Urban Geography

Tim Hall, Heather Barrett

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317313533
• Edizione: 5
• Argomento: Sciences physiques
• Categoria: Géographie

This revised fifth 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:

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• the urban world

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• changing approaches to urban geography

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• urban form and structure

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• economy and the city

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• urban politics

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• planning, regeneration and urban policy

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• cities and culture

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• architecture and urban landscapes

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• images of the city

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• experiencing the city

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• housing and residential segregation

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• transport and mobility in cities

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• sustainability and the city.

This edition builds on the success of the comprehensively revised fourth edition and provides revised chapters on transport/mobility and urban futures, with additional updating of readings and some case studies. The book synthesises a wide range of literature on each subject and presents the material in a lively engaging way, supported by an expanded range of student friendly features, including exercises and suggestions for further study.

Section 1
Contexts

1 An urban world

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 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 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. 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 (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 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.

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 (...