Abstract
Manuel Pastor and colleagues examine a collection of local movements working toward progressive causes and urban development in several large American cities. Due to the highly localized grounding of these movements, the authors frame this type of mobilization in terms of regional equity. A regional equity perspective focuses on metropolitan regions as vehicles for social movements to secure economic prosperity through careful and deliberative cultivation of progressive projects and relationships in impoverished urban communities. Pastor and colleagues begin by fleshing out a detailed theoretical model of the regional equity movement, using several concrete examples of projects in major cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Detroit. They also examine the structural characteristics of metropolitan areas that can impede or facilitate regional equity movements both within and across the United States. The authors conclude with a sober, yet ultimately optimistic discussion of how the regional equity movement might evolve and result in fundamental changes to American society.
Scholars of social movements, collective behavior, urban sociology, urban planning, social stratification, and community organizing will find this book well worth a careful and attentive read. Additionally, the authors are successful in their explicit goal of making this a work of public sociology. As a result, there are valuable lessons and strategies here for community activists engaged in the front-line struggle for regional equity.