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<p>En este ensayo empezaré por examinar la postura teórica que plantea que la historia, siendo espacial, es visible en la fotografía y cartografía. La perspectiva política o social es una metáfora sustentada: las múltiples interpretaciones del pasado están ancladas a sitios específicos en los paisajes globales. El historiador puede exponer los fantasmas que atormentan el presente, utilizando el método que denomino "el cronoscopio": una visualización que combina signos fotográficos indicativos con la acción interpretativa y narrativa del texto verbal y con los ademanes connotativos de las bellas artes. La fotografía estereográfica contiene la profundidad de la historia misma: el observador contemporáneo literalmente mira al interior del pasado. Esa profundidad de la historia es un desafío y una negación de la temporalidad plana de la modernidad. Para explicar estas tesis enfoco el cronoscopio para exponer los fantasmas históricos vinculando dos de las metrópolis más grandes del mundo, Los Ángeles y la ciudad de México, con la historia de la revolución y contrarrevolución, en los años 1900-1930.</p><p> </p>

Perhaps no single aspect of the American polity has been more analyzed, discussed, cited for evidence in grand theories of American political development, and yet less understood than the role of the urban voter in the regime formation and policy innovation of the Progressive era (circa 1890–1920). One century of prolific urban political analysis has produced an abundance of evidence, theory, and keen insight, yet we still have nothing like a systematic survey of urban voting behavior using reliable multivariate methods in more than a few elections or comparatively across several cities simultaneously. As a consequence, we have built for the urban voter a city of theoretical models without an adequate empirical infrastructure.

Thanks to recent innovations in theories and methods of political history, an enormous task lies before those wishing to approach the social-scientific goal recently desribed as "total political history." Research and theorizing on the subjects of political culture, the autonomy of the state, language and discourse, the public sphere, and the importance of gender to political life promise to displace a long-standing interest among political historians in locating the social groups that presumably composed the "base" of historical regime and policy formation. The understanding of past politics as the epiphenomenal superstructure to an ontologically primary base of past society has been radically revised by scholarship presenting evidence of the relative autonomy of the state and of cultural structures within which both society and politics operate (Kousser 1982,1990; Skocpol 1985; McDonald 1986; Tropea 1989; Hunt 1986; Reddy 1987; Palmer 1990).

The history of suburbs has received so much scholarly attention in recent decades that it is time to take stock of what has been established, in order to discern aspects of suburbs that are still unknown. To date, the main lines of inquiry have been dedicated to the origins, growth, diverse typologies, culture and politics of suburbs, as well as to newer topics such as the gendered nature of suburban space. The vast majority of these studies have been about particular times and places. The authors propose a new perspective on the study of suburbs, one which will begin to investigate the transformations of suburbs after they have been established. Taking the entire era from the mid-nineteenth century through to the late twentieth century as a whole, it is argued that suburbs should be subjected to a longitudinal analysis, examining their development in the context of metropolises that usually enveloped them within a generation or two of their founding. It is proposed that investigation of these 'transitions' should be undertaken in parallel with the changes that occur in the life-cycles of their residents. It is suggested that an exploration of the interaction of these factors will open a broad new research agenda for suburban history as a subfield of urban history.

Political geography is one of the most exciting subdisciplines to emerge from the 'spatial turn' in the social sciences. Arising largely within the discipline of geography, political geography has deep implications for political science, and yet these implications have not yet been widely recognized among political scientists. Conversely, political geographers have not yet profited enough from the rich field of political science. Political geography has the potential to dramatically transform many areas of established political science research. We focus on two: (a) the study of 'contextual effects' on political behavior and (b) the study of governance by applying the 'new institutionalism.' By spatializing the basic premises of these political science subfields, researchers can find new ways of looking at old questions. We conclude that political scientists should move beyond territorial questions of geography and begin thinking about the intrinsic spatiality of all political action, events, and institutions. Adapted from the source document.

The idea for this special issue, exploring the history of cities and urbanism within the emerging transnational paradigm, originated in a discussion among the members of the North American Editorial Board ofUrban Historyabout what it means for cities to be global. Veering in many directions, spanning multiple centuries and stretching into much of the world, the conversation touched on the movement of people and ideas, the relationship of urban areas with their hinterlands and with each other, the importance of given technologies and industries for particular forms of urban development, the critical role of politics – at all levels – in that development and the ongoing and evolving role of global capital on those cities. Using the global Internet, members of the North American Editorial Board located in Montreal (Michèle Dagenais), Rochester (Victoria Wolcott), Irvine (Jeffrey Wasserstrom), Philadelphia (Lynn Hollen Lees), Miami (Robin Bachin), Mexico City (Hira de Gortari Rabiela), Hamilton (Richard Harris), Los Angeles (Philip Ethington and Janice Reiff), Amherst (Max Page) and Ann Arbor (Matthew Lassiter) generated a plan to issue a global call for papers for the IXth International Conference of the European Association for Urban History in Lyon, France in August of 2008. Nine scholars from Canada, the United States, France and Mexico pre-circulated their papers for a special bilingual double-long session, co-chaired by Michèle Dagenais and Phil Ethington.

When the World Trade Center towers collapsed on 11 September 2001, many commentators noted that in their short lives, the towers had come to represent many things: American-led global capitalism, the United States and, most of all, New York City. Their brief role as a shorthand way of saying 'New York City' provoked us to ask about 'urban icons' more generally. But we did not need such cataclysm to provoke us to consider the topic of icons and their functioning in contemporary global culture. To help illuminate the usefulness of the concept of 'urban icons' we held an international conference in order to determine whether the category can be used as a conceptual grid for studying the intersection of visual culture and urban history.