"You can learn a lot by figuring out how cities get built. That is the fundamental assumption of Urban Fortunes. Compared to some other approaches to an urban sociology, we get physical. We study the land and how real estate becomes a commodity that people put buildings on. We want to learn how the configurations of houses, offices, and factories make some people better off and others worse off. We explore not only how benefits and costs accumulate for individuals but also how they aggregate to create durable differences among places. We try to determine what this then means to people on the ground making a life in the homes and neighborhoods created in this process. That was our goal when we first wrote the book, and here we have a chance to reflect on what we tried to do and how it looks in retrospect and to offer the reader a revised guide to the chapters that follow."--Preface p. vii.