Winner of the 2001 Carey McWilliams Award

A CONTEMPORARY CLASSIC, Magical Urbanism focuses on how Latinos are attempting to translate their urban demographic ascendancy into effective social power. Mike Davis chronicles the Dickensian underworld of day labor in New York, tracks the development of new ecologies and levels of development along the border, and examines the shifting realities of life and work for Latinos in US cities. The cosmopolitan result of the Latinization of America's cities "is a rich, constantly evolving" culture that has the potential, argues Davis, to become a radical new American counterculture.