[BOOK REVIEW] Cities and Urban Cultures

Author: Deborah Stevenson
Year: 2003
Pages: 192
Publisher: Open University Press

Reviewed by: Fitri Aulia Ikhsani - Research and Development ISAFIS

In more than decades ago Japanese popular culture has been thrust the world with the so called J-Pop in its own uniqueness following with K-Pop or Korean Popular culture in the last ten years. This popular culture or pop culture gradually became a common thing that we face and absorbed in this present day. A lot of people think that pop culture is embodiment of urban cultures in the cities. This is where the question begin, how the urban cultures in the cities resulting popular culture? 

Which led to the core question, what is exactly the meaning of the city and urban culture and how is it related to each other? Through the book called Cities and Urban Culture, Deborah Stevenson try to explain about the cities and urban cultures with interdisciplinary approaches such as sociology approach, cultural approach and some perspective through history. Starting with New York as the case study, the author let the readers to imagine about the physic of New York with lots of sky scrapers as the symbol of the city in United States. 

Then the author gave the comparisons between the rural and the urban to make the readers comprehend the conceptualizing of urban cultures. Furthermore, the author try to analyzing the cultural trends and some pivotal urban in modern, post modern and globalization which have built the environment and the image of the cities. it then continue with the examination of the urban cultures representative such film, literatures, art and popular text which become the dominant way to represent and informed about how the urban culture should feel and look like.

Designed as a text for undergraduate courses in cultural studies and wider social science, there are some points that make the book can be considered as one of comprehend yet easy to understand for people in general. For instance, in the first chapter of the book, the author tries to 'guide' the reader by explaining about the material that will be discussed in the whole chapters and gave a brief explanation about how one chapter can be related to other chapters. 

This is surely help the reader to understand more about the book since a lot of different approaches in the analysis are used. The next part which makes the book easier to understand is the conclusion part in every chapters end. Through the conclusion part, the author not only try to emphasize and rephrase the ideas of each chapters but also give some hook paragraph that link the previous chapter to the next one which make people to easier to comprehend the whole point of the book. Furthermore, the effective explanation of each chapters and simplicity of case study given in the book make the book able to provide comprehend understanding about the issues.