New Urban Politics Books

Cities in a Time of Terror: Space, Territory, and Local Resilience

M.E. Sharpe
Authored by: H.V. Savitch

This book is about urban terror--its meaning, its ramifications, and its impact on city life. Written by a well-known expert in the field, Cities in a Time of Terror draws on data from more than a thousand cities across the globe and traces the evolution of urban terrorism between 1968 and 2006. It explains what kinds of cities have become prime targets, why terrorism has become increasingly lethal, and how its inspiration has changed from secular to religious.

The author describes urban terrorism as an attempt to use the city's own strength against itself, forcing it to implode, and delineates three basic logics of terrorist choices for targeting cities. The book also includes a discussion of local resilience--the city's capacity to bounce back from attack--and suggests how that can be sustained. Examples from New York, London, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Moscow, Paris, and Madrid illustrate the book's central themes

“The irony of urban terrorism, as Hank Savitch shows in this wide-ranging and imaginative book, is that terrorists exploit the very qualities that draw people to them: their openness, their capacity to offer anonymity, their function as centers of consumption and power. Yet despite horrific and destructive assaults on urban populations and infrastructure around the world, what finally stands out is how resilient most cities are, how most of them do not completely batten down the hatches and restrict their citizens in the face of threats. Cities and city life display a remarkable durability--indeed, a remarkable ordinariness--in the long term.” -- Peter Eisinger, The New School University

Race Rules: Electoral Politics in New Orleans, 1965-2006. Lexington Books.

By Baodong Liu and James Vanderleeuw

"The authors of this unique longitudinal study of racial voting patterns challenge both Key's racial threat hypothesis and the racial tolerance hypothesis. As the authors show in the thorough analysis of decades of New Orleans' elections, racial voting patterns are the product of the racial makeup of the electorate and the candidate pool. This volume should be on the shelf of all those interested in racial politics and urban politics."—Charles S. Bullock, III, University of Georgia

Race Rules: Electoral Politics in New Orleans, 1965-2006 examines one of the innumerable ramifications of Hurricane Katrina: a reversal in the decades-long process of racial transition, from white dominant to black dominant. The electoral consequences of such a racial change - in a city where race has historically played a pronounced social, economic, and political role - are potentially dramatic. In light of the 2006 New Orleans mayoral election, the following emerges as a significant question: Does a change in the population's racial composition mean a reversal in the political status of African Americans in New Orleans? To address this question, Liu and Vanderleeuw investigate racial voting patterns in New Orleans' municipal elections over a forty year span from 1965 to 2006.Race Rules argues that as an enduring influence in urban politics race manifests as either electoral conflict or electoral accommodation, but not as acceptance of the political empowerment of "other race" members.

About the Authors
Baodong Liu is TRISS Endowed Professor of political science at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

James M. Vanderleeuw is professor of political science and Director of the Center of Public Policy Studies at Lamar University, Texas.