SMITH, Neil 1954-

PERSONAL: Born July 18, 1954, in Leith, Scotland; immigrated to United States, 1974; son of Ronald Alexander and Nancy (Williamson) Smith. Education: University of St. Andrews, B.Sc., 1977; attended University of Pennsylvania, 1974–75; Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D., 1982.

ADDRESSES: Office—Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 5th Ave., New York, NY 10016.

CAREER: Columbia University, New York, NY, assistant professor, 1982–86; Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, assistant professor, 1986–88, associate professor, 1988–90, professor of geography, 1990–2000; City University of New York, New York, NY, distinguished professor of anthropology and geography, and director of Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. Visiting professor at University of Utrecht, University of Queensland, University of Toronto, and University of Oregon. Guest lecturer at museums and universities, including Whitney Museum of Modern Art, Harvard University, University of Glasgow, Helsinki University of Technology, and Oxford University.

MEMBER: Association of American Geographers, American Anthropological Association, Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations.

AWARDS, HONORS: National Science Foundation grants, 1987–89, 1991, and 1998–2000; McKnight Foundation grant, 1991–92; Rockefeller Foundation grant, 1994–97; Guggenheim fellowship, 1995–96; distinguished scholarship honors, Association of American Geographers, 2000; City University of New York faculty development grant, 2000–01; Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography, 2003, and Henry Adams Book Prize, Society of Historians in Federal Government, and Globe Award for Public Understanding of Geography, Association of American Geographers, both 2004, all for American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Malcolm Forbes and Michael Kershaw) Geography, Social Welfare, and Underdevelopment, Journal of St. Andrew's Geographers (St. Andrews, Scotland), 1977.

Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space, Blackwell (Cambridge, MA), 1984.

(Editor, with Peter Williams) Gentrification of the City, Allen & Unwin (Boston, MA), 1986.

(Editor, with Anne Godlewska) Geography and Empire, Blackwell (Cambridge, MA), 1994.

The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City, Routledge (New York, NY), 1996.

American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2003.

The Endgame of Globalization, Routledge (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to books, including Gentrification, Displacement, and Neighborhood Revitalization, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1984; Selling Places: The City as Cultural Capital, Past and Present, Pergamon (London, England), 1993; and Scale and Geographic Inquiry, Blackwell (Malden, MA), 2004. Contributor to periodicals, including Studies in Political Economy, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban Affairs Review, Geographical Review, Society and Space, and New York Times. Coeditor of journals, including Antipode, 1986–87, and Society and Space, 1993–. Member of editorial boards, including Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 1990–, Social Text, 1996–, Philosophy and Geography, 1995–, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 1995–, Urban Affairs Review, 1995–, and Arab World Geographer, 1998–.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A book titled Scandalous New York.

SIDELIGHTS: Neil Smith, a professor of anthropology and geography at the City University of New York, "has been the most prolific and perhaps the most eloquent theorist of gentrification since the late 1970s," according to Martin Brockerhoff in Population and Development Review. Smith, who also serves as the director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics in New York City, is the author and editor of a number of books on the discipline of geography and the concept of gentrification, including Geography and Empire and The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. Smith's 2003 work, American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization, received the Henry Adams Book Prize as well as the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography.

In The New Urban Frontier Smith explores "the institutional and the human factors involved in gentrification," observed Arena contributor Kathleen Ferguson. By examining developments in major cities throughout the world, with special attention paid to the changes in New York City's Lower East Side and Harlem, Smith concludes that gentrification efforts are driven by a combination of social, cultural, political, and economic forces. The New Urban Frontier received generally positive reviews. In the words of Brockerhoff, the work "is brimming with fascinating city case studies, imaginative historical allusions, forceful arguments, and good humor," and Ferguson remarked that the author "writes persuasively. He has a tempo and grip of the argument which allows diverse and demanding subject material to be dealt with in a conversational manner, from the history of 'socialist gentrification' in post-Communist Budapest, to scientific appraisals of urban demographics."

Early-twentieth-century geographer Isaiah Bowman is the subject of Smith's award-winning American Empire. During his career Bowman played a leading role in shaping the foreign policy of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, and his contributions extended into the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. "Smith's Bowman is an ever-present figure at many of the major events of his times and a part of the internecine wars of both the Wilson and the Roosevelt administrations," wrote Nicholas Entrikin in Geographical Review. "It will surprise readers to discover the many and important geopolitical concerns that engaged Bowman during his long career." Smith also discusses Bowman's controversial tenure as president of Johns Hopkins University, noting that his authoritarian nature often proved counterproductive to his vision. "For Smith, Bowman is a 'vital anomaly,' someone who saw the potential of geography, who understood the fundamental link between geography and political economy, but who in the end was marginalized by the limits of his own philosophy and politics," Entrikin stated. Reviewing American Empire in the Canadian Geographer, Simon Dalby remarked, "This volume is a significant contribution to the history of geography specifically and scholarship more generally, an analysis of the rise of American power and the role of knowledge in shaping its course and, in lesser part, a biographical account of the geographer who was undoubtedly the most influential member of the discipline in shaping American foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Arena, June-July, 1998, Kathleen Ferguson, review of The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City, p. 55.

Canadian Geographer, fall, 2004, Simon Dalby, review of American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization, p. 382.

Geographical Review, April, 2003, Nicholas Entrikin, review of American Empire, p. 267.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, December, 1996, Jonathan Skinner, review of Geography and Empire, p. 735.

Population and Development Review, June, 1997, Martin Brockerhoff, review of The New Urban Frontier, p. 441.