Los Angeles School of Urbanism
In the early 1980s, I took the first tentative steps toward broadening and deepening my understanding of social theory and its relation to public policy and city planning practice. As it turned out, this initiative has occupied a good deal of my attention ever since. I began with the theory of the state and welfare state, which I believed was essential in explaining the tangle of issues that lay behind issues of mental health care and homelessness. I became the founding editor of an academic journal focused on the society/ space interface, at the same time that I was caught up in the rise of the Los Angeles School of Urbanism. For eight years, I led a think tank devoted to understanding Southern California as a critical lens for developing urban theory and public policy. Read more.
Los Angeles School
Books
M. Dear, The Postmodern Urban Condition, Blackwell, 2000. [Chinese language edition, Shanghai Education Publishing House, 2004].
M. Dear (ed.), From Chicago to LA: Making Sense of Urban Theory. Sage Publications, 2002
G. Leclerc, R. Villa, M. Dear (eds.), Urban Latino Cultures: la vida latina en L.A., Sage Publications, 1999.
M. Dear, E. Schockman, G. Hise (eds.), Rethinking Los Angeles. Sage Publications, 1996.
Dear, A.J. Scott (editors) Urbanization and Urban Planning in Capitalist Society. Methuen, 1981. [Re-issued, 2018]
Articles
Los Angeles and the Chicago School: invitation to a debate
M. Dear, City & Community 1(1) 2002, 5-32.
Postmodern Urbanism
M. Dear & S. Flusty, Annals, Association of American Geographers 1998, 88 (1), 50-72.
Critical Responses to the LA School of Urbanism
M. Dear et al. Urban Geography, 2008, 29 (2), 101-112.
Sprawl Hits The Wall
M. Dear, Volume 4 of the Atlas of Southern California, University of Southern California, 2001.
The Urban Question: toward a framework for analysis
M. Dear and A.J. Scott (eds.), Urbanization and Urban Planning in Capitalist Society, 1981, 3-16.
For a complete list of articles, refer to the full CV
Theory in Geography + City Planning
Books
R. Wolch, M. Dear (eds.) The Power of Geography: How territory shapes social life. Unwin Hyman, 1989. (Re-issued, 2014.)
Dear, S. Flusty (eds.) The Spaces of Postmodernity: A Reader in Human Geography. Blackwell, 2002.
L. Clark, M. Dear State Apparatus: The Structures & Language of Legitimacy. Allen and Unwin, 1984. (Re-issued, 2020.)
Dear, J.J. Drake, L.G. Reeds (editors) Steel City: Hamilton & Region University of Toronto Press, 1987.
Articles
The Postmodern Challenge: Reconstructing Human Geography
M. Dear. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, 1988, NS 13(3), 262 274.
Postmodernism and Planning
M. Dear. Society and Space, 4, 1986, 367 384
Privatization and the Rhetoric of Planning Practice
M. Dear. Society & Space, 7(4), 1989, 449-462.
For a complete list of articles, refer to the full CV