The Urban Question in the Age of Innocence and Convergence

Abstract

This is a discussion of how the “urban question” became a topic of general interest in the media, based on a bibliometric analysis of newspapers from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, targeting a specific process of urbanization in the United States, hinting at how the public perception of urban studies came to attract different fields of research and how new responsibilities were added to urban management. Sources used were the historic newspaper databases of Chronicling America and the New York Times, via ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Preliminary conclusions indicate directions for further multidisciplinary debate, summarized as follows: understanding of the city may have originally proceeded somewhat naïvely, disregarding central features of the urban phenomena; early methodological instruments were more frequently based on limited observation than on deeper surveys; and there is a continuing period of innocence and convergence in the understanding of the urban question.