Mike Davis

One of few urban scholars who have had a genuine impact outside the academy, Mike Davis is an uncompromising critic of the urban and environmental impacts of American capitalism. He owes this reputation to a prolific set of writings on the US city City of Quartz ( 1990), Ecology of Fear (1998), and Magical Urbanism (2000) ­which chart the conflictual evolution of Los Angeles over the twentieth century, and latterly, a series of polemics addressing a range of urbanized political geographies. With his writing conveying a deep sense of political immediacy much of the material in his books began life as shorter, topical articles - he is nonetheless an urbanist with a deep sense of radical social history.