing provision
		Employment
		Households
		Movement
	The dual city: towards an integrated analysis?
		The dual city and two missing middles
	From institutions to networks
		Institutions: third way or cul-de-sac?
		Practice: a social constructivist approach
	Conclusions: towards a secret life of cities
3 Making the connections: the dual life of a city
	Introduction
	Defining London
	Decentralisation and disparity: a world city divided
		Deindustrialisation: a combination of ‘shake-out’ and ‘spill-over’
		Housing market segmentation
		Transport: bridge or barrier?
		Retail development: changing regimes
		An integrated city?
	Time–space coordination and social reproduction
		Changes of workplace and changes of the home–work relation
		Suburban living, household life-course and first-time buyers
		Children’s schooling, investment and housing decisions
		Commuting: an issue of accessibility
		Making the links between home, work and movement
		Shopping: the changing contexts of urban life
		Local food shopping: space matters
		Paid employment, gender role and food shopping: time—space matters
		Home, work, shopping and transport: the problem of meaningful integration
	Conclusions
	Notes
4 Opening up the household
	Introduction
	Revisiting ordinary urban households
	Peering inside the ‘black box’
		Mr and Mrs Linklater: \'I tend to be the stodgy one’
		Mr and Mrs Langham: ‘Circumstances have changed now’
		Mr and Mrs Leicester: ‘But life was so different then’
		Mr and Mrs Land: ‘I don’t think I would have chosen to go back’
	Viewing the household as a duality of structure
	The practice of transformation
	Space, time and everyday coordination
	Spatial arrangement and temporal ordering
	Conclusions
	Notes
5 The strategies of social reproduction
	Introduction
	Two urban neighbourhoods
	Thirty working family households
		Vestiges of the ‘family wage’ in ‘traditional’ male breadwinner households
		Extending resources in ‘flexible’ households
		Balancing gender divisions in ‘dual’ households
		Gendered urban cultures
	The key relationships
	Coordinating housing and employment in two-earner households: \'risk sensitivity’
		Mr and Mrs Livingstone: ‘If we were to have a decent standard of living, I had to go back to work’
		Mr and Mrs Mellor: ‘avoid putting all your eggs in one basket’
		The Listers and the Lymingtons
	Rootedness
		Mr and Mrs Lexington: ‘a happy medium’
	Negotiating flexibility: flexibility for whom?
		Mr and Mrs Morris: that’s all we talk about at work, not seeing enough of our families
	Gendered cultures of production, consumption and reproduction
	Conclusions
	Notes
6 Towards urban social sustainability
	Introduction
	The sustainability debates
		Sustainable development: a complex issue
		Sustainable development: a reconceptualisation
		The concept of environment: natural environment and human-made environment
		The concept of development: economic development and socio-economic development
		The concept of people: individuals and society
		Physical sustainability and social sustainability: external and internal dimensions of a sustainable overall development
		Industrial capitalism and social sustainability
		Industrial capitalism: a growth machine
		Uneven development between production and reproduction in space and time
		Institutional conflict and social sustainability
		Restoring the human scale of sustainable development
	Spatial integration: planning for sustainability in the UK
		Urban reconcentration and mixed-use development: concentration or integration?
		Diversity, flexibility and accessibility: a socially sustainable city
	Conclusions
	Note
7 Widening the web
	The journey, not the destination
	Recapping the themes of the book
	The secret life of Portland, Oregon
	Some lessons arising from the research
		Ways of seeing
		Social sustainability
		Time and exclusion
		Women: being everywhere
		The grain of the city
	Beyond this book
	Note
Appendix Applying qualitative methods and a household perspective to local contexts in the city
	The case studies
		(1) Four household samples from two contrasting London boroughs
		(2) Working family households interviewed in London and Manchester
		(3) Working family households interviewed in central and outer Portland
	Neighbourhood-specific household research
	Use of in-depth interviewing and \'biographical’ data collection
	Interviewing household members together and apart
	Thematic narrative analysis
References
Index