Development of Urban Geography in the United States

Abstract

Although the studies of urban geography in the United States began in the early twentieth century, attention to cities as a homogeneous region was given in the 1920's when French school of regional analysis was introduced to the United States. The regional analysis was supported by the publication of HARTSHORNE's the Nature of Geography. Along with the regional analysis, an early emphasis in American urban geography was placed on the site and situation of the city. Functional approach which had roots in regional analysis developed to study the spatial attributes of the city to present the image of the city. American urban geography until 1954 was largely functionalist in approach and verbal, descriptive explanation.After the Second World War, main themes of urban geography became urban function and functional classification of cities in which attention was given to uniqueness of the city. In the 1950's urban geography was seeking to find regularities which were analogous to laws in physical geography. Statistical methods were necessary means to find regularities in urban phenomena. During the 1950's and 1960's urban geographers tended to take abstract and theoretical approaches.From the mid-1960's on there was a growing desire to find human order rather than natural order. The emergence of behavioral geography reflected this trend, emphasizing decision-making processes. However, this approach maintained a strong ties with the spatial science tradition. In the 1970's urban geography in the United States had a great variety of approaches, reflecting different perspectives to urban phenomena. Social, radical, and historical approaches were widely employed as well as spatial, behavioral, and quantitative approaches.