CITY BOUND - POLITICAL-SCIENCE AND THE AMERICAN METROPOLIS

The study of urban politics was once central to the political science discipline in the United States. As central cities have lost their dom inant position in the metropolis, however, political science's urbanis ts have remained fixated on the conflicts and crises of the urban core , while largely ignoring urban politics that occurs outside the city l imits. This focus has resulted in a skewed understanding of urban Amer ica, and may limit the analytical contributions of the field as well. We review the development of the urban politics literature and offer s ome explanations for its preoccupation with big cities. We argue that work in this field would be better integrated if urban politics were r econceptualized as the politics of urbanisation. We suggest some new t heoretical and substantive contributions that such an approach would p ermit, and emphasize that the politics of urbanization cannot be fully understood in city-bound analysis.