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UNIT 1: HOW GEOGRAPHERS APPROACH THE CITY
1.0 Intended Learning Outcomes
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
Define urban geography and urbanism
Discuss the meaning, scope, and nature of urban geography
Differentiate urbanization and urbanism
Discuss the key concepts of urban geography
Present a discourse on the approaches and methods of urban geography
Present situations where approaches and concepts of urban geography
could better promote contemporary cities
1.1. Introduction
In this chapter, you will learn about urban geography, its definition, nature,
scope, methods, and approaches. Part of your study of urban geography is to
delineate the concepts of urban geography and urbanism. The study of urban
geography and urbanism are significant in urban studies, hence, you will also have
to take grasps of what urban studies and how this connects to urban geography.
Moreover, you will have to link the basic information learned from understanding
urban geography to urbanization and you will also identify situations where these
approaches and concepts could better promote and lead to the creation and
development of contemporary cities. The process is relevant to the better
understanding ofn how contemporary cities developed and evolved through time.
Hence, to better understand the lessons, you will have to read articles
incorporated therein, watch videos and/or documentaries about the topic, and
present ideas to exercises and answers to the questions that this learning material
feature.
1.2 Topics/Discussion (with Assessment/Activities)
1.2.1 How geographers approach the city
1.2.1.1 Meaning, Scope, Nature, and Uses of Urban Geography
1.2.1.2 Key concepts of Urban Geography
1.2.1.3 Approaches and Methods in Urban Geography
1.2.1.4 Meaning, Scope, and Nature of Urban Studies
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Brain-build
Activity Title: Devour on Starters
Instruction:
1. Perform the following activities and use any writing implements to deliver
the same. Be creative.
Activity 1
In one complete picture or illustration, show, briefly and comprehensively,
what urban geography is all about. Create and Inform!
Activity 2
Using a graphic organizer or infograph, present the situation by which urban
geography may apply to the disciplines of social sciences (e.g. Sociology,
Political Science, Economics, Anthropology, among others)
Activity 3
Imagine yourself as an urban geographer, illustrate through print or picture,
your view on a city system
2. Present your outputs either print or virtual.
General Instruction for Submission of Outputs:
Use separate sheets in accomplishing the activities, quizzes and/or
exercises contained in this module. Compile in a folder and submit as
scheduled.
3. Rubric
1. CRITERIA
1. Cohesiveness of ideas
Ideas or information presented is rich and
shows learner’s understanding of the
topic
2. Quality of Instructional Aid
The learner’s use of appropriate scheme
and material are apparent and led to the
successful delivery of the expected output
3. Quality and Style of Presentation
The learner is able to present the assigned
task accurately and in the most
sophisticated way
TOTAL
PT.
SCORE
REMARK
10
5
5
20
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Geography is the study of the physical and human and/or social environments of the
Earth, while urban inquiry focuses on the people and processes of cities and towns -- which
now account, for the first time in human history, for a majority of the world's population.
It can be deduced from this that urban geography, then, is concerned with the relations
among people, and between people and their environments, in cities and towns across the
world.
What is Urban Geography?
Urban geography is a branch of human geography concerned with various aspects of
cities. An urban geographer's main role is to emphasize location and space and study the
spatial processes that create patterns observed in urban areas. To do this an urban
geographer, they study the site, evolution and growth, and classification of villages, towns,
and cities as well as their location and importance in relation to different regions and cities.
Economic, political and social aspects within cities are also important in urban geography
(Briney, 2019).
An essential component within urban geography is the city and defining what a city
or urban area actually is. Although a difficult task, urban geographers generally define the
city as a concentration of people with a similar way of life-based on job type, cultural preferences,
political views, and lifestyle. Specialized land uses, a variety of different institutions, and use of
resources also help in distinguishing one city from another.
Moreover, urban geographers also work to differentiate areas of different sizes.
Because it is hard to find sharp distinctions between areas of different sizes, urban
geographers often use the rural-urban continuum to guide their understanding and help
classify areas. It takes into account hamlets and villages which are generally considered rural
and consist of small, dispersed populations, as well as cities and metropolitan areas
considered urban with concentrated, dense populations. Meanwhile, Johnston (2000)
concluded that, the study of urban places is central to many social sciences, including
geography, because of their importance not only in the distribution of population within
countries but also in the organization of economic production, distribution and exchange, in
the structuring of social reproduction and cultural life, and in the exercise of political power.
Sub-fields of the different social science disciplines were established in the decades after the
Second World War to study these separate components, such as urban anthropology,
economics, geography, politics, and sociology; later attempts were made to integrate these
under the umbrella title of urban studies.
Nature and Scope of Urban Geography
Urban geography is the study of urban places with reference to their geographical
environment. Broadly speaking, the subject matter includes origin of towns, their growth
and development, their functions in and around their surroundings. The subject of urban
geography has gradually taken a special place among the various branches of geography in
the period after the Second World War in various foreign and Indian universities and
colleges. With the increase of population globally, towns and cities have become magnets of
economic, social and political processes.
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A comprehensive illustration of the scope and/or extent of urban geography and
studies is fused through this diagram espoused by Pacione (2009).
To know the beginning of urban geography, Briney (2019), presented a brief but
comprehensive historical accounts on the development of urban geography.
History of Urban Geography
The earliest studies of urban geography in the United States focused on site and
situation. This developed out of the man-land tradition of geography which focused on the
impact of nature on humans and vice versa. In the 1920s, Carl Sauer became influential in
urban geography as he motivated geographers to study a city's population and economic
aspects with regard to its physical location. In addition, central place theory and regional
studies focused on the hinterland (the rural outlying are supporting a city with agricultural
products and raw materials) and trade areas were also important to early urban geography.
Throughout the 1950s and 1970s, geography itself became focused on spatial analysis,
quantitative measurements and the use of the scientific method. At the same time, urban
geographers began quantitative information like census data to compare different urban
areas. Using this data allowed them to do comparative studies of different cities and develop
computer-based analysis out of those studies. By the 1970s, urban studies were the leading
form of geographic research.
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Shortly thereafter, behavioral studies began to grow within geography and in urban
geography. Proponents of behavioral studies believed that location and spatial
characteristics could not be held solely responsible for changes in a city. Instead, changes in
a city arise from decisions made by individuals and organizations within the city.
By the 1980s, urban geographers became largely concerned with structural aspects of
the city related to underlying social, political and economic structures. For example, urban
geographers at this time studied how capital investment could foster urban change in various
cities. Throughout the late 1980s until today, urban geographers have begun to differentiate
themselves from one another, therefore allowing the field to be filled with a number of
different viewpoints and focuses. For example, a city's site and situation is still regarded as
important to its growth, as is its history and relationship with its physical environment and
natural resources. People's interactions with each other and political and economic factors
are still studied as agents of urban change as well.
Urban Geography as a Sub-discipline
On one hand, Latham et al (2009), also presented thorough introduction of geography
as a sub-discipline. The discussion include the beginnings of urban geography and how it
developed as a meaninful social science.
According to the authors, urban geography is a relatively youthful sub-discipline.
Early work focused on the ways that climate and local geographical conditions had shaped
the development of individual urban centres. This certainly produced some interesting work.
Jean Brunhes’ (1920) Human Geography, for example, showed in great detail how the
architecture and form of particular settlements could be related to the surrounding region’s
topography, climate and geology. But there was only so much to be said about the
importance of the immediate physical environment to things like settlement location, or a
city’s internal morphology. It is only in the past 50 years that urban geography has emerged
as a recognisable entity either within geography or, more broadly, within social scientific
research on cities and urbanisation. As recently as the end of the 1950s, urban geography was
defined by just a handful of textbooks and monographs (see Dickinson, 1947; Taylor, 1949;
Mayer and Kohn, 1959) and, in North America and the United Kingdom at least, it was rare
for university geography departments to offer undergraduate courses focusing exclusively
on urban issues. Prior to the 1950s geography in general was preoccupied by two principal
themes: first, that of regional distinctiveness and second, on the relationship between
humans and the physical environment. Geography was thus essentially an idiographic
discipline (a discipline concerned with singular empirical cases) closely aligned with the
humanities, and a discipline where the division between human and physical geography was
blurry (humans were after all part of the physical environment).
This situation altered dramaticall in the early 1960s, as urban geography emerged as
a quantitatively based ‘spatial science’, defined by three central principles. First, it was
convinced that the aim of geography should be to find general laws that defined the
formation of geographical relationships. Second, to discover these relationships geography
had to develop rigorous and empirically testable theories. And third, geography had to adopt
established scientific techniques such as statistical analysis, hypothesis testing, or
mathematical modelling, to properly test these theories. Thus, to be scientific, data needed to
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be measurable and countable. And to be rigorous, data needed to be scientifically tested
against some theory about how the world worked. While these principles may appear
straightforward enough and even rather quaint and a little naive to contemporary ears, they
represented a revolution within the conservative world of early 1950s geography.
Quantitative geography thus reconceptualised geography as a nomothetic discipline
(concerned with general cases and laws), one that was closely identified with the scientific
project (whether that be in the physical or social sciences). However, the sub-discipline could
not be insulated from the broader changes taking place across western societies in the 1960s
and 1970s. While this saw the rise of an influential body of work inspired by Marxist and
feminist traditions, it also saw a more general interest in the ‘peopling’ of geography, aligned
with a growing interest in place (Cloke et al., 1991: ch. 3). Such a ‘humanistic’ geography was
diverse in its content, but shared an ‘insistence on taking seriously the inter-subjectively
constituted lifeworlds – the shared meanings and “common-sense knowledges” – associated
with groups of people who lead similar lives under similar circumstances in similar places’
(p. 87).
The broad movement that underpinned this shift is often referred to as the ‘cultural
turn’, which is well documented by Barnett (2003), Mitchell (1999) and Scott (2004). For
Barnett, this turn involved a threefold rejection of Marxism, a methodological interest in
ethnography (drawing on methods of qualitative social research or textual analysis) and a
commitment to social constructionism (seeing place and social identity as being constituted
through texts, images and discourses). It also implied a sensitivity to difference, be this based
on gender, race, sexuality or other forms of identity (Anderson, 1999: 12).
Poststructuralism, which made its way into geography via the humanities,
‘questioned the coherence and fixity in categories [and] created a hunger for what has
become known as “problematising”; for situating within narrative context that which is
assumed to rest on a bedrock of truth’. Such an agenda also included an interest in
institutions ‘as cultural domains’: ‘Universities, banks, the military, thelevels of state, the law,
the church, corporations, schools, the media and even families impose some narrative plot
onto their activities, binding members to the unit and justifying their existence to themselves
and society at large’ (Anderson, 1999: 7).
More recently, there has been an expansion of the cultural turn into the field of
everyday life. Certainly, not all cultural geographers share this concern. For Anderson (1999:
3): ‘The taken-for-granted minutiae of dress conventions, traffic rules, table manners, codes
of humour, funeral rituals, subtleties of fashion shifts and definitions of personal beauty, are
probably beyond the purview of geographers’. This is no longer the case and, whether one
agrees with its relevance or not, recent urban geographical work has included work on
tending gardens, sitting in airports, sitting in cafes and using telephones (e.g., Hitchings,
2003; Power, 2005; Laurier and Philo, 2006; Adey, 2007).
Above all, however, urban geography is multidisciplinary. Its areas of concern bleed
into those of other areas of human geography (economic geography, social geography,
political geography and so on) and other social science disciplines (sociology, anthropology,
economics, planning, to name the four closest).
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Leaning from the historical account on the emergence of urban geography by Briney
(2019), it is patent that urban geography could encompass a bigger concentration which
could pose a challenge to those who are specializing on this discipline. Nonethless, urban
geography may be best understood by using themes. With this, Briney (2019), presented the
varrying themes, viz:
Themes of Urban Geography
Although urban geography has several different focuses and viewpoints, there are
two major themes that dominate its study today.
1. This is the study of problems relating to the spatial distribution of cities and the
patterns of movement and links that connect them across space. This approach
focuses on the city system.
2. The theme in urban geography today is the study of patterns of distribution and
interaction of people and businesses within cities. This theme mainly looks at a
city's inner structure and therefore focuses on the city as a system.
In order to follow these themes and study cities, urban geographers often break down
their research into different levels of analysis. In focusing on the city system, urban
geographers must look at the city on the neighborhood and citywide level, as well as how it
relates to other cities on a regional, national and global level. To study the city as a system
and its inner structure as in the second approach, urban geographers are mainly concerned
with the neighborhood and city level.
Key Concepts in Urban Geography
There are overarching areas of concern in urban geography that Latham et al (2009)
have presented. These are, location and movement; constructions; envisioning and
experience; social and political organisation; and sites and practices. Let us learn from the
contextualization and/or discussion of Latham (2009), viz:
1. Location and Movement
This area includes ideas that respon to variety of questions such as, why were
some cities so large, and why did they appear to be getting more so? Why were some
industries concentrated in some places and not others? How did transportation
networks work? Why were land rents in some parts of cities so high and others so
low? What determined the flow of people and information between different cities?
In a short period of time and borrowing with enthusiasm from other disciplines that
shared an interest in the spatial distribution of human activity such as economics and
sociology, quantitative urban geographers developed an impressive range of theories
through which cities might be understood. And, at the same time, cities offered a
wealth of existing and potential data sets – population censuses, railroad freight bills,
electoral rolls, newspaper circulation figures, highway flow rates, to name just a few
example – with which geographers could get to work developing empirically rigorous
theoretical models to answer all of these questions.
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This allows us to think about the dynamic of spatial relations within and
between cities. Traditionally, much of urban geography has focused on such relations.
Central place theory, locational analysis, diffusion models, network analysis, systems
theory and suchlike allowed quantitative urban geographers to describe the structure
and morphology of cities and city systems with ever greater sophistication (see
Gottmann, 1961; Haggett, 1965; Pred, 1966; Berry, 1973; Johnston, 1983). Nonetheless,
this quantitative urban geography that was so confident and so intellectually
dominant in the 1960s and 1970s also came to face a series of critiques of its more
extravagant claims about its ability to understand the spatial dynamics of cities,
particularly as the pace, density and intensity of urban life has transformed. The entry
on centrality discusses more recent attempts to consider and conceptualise the role of
downtowns and central business districts in cities. Unsurprisingly, these questions
about location saw the rise of a linked, but separate, sub-discipline of transport
geography. In many ways, the recent upsurge in work on mobility deals with the
terrain usually occupied by transport geography, which has had a long and
substantial contribution to urban geography. Yet it has often been boxed off, left to
those with an interest in port systems, road pricing or rail travel.
The dynamic between the logics of centrality and mobility then forms the
backdrop to the discussion of global cities. This is a field of study that has boomed
over the last two decades and has been an inevitable partner of the vast literature on
globalisation in all its forms and conceptual shapes. This body of work has been driven
primarily by cases and theories derived from economic geography, and sees cities as
being defined by their ability to hold down circuits of wealth, employment and
capital. There is a subtle difference in perspective here with the literature on
transnational urbanism, which has emerged as the study of flows of ideas, practices,
peoples and commodities between and within contemporary urban centres. The
human flows that move between cities – either as tourists or migrant workers, either
temporarily moving or going from one sedentary life to another – have tended to be
defined in contrast to globalisation, allowing a tracing of how particular ethnic groups
organise themselves across established national boundaries. They can be highly
visible – Chinatowns being a classic example – or they can be largely hidden from
mainstream society, as many migrant groups seek to establish and embed themselves
through independent means.
2. Constructions
This set of concepts allows us to get some purchase on cities as built, or
constructed environments. We begin by considering the relationship between cities
and nature, and how the urban environment is not necessarily unnatural, but is better
understood as a kind of hybrid of the natural and social. The discussion cuts across a
range of themes that have been exciting theorists, such as urban political ecology (Keil,
2003; Wolch, 2007) and animals in cities (Wolch, 2007). The relationship between
human actors and nature has been an important new field of study in human
geography (e.g., Whatmore, 2002) and the relationship between urbanity and
(controlled) nature is one that is only recently being given fuller examination.
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Theorists have become interested in the diverse materiality through which
social practice comes into being. So, they are not just interested in people and
language, but also the complex networks of bodies, objects, technologies and
imaginaries through which urban space is constituted. This has been a key aspect of
recent debates concerning urban infrastructure, which seeks to explain the sociotechnical constitution of the bits and pieces of urban systems such as cables, power
supplies and satellite that help urban society stick together. These mechanisms shape
the experience of urban life, but are often hidden (literally and metaphorically) from
our attention. And it has also invigorated debates in the field of architecture, both in
terms of the networks of relations that come together to make a building happen and
also through an understanding of how buildings are used, both in the everyday sense
of home and housing and in ceremonial, identitymarking institutions such as state
parliaments or museums.
3. Envisioning and Experience
Theorists such as Schivelbusch (1986) and Schwarzer (2004) have argued that
visuality is central to the modern urban experience: Panoramic vision turns the view
of the city into a sequence of disembodied and abstracted forms. Schivelbusch realizes
that since rail passengers perceive specific objects poorly, they tend not to look closely
or carefully. Speed anaesthetizes vision. Sight becomes absentminded. Instead of
observing a building’s form, rail passengers see odd features in the shifting
juxtapositions brought about by the train’s velocity and their own hap hazard
concentration. A new type of building is seen. This is not the building carefully
designed by the architect, but instead a building interconnected with other buildings,
other objects, and other images in the mind. (Schwarzer, 2004: 54)
Railway or car journeys are thus interesting ways of thinking through how the
urban is constituted, as it suggests that many urban dwellers switch into absentmindedness when travelling through complex urban landscapes. By contrast, there is
also a tendency to associate cities through visual metaphors, associating them with
their distinguishing ‘trademarks’ such as Sydney’s harbour, bridge and opera house;
London’s palaces and Victorian buildings; Rome’s monuments and ruins or New
York’s skyline of high-rise towers. Moreover, they are often dominated by complex
forms of visuality in how we make sense of urban space, most frequently expressed
through the medium of photography, which has been important in the rise of
cinematic productions and still images alike
We then focus on how urban experience can be understood via the concept of
virtuality, not just in terms of the digital, but in terms of an experience that points to
an imaginative and future-oriented sense of experience. While often associated with
the rise of ‘cybercities’, virtuality has a more complex set of meanings, which includes
the practice of imagining urban space, the use of technology to simulate ‘real’ spaces
and a complex set of transactions in time, most notably in financial trading.
Finally, we consider a concept – surveillance – that allows us to get a handle
on how various forms of governance infiltrate many of the most everyday of urban
practices and routines. The increasing sophistication of camera technology has
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allowed public spaces to be increasingly monitored visually. Yet surveillance means
much more than this, as corporations seek to scan consumer behaviour in the search
for greater market sensitivity, governments construct databases to watch over who is
part of the national community and the military adopts cartographic techniques in
order to enhance their operations (often against civilian targets).
4. Social and Political Institutions
This area allows us to consider some of the power of social and political critique
was given animportant stimulus by developments in Marxian geography. Marxian
urban geography was also concerned with an entirely new set of research themes
(trade unions, political activists, ideological fields, the dynamics of capitalist
accumulation) and a whole new range of empirical concerns, not least of which was
understanding how the economic structures of a city were intertwined with its
political institutions.
In 1973, David Harvey published Social Justice and the City, now seen as a
turning point in the use of Marxian concepts in urban geography. Starting out as a
politically liberal meditation on the relationship between cities and social justice,
Harvey came to the conclusion that liberal – that is to say mainstream – social science
was incapable of understanding the underlying causes of the many inequalities and
social injustices that structured the experience of the modern city. His arguments
inspired a wide range of social geographic research. This is not to deny the significance
of quantitative, statistical measures of segregation as captured by census data and
other socio-economic surveys, but rather to take a more reflective, integrated
approach to considering the categorisation of such data. In this context, the
importance of recognising ‘difference’ has been an important motivation for
geographers working at the intersection of post-colonialism and urban geography and
planning (e.g., Fincher and Jacobs, 1998).
Harvey was not alone in his call for a ‘radical’ (that is to say anti-establishment),
Marxian inspired, urban geography. Since 1969 the journal Antipode had been
publishing Marxian inspired (along with feminist and other) critiques of quantitative
geography. But Social Justice and the City acted as a catalyst in redefining what a
radical urban geography would be about – not least because it asserted, first, that
geography was absolutely central to the dynamics of the capitalist system and, second,
that cities in particular were key sites for the realisation of surplus value – that they
were money-machines. In the following years, a multitude of geographical scholars
have extended the scope of Marxian urban geography. Indeed, if quantitative
geography defined the dominant intellectual trajectory within urban geography from
the mid-1950s into the 1970s, political, economic and Marxian approaches dominated
urban geography through much of the 1980s and early 1990s and helped shape the
dominant concepts used in explaining the form of urban politics.
However, Marxian geography was but one of a series of streams that entered
urban geography via sociology. An important theme of urban studies throughout the
twentieth century has been that of community. This entry traces out the diverse set of
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ideas that have underpinned this slippery term and argues that the literature has
moved from an idea of ‘community lost’ (where knowing one’s neighbour, for
example, is an important theme of successful neighbourhoods) to ‘community saved’,
where vibrant social relations are found either in rejuvenated – and perhaps gentrified
– inner-city neighbourhoods, or else in a more distanciated form, via the internet, or
even in more complex forms of interaction between human and object, where
community is redefined.
5. Sites and Practices
Finally, this concept allows us to consider some of the topographies of
contemporary urban life. Again, Marxian thinkers have been influential here,
particularly those of the Frankfurt School, associated with the writings of Theodore
Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Their conceptualisation of a ‘culture industry’ that
pacified the masses with consumer goods and mass media entertainment was
influential to many scholars, eager to explain why social groups in post-war societies
seemed to be deradicalised and passive political bystanders, rather than active
opponents of established social norms.
Such work tended to ignore the desire of audiences to actively choose the
consumer goods and entertainment choices that would make up their own modes of
urbanised living. Recent work in geography, sociology, anthropology and media
studies has tackled this issue head-on, particularly in terms of the sites of
consumption in cities, from the spectacular to the mundane. In many ways, the mass
production of new goods was dependent upon an urbanised society, ‘where
knowledge of consumption was essentially practical knowledge, not acquired
through instruction or advertising, but from the experience of participating in
activities in the dense interaction and information networks of urban life’ (Glennie
and Thrift,1992: 430).
An understanding of the media is important in terms of making sense of how
cities are represented, and in the ways in which the urban is produced, distributed
and consumed. This is an emerging area of urban studies, not one that geographers
have contributed a whole lot to. Yet in media studies and sociology, attempts are being
made to conceptualise how media is at the same time a material practice (revolving
around television studios, production companies and satellite infrastructure), a
textual representation (in terms of its distribution of symbolic collections of words and
images that are packaged, sold and consumed), and a relational process, in that places
are linked together by media practices. This runs between of extremes, from the statecentred propaganda machines that dominate programming in China, to the
completely decentralised chatrooms of the ‘blogosphere’.
Such forms of social interaction pose important questions about the nature of
being ‘public’ in the city. The entry on public space described some of the debates
around everyday life in cities, particularly the apparent decline of political expression
in public. It is suggested that – contrary to the orthodox view of there being a decline
in sociality in cities – there are many new and vibrant forms of urban sociality. Being
seen in public is an important aspect of this, and multiple publics often seek out
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symbolic sites of commemoration or collective identity to express particular worldviews. Recent events such as 9/11 have added to the sense of immediacy felt by
geographers and others in explaining and understanding such events. Our final entry
concerns the places and practices of commemoration within urban space, given their
importance both as a form of representation of a particularly admired historical figure,
a source of contest and conflict (as was the case in post-1989 East and Central Europe)
or as a focus of collective or individual displays of grief, anger or joy.
The highlighted concepts on each of the overarching concepts discussed by Latham et
al (2009) are subfields of these concepts and linking them to the main concepts would lead
you to better understanding. These subfields are visible and/or patent in our daily lives and
all have found connections to the study or urban geography which must necessarily be
mustered to engulf the social, political, economic, cultural and environmental
conceptualizations of urban geography.
Approaches and Methods in Urban Geography
Contemporary urban geography is shaped by four broad epistemological traditions:
positivism, structuralism, humanism-phenomenology, and postmodern. Each of these
approaches differs in terms of ways of building explanations, principles for defining
causality, and accepted criteria for the validation of theories. In view of this, you can learn
from the discussion and contextualization of of Knox and Stephen (2000) as cited in the
discussion of Aguilar (2014), viz:
1. Positivism, involves an attempt to explain causal relations between observed
phenomena. The first major paradigm shift to affect urban geography reflected the
desire to make geographical investigation more scientific. Modern approaches started
with the introduction of the philosophy of positivism that is characterized by the
adherence to the scientific method of investigation based on hypothesis testing,
statistical inference and theory construction. This philosophy is based upon the belief
that human behavior is determined by universal laws and displays fundamental
regularities. Positive approaches can be subdivided in two types, ecological and neoclassical approaches. Ecological approaches ere based upon the belief that human
behavior is determined by ecological principles, namely that the most powerful
groups, would obtain the most advantageous positions in a given space, the best
residential location for example. This school of urban geography goes back to the
Chicago school of sociology from the 1920s, andtheir contributions include the
concentric zone, and the sector model of land use. The ecological approach developed
during the 1960s in that the model were refined with the increasing sophistication of
computers. Neo-classical approaches were based on the belief that human behavior
was motivated primarily by rationality. This means that each decision was taken with
the aim of minimizing the cost involved (in terms of time and money) and maximizing
the benefits. This type of behavior was referred as utility maximization. Although
evident in the central place theory on the spatial pattering of settlements, positivism
blossomed in the late 1950s with the development of the spatial analysis school, which
led to multivariate classifications of settlements type, investigations of the rank-size
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rule for the population of the urban places, and analysis of spatial variations in urban
population densities. During the 1970s the development of a range of multivariate
statistical techniques extended the social area approach of the ecologists in the form
of factorial ecologies designed to reveal the bases of residential differentiation within
the city. However, their very poor approximation to reality was the source of much of
the criticism directed at these models and reflected the overlysimplistic assumptions
upon which they were based and the important factors and motivations they ignored.
They failure to recognize and account for the idiosyncratic and subjective values that
motivated much human behavior was criticized by behavioral and humanistic
approaches that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s.
2. Structuralism, by contrast, is an attempt to explain observed phenomena as the
outcome of unobserved structures and relations. Causality operates at the structural
level -- at a ‘deeper’ level below the surface of appearance and observation-- and may
not be directly observable. In structuralism, theories must be validated by internal
logic and consistency. It is possible to devise and refine empirical tests in order to
reveal difficult-to-observe relations and processes, but in general, structuralist inquiry
places less emphasis on observation and measurement compared with positivism.
3. Behavioral and humanistic approaches were united in their belief that people, and
the ways in which they made sense of their environment should be central to their
approach. Behaviorist approaches can be regarded as an extension of positivist
approaches; they sought to expand positivism’s narrow conception of human
behavior and to articulate more richly the values, goals and motivations underpinning human behavior. However, despite this they were still concerned with
uncovering law-like generalizations in human behavior. In a radical departure from
the scientific approaches of the 1950s and 1960s, the humanistic approaches brought
techniques more associated with the humanities to understand people-environment
relationships. They sought to understand the deep, subjective and very complex
relationship between individuals, groups, places and landscapes. This was reflected
in the sources they utilized that included paintings, photographs, films, poems,
novels, diaries, and biographies. The humanistic perspective has been criticized for
placing excessive emphasis on the power of individuals to determine their own
behavior in the city, and affording insufficient attention to the constraints on human
decision-making. The influence of humanism in urban geography was limited.
4. Structural analysis in urban geography has been based primarily on the work of K.
Marx. The political economy approach entered urban geography in the early 1970s in
response to the continuing social problems of urban areas. Cities are viewed as an
integral part of the capitalist mode of production by providing an environment
favorable for the fundamental capitalist goal of accumulation. Much attention has
been directed to the analysis of urban property and housing markets, and studies of
residential patterns. This approach interpreted urban residential segregation
primarily as a result of decisions by those with power in the property market,
including building society managers, estate agents, and local authority housing
managers. The political economy approach has had a major impact in urban
geography and has provided real insight into economic and political forces
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underlying urban change. However, the dominance assigned to social structure over
human agency in this perspective was rejected by humanistic geographers; critics
have attacked the emphasis attached to class divisions in society to the neglect of other
lines of cleavage such as gender, ethnicity and sexuality.
5. Postmodern theory began to exert an influence on urban geography in the late 1980s
and 1990s. The postmodern perspective is characterized by a rejection of grand theory
and an emphasis on human difference. The most visible impact of postmodern
thinking on the city is in its architecture where the concrete functionalism of the
modern era is replaced by a diversity of styles. In terms of the social geography of the
city, the most important contribution of a postmodern perspective is how its focus on
differences, uniqueness and individuality sensitizes us to the needs and situations of
all members of a society. This emphasis has been reflected in studies of gender
differences in urban labor markets, “spaces of exclusion” occupied by minority
groups, marital status, sexuality, race age, and disability. A major criticism directed at
the postmodern approach to the city is its apparently unlimited relativism. Because it
privileges the views of all individuals, there appears to be no limit to the range of
possible interpretations of any situation, there is “no real world”.
Methods of Urban Geography
Just like in the study of Geography, urban geographers used almost similar methods
ad/or techniques in studying the city system. Hence, this part of this learning guide
would fall on techniques for empirical analysis should not be taken to mean that
methodological contributions in geography have been restricted to observation and
hypothesis testing. For the past 20 years the discipline has been a fertile field of theoretical
research, particularly in conceptualizing and modeling geographic processes. In many
ways these theoretical developments have given the discipline its secure intellectual
foundation.
1. Observation of phenomena and events is central to geography's concern for
accurately representing the complexity of the real world. The traditional and still
widely practiced method of observation is through direct "on-the-ground" contact
between geographer and subject through field observation and exploration.
Fieldwork is particularly effective for making observations at micro- to mesoscales,
as typified, for example, by the study of single watersheds or cities.
2. Fieldwork is an intensive observation endeavor. It can require substantial
investments of human and financial resources, particularly if carried out over
extended periods of time. The intensive nature of fieldwork makes it impractical
for macroscale observations of the Earth's surface. Such observations are best made
by using remote sensing techniques that utilize air- or spaceborne platforms and
sensors. The development of these techniques, and especially the collection of
remote sensing data, have often been led by geographers. Fieldwork is an intensive
endeavor. It can require substantial investments of human and financial resources,
particularly if carried out over extended periods of time.
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The intensive nature of fieldwork makes it impractical for macroscale
observations of the Earth's surface. Such observations are best made by using
remote sensing techniques that utilize air- or spaceborne platforms and sensors.
The development of these techniques, and especially the collection of remote
sensing data, have often been led by geographers. The field geographer's interest
in distributions and spatial patterns is part of a larger concern with synthesis: how
and why particular phenomena come together in specific places to create
distinctive environments. This concern leads geographers in the field to observe
and study a wide range of physical and social phenomena. Research on land
reform, for example, might involve soil sampling as well as interviews with
affected individuals.
The enduring importance of fieldwork in geography extends beyond research
to pedagogy. At a time when new ways are being sought to promote
environmental and cultural awareness through education, geographic fieldwork
offers a unique and valuable perspective. Field excursions are incorporated
routinely into many geography courses. They are designed to teach students about
the environment in which they live and to encourage them to be inquisitive about
the processes that shape landscapes and cultures. Fieldwork thus provides both a
tool for the acquisition of knowledge and a means of promoting awareness and
appreciation of culture and the environment.
3. Remote sensing is defined here as the detection and recording of electromagnetic
radiation signals from the Earth's surface and atmosphere using sensors placed
aboard aircraft and satellites. These signals are usually recorded in digital form,
where each "digit" denotes one piece of information about an average property of
a small area of the Earth. Geographers have been using remote sensing data since
they first became available about 30 years ago. Geographers who study the Earth's
climate, for example, use satellites to collect data on atmospheric conditions for
monitoring and predicting change. Remotely sensed data also are very useful in
creating and updating maps of physical, biological, and cultural features at the
Earth's surface. The ability of certain sensor systems to "see" through cloud cover,
and their unrestricted access to all portions of the Earth, provide information that
may not be available from other sources.
4. Display and analysis through Cartography is the traditional close association
between geography and maps is appropriate given the discipline's concern with
space and place. The symbiotic link between geographers and maps has ensured
the persistence of cartography as a subdiscipline of geography within most
academic settings.
The field of cartography has changed enormously during the past three
decades, primarily because of the widespread availability of computers.
Computers have made possible new forms of symbolization, such as dynamic (i.e.,
animated) maps, customized maps for individual users, and interactive maps.
They have also made possible new methods for scientific visualization and spatial
data analysis.
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5. Geographic Visualization, the use of concrete visual representations to make
spatial contexts and problems visible, so as to engage the most powerful human
information processing abilities, those associated with vision" (MacEachren et al.,
1992). The dramatic increase in volume of georeferenced data being collected and
generated today is exceeding our capacity to analyze and digest it. Using the
power of human vision to recognize patterns and synthesize spatial information
increases the capacity of geographic researchers to cope with this data volume.
6. Spatial Statistics, the analysis of geographically referenced information poses
statistical challenges not faced in most other disciplines. First, observations are not
always scalar numbers, such as points on a map. They may be multidimensional,
consisting of lines, areas, and volumes. Second, the observations may be spatially
or spatiotemporally covariant—that is, the values of observations made in one
location may depend on the values of observations from other locations or from
the samelocation at different times. This violates a key assumption central to much
statistical theory—that observations are mutually independent.
7. Geographic Information Systems systems were defined in 1992 by the U.S.
Geological Survey as "computer systems capable of assembling, storing,
manipulating, and displaying geographically referenced information" (USGS,
1992). Such systems, in fact, have power, utility, and importance far beyond this
definition, both within and beyond the field of geography. GISs can be used to
perform an extensive variety of spatial operations and analyses on properly coded
data. At the most elementary level are computations of distances, areas, centroids,
gradients, and volumes. More complex operations that add spatial referencing to
a basic calculation are also possible—for example, going beyond questions about
the total length of a city's sewer lines to questions about the total length of sewer
lines in a given area in a particular city and what proportion of this length is more
than 50 years old. GISs are also capable of more complicated operations such as:
(1) Calculating new spatial datasets based on attributes of existing data—for
example, calculating slopes from elevations;
(2) Comparing two or more spatial datasets based on user-specified criteria—
for example, identifying toxic waste sites that are situated on permeable
soil;
(3) Delimiting areas that possess certain characteristics defined by the user—
for example, delimiting locations of commercially zoned land within 2 miles of
an interstate highway; and
(4) Modeling the possible outcomes of alternative processes and policies—for
example, determining the impact of flooding along the Mississippi River given
the presence or absence of levees
Indeed, current trends in geography's techniques suggest a future in which
researchers, students, business people, and public policy makers will explore a world of
shared spatial data from their desktops. They will request analyses from a rich menu of
options, select the geographic area and spatial scale of analysis, and display their results in
multimedia formats that are unanticipated today.
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Breakdown Thoughts
Reflect on the information you have grasped from reading and respond, through use of
your critical thinking the, to the questions provided below. Answer on point!
1. What questions arise for you as you think about urban geography? How useful are they?
2. How is urban geography different from the rest of the branches of geography? Illustrate.
3. How does urban geography relate to other branches and/or social science?
Complementary? Contradictory? Rationalize.
4. Based on your reading experience, would you say that knowledge in urban geography is
necessary to your future job as a social science teacher?
5. Explain a social situation you had to troubleshoot, how would you use urban geography?
Explain the steps, approaches, and/or methods you would be using and state perceieed
delimits of these of urban geography in the resolution of the social situation you have
identified.
Branch-It-Out
Broaden the idea of the selected images/concepts below by associating concepts/ideas
that are linked to the main concepts to make them socially meaningful and relevant.
Scope
(3) Situations
Approach
Method
Resource Management
Quantitative Geography
Transport Geography
Regional Geography
Geography & Planning
MAKE A REAL DEAL
State some of Napoleon Bonaparte’s traits that you wish & would not wish
to imbibe and on what aspect in your life you would & not apply them. Make a web.
Scoop-the-Scope!
Conduct an observation in your locality to have a grasp of the social problems
that needed interventions. Prioritize and select one endemic social problem that you
think needs outright intervention. Think of how urban geography could help solve
the problem, state how you will use it, what method you would use, and what
approach of urban geography you would see the problem from.
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Quiz 1.0
Score: _____________
Name: __________________________________
Date: ______________
Part I. Identification. Based on the cues presented, identify the principles or concepts
applicable to each item. Spell the words correctly. WRONG spelling is WRONG.
____________ 1. A branch of human geography concerned with various aspects of cities
____________ 2. This field has emerged as the study of flows of ideas, practices, peoples and
commodities between and within contemporary urban centres.
____________ 3. This allows us to think about the dynamic of spatial relations within and
between cities.
___________ 4. This concept allows us to consider some of the topographies of contemporary
urban life.
____________ 5. This tradition is believed to have led the development of urban geography.
____________ 6. This person became influential by motivating geographers to study a city's
population and economic aspects with regard to its physical location.
____________ 7. What is considered as central to many social sciences according to Johnston
(2000).
____________ 8. This method can require substantial investments of human and financial
resources, particularly if carried out over extended periods of time.
____________ 9. This area allows us to get some purchase on cities as built, or constructed
environments.
____________ 10. The broad movement that underpinned the shift in geography studies as
documented by documented by Barnett (2003), Mitchell (1999) & Scott (2004).
____________ 11. It has been referred to as a kind of hybrid of the natural and social.
____________ 12. This methid has been detection and recording of electromagnetic radiation
signals from the Earth's surface and atmosphere using sensors placed aboard
aircraft and satellites.
____________ 13. This approach believe that people, and the ways in which they made sense
of their environment.
____________ 14. This approach interpreted urban residential segregation primarily as a
result of decisions by those with power in the property market
____________ 15. This method concentrates on the use of concrete visual representations to
make spatial contexts and problems visible, so as to engage the most powerful
human information processing abilities, those associated with vision.
____________ 16. He instigated the politically liberal meditation on the relationship between
cities and social justice.
____________ 17. TRUE/FALSE:
Market Geography
:
Retail Structure
____________ 18. TRUE/FALSE:
Physical geography
:
Urban site conditions
____________ 19. TRUE/FALSE:
Welfare Geography
:
Quality of life
____________ 20. TRUE/FALSE:
Social geography
:
Socio-spatial structure
Note: Answer the quiz via the google forms. Link to it will be provided on group chat room.
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1.3 References
Aguilar, A. G. (2014). Urban Geography. Institute of Geography, National University
of México (UNAM), 04510, Mexico D.F. Retrieved January 30, 2021 at
https://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C01/E6-14-03-06.pdf
Briney, Amanda (2019). “An Overview of Urban Geography.” ThoughtCo. Available
from thoughtco.com/overview-of-urban-geography. [accessed 2 Feb, 2021]
Knox, P. and Steven, P. (2000). Urban Social Geography. An Introduction, Fourth
Edition, Prentice Hall, England. [An urban geography concern with a sociospatial dialectic].
Latham, A & McCormack, D. P. (2007) Developing ‘real-world’ methods in urban
geography fieldwork, Planet, 18:1, 25-27, DOI: 10.11120/plan.2007.00180025
MacEachren, A. M. (1992). Visualizing uncertain information. Cartographic
perspectives, (13), 10-19.
Pacione (2009). The contemporary city between administration and geomanagement Scientific
Figure
on
ResearchGate.
Available
from:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-nature-of-urban-geographySource-Pacione-2009_fig3_289413473 [accessed 2 Feb, 2021]
The National Academies of Engineering (1997). Rediscovering Geography: New
Relevance for Science and Society. Washington, DC 20001 © 2021 National
Academy of Sciences. https://www.nap.edu/read/4913/chapter/6#68
[accessed 2 Feb, 2021]
GS (1992). Publications of the U.S. Geological Survey. US Department of the Interior.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/unnumbered/70043734/report.pdf [accessed 2 Feb,
2021]
1.4 Acknowledgment
The images, tables, figures and information contained in this module were
taken from the references cited above.
C. M. D. Hamo-ay