Urban Geography

4th edition

This extensively revised and updated fourth edition not only examines the new
geographical patterns forming within and between cities, but also investigates the
way geographers have sought to make sense of this urban transformation. It is
structured into three sections: ‘contexts’, ‘themes’ and ‘issues’ that move students
from a foundation in urban geography through its major themes to contemporary
and pressing issues. The text critically synthesizes key literatures in the following
areas:
● an urban world
● changing approaches to urban geography
● urban form and structure
● economy and the city
● urban politics
● planning, regeneration and urban policy
● cities and culture
● architecture and urban landscapes
● images of the city
● experiencing the city
● housing and residential segregation
● transport and mobility in cities
● sustainability and the city.
The fourth edition combines the topicality and accessibility of previous editions
with extensive new material, including many new chapters such as an urban world
and politics, housing and residential segregation, and transport in cities, as well as
a wealth of international case studies, extending its range of coverage across the
field. This book features enhanced pedagogy including a range of new illustrations
and tables, a list of key ideas for each chapter, end of chapter essay questions and
project activities, and annotated further reading from books, journals and websites.
Written in an engaging, student-friendly style, this is an essential read for students
and scholars of urban geography.
Tim Hall is an urban cultural geographer who lectures at the University of
Gloucestershire, UK.
Heather Barrett is an urban geographer who lectures at the University of
Worcester, UK.
 Routledge Contemporary Human
Geography Series
Series Editors:
David Bell, Manchester Metropolitan University
Stephen Wynn Williams, Staffordshire University

This series of texts offers stimulating introductions to the core subdisciplines of human
geography. Building between ‘traditional’ approaches to subdisciplinary studies and
contemporary treatments of these same issues, these concise introductions respond
particularly to the new demands of modular courses. Uniformly designed, with a focus
on student-friendly features, these books will form a coherent series which is up-to-
date and reliable.
Existing Titles:
Cultural Geography
Tourism Geography
Development Geography
Political Geography
Geographies of Globalization
Urban Geography, 3rd edition
Urban Geography, 4th edition
Urban Geography
4th edition

Tim Hall and Heather Barrett

First published 2012
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2012 Tim Hall and Heather Barrett
The right of Tim Hall and Heather Barrett to be identified as authors of this
work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hall, Tim, 1968-
Urban geography / Tim Hall and Heather Barrett.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Urban geography. I. Barrett, Heather L. II. Title.
GF125.H35 2011
307.76—dc22 2011007341

ISBN: 978-0-415-49231-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-49232-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-80533-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Times and Franklin Gothic

by Keystroke, Station Road, Codsall, Wolverhampton
 Contents

List of figures vii

List of tables ix
Acknowledgements xi

Section 1: contexts 1
1 An urban world 3
2 Changing approaches 18
3 Urban form and structure 30

Section 2: themes 55
4 City economies 57
5 Urban politics 101
6 Planning, regeneration and urban policy 127
7 Cities and culture 162

Section 3: issues 187

8 Architecture 189
9 Images of the city 215
10 Experiencing the city 235
11 Housing and residential segregation 260
vi • Issues

12 Transport and mobility in cities 282

13 Sustainability and the city 302

Glossary 324
Bibliography 329
Index 357
Figures

1.1 Annual growth rate of the world’s cities by region

and city size 1990–2000. 8
1.2 The world’s mega cities 10
3.1 Tulum, Mexico, reflecting the religious and cultural
beliefs of the Mayan civilization 35
3.2 (a) A model of the pre-industrial city,
(b) Pre-industrial London 36
3.3 Models of the industrial city 41
3.4 Model of fringe belt development 44
3.5 The dual city, juxtaposing the traditional Islamic
medina and colonial extension, Sfax Tunisia 47
3.6 The post-modern city (after Dear and Flusty 1998) 49
4.1 The circuits of capital (Source: Harvey 1989b: 67) 61
4.2 The hierarchy of world cities 69
4.3 Cartogram of alpha world cities in 2008 72
4.4 (a) Sheepcote Street canal area, Birmingham in the
late 1980s prior to redevelopment (b) The same area
today, part of the Convention Quarter redevelopment
close to the National Indoor Arena 78
4.5 Docklands, London, the focus for major producer
service expansion in the 1980s and 1990s with new
office buildings in close proximity to poor urban
communities 86
4.6 South Street Seaport, New York, USA – a festival
retail-leisure development 89
4.7 Informal street trading in Marseille, France 94
4.8 Characteristics of the formal and informal sectors 95
5.1 Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona 122
6.1 Common themes in urban planning and policy 131
6.2 Howard’s vision of the social city 134
6.3 Letchworth Garden City 135
6.4 Le Corbusier’s Radiant City 137
viii • List of figures

6.5 Corbusian unité, Nantes, France 138

7.1 Terraced housing near Spitalfields showing
weavers’ lofts 177
7.2a and 7.2b An improvised game of cricket in the Plaça Ángels
adjacent to MACBA 181
7.3a Antoni Tàpies exhibition, MACBA (2004) 182
7.3b L’esperit català, Antoni Tàpies (1971) based on the
Catalan flag 182
8.1 Worcester Cathedral (early English gothic) and
Law Courts (classical palladian) 192
8.2 Modern and post-modern office buildings,
Birmingham UK 193
8.3 What is architecture? 194
8.4 Gender roles and housing design 203
8.5 Iconic architecture: the Guggenheim Museum
Bilbao 205
9.1 Gino Severini’s Suburban Train Arriving in Paris
(1915) 223
9.2 Example, city marketing material 229
10.1 Traces of the past: a former factory building, now a
fashion and design school, East London 240
10.2 Electricity substation, rural-urban fringe, UK 242
10.3 Ideal bodies: advertising imagery 248
10.4 Control of behaviour, Cabot Circus, Bristol, UK 249
10.5 Seating, Stuyvesant Square, New York City 250
10.6 An attempt to represent the subjective dimensions
of daily paths using photographs, diary entries,
interviews and researcher observations 254
11.1 Murdie’s idealized model of urban ecological
structure 263
11.2 Actors and institutions in the housing market
(Bourne 1981: Figure 4.8, p.85) 271
12.1 The relationship between fuel consumption and
urban density 287
12.2 The Barclays public cycle hire scheme, East London 293
12.3 Unused cycling facilities at an out of town retail
outlet. Monks Cross near York, North of England 294
13.1a and 13.1b The Highline in midtown Manhattan. A disused
raised railway line converted into a publicly
accessible green space (www.thehighline.org) 318
 Tables

3.1 Key phases of urbanization 31

4.1 A simple model of TNC business operations 64
4.2 The decline of manufacturing employment in the UK 1975–2009 75
4.3 The rising significance of the service sector, globally 84
5.1 Different theoretical perspectives on power and urban politics 111
7.1 Domains of cultural difference 166
9.1 Pro- and anti-urban myths 217
12.1 Passenger transport by mode (per cent) 283
12.2 Transport mode and urban form 285
12.3 Comparing cities in terms of car use and public transport, 1980 287
12.4 Substitution and switching mechanisms employed in car travel
reduction strategies 219–2
 Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the students on the modules GEO202
‘Contemporary Urban Issues’ (Gloucestershire) and GEOG2021 ‘Urban
Geography’ (Worcester) for providing lively settings in which many of the
ideas in this book were first raised and discussed. We would also like to
thank Cathy (Tim) and Martyn (Heather) for helping to keep us sane during
the writing of this book. A great deal of thanks is also due to Andrew Mould,
Faye Leerink and Emma Hart for their assistance in the production of this
book and their patience as deadlines slipped by. Their efforts have been vital
to the production of this volume. Thanks are also due to Kate and Bob for
their guerilla marketing efforts in London!
Please can we pass on our thanks to the following for granting permission for
material that has been reproduced here: Routledge (figures 3.6, 4.8, 8.4 and
10.6; table 12.2); Alan Dixon (figure 4.7), Topical Press Agency (figure 6.3);
VEGAP, Madrid and DACS London (figure 7.3b) Tate Images, ADAGP,
Paris and DACS, London (figures 9.1); FLC/ADAGP, Paris and DACS
(figure 6.4); Peter Newman and David Satterthwaite (table 12.3).
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission
to reprint material in this book. The publisher would be grateful to hear from
any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to
rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book.
Section 1
Contexts
 1 An urban world

Five key ideas

● We live in an increasingly urban world which is dynamic and changing and

characterized by great diversity.
● We have all experienced ‘the urban’ in some way and this personal
experience forms an important foundation from which to research and
theorize about cities.
● At the macro scale, patterns of global urbanization are changing, with
significant urban growth in parts of the Global South with previously low
urban populations.
● Cities are increasingly economically, politically and culturally connected
and occupy particular niches within increasingly competitive global urban
networks.
● City life offers both opportunities and problems. Concerns about the
problems and inequalities of large cities and rapid urban growth have
existed from the nineteenth century onwards, often eloquently expressed
in fictional writings about cities.

Introduction

We live in an urban world, or more accurately many different urban worlds.

In July 2007, for the first time in human history, the majority of the world’s
population resided in cities. This event, hailed as monumental in much media
coverage, was, in itself, of little more than symbolic importance. The trends,
most notably massive urban growth in the Global South, had been apparent
for some time and show no sign of slowing down, let alone reversing. It is
against this background, a growing, dynamic urban world characterized by
increasing interconnection and inequality that faces challenges in the near
future including peak oil and probable climate chaos, that this book invites
you into the world of urban geography. Urban geography texts always argue
4 • Contexts

that their publication coincides with exciting and challenging times for the
city. They are always correct. Whatever cities might be they are never boring.

The dynamic and diverse nature of the urban world presents a significant
challenge for those attempting to write a textbook to guide students through
its complexities. For a general textbook, the aim should be to provide the
student with as comprehensive an overview as possible. However this is
always only ever partially fulfilled. Textbooks, such as this one, are written
by authors who approach the study of the city in particular ways, drawing
on their own set of knowledge and experiences. Who writes the book and
where they are based matters. This has been a key issue raised about urban
geographical writing on the city, where it has been pointed out that in reality
universal ideas and theories about the city are only ever partial (see for
example Robinson 2005a).

It is therefore an important starting point for researchers and writers to

acknowledge and understand their own perspective and position in any piece
of work. We are two urban geographers who were born and brought up in
the United Kingdom (UK) and who have worked mainly in UK universities.
Our professional discussions and experience have mainly been with others
in Europe and North America. This has inevitably shaped our approaches
to studying cities. While we have tried to move beyond the specifics of
our urban experiences in this book, by focusing on exploring the broader
processes shaping cities, where we make these abstract ideas concrete we will
often draw on examples from our own experiences. Therefore, the coverage
of examples used and issues raised will, like other textbooks, not reflect the
urban world in all its diversity. This is where we invite you to build on what
we have written here and to add your own perspectives and experiences.
Throughout the book we have tried to offer you exercises and opportunities
to reflect on your own knowledge of the urban and to consider the ways in
which the urban realities that you inhabit and experience are shaped by these
broader processes. So let us begin with your urban geographies . . .

Your urban geographies

This is a book written first and foremost for students. Its objective, therefore,
is to equip you, the student with enough knowledge of cities and the
ways that they have been thought about and researched, primarily but not
exclusively from within urban geography, to allow you to understand key
aspects of cities and to become an urban geographer in your own right.
As a student of urban geography, or one of its many cognate disciplines, you
are likely to encounter cities and to address urban questions in many different
 An urban world • 5

ways. These may include abstract discussions of urban theory; essays and
reports that ask you to pull together, synthesize and analyse a range of
examples, typically in the light of theory or policy; assignments that require
you to analyse secondary data and draw conclusions on the basis of this; or
projects that ask you to go out and conduct some original research and collect
your own data in one or more urban settings. Of the latter the fieldtrip and
the independent study or dissertation are among the most common, and
typically, most rewarding, academic encounters with the city. Cities are such
fascinating environments that it would be a great shame if this book did not
encourage you to brave the weather and to get out and study the city, to
perhaps look at the taken for granted urban environment that you pass
through every day with fresh eyes. Alternatively, you might encounter the
city through its many representations – films, novels, advertisements, media
reports or computer games for example – and be asked to critically analyse
the nature of these images and perhaps their significance. So, as you read this
book think about what motivates you and about what you want your urban
geographies to be, where they might take you and what they might contribute
to the city. There is more to urban geography than just writing essays.
So, where do you begin? Well, for a start, it is unlikely that those of you
reading this book have not encountered a city in some way or another, either as
a resident of one or through reference to cities and urban life through a range
of media, such as a book, television programme or film. It is worthwhile,
therefore, asking you to reflect on what you already know about cities.

Exercise

A range of definitions, concepts and ideas associated with the terms ‘city’ and ‘urban’
exist. It is important that you are aware of the variety of ways in which urban areas can
be defined and thought about. As a student developing your understanding of cities, it is
useful to reflect on the ideas about urban areas that you already hold and how these link
to broader ideas and beliefs. Either individually or in conversation with family, friends
or classmates think about the following question (and do not read on before you have
generated your own thoughts and reflections!):

What do the terms ‘city’ and ‘urban’ mean to you? Make a list of things that you think
define ‘the city’ or ‘the urban’.

Hopefully the list you have generated is quite diverse, and this should give
you an indication of the breadth of material that can be covered when
examining cities. Your list may include things that define urban areas
6 • Contexts

(population size, geographical boundaries, legal definitions), things urban

areas possess (landscapes, buildings, infrastructure, activities) or attributes
associated with the city (noisy, crowded, dangerous, creative, exciting,
vibrant, polluted). It might also identify urban concerns at different levels,
or geographical scales, from personal issues (conditions in your local
neighbourhood) to things of global concern (the sustainability of urban
growth). This indicates that there is not one city but many ‘cities’ and also
many topics for urban geographers to study.

Developing your urban geographies

Your personal experiences of, and knowledge about, cities are an important
starting point for developing your understanding of ‘the urban’. However, as
theories of learning suggest, personal experience in itself is not sufficient to
develop thorough knowledge of an issue, and this experience needs to be
built upon in order to develop a deeper understanding through a ‘cycle of
learning’ (see Kolb 1984). So in order to develop your critical understanding
of cities you need to reflect on your experiences and make sense of these
by contextualizing your experience and knowledge in relation to other
information about cities. Here you need to use your research skills to gather
appropriate data/evidence on urban trends and issues – in the section below
we outline some broad trends in contemporary urban development which will
provide a starting point for thinking about these wider issues and setting your
experiences in context, which will then be further developed throughout the
book. The next stage of the ‘cycle’ in developing your critical understanding
is to think about your experiences and this broader evidence and make sense
of these through abstract conceptualization. Here you will draw upon wider
theories and concepts about urban development, change and experience in
order to draw together these various strands of evidence and place them
in the broader context of writing about cities. In the next chapter we will
consider the development of urban geographical theory in order to provide
a foundation for your own theorizing. Through this you will develop your
critical knowledge and understanding about cities and urban life which will
provide the foundation for your further experiences of and research into
cities, so completing one round of the learning cycle.
In beginning to build on our more personal experiences of urban life and
set these into a wider context we want to consider three important ideas
underpinning the multiple geographies of the urban world which highlight
some key trends in urban development and ways of thinking about cities. The
first important idea is to place ourselves within the broader trends of urban
development and change, or rather to consider the macro geographies of
 An urban world • 7

the urban world. Here it is useful to examine broad patterns in urban

development at the global scale which emphasize the diversity in trends
around the world. A second important idea to consider is the increasing
connectedness of the world, where people and places are increasingly linked
together in complex economic, political and cultural networks. Finally, it is
important to consider how these broader processes are mediated by local
contexts, thinking about the internal geographies of cities and the complexity
of our urban lives and experiences. These key ideas about the urban world are
introduced in the next section and underpin subsequent discussions about the
urban which follow in the book.

Macro geographies of the urban world

A core question for anyone interested in studying cities is how many urban
people there are in the world and where they live. Until the second half of
the twentieth century significant urban development, or urbanization, was
limited and spatially concentrated into a number of key regions, principally
Europe, North America and Latin America. More recently, within these more
urbanized societies, urban growth has been slow and the increases in urban
populations relatively modest (figure 1.1). The most significant growth in
the last thirty years has taken place in those parts of the world with low
percentages of urban populations, with this predicted to increase in the near
future. In particular, urban growth has been rapid in Asia, with China and
India having particularly large and increasing urban populations. Growth has
also been significant within Africa (figure 1.1).
Within these broad regional figures significant variation exists, and a more
detailed examination of the recent trends in urbanization reveals that the
urban world is far from uniform. Urban development is certainly changing
the spatial organization of the world’s economy and society, but at different
rates in different places which leads to interesting questions for urban
geographical research to examine. Globally there remains considerable
variation in both the size and proportion of populations in urban places and
the ways in which these populations are distributed, in terms of the number
and size of cities (figure 1.1). For example, while much of China’s growth
has been in the form of large cities, urban growth within Africa has been
predominantly of small and intermediate cities, with more significant urban
growth confined to a small number of countries on this continent. Equally,
the modest growth in cities in developing regions has been polarized, with
gains in smaller towns and cities and something of a renaissance for some of
the larger cities in these regions, which had been experiencing a decline in
their populations.
8 • Contexts

3
%

0
Small cities Intermediate cities Big cities Large cities Total

Africa (China) Developed regions

Latin America & the Caribbean (India) World total
Asia Developing regions
Small cities: cities with 100,000 to 500,000 inhabitants
Intermediate cities: cities with 500,000 to 1 million inhabitants
Big cities: cities with 1 million to 5 million inhabitants
Large cities: cities with 5 million or more inhabitants

Figure 1.1 Annual growth rate of the world’s cities by region and city size 1990–2000
Source: Adapted from UN-HABITAT Global Urban Observatory (2008)

The United Nations is a key source of data on the trends in urban growth,
publishing its World Urbanization Prospects biannually and an annual
Demographic Year Book. However, while being a useful source of
information, the figures published should be viewed with caution as the
number of people living in cities around the world is difficult to accurately
define. In analysing current urban trends there is a fine line to be drawn
between making useful general observations and a vague over simplification
of the changes taking place (Clark 2003).

Exercise

Consider figure 1.1 again – what problems might there be in collecting and collating the
data for a chart such as this? Think in particular about how data might be collected about
the number of urban dwellers and how you might define what constitutes an urban area.

Once you have generated some ideas, visit the UN Global Urban Observatory website
(ww2.unhabitat.org/programmes/guo/) and compare your ideas with the information
 An urban world • 9

presented there about how their data sets have been compiled. This should highlight the
variations around the world in the ways, frequencies, and so on in which census
information is collected and how urban areas are defined.

From looking at the data an important issue emerges for those studying
‘the urban’, namely that most of the world’s urban population live outside
the developed world and also mainly in smaller or medium sized cities.
Yet much of the urban geographical writing on cities that has been widely
published has focused on larger cities, located within developed regions. It is
therefore clearly a challenge to urban scholars to address these issues and to
produce work that speaks to the urban world in its full diversity (Hubbard
2006; Robinson 2005a).

Connectivity, power and world cities

Another key urban trend has been the increase in the number and location
of the world’s mega cities, defined as those with over 10 million inhabitants.
It is predicted that the number of mega cities in the world will increase to
27 by 2025, with the majority of these being located outside the developed
world (see figure 1.2). The city of Mumbai is predicted to become the
largest mega city after Tokyo, which will retain its top spot, while many
mega cities in developed regions, such as New York-Newark, will slip
down the rankings. The increasing number and changing distribution of
these large global cities has captured the imagination of commentators and
researchers in recent years. The emergence of new mega cities has prompted
questions about the processes fuelling these changing patterns (urbanization),
the varying role and status that cities in the world possess and the ways in
which cities are connected to one another on a global scale. A fundamental
question has been whether the rise of these new mega cities heralds a shift in
the distribution of the planet’s most powerful and connected cities, or world
cities.
Throughout the twentieth century, the colonial capitals and industrial cities of
Northern Europe and North America were some of the world’s largest cities
and acted as key nodes through which goods, information and people flowed
and as centres where wealth was generated and power exercised. However,
it is clear that the role and status of cities is shifting within our increasingly
globalized world, where the speed, spread and depth of economic, political
and cultural linkages is increasing and changing (Brenner and Keil 2006).
The search for power and economic prosperity among a growing number of
10 • Contexts

2007 2025
Population (Thousands) Population (Thousands)
1 Tokyo 35,676 1 Tokyo 36,400
2 Mexico City 19,028 2 Mumbai 26,385
3 New York-Newark 19,040 3 Delhi 10,129
4 São Paulo 18,845 4 Dhaka 22,015
5 Mumbai 18,978 5 São Paulo 21,428
6 Delhi 15,926 6 Mexico City 21,009
7 Shanghai 14,987 7 New York-Newark 20,628
8 Kolkata 14,787 8 Kolkata 20,560
9 Buenos Aires 12,795 9 Shanghai 19,412
10 Dhaka 13,485 10 Karachi 19,095
11 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana 12,500 11 Kinshasa 16,762
12 Karachi 12,130 12 Lagos 15,796
13 Rio de Janeiro 11,561 13 Cairo 15,561
14 Osaka-Kobe 14,748 14 Manila 14,808
15 Cairo 11,893 15 Beijing 14,545
16 Beijing 11,106 16 Buenos Aires 13,768
17 Manila 11,100 17 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana 13,672
18 Moscow 10,452 18 Rio de Janeiro 13,413
19 Istanbul 10,061 19 Jakarta 12,363
20 Istanbul 12,102
: Cities located near a large water body (sea, river or delta)
21 Guangzhou, Guangdong 11,835
22 Osaka-Kobe 11,368
23 Moscow 10,526
24 Lahore 10,512

Data from UN Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects 2007. 25 Shenzhen 10,196
Figures for 2005 are projections. 26 Chennai 10,129
Note: Population figures are for urban agglomeration, not city proper.
Mega cities are cities with populations of more than 10 million. : New megacities

Figure 1.2 The world’s mega cities

Source: Adapted from UN-HABITAT (2008)

large global cities, acting within an increasingly unstable and unpredictable

world, has generated intense competition between cities to gain status by
encouraging growth through city marketing and planning activities. Here
cities are seen to be acting increasingly entrepreneurially in order to attract
the right activities and people with which to stimulate growth (Hall and
Hubbard 1996, 1998).

Recent research has also sought to quantify the relative power and
connectivity of cities on a global scale, most notably the work of the Global
and World Cities (GaWC) Research Group based at Loughborough
University in the United Kingdom (www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/index.html).
What this research suggests is that the most powerful and connected of the
world’s cities remain those of the Global North, despite their diminishing
relative population size, and that the newly emerging mega cities of much of
the Global South lack significant global economic and political power despite
their large size. It should be noted, however, that the criteria generally used
to define status can be seen as ‘capitalist’ and ‘western’ in their conception,
potentially excluding many cities defined as globally important by other
criteria (Robinson 2005b). An alternative view would consider all cities as
 An urban world • 11

inherently global in some way but as differently positioned within a

multitude of global networks (this is explored again in chapter two).

Internal geographies of cities

Finally, the trends in growth and change in urban populations around the
world raise a number of significant issues for city dwellers and the managers
of cities. At the heart of these concerns is the long-term sustainability of
current urban trends and lifestyles, particularly the environmental impacts
of city growth and problems of poverty and inequality within cities. For
example, as noted above, Mumbai in India is predicted to become the world’s
second largest mega city. Its current growth and increasing global profile
have led to the city becoming something of a key exemplar of the issues and
concerns that could face many cities in the twenty-first century. In particular,
its use in a number of recent books and films has led to wider global public
awareness of the city and the issues it faces. For example, the widely
acclaimed film Slumdog Millionaire released in late 2008 was set against the
backdrop of Mumbai.
The film’s story highlights both the magic and the horrors of life within this
vast and rapidly changing city, and also some of the realities of everyday life
in the city and the problems of poverty faced by many of its inhabitants.
Consideration of films such as this that highlight life within cities should
raise questions in our minds about why life portrayed in the city is the way
it is and also the extent to which this is similar to or different from that with
which we are familiar from our own urban experiences. Indeed, these are
some of the key questions about urban life, or urbanism, that have been
long-standing concerns of urban geographers, among others.
Yet, concerns about the impacts of rapid urban growth and change and the
problems of life in cities are not merely a twenty-first century phenomenon.
Anxieties about urban life have been evident since the rise of large industrial
cities in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century. The rapid,
largely unplanned, growth of these cities also generated fears about their
social and environmental impact. Then, as now, these concerns were most
eloquently expressed in some of the fictional writings of the period, such
as the work of Charles Dickens on life in Britain’s industrial towns in the
nineteenth century. Much of his work graphically portrays the problems
associated with poor living conditions within these cities:
It [Coketown] was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been
red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a
town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a
12 • Contexts

town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents

of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled.
It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye,
and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a
trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked
monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of
melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one
another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by
people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours,
with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and
to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every
year the counterpart of the last and the next.
(Charles Dickens (1854) Hard Times)

This work, among other fictional and non-fictional writing, contributed

to the formation of negative attitudes to urban life (anti-urbanism), where the
city became associated with problems of poverty, disease, pollution, violence
and alienation (Gold and Revill 2004). However, the impact of this urban
growth, and the anti-urban reactions to it, did help generate both research into
cities and moves to better manage them which we consider later in the book.
Yet despite these efforts, anti-urban representations of urban life remain
prevalent. In particular, many visions of our planet’s future within science
fiction writing and film are set against backdrops of dystopic urban
landscapes, which are either dark and menacing (such as in the film Blade
Runner, 1982) or ruined and abandoned (such as in the film Mad Max, 1979)
(Gold 2001). However, despite these numerous pessimistic visions, not
everyone concurs with these nightmare scenarios and there is also optimism
about the urban future. The idea of the city, and living within one, remains
strong; one thing that we can be sure of is that cities are adaptable to new
conditions and circumstances, both global and local in nature. Of immediate
concern is how cities and urban populations can adapt to address important
global concerns such as the use of the world’s resources, climate change and
world poverty and health. These are critical challenges facing the urban
managers of today and tomorrow – we all have our part to play, perhaps
yours will be a key one in the future!

Summary and structure of the book

Hopefully this opening chapter has provided you with a stimulating start
to, or continuation of, your urban geographical journey. There is a great
diversity of cities in the world, which possess both similar and unique
characteristics and concerns, and also many ways of looking at the city, both
from above and below, from the official to the personal and from different
 An urban world • 13

cultural perspectives. We would hope that this has raised many questions for
you about what is going on in the urban world, both locally to you and also
further afield. The remainder of this book seeks to help you explore the issues
identified in this introduction, and more, in greater depth, drawing on a wide
range of information concerning cities, both from within urban geography
and beyond.
The book is structured around three core sections; Contexts, Themes and
Issues. The first section, of which this introductory chapter forms part,
provides a series of Contexts, or foundations, for the study of urban
geography. Also within this section, chapter two examines some of the
significant theoretical and conceptual issues underpinning urban geographical
study, while chapter three explores the diversity in the structure of the
world’s cities and how urban form varies over time and space. The section
on Themes contains four chapters and examines some of the fundamental
processes driving urban growth and change, which shape both cities and the
lives of people within them. Chapter four examines economic processes,
further examining the role of cities within the changing global economy and
the impact that this has had on economic activities within cities. Chapter
five considers politics and urban governance, examining the variety of ways
in which cities are managed around the world and the balances of power
that exist between various groups within cities. Chapter six develops the
examination of city management by looking at the range of approaches and
policies developed to plan the city and create better urban environments.
Finally, in this section, chapter seven explores the social and cultural
heterogeneity of cities and the ways in which this features within numerous
dimensions of urban life. The final section of the book, Issues, considers
some key questions about cities and aspects of urban life:
● Are cities built to be looked at or lived in? (Chapter eight considers
the significance of architecture to the functional and symbolic form of
cities and how this impacts on people’s lives in the city.)
● Are images of cities important? (Chapter nine looks at a variety of
representations of cities and the ways in which they are implemented
in cultural politics and processes of urban development.)
● Are cities experienced as dreams or nightmares? (Chapter ten examines
how we engage with the city in everyday life and whether this is a positive
or negative experience for people.)
● Are cities able to provide a home for everyone? (Chapter eleven explores
the fundamental role of the city as a residential space and considers why
many cities cannot meet the housing needs of their populations.)
● Are cars killing cities? (Chapter twelve considers our mobility in cities
and examines the transportation dilemmas facing many cities in the
twenty-first century.)
14 • Contexts

● Are current trends in urbanization sustainable? (Chapter thirteen considers

the impact of urban development on the environment and explores the key
question running throughout the book of whether our increasing rates of
urban growth, expanding cities and urban lifestyles are sustainable in the
future.)
Why these questions? Well, they are issues that we consider important to
discuss. It is not a definitive set, and we are sure that you could think of
others. There is, therefore, a lot to explore! While this book will provide
you with a comprehensive introduction to the study of urban geography, not
everything there is to be known and explored is within these pages (even if
we could achieve this, the resulting book would be too heavy and expensive
to be of use to the majority of students!). The book, therefore, contains
a number of features which will help to guide you to further sources of
information and which are also designed to encourage you to engage actively
with the book and its content. Each chapter includes:
● Five key ideas – these introduce each chapter and concisely capture their
essential contents and conceptual material. Along with the glossary of
terms, these can act as useful reference points and aid the development
of your understanding of key urban themes.
● Highlighted terms – this identifies some of the specialist terms and
concepts used in urban geography which are briefly defined and discussed
in the glossary at the back of the book. The glossary can act as a useful
reference point and basis for the further exploration of key themes and as
an opportunity to test yourself on your knowledge and understanding of
key ideas.
● Boxed case studies – these provide concise summaries and discussions
of key, contemporary research on particular urban themes. Based on
published papers, they are designed to highlight key authors and ideas
and encourage you to follow-up and explore issues in greater depth,
by using the case study article as the basis for further bibliographic
searches.
● Follow-up activities – this section contains suggested questions,
discussion topics, project ideas and research activities which you can
use to develop both your knowledge of the key ideas and case studies
introduced in the chapter and also to develop your study skills. The
activities will make links with the further reading in the annotated
bibliography at the end of the chapter.
● Annotated bibliography – this provides a list of some key books, journals
and web resources which you can use as a starting point for your further
investigation of a topic and to develop wider reading for projects or essays
on a particular issue. Each source identified is accompanied by a brief note
indicating what the source provides (note: summarizing sources that you
 An urban world • 15

read is a useful skill that will help you in organizing and producing your
assignments).
So let us now continue our journey and begin to delve a little deeper into the
world of urban geography . . .

Follow-up activities
Essay title: ‘What are some of the key issues facing cities around the world in
the twenty-first century?’

Commentary on essay title

An effective answer would outline some of the key urban trends and issues
introduced in this opening chapter and would provide some examples of
these issues from cities around the world drawing on academic research
into cities. It might also look to suggest which of these issues are the most
challenging ones facing cities. An excellent answer would look to move
beyond this extended list and critically explore why these issues face cities
and why they present particular challenges. It would also look to set
discussion more widely within academic writing on the city, evaluating
different perspectives, or lenses, adopted to look at urban issues.

Project idea
Develop the idea of ‘your urban geographies’ introduced in this
chapter. Develop a case study of the city you live in or a city that is
familiar to you, gathering evidence to examine this city from the three
perspectives outlined in this chapter: the macro geographies of your
city, the connectivity of your city and the internal geographies of your
city. What types of evidence can you gather to explore your city
(for example, population statistics, economic data about companies
operating in your city, field research, writings about your city, your
own personal experiences)? Evaluate the evidence you gather and think
about the benefits and problems of using different sources of data and in
examining the city from a variety of perspectives.
16 • Contexts

Further reading

Books
● Bell, D. and Jayne, M. (2006) Small Cities: Urban Experience Beyond the
Metropolis, Abingdon: Routledge
An interesting collection of essays focusing on those cities not normally
featured in general urban geographical writing.
● Clark, D. (2003) Urban World / Global City, 2nd edn, London: Routledge
Provides a useful overview of changes in global patterns of urbanization.
● LeGates, R.T. and Stout, F. (2007) The City Reader, 4th edn, Abingdon:
Routledge
Brings together a wide range of key writings on cities.
● Pacione, M. (2009) Urban Geography: A Global Perspective, 3rd edn,
Abingdon: Routledge
A key urban geography textbook; comprehensive coverage and written in a
student-friendly way.
● UN HABITAT (2008) The State of the World’s Cities 2008/9: Harmonious
Cities, London: Earthscan
A comprehensive overview of trends in urbanization around the world and the
issues facing cities by this key global organization.

Journal Articles
● Gold, J.R. (2001) ‘Under darkened skies: the city in science-fiction film’,
Geography, 86 (4): 337–345
Good introduction to the portrayal of the city in film and the idea of dystopian
imagery.
● Nijman, J. (2007) ‘Comparative urbanism’, Urban Geography, 28: 1–6
A key author in recent debates about the need to extend geographical research
to include more comparative studies, especially concerning cities beyond the
Global North.
● Robinson, J. (2005) ‘Urban geography: world cities, or a world of cities’,
Progress in Human Geography, 29: 757–765
A key article which challenges the ‘western’ focus of much urban
geographical writing and theorizing.
 An urban world • 17

● Shearmur, R. (2010) ‘Editorial – A world without data? The unintended

consequences of fashion in geography’, Urban Geography, 31: 1009–1017
Recent article highlighting the need for quantitative data to underpin urban
analysis.
● Taylor, P. and Walker, D.R.F. (2004) ‘Urban hinterworlds revisited’,
Geography, 89: 145–151
Based on GaWC research ideas, the article considers the degree of
connectivity between particular world cities.

Websites

● Gapminder (www.gapminder.org/) – a very useful site containing a wealth of

data on global socio-economic trends and variations which can be mapped to
reveal global diversity and inequalities.
● Global and World Cities Research Centre (GaWC) (www.lboro.ac.uk/
gawc/index.html) – a wealth of research material into world cities and the
connectivity of cities. Also displays some interesting maps showing world city
connectivity.
● UN HABITAT website (www.unhabitat.org/) – global organization concerned
with the issues facing the world’s cities. Contains a wealth of research and
information.
● Urban Geography Research Group (UGRG) of the Royal Geographical
Society/Institute of British Geographers (www.urban-geography.org.uk/) –
website of the research group of academic geographers in Britain. Contains
some useful links to other sites and some good book reviews of urban
geography texts.
 2 Changing approaches

Five key ideas

● Urban theory has undergone a series of radical shifts throughout its

history.
● Despite these discontinuities a series of fundamental questions have
always underpinned the work of urban geographers.
● Two major ongoing concerns of urban geographers are the internal
natures of cities and the relationships of cities to wider contexts.
● Recent critical challenges have argued that urban theory is failing to
reflect the cosmopolitanism of contemporary global urban diversity.
● An immediate challenge for urban geographers is to seek ways to
‘reimagine’ urban theory in the light of these challenges.

Introduction

A discussion of the history of urban geography, how it has changed through

time, is a standard aspect of all urban geography textbooks. Urban geography
has been characterized by a number of radical shifts in its theoretical
underpinnings, the aspects of the city that geographers are interested in and
the methods they employ to study the city. It is important to be aware of this
history and to realize that the ways that you will approach the study of cities
are products of this history. These discussions tend to take one of two forms.
Either they offer a broad historical review of the subject’s evolution (this was
the approach adopted in previous editions of this book) or a focus on current
issues or debates with reference to the subject’s evolution (see Robinson
2005a). These accounts all have a strongly chronological flavour. We do not
aim to replicate these here. We want to take a more thematic approach. While
the approaches that urban geographers have taken have been dynamic and
changing, we can recognize a set of fundamental questions that represent
enduring concerns of urban geographers.
 Changing approaches • 19

Historically then, the study of cities is identifiable with continuities and

discontinuities – continuities in terms of the basic questions cities pose,
discontinuities in terms of how they have been studied and theorised.
(Paddison 2001: 4)

It is these ‘basic questions’ that we are primarily interested in considering in

this chapter.

Exercise

What do you consider to be the most important ‘basic questions cities pose’ (Paddision
2001: 4)? Before reading on see if you can think of four or five examples. Can you find
examples from the academic literature of geographers studying these questions? Try to
think about the different approaches that geographers have taken to these questions.
Think in terms of the methods they have employed and any evidence of their theoretical
stances on these issues. Is this how you would approach these questions? Can you think
of alternative approaches?

Fundamental urban questions

Brian Berry (1964: 147) concisely captured the conceptualization of cities,

as reflected in the range of concerns of urban geographers, in his oft quoted
phrase: ‘cities as systems within systems of cities’. This captures much of
what urban geography has been concerned with since its emergence as an
academic discipline in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
(Hubbard 2006). Namely an interest in exploring many facets of the internal
lives of cities while recognizing that cities are part of wider contexts, be
they systems or networks of cities or more general political or economic
contexts.

We want to expand this conception of urban geography a little here. We

would argue that there are at least two further areas of interest that are not so
easily captured by Berry’s quotation above. In our view urban geographers
have been interested in four fundamental, enduring themes. These are:

● the internal geographies of cities of various kinds;

● the relationships between cities and their wider contexts;
● exploring and accounting for global urban diversity;
● different ways of thinking about, defining, theorizing and researching
the city.
20 • Contexts

We will use these four themes to guide our discussion of changing

approaches to urban geography and its cognate disciplines within the
remainder of the chapter.

The internal nature of cities

Urban geographers have continually sought to make sense of the city’s

internal structure, to discern order within the seemingly chaotic. The origins
of this impulse can be found in the birth of urban studies at the Department
of Sociology at the University of Chicago, which was founded in 1913. The
theoretical and methodological foundations laid down by pioneering urban
scholars such as Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, among others, have been
fundamental to a wide range of disciplines, including urban geography,
concerned with the city.

Rather than plough through the detail of the successive attempts that
geographers and others have made to understand the structure of cities (for
such discussions please see the suggested reading at the end of the chapter)
we simply want to isolate one dimension that urban scholars have looked at
and which would seem to underpin the internal geographies of cities. This
is the operation of power within the city and its associated processes of
competition and conflict. In doing so we will discuss the different ways in
which successive ‘schools’ or paradigms of urban geography thought about
the operation of power in the city and how this influenced their views of the
processes that shaped the internal structure of cities. We would not argue that
this is the only dimension that one could choose, but for us it is illustrative of
key changes in thinking across the history of urban geography.

Drawing on ideas from the natural sciences, the Chicago School talked of
human ecology and explored competition between groups of people with
differing abilities to pay economic rent for land. From this they argued that
the land use patterns and patterns of residential segregation reflected
equilibria between the abilities of different groups to pay economic rent, their
needs and inter-group competition. Despite their interest in economic power
these researchers were not blind to culture as a force shaping cities, noting
ethnicity and other facets of lifestyle as a factor producing communities
within cities. From this view of the city as an arena of competition stemmed a
number of urban models that represented the first attempts to systematically
understand the structure of the city and to tie this to underlying causal
processes (Pacione 2009). Widely known and applied models to date from
this period included Burgess’ concentric zone model and Hoyt’s sector model
(see Pacione 2001a and chapter three).
 Changing approaches • 21

In the 1950s and 1960s the social sciences became increasingly concerned
with producing rigorous, statistical explorations of society that pursued a
nomothetic search to unearth regularities, general laws and patterns of
human behaviour. This was facilitated by significant advances in computer
technology and the desire of the social sciences to attain credibility and
relevance (Hubbard 2006). This approach was particularly influential in
geography that began to be described as a postivist, spatial science. In
urban geography this partly took the form of testing the urban models either
from the Chicago School or subsequent ones that were much influenced
by their work. Influential work from this period included explorations
of the social areas of cities (Shevky and Bell 1955) and later factorial
ecology that sought to identify the socio-economic and cultural factors
that underpinned urban spatial patterns (see Knox and Pinch 2010: 67–73
and chapter eleven).

Despite the undoubted technical sophistication of this work it was subject to a

number of criticisms by the late 1960s. These included criticisms of inherent
flaws, such as its unrealistic views of human beings and their knowledge of
the environment and consequently the poor predictability of urban models
(Pacione 2009). However, ultimately more damning were criticisms of spatial
science’s lack of ability to say anything about a number of emerging urban
crises linked to poverty, inequality and conflict in cities of the Global North
at the time. Put simply, positivist urban geography lacked relevance and
engagement with the topical urban issues of the time. Despite the efforts of
an influential behavioural offshoot (see Goodey and Gold 1985; Walmsley
and Lewis 1993; Kitchin 1994), which by drawing on environmental
psychology aimed to more accurately model the processes of human
perception and cognition, this particular brand of urban geography saw its
influence wane into the 1970s.

Interestingly, while the origins of the Chicago School of urban studies

lay in explorations of one rapidly industrializing city, the origins of the
approach that came to replace spatial science in urban geography can be
traced back in part to Friedrich Engels’ (1844) revelations of the horrors of
another, Manchester, during his time there in the 1840s. This, and Engels’
subsequent work with Karl Marx, were key influences on the emergence
of structuralist approaches across the social sciences in the early 1970s.
Engels, and structuralists more generally, saw power in rather different terms
to the Chicago School and their followers. Emphasizing inequality and the
exploitation of the working class, structuralism within urban geography
focused on class as the key dimension of urban life and saw social and spatial
outcomes as the consequences of structural changes within the capitalist
regime of accumulation (Pacione 2009).
22 • Contexts

Structuralist, or neo-Marxist, urban geographies then were very different to

the positivist ones that had preceded them. These were urban geographies
underpinned often by a strong normative impulse, a sense of what should be
(Hubbard 2006; Pacione 2009). In some cases these convictions prompted
researchers to take on activist roles or positions overtly critical of planning
and government policy, which were felt to be instrumental in the
maintenance of unequal class relations and the propping-up of capitalism.
Some of the key works from this period included Social Justice and the City
(1973) by David Harvey (a ‘reformed’ positivist) and The Urban Question
(translated into English in 1977) and The City and the Grassroots (1983) by
Manuel Castells.

Many of the key works in this paradigm explored the dynamics of investment
in urban property markets. They interpreted these patterns as attempts to
resolve periodic crises within capitalism, charting the social and economic
consequences of this dynamic through processes such as gentrification (Smith
1996), suburban development, deindustrialization and urban abandonment.
Although subject to a number of criticisms, often referring to its failure
to adequately incorporate human agency into its analysis (see Savage
et al.’s (2003: 52–53) criticisms of David Harvey for example) it retained a
prominence within urban geography and indeed its influence is still felt
today.

An alternative perspective that arose primarily within urban sociology

focused not on power in terms of class positions and conflict but rather in
terms of the ability of key individuals, urban managers and gatekeepers, to
control access to resources in the city (Pacione 2009).
Such actors included housing managers, planners, estate agents, mortgage
lenders, financiers, police, councillors and architects. Collectively and
individually, it was argued these actors could deny certain social groups
access to particular property markets (and hence particular parts of the
city).
(Hubbard 2006: 32–33)

Despite the focus on individual actors their actions tended still to be

interpreted in terms of the maintenance of class relations.

The urban managerialist approach, in emphasizing conflict, racism and

inequalities in wealth and power in less abstract terms than neo-Marxist forms
of structuralism made some important contributions to urban studies (see Pahl
1970; Rex and Moore 1974; Rex and Tomlinson 1979). In highlighting the
barriers to access to resources, such as housing, for many in the city, they
destabilized positivist models of the city in which such constraints were
largely absent (Hubbard 2006) (see also chapter eleven).
 Changing approaches • 23

The desire to unpack the internal structure of the city remains a strong
impulse within urban geography, with recent contributions including
attempts to model the post-industrial, post-modern or global metropolis (see
discussion below and chapter three). However, work in this vein has tended
to shift in one of two directions, either looking at how specific processes,
such as gentrification for example, play out within cities or, alternatively,
adopting more ethnographic approaches or ones that seek to explore more the
meanings of urban spaces (Pacione 2009). We will look at some of this work
later in the chapter and throughout the book.

Cities and wider contexts

As Brian Berry’s (1964) quotation (see p. 19) reminds us, one of the key
interests of urban geographers has been, and remains, the question of the
relationships between cities and wider contexts, however these may be
construed. Although not a central concern of positivist approaches it was
present in their interest in urban systems, for example, Christaller’s central
place theory (Hubbard 2006: 32). However, this dimension of the urban has
been much more a concern of other approaches and is something we have
seen a growing interest in recently. Again, the question of power, in this case
the operation of power upon cities and the power of cities themselves,
provides a useful lens through which to examine the ways in which urban
geographers have approached this in a number of different ways.
A recurrent concern among structuralist urban geographers has been the
impacts of structural changes on cities, the wider context in this case seen as
the capitalist system or the global economy. The city, in being regarded as a
crucial site of the resolution of periodic crises within capitalism, was often
considered as ‘victim’. Work in this vein emphasized the destructive impacts
of uneven development in processes like deindustrialization and urban
development. Later work, however, argued that cities were not as helpless as
this view might suggest and explored the ways in which cities and space were
also active in shaping the processes of ongoing development (Massey and
Meegan 1982; Massey 1984).

More recently an interest in the geographies of globalization has focused

attention on a number of global cities (London, Paris, New York, Los
Angeles and Tokyo among others) as crucial lynch pins within the global
economy, highlighting the connectivity between these cities and,
concomitantly, the implications for those cities that are not part of these
networks (Brenner and Keil 2006; Kim 2008). The notion of the links
between even the most mundane urban spaces has gained a significant
foothold theoretically and analytically within urban geography following
24 • Contexts

Doreen Massey’s arguments for a ‘global sense of place’ (1994). Here she
argues that places should not be seen as closed, bounded, coherent entities,
but rather as open, complex and interconnected to ranges of other spaces
through links associated with travel, migration, trade, commerce and culture,
as well as more personal biographies and memories. Here again though,
Massey recognizes power at play, arguing that while some spaces are the
originators of many connections, shaping the geographies of other spaces
around the world, other, perhaps less ‘powerful’, spaces, tend to be,
overwhelmingly, the receivers of connections or connected in ways that do
not allow them the power to shape spaces elsewhere. In this case they are
more shaped than shapers. Since Massey first introduced the idea of places as
networked in this way there has been a significant interest in the application
of a variety of network approaches in human geography which we are seeing
increasingly applied to analysis of cities (Amin 2002b; Amin and Thrift
2002). We are likely, therefore, to see a growing interest in research based
around notions of connectivity within urban geography in the future (see
discussions on this subject later in this book).

Global urban diversity

A number of commentators (Eade and Mele 2002; Hubbard 2006; Robinson
2002, 2005a; Roy 2009) have noted something of a crisis in urban theory
recently. We have witnessed the emergence of theoretical perspectives
(feminist, post-modern, post-colonial, for example) that are both radically
different to and explicitly critical of theoretical perspectives on the city that
stemmed from positivist and structuralist traditions and which, until recently,
dominated urban thinking across a number of disciplines. The rise of these
alternative perspectives can be interpreted as a failure of ‘traditional’ urban
theory to reflect, or be able to engage with, the realities of global urban
diversity. Jennifer Robinson (2002, 2005a) has gone as far as arguing that
urban theory risks becoming irrelevant if it remains narrowly focused on
certain aspects of life in cities of the Global North at a time when current
trends in urbanization are profoundly shifting the distribution of urban
populations towards the Global South (see chapter one). Not only has urban
theory failed, thus far, to respond to these trends but it has also failed to
embrace the diversities of city life globally, remaining too fixated on a
narrow set of social divisions (especially class based divisions) that were
more applicable to cities in a particular place (the Global North) at a
particular time (the twentieth century) than they are to the diversity of cities
and urban lifestyles around the world now.
Robinson is particularly critical of the tendency of urban theory to transfer or
‘universalise’ ‘located and parochial assumptions’ (2005a: 6) from the small
 Changing approaches • 25

set of cities in which they were devised to other, very different, cities
elsewhere. The effects of this have been either that the assumptions are
irrelevant to the cities to which they have been applied, or, that in not fitting
into these assumptions and models, certain cities are relegated and defined as
‘other’ or simply seen in terms of under-development or in terms only of
what they lack in relation to other cities. The application of western urban
theory then to cities elsewhere may be disempowering, a tendency regarded
as colonial in its effects. There is a danger then, following this, that this
application of urban theory can create hierarchies, categories and divisions to
which cities are consigned. Much of the impulse behind the emergence of
new perspectives and alternative urban theories is to resist this colonial,
disempowering impulse and to produce urban theories that are able to
recognize cities on their own terms and to accommodate global urban
diversity. As Robinson argues: ‘we need a form of theorising that can be as
cosmopolitan as the cities we try to describe’ (2005a: 3).
Hubbard (2006) is similarly critical of urban theory’s attempts to account
for recent trends in urbanization in cities of the west. These cities are being
increasingly affected by a number of economic, political, social and cultural
factors that were neither anticipated nor included in positivist and later
structuralist models and theories of the city and which appear to raise
questions about some key aspects and assumptions of these perspectives.
These processes, often referred to under the banner of post-modern
urbanization, have included deindustrialization, the rise of entrepreneurial
forms of urban governance, increasing levels of social polarization and
fragmentation and the reconfiguration of both individual and group identities
in new, multiple and complex ways through practices such as consumption,
migration and leisure that are increasingly central to the urban experience.
They have exposed earlier urban theory as overly rigid, crude and inflexible.
It is not that recent urban theory has failed to notice these changes. Indeed,
there has been much written about them by many urban geographers and
others from cognate disciplines (see Harvey 1989a; Soja 1989, 1996; Davis
1990; Watson and Gibson 1995; Dear and Flusty 2005), a significant
proportion of which is based upon analysis of Los Angeles, a city that has
become constructed as the archetypal post-modern city (see also chapter
three). Rather, much of what has been produced has been done from within
the theoretical straightjacket of twentieth century urban theory that has been
unable to offer sufficiently cosmopolitan, to use Robinson’s term, urban
theory through which to speak of these changes (Hubbard 2006: 42–55).
Criticisms of these attempts to theorize the post-modern city have included
questions about the representativeness of Los Angeles. As with earlier
manifestations of urban theory we have seen here a tendency to universalize
insights derived from the specific analysis of Los Angeles. Further, these
26 • Contexts

accounts have been accused of producing top-down perspectives that have

failed to include the grounded multiple realities of the cities under scrutiny
(Ley and Mills 1993). This, it has been argued, is both disempowering and
reductionist, erasing the subtle contours of social difference and experience
within different cities.

Exercise

Look at some of the writing on Los Angeles from writers such as Davis, Soja or Dear and
Flusty. How transferable, do you think, are their views of post-modern urbanization to
urban settings with which you are familiar? How different, and in what ways, would our
view of post-modern urbanization be had it been based more extensively around
explorations of cities other than Los Angeles?

Despite an avowed engagement with the complexities of global urban

diversity and the processes of post-modern urbanization, these accounts seem
to have failed to escape the tendencies to abstraction and reductionism typical
of twentieth century urban theory.
While there is a widely noted dissatisfaction with the ‘will to abstraction’
which forced the city to conform to abstract models, categorisations and
languages, urban scholars have often fallen back on these very forms of
abstraction in their attempts to comprehend new forms of urbanity.
(Hubbard 2006: 55)

Thinking about the city

Having read our brief gallop through the history of urban geography you
may be asking, quite rightly, how this is relevant to your own practice as a
budding urban geographer. We want to stress three points here. First, it is
important to reiterate that the urban geography that you will undertake is the
product of a long evolution of theory, methods and concerns. Your urban
geographies then will be shaped by this history. Second, it is important to
stress that debate, even disagreement, is very much alive within urban
geography. The gauntlet thrown down by Jennifer Robinson and other
post-colonial theorists, for example, is evidence of this. You have choices
as an urban geographer then. Debates to weigh up and maybe participate in.
Think critically about your urban geographies, where they come from and
what alternatives exist. This will make you a more effective and incisive
urban geographer and will bring the subject alive to you. This is something
 Changing approaches • 27

that all of the urban geographers that you will read about in this and other
books have gone through, and continue to do so. Third, thinking in terms of
theory is a vital part of urban geography. While empirical investigation of
cities is important, the significance of case studies is only really apparent
when they are connected to bigger questions. What then do the case studies
that you look at and issues that you research yourselves tell you about how
the city works? In what ways do the findings of these investigations connect
to the more fundamental issues that we have outlined here and what do they
reveal about them? Thinking theoretically about cities is an important skill
for any urban geographer, it will produce richer, more critical urban
geographies rather than ones that are naïve or descriptive.

Summary
This chapter has not attempted to offer a detailed, comprehensive account
of changing approaches within urban geography. It has said nothing for
example about humanistic approaches (see, for example, Relph 1976, 1987
and chapter ten). It has tried to offer a flavour of the way in which the subject
has evolved around a number of key questions, some reasons why and the
contributions it has drawn from cognate disciplines. It should be seen as an
introduction to this important field that can be explored in greater depth
through the readings outlined below.

Follow-up activities
Essay title: ‘We need a form of theorising that can be as cosmopolitan as
the cities we try to describe’ (Robinson 2005a: 3). Discuss Robinson’s
challenge to urban theory and the ways that we might go about constructing
an alternative, ‘cosmopolitan’ urban theory.

Commentary on essay title

An effective answer would reiterate the key points of Robinson’s critique
of urban theory, perhaps making reference to other writers who have
raised similar points. This would cover both her criticisms of the colonial
tendencies of this theory and the basis that she proposes for an alternative.
An excellent answer would then move beyond Robinson’s work to consider
the work of others who have proposed alternatives to prevailing forms of
urban theory. The papers by Rao and Wolch in the further reading below
would be relevant here as well as some of the critiques outlined by Hubbard.
28 • Contexts

Project idea
‘Current trends in urbanization are making the cities of the Global
North a peripheral part of the urban world.’ To what extent do you
agree with this statement? Can you gather evidence to support your
position? What types of evidence have you used (for example,
population statistics, economic, political or cultural power)? Do all of
these forms of evidence tell the same story? What alternatives could
you chose and how would this affect your argument?

Further reading

Books

● Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (2002) Cities: Reimagining the Urban, Cambridge:

Polity
A radical reimagining of the boundaries and concerns of urban geography.
Fuel to the fire of recent debates.
● Hubbard, P. (2006) City, Abingdon: Routledge (Chapter 1: ‘Urban theory,
modern and post-modern’)
Phil Hubbard offers one of the most readable and comprehensive accounts of
the history of urban theory currently available.
● Pacione, M. (2009) Urban Geography: A Global Perspective, London: Routledge
Pacione’s book is about the most comprehensive overview of urban
geography that is currently available. Chapter 2 ‘Concepts and theory in urban
geography’ is particularly relevant to the discussion in this chapter.
● Robinson, J. (2005) Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development,
Abingdon: Routledge
Jennifer Robinson offers some fundamental criticisms of the urban theory that
has tended to hold sway across a range of disciplines. Her arguments are fully
laid out in this book.
● Savage, M., Warde, A. and Ward, K. (2003) Urban Sociology, Capitalism and
Modernity, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Although not specifically from an urban geography perspective, this book
contains some clear-eyed, critical evaluation of a range of urban theory.