SOME THOUGHTS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF URBAN GEOGRAPHY IN THE UNITED STATES DURING THE 1950s AND 1960s

Abstract

Urban geography evolved in the late 1940s from a mixture of traditional geography, Chicago-School urban sociology, and city planning. In the 195Os, Inventory and Priaspecf first reflected a similar mixture in separate chapters; then the Mayer-Kohn readings pulled several strands together into a dominantly spatial framework which had considerable impact on the role of urban geography in the cumculum as did the later Murphy textbook organized along similar lines. During the 19609, urban research focused on more explicitly spatial, quantitative, and theoretical concerns, which then merged with the mainstream model in the early 1970s as evidenced by the BASS committee report, the Berry-Horton reader, and the Yeates-Garner textbook. The resulting blend of spatial theory, traditional geography, and planning implications appears to have continued in the cumculum even though urban geographic research has become more divergent and pluralistic.