Broadly,
Urbanism is a focus on
citiesA city is a relatively large and permanent settlement, particularly a large urban settlement. Although there is no agreement on technical definitions distinguishing a city from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status...
and urban areas, their geography, economies,
politicsPolitics is a process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic and religious institutions...
,
social characteristicsThe term Social refers to a characteristic of living organisms...
, as well as the effects on, and caused by, the
built environmentThe phrase built environment refers to the man-made surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging in scale from personal shelter to neighborhoods to the large-scale civic surroundings....
.
Urbanism is distinct from
new urbanismNew Urbanism is an urban design movement, which promotes walkable neighborhoods that contain a range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s and continues to reform many aspects of real estate development and urban planning....
in that it shies away from
greenfieldGreenfield land is a term used to describe a piece of previously undeveloped land, in a city or rural area, either currently used for agriculture or landscape design, or just left to nature. In contrast, brownfield land is an area that has previously been developed, such as the site of a gas...
development in favor of revitalizing existing urban areas.
The philosophy of urbanism posits that traditional cities are vitally important to society. Cites or other dense human settlements are said to serve a variety of important functions.
Outside of cities, most people are not exposed to the same level of diversity-in both thought and personal characteristics-as they are within them.
Broadly,
Urbanism is a focus on
citiesA city is a relatively large and permanent settlement, particularly a large urban settlement. Although there is no agreement on technical definitions distinguishing a city from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status...
and urban areas, their geography, economies,
politicsPolitics is a process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic and religious institutions...
,
social characteristicsThe term Social refers to a characteristic of living organisms...
, as well as the effects on, and caused by, the
built environmentThe phrase built environment refers to the man-made surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging in scale from personal shelter to neighborhoods to the large-scale civic surroundings....
.
Urbanism is distinct from
new urbanismNew Urbanism is an urban design movement, which promotes walkable neighborhoods that contain a range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s and continues to reform many aspects of real estate development and urban planning....
in that it shies away from
greenfieldGreenfield land is a term used to describe a piece of previously undeveloped land, in a city or rural area, either currently used for agriculture or landscape design, or just left to nature. In contrast, brownfield land is an area that has previously been developed, such as the site of a gas...
development in favor of revitalizing existing urban areas.
Urbanism as a philosophy
The philosophy of urbanism posits that traditional cities are vitally important to society. Cites or other dense human settlements are said to serve a variety of important functions.
Diversity
Outside of cities, most people are not exposed to the same level of diversity-in both thought and personal characteristics-as they are within them. According to urbanists, this mingling of diverse people is vital to fostering tolerance and acceptance in the broader society.
Environmental Protection
It is well established that people living in a modern city have a significantly smaller impact on the environment. Those living in cities have a reduced or eliminated need for an automobile and a heavier reliance on walking, cycling, and transit. Land in dense urban areas is also more efficiently used than in suburban or rural areas which require an enormous amount of infrastructure to service. Further, in apartment buildings, or shared dwellings, as well as many other aspects of city living, there is a sharing of common goods and services. A thousand people can share the same small park, rather than each have a lawn. Renters in a large apartment building lower their heating costs by sharing walls, effectively only needing to heat one sixth as much as a person in a standalone structure of the same size.
Culture
Cities have historically been the driver of culture. Most cultural institutions throughout the world are located in central cities.
Urbanism as a study
Urbanists distinguish urban areas from rural areas by their higher population
densityUrban density is a term used in urban planning and urban design to refer to the number of people inhabiting a given urbanized area. As such it is to be distinguished from other measures of population density. Urban density is considered an important factor in understanding how cities function...
. They maintain that the difference in population entails a difference in the social and political order as well. Initially, some scholars denied the social and political differences between
ruralRural areas are large and isolated areas of a country, often with low population density.About 91 percent of the rural population now earn salaried incomes, often in urban areas...
and
urban areaAn urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...
s, and insisted that there was no point in a specifically urban studies; but this debate has been largely resolved in favor of urban studies, and it is now widely accepted that cities need to be studied separately from the country.
Having established that cities are genuinely distinct from rural areas, scholars have studied cities according to three different perspectives: the internalist perspective, which looks at spatial and
social orderSocial order is a concept used in sociology, history and other social sciences. It refers to a set of linked social structures, social institutions and social practices which conserve, maintain and enforce "normal" ways of relating and behaving....
within a city; the externalist perspective, which views cities as stable points or nodes in the wider globalizing space of networks and flows; and the interstitial perspective, which attempts to reconcile the two perspectives through understanding how the social, temporal and spatial ordering of a city is influenced by global, external forces, and how it influences them in turn. For example, in
The Ordinary City (1997),
AminProfessor Ash Amin FBA AcSS is a professor of geography at Durham University, UK. Born in London, he graduated from the University of Reading in 1979 with a first-class degree in Italian Studies and then gained a PhD in geography from Reading in 1986. He is a prominent and world renowned economic...
and Graham argue that the urbanscape can best be understood as a site of co-presence of multiple spaces, multiple times and multiple webs of relations, tying local sites, subjects and fragments into globalizing networks of economic, social and cultural change.
"Urbanism" in its wider sense will also include the study of the interaction between the city and the rural
hinterlandThe hinterland is the land or district behind the borders of a coast or river. Specifically, by the doctrine of the hinterland, the word is applied to the inland region lying behind a port, claimed by the state that owns the coast...
. No city can exist without a hinterland to supply it, but, because of communications technology, this hinterland may be less easy to identify than it was in pre-industrial, agrarian societies, and furthermore the conception of how the hinterland relates to the city may change throughout history. In the
Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean. The term is used to describe the Roman state during and after the time of the first emperor,...
and
ancient GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
), for example, the
municipiumA municipium belonged to the second-highest class of Roman cities, being inferior in status to the colonia. The first municipium was Tusculum...
and
polisA polis -- plural: poleis --is a city, a city-state and also citizenship and body of citizens...
were considered to consist of both "urban" centre and hinterland, with which they formed one unified social, political and economic entity.
The word urbanism is also used as a qualitative complement to the description of various urban and rural forms i.e.: informal urbanism, new urbanism, self-sufficient urbanism, sustainable urbanism, centralized or decentralized urbanism, neo-traditional urbanism, transitional urbanism, other urbanisms, etc.
See also
- Landscape urbanism
Landscape Urbanism is a theory of urbanism arguing that landscape, rather than architecture, is more capable of organizing the city and enhancing the urban experience. Landscape Urbanism has emerged as a theory in the last ten years and is far from being a coherent doctrine...
, an urbanism modeled on the disciplines of landscape architectureLandscape architecture is a the design of outdoor and public spaces to achieve socio-behavioural, environmental, and/or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic investigation of existing social, ecological, and geological conditions and processes in the landscape, and the careful design of...
and ecologyEcology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the interactions between organisms and the interactions of these organisms with their environment....
.
- Micro-urban
Micro-urban is an informal term for smaller cities of 250,000 or less with certain urban characteristics normally found in large metropolitan centers...
- New urbanism
New Urbanism is an urban design movement, which promotes walkable neighborhoods that contain a range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s and continues to reform many aspects of real estate development and urban planning....
, a response to contemporary problems such as urban sprawlUrban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs over rural land and to its outskirts. The problem of urban sprawl is that it is costly to initiate the development of new infrastructure adequate enough to support its residents...
and traffic congestion.
- Unitary urbanism
Unitary urbanism was the critique of status quo urbanism employed by the Lettrist International and then further developed by the Situationist International between approximately 1953 and 1960....
, a critique of urbanism as a technology of power by the situationists.
- Urban geography
Urban geography is the study of urban areas. That is the study of areas which have a high concentration of buildings and infrastructure. These are areas where the majority of economic activities are in the secondary sector and tertiary sectors...
- Urban design
Urban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities, and in particular the shaping and uses of urban public space. It has traditionally been regarded as a disciplinary subset of urban planning, landscape architecture, or architecture and in more recent times has...
- Urban planning
Urban, city, and town planning is the integration of the disciplines of land use planning and transport planning to explore a very wide range of aspects of the built and social environments of urbanized municipalities and communities...
- Urbanate
An Urbanate is the name given by Technocracy Incorporated to their proposal for a new living environment, which is envisioned to replace traditional cities in a possible future technate.-Overview:...
, a living environment envisioned by the Technocracy movement.
- World Urbanism Day
The international organization for World Urbanism Day , also known as "World Town Planning Day", was founded in 1949 by the late Professor Carlos Maria della Paolera of the University of Buenos Aires, a graduate at the Institut d'urbanisme in Paris, to advance public and professional interest in...
.
External links
- http://www.urbanizamkula.co.rs/stranice/englpocetna.htm"A Home for Town Planning Kula-Odzaci" Kula
-Geographic locations:* Kula, Bulgaria, a town and municipality in Vidin Province* Kula, Ethiopia, a town in Ethiopia* Kula, Hawaii, a district of East Maui in Hawaii* Kula, Manisa, a town in Western Anatolia...
, SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a country located in both Central and Southeastern Europe. Its territory covers the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and central part of the Balkans...
]
- Hollow city MP3 interview with Rebecca Solnit on the evolution of the US city and contemporary threats to it
- Collection of articles on Shack Settlements
- Housing struggles and theory newswire
- Urbanism and Aisthesis: Rostros y lugares del anonimato | ciudades, pintura metafísica y sobremodernidad by Adolfo Vasquez Rocca PhD
- Kerb 15 - Landscape Urbanism. This issue includes contributions from Charles Waldheim, Mohsen Mostafavi, FOA, Karres en Brands, Kongjian Yu, Kyong Park, Kathryn Gustafson, Stephen Read, Kelly Shannon, Richard Weller, RMIT Press, 2007.
- Urbanism, Delft University of Technology
- Landscape Urbanism Program at the Architectural Association
- Professional network for Landscape Urbanism
- Urbanism News website
- Urban Design information website
Further reading
- Amin
Professor Ash Amin FBA AcSS is a professor of geography at Durham University, UK. Born in London, he graduated from the University of Reading in 1979 with a first-class degree in Italian Studies and then gained a PhD in geography from Reading in 1986. He is a prominent and world renowned economic...
and Graham (1997) "The Ordinary City" in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, NS 22 pp 411–429
- Manuel Castells
Manuel Castells is a sociologist especially associated with information society and communications research. The 2000–06 research survey of the Social Sciences Citation Index, ranks him as the world’s fifth most-cited social sciences scholar, and the foremost-cited communications scholar...
The Urban Question, Network Society
- Peter Geoffrey Hall Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century
- David Harvey
David Harvey is the name of:*David Harvey *David Harvey , geographer and social theorist*David Harvey , American music producer who won 1975 Grammy Award for Best Classical Album...
(1989)Flexible accumulation through urbanization
- Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs, OC, O.Ont was an American-born Canadian urbanist, writer and activist. She is best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities , a powerful critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States...
, The Death and Life of Great American CitiesThe Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs, is a greatly influential book on the subject of urban planning in the 20th century...
- Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre was a French sociologist, intellectual and philosopher who was generally considered a Neo-Marxist.-Biography:Lefebvre was born in Hagetmau, Landes, France...
(1970) "The Urban Revolution"
- Kevin Lynch
Kevin Lynch may refer to:*Kevin A. Lynch, American urban planner*Kevin G. Lynch, Canadian civil servant*Kevin Lynch , Irish republican*Kevin Lynch , Minnesota basketball player...
, Image of the City
- Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford was an American historian and philosopher of technology and science. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a tremendously broad career as a writer that also included a period as an influential literary critic...
, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its ProspectsThe City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects is a 1961 National Book Award winner by American historian Lewis Mumford.It was first published by Harcourt, Brace & World ....
- Robert E. Park
Robert Ezra Park was an American urban sociologist, one of the main founders of the original Chicago School of sociology.-Life:...
, The City - Suggestions for the Study of Human Nature in the Urban Environment (1925) and all the publications of the Chicago schoolIn sociology and later criminology, the Chicago School was the first major body of works emerging during the 1920s and 1930s specialising in urban sociology, and the research into the urban environment by combining theory and ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago, now applied elsewhere...
- Saskia Sassen
Saskia Sassen is an American sociologist noted for her analyses of globalization and international human migration. She is currently a professor of sociology at Columbia University and at the London School of Economics. Sassen coined the term global city...
(1997) The global city: London, New York, TokyoA global city is a city deemed to be an important node point in the global economic system. The concept comes from geography and urban studies and rests on the idea that globalization can be understood as largely created, facilitated and enacted in strategic geographic locales according to a...
- Richard Sennett
Richard Sennett is the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, the Bemis Adjunct Professor of Sociology at MIT and Professor of the Humanities at New York University. Sennett is probably best known for his studies of social ties in cities, and the effects of urban...
The Uses of Disorder
- Ed Soja Postmetropolis
- Scape Magazine 'Scape is the new international magazine for landscape architecture and urbanism.