Ordinary Cities, Extraordinary Geographies

Edited by John R. Bryson, Professor of Enterprise and Economic Geography, Department of Strategy and International Business, Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, UK, Ronald V. Kalafsky, Professor of Geography, Department of Geography, University of Tennessee and Vida Vanchan, Professor of Geography and Planning, Geography and Planning Department, Buffalo State, The State University of New York, SUNY, US

• Contents:Preface: ordinary cities – place, space, time and biographicalnarratives xiiAcknowledgements xvi1 Ordinary cities, extraordinary geographies: parallaxdimensions, interpolations and the scale question 1John R. Bryson, Ronald V. Kalafsky and Vida Vanchan2 The progressive city in the neighborhood context 23George R. Frantz3 The mechanics of small metropolitan labor markets in theU.S. South: does job growth always drive population growth? 43Jonathan Kozar and William Graves4 Examining the exports of smaller southern cities andassessing “borrowed size” 67Ronald V. Kalafsky5 (Extra) Ordinary Geelong: state-led urban regeneration andeconomic revival 84Louise C. Johnson, Sally Weller and Tom Barnes6 The infraordinary or the ordinary as extraordinary?Expertise (and not global) production networks andordinary towns and cities 106Stephen Williams and John R. Bryson7 An ordinary but extraordinary city: Siem Reap Angkor, Cambodia 133Vida Vanchan8 Resilience and development of a small city in India:Dholpur, Rajasthan 151Suparna Soni9 Interconnection between ethnic enclaves in a small cityand globalization 164Kamyoung Kim and Ju-Hyun Bae10 Beside the seaside: vertical dis-integration, demographicimbalance and adaptation in UK coastal communities 190Jacob Salder11 Reframing urban theory: smaller towns and cities, forms oflife, embeddedplasticity and variegated urbanism 210John R. Bryson, Vida Vanchan and Ronald V. KalafskyIndex

'Ordinary Cities, Extraordinary Geographies is a call for a more inclusive research agenda centering overlooked places often perceived as less important because they are not exceptionally large, or wealthy, or confronted by exceptional circumstances. Bryson, Kalafsky, and Vanchan have assembled both a compelling argument for studying ordinary places and a collection of international empirical examples. The result is an illustration of how and why studying ordinary places is essential to building a more inclusive research agenda for geography (and more broadly social science).'