Thomas A. Hutton is Professor of Urban Studies and City Planning in the Centre for Human Settlements, School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia, Canada. Dr Hutton’s research interests include new industry formation in the inner city and the role of service industries in urban transformation within the Asia-Pacific.
Always informative, this book makes a substantive contribution to the literature on the contemporary space-economy of cities. Highly recommended, for upper division undergraduate, through faculty and research collections. Robert Beauregard, Columbia University, USA [Hutton's] assessments of urban change are careful and thus sympathetic, quite different from the recent hype associated with the apparent general renaissance of cities. Without any doubt, the book sets a standard in contemporary knowledge of the development of inner cities... its contribution to the urban discourse will be much appreciated. Markus Hesse, University of Luxembourg, LUX With numerous photographs and maps as well as detailed evidence from interviews, and with richly detailed case studies of industrial districts in London, Singapore, San Francisco, and Vancouver, the book documents the emergence of this new urban economy. Weaving together industrial restructuring, changing land uses, the city's social composition, public policy, and urban culture, Hutton's approach captures the contingent complexity of metropolitan transformations, though it also unearths striking similarities among cities in quite different nations and cultures. Always informative, this book makes a substantive contribution to the literature on the contemporary space-economy of cities. -- Choice, December 2008