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Return to the Center: Culture, Public Space, and City Building in a Global Era.

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RETURN TO THE CENTER: Culture, Public Space, and City Building in a Global Era. By Lawrence A. Herzog. xxi and 273 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 0292712618; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 0292712626.

Urban geographers increasingly are forced to contemplate the impact of globalization on cities, and as they do so they are continually confronted by the constantly changing inner city. Inner cities experience fluctuations in investment, ranging somewhere between the extremes of chaotic profitability and devastating neglect. They become vital playing fields of dynamic cultural trends at the global, regional, national, and subnational levels. Likewise, they are showcases of local and national history and tradition. City centers continue to be areas where different interest groups and social classes do battle. Financial districts of global cities continue to experience inward investment. However, political and economic decentralization, a hallmark of globalization, often involves the movement of capital investment and decision making to suburban areas in economically advanced countries and emerging markets alike. On balance, the central city does not hold the dominance it once did, but it cannot be written off just yet.

In Return to the Center Lawrence Herzog attempts to assess the status of public space in inner cities of the Spanish-speaking world and...

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