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

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

For a complete list of articles, refer to the full CV