What were the main points of this ? Castells's structural take on cities is intended to correct the idea that urban space was shaped by the knowledge and action of those who live, work, and play in them. This supposed corrective, however, thrusts Castells—as well as other Marxist-oriented theorists—to the other extreme whereby the spatial forms of the city are determined by forces outside of the control of everyday people. By answering the question—"is there an urban sociology?"—with a negative response, Castells continued a long tradition of seeking out the basic defining features and contours of the city. Castells's radical take on the "urban question" sent a shock wave throughout urban studies with his insistence that the social processes that produced the city were not distinctly urban but, rather, endemic to capitalist society. Discussing Castells pivotal role in the development of a "new" urban sociology, one explicitly linked to Marxist critiques of capitalism, John Walton (1993) writes: In brief, Castells argued that urban sociology had no "real" or concrete object because "urban" referred only vaguely to things not rural than to some specific phenomenon. Rather, urban sociology (or "ideology) was concerned with certain activities such as social groups that formed

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