Introduction—Digression Analysis: A Decidedly Editorial Introduction to the Symposium on the State of Urban Geography; Dispatches from the Field

Abstract

This is a time that poses numerous challenges to urban geographers and the cities they study. As it happens, 2004 was a period of disciplinary reflection marking the centennial of the Association of American Geographers (AAG). As graduate student members of the board of the AAG’s Urban Geography Specialty Group, we capitalized on a confluence of events to organize a panel entitled “The state of urban geography: What is it and where is it going?” for the AAG’s 2004 annual meeting in Philadelphia. This year of disciplinary celebration also coincided with the torment of our own early professional lives as newly-minted, so-called urban geographers. Drawn into collaboration through these circumstances, we chose to organize a session in which we invited urban geographers at various stages in their careers to reflect on the subdiscipline and its practice. To initiate dialogue, we asked: What is the significance of the subdiscipline to the production and application of geographic knowledge? What—or who—defines urban geography? Is urban geography what urban geographers do or is it something more? To be sure, the forward-looking spirit of the day fulfilled our initial hopes. We were fortunate to assemble an impressive set of urban geographers with diverse interests and experiences, including Larry Bourne (University of Toronto), Winifred Curran (DePaul University), Michael Dear (University of Southern California), Sarah Elwood (University of Arizona), Robert Lake (Rutgers University), and Sallie Marston (University of Arizona). Some panelists were close to retirement and others were equally close to the start of a new job. The group spoke to a standing-room-only crowd about their accomplishments, their hopes for, and their disappointments with urban geography at the turn of the millennium. When invited to assemble and introduce the panelists’ reflections as a symposium for this journal, we relished our own opportunity to ponder the state of the subdiscipline. But