Urbanization
AN INTRODUCTION TO URBAN GEOGRAPHY
Third Edition
Paul L. Knox
University Distinguished Professor and
Senior Fellow for International Advancement College of Architecture & Urban Studies, Virginia Tech
Linda McCarthy
Associate Professor, Department of Geography
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Knox, Paul L.
Urbanization : an introduction to urban geography / Paul L. Knox, Linda McCarthy. —3rd ed. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-321-73643-7
1.Urban geography.2.Urbanization.I. McCarthy, Linda (Linda Mary)II. Title. GF125.K56 2012 307.76—dc22
2011030227
12345678910—EB—1514131211
ISBN 10: 0-321-73643-5 www.pearsonhighered.comISBN 13: 978-0-321-73643-7
Preface xi
About the Authors xiii
Part 1 Introduction 1
Chapter 1 URBANIZATION AND URBAN GEOGRAPHY 3
Learning Outcomes 3
Chapter Preview 3
The Study of Urban Geography 4
◼ Urban View 1.1: The Art of Taking Back a Neighborhood: The Heidelberg Project 4
Space, Territoriality, Distance, and Place 5
Approaches to Urban Geography 6
◼ Urban View 1.2: Census Definitions 8
Urbanization: Processes and Outcomes 9
Economic Change 9
Demographic Change 11
◼ Urban View 1.3: Globalization and Cities 12
Political Change 12
Cultural Change 13
Technological Change 13
Environmental Change 14
Social Change 14
The Plan of the Book 14
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 15 • Review Activities 15
Part 2 Foundations and History of Urbanization 17
Chapter 2 THE ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF CITIES AND URBAN LIFE 19
Learning Outcomes 19
Chapter Preview 19
The Definition of a City 20
◼ Urban View 2.1: Bernal Diaz Del Castillo’s Description of Tenochtitlán in 1519 20
Preconditions for Urbanization 22
Theories of Urban Origins 22
Agricultural Surplus 22
Hydrological Factors 22
Population Pressures 22
Trading Requirements 22
Defense Needs 23
Religious Causes 23
A More Comprehensive Explanation 23
Urban Origins 23
Mesopotamia 23
Egypt 24
The Indus Valley 24
Northern China 24
The Andes and Mesoamerica 24
Internal Structure of the Earliest Cities 25
◼ Urban View 2.2: Internal Structure of the Earliest Cities 25
Urban Expansion from the Regions of Urban Origin 27
◼ Urban View 2.3: The Silk Road: Long-Distance Trade and Urban Expansion 28
The Roots of European Urban Expansion 29
Greek Cities 29
Roman Cities 30
Dark Ages 31
Urban Revival in Europe during the Medieval Period 33
◼ Urban View 2.4: Hanseatic League Cities 38
Urban Expansion and Consolidation during the Renaissance and Baroque Periods 39
Urbanization and the Industrial Revolution 40
◼ Urban View 2.5: Manchester: Shock City of European Industrialization 41
◼ Urban View 2.6: Residential Segregation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Glasgow, Scotland 44
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 44 • Review Activities 44
Chapter 3 FOUNDATIONS: THE U.S. URBAN SYSTEM AND ITS CITIES 47
Learning Outcomes 47
Chapter Preview 47
◼ Urban View 3.1: Frontier Urbanization and Some Problems of Daily Life 48
Frontier Urbanization 48
The Mercantile Period (1790–1840) 50
◼ Urban View 3.2: Vance’s Mercantile Model 51
Inside the Mercantile City 51
THE PEDESTRIAN CITY 53
MODELS OF THE MERCANTILE CITY 53
Early Industrial Expansion and Regional Realignment (1840–1875) 53
Some Principles of Urban Growth 55
Interpreting and Analyzing the Urban Hierarchy and the Central Place System 55
THE RANK-SIZE RULE 55
CENTRAL PLACE THEORY 57
BEYOND CONSUMER HINTERLANDS 58
Inside the Early Industrial City 58
Urbanization and the Public Interest 58
◼ Urban View 3.3: Immigrant Housing Conditions 59
Instruments of Change: Horsecars and Railroads 60
HORSECARS 60
RAILROADS 61
The Organization of Industry (1875–1920) 62
The Industrial City 62
ECONOMIC SPECIALIZATION AND THE REORGANIZATION OF URBAN SPACE 63
FRAMING THE CITY: NETWORKED INFRASTRUCTURES 65
THE EMERGENCE OF LAND USE ZONING LAWS 66
THE SUBURBAN EXPLOSION: STREETCAR SUBURBS 67
RAPID TRANSIT 68
MASS TRANSPORT AND REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT 69
Inside the Industrial City 69
CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICTS 70
DEPARTMENT STORES AND SHOPPING DISTRICTS 70
DOWNTOWN OFFICE DISTRICTS 70
WAREHOUSE ZONES 71
CITY HALLS AND CIVIC PRIDE 71
THE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF CBDS 71
LAND VALUES AND URBAN LAND USE 72
SECTORS AND ZONES 73
FILTERING AND VACANCY CHAINS 74
Fordism, the Automobile, Suburban Infill, and the Great Depression (1920–1945) 74
A Critical Turn for Urbanization: The Depression and Macroeconomic Management 75
The Rise of Suburbia 76
Fordism 76
Paving the Way for Suburbanization 77
PARKWAYS 77
THE DECLINE OF MASS TRANSIT 78
Patterns of Suburban Growth 78
AUTOMOBILE SUBURBS 78
PLANNED SUBURBS 79
SUBURBANIZATION AND FEDERAL POLICY 82
SUBURBANIZATION OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY 83
NEW PATTERNS OF LAND USE 83
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 84 • Review Activities 84
Chapter 4 URBAN SYSTEMS AND CITIES IN TRANSITION 87
Learning Outcomes 87
Chapter Preview 87
◼ Urban View 4.1: Fast Food and Religion in the Exhaust of a Drive-in Culture 88
Regional Decentralization and Metropolitan Sprawl (1945–1973) 88
Metropolitan Sprawl 90
The Fordist Suburb 91
Suburban Production and Consumption Spaces 95
Central City Land Use 95
Demographic and Social Change in Cities 96
◼ Urban View 4.2: The Canadian Urban System 97
THE BABY BOOMERS AND URBAN CULTURE 98
AGING POPULATIONS 98
THE BURDEN OF YOUTH 98
THE NEW IMMIGRANTS 98
◼ Urban View 4.3: Boomerang Generation: Y Us? 99
Economic crisis, Restructuring, and New Metropolitan Form (1973–Present) 99
Economic Crisis and Urban Distress (1973–1983) 99
◼ Urban View 4.4: Contemporary European Urbanization 100
Economic Restructuring and New Metropolitan Form (1983–Present) 102
◼ Urban View 4.5: Australian Cities 103
World Cities 104
Globalization and Urban Change 106
◼ Urban View 4.6: Japanese Cities: Tokyo and the Tokaido Megapolitan Region 107
The Polycentric Metropolis 107
The End of “Suburbia” 110
◼ Urban View 4.7: From Boomburbs to Bustburbs? 111
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 112 • Review Activities 113
Part 3 Urbanization and the Less Developed Countries 115
Chapter 5 URBANIZATION IN THE LESS DEVELOPED COUNTRIES 117
Learning Outcomes 117
Chapter Preview 117
◼ Urban View 5.1: The Dream of a Better Life as a Garment Girl in Dhaka 118
Urbanization Trends and Projections: The Less Developed Countries in Global Context 118 Factors Promoting Urban Growth 122
◼ Urban View 5.2: Fleeing the Countryside for Life in the City in Africa 123
Theories of Urbanization and Economic Development 123
Modernization Theories: The Developmental Approach 123
Urban Bias and Underdevelopment 125
◼ Urban View 5.3: A Model of Peripheral Urbanization 127
New Models from the Less Developed Countries: Opportunities for Development 127
A Historical Perspective on Colonial Urbanization 127
Indigenous Urbanization at the Eve of the European Encounters 127
Colonial Urbanization 129
Mercantile Colonialism 132
Industrial Colonialism 132
Late Colonialism 133
Early Independence 133
Neocolonialism and the New International Division of Labor 134
Globalization and Neoliberalism 135
Overurbanization 135
Overurbanization and Megacities 135
Widespread Overurbanization 135
◼ Urban View 5.4: The Harsh Realities of Life in a Megacity 136
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 137 • Review Activities 137
Chapter 6 URBAN FORM AND LAND
USE IN THE LESS DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
139
Learning Outcomes 139
Chapter Preview 139
◼ Urban View 6.1: Life in a Haiti Tent City 141
Patterns of Urban form and Land Use 141
Latin American Cities 141
African Cities 145
Islamic Cities 148
◼ Urban View 6.2: Fighting Racial Discrimination in South African Cities with Soccer? 149
◼ Urban View 6.3: Towering Ambition in Persian Gulf Cities and the Global Economic Downturn 153
South Asian Cities 154
◼ Urban View 6.4: A Day in the Life of a Call Center Worker in India 156
Southeast Asian Cities 157
◼ Urban View 6.5: Shanghai, a World City and ”Dragon Head” of China’s Economy 159
East Asian Cities 159
◼ Urban View 6.6: Foreign Direct Investment and Regional Development in the Pearl River Delta, the World’s Largest Extended Metropolitan Region 163
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 165 • Review Activities 165
Chapter 7 URBAN PROBLEMS
AND RESPONSES IN THE LESS DEVELOPED COUNTRIES 167
Learning Outcomes 167
Chapter Preview 167
◼ Urban View 7.1: Narrowing the Digital Divide in Africa: Skipping Landlines for Cell Phones 168
Urban Problems 169
Poverty 169
◼ Urban View 7.2: Defying Gender Stereotypes: Las Cholitas in Bolivia 172
Inadequate Housing 172
Lack of Urban Services 174
◼ Urban View 7.3: A Terrible Human Toll: HIV/AIDS in SubSaharan African Cities 176
Transportation Problems 177
◼ Urban View 7.4: How Rationing Can Backfire: The “Day Without a Car” Regulation in Mexico City 178
Environmental Degradation 179
Responses to the Problems of Urbanization 180
Sustainable Urban Development 180
The “Globalization Paradox” and Recent Changes in Urban Governance 181
◼ Urban View 7.5: Urban Social Movements and the Role of Women: Mahila Milan in Mumbai, India 183
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 184 • Review Activities 184
Part 4 Processes of Urban Change 187
Chapter 8 THE URBAN DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 189
Learning Outcomes 189
Chapter Preview 189
◼ Urban View 8.1: Two Sides of the Housing Crisis: Skateboarding and Foreclosure 190
Property, Location, Rent, and Investment 190
◼ Urban View 8.2: Global Financial Meltdown, Local Disinvestment 192
Patterns of Investment in Land and Property 194
Property as a Financial Asset 194
The Structures of Building Provision 194
City Makers 194
LANDOWNERS 195
SPECULATORS 196
DEVELOPERS 196
BUILDERS 198
CONSUMERS 199
REALTORS, FINANCIERS, OTHER PROFESSIONAL FACILITATORS 199
GOVERNMENT AGENCIES 199
Market Responses of the Development Industry 200
◼ Urban View 8.3: Urban Development is Less and Less a Local Activity 200
NEW PRODUCTS 201
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 204 • Review Activities 204
Chapter 9 HOW NEIGHBORHOODS CHANGE 207
Learning Outcomes 207
Chapter Preview 207
◼ Urban View 9.1: Staying Put Despite the Spiral of Neighborhood Decline: A Mad Hatter? 208
Neighborhood Change 209
Redevelopment and Reinvestment 209
◼ Urban View 9.2: The Household Life Cycle 210
Neighborhood Life Cycles 211
Housing Markets 211
Urbanization and the Tenure Transformation 212
◼ Urban View 9.3: Cabrini-Green: A Cherished Home in a Place That was a Symbol of Everything Wrong with Public Housing 214
Public Housing 214
◼ Urban View 9.4: Public and Private Housing in European Cities 217
Residential Mobility and Neighborhood Change 218
Movers, Stayers, and Neighborhood Change 218
The Impact of New Arrivals to the City 219
Intraurban Moves 219
◼ Urban View 9.5: Neighborhood Stability in West European Cities 219
Reasons for Moving 220
Understanding Household Behavior: The Decision to Move 221
Understanding Household Behavior: The Search for Alternative Places to Live 222
Housing Market Gatekeepers, Bias, and Discrimination 223
Real Estate Agents as Social Gatekeepers 223
Mortgage Finance Managers as Social Gatekeepers 225
Insurance Agents as Social Gatekeepers 226
◼ Urban View 9.6: Hoxton’s Serial Transformations 227
Putting it all Together: The Example of Gentrification 228
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 231 • Review Activities 231
Chapter 10 THE POLITICS OF CHANGE: URBANIZATION AND URBAN GOVERNANCE
233
Learning Outcomes 233
Chapter Preview 233
◼ Urban View 10.1: The Disneyfication of Times Square 234
The History of Urban Governance 235 Laissez-faire and Economic Liberalism (1790–1840) 235
Municipal Socialism and the Rise of Machine Politics (1840–1875) 236
Boosterism and the Politics of Reform (1875–1920) 237
THE PROGRESSIVE ERA 237
ANNEXATION 238
Egalitarian Liberalism and Metropolitan Fragmentation (1920–1945) 239
THE NEW DEAL 241
Cities as Growth Machines and Service Providers (1945–1973) 241
BLACK POWER AND BLACK POLITICS 243
◼ Urban View 10.2: Milwaukee Demolishes the “Freeway to Nowhere” 243
THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND SPATIAL EQUITY 244
Entrepreneurial Politics and Neoliberalism (1973–Present) 245
◼ Urban View 10.3: Tax Increment Financing (TIF) 246
Fiscal Crisis 247
◼ Urban View 10.4: The Fiscal Squeeze and U.S. Central Cities 248
Fiscal Retrenchment and Neoliberalism 249
The Privatized City 250
PRIVATOPIA 251
NIMBYism, Smart Growth, and the Geopolitics of Suburbia 251
ZONING STRUGGLES 252
“SMART” GROWTH 252
Civic Entrepreneurialism and the Politics of Image 253
STRATEGIES FOR URBAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 254
THE POLITICS OF PACKAGING 256
Perspectives on Governance, Politics, and Urban Change 257
The Structure of Local Power 257
The Role of the Local State 259
Patterns of Local Conflict 259
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 260 • Review Activities 260
Chapter 11 URBAN POLICY
AND PLANNING 263
Learning Outcomes 263
Chapter Preview 263
The Roots of Urban Policy and Planning 264
◼ Urban View 11.1: Competition at all Costs: Civic Entrepreneurialism Taken Too Far? 264
Themes and Perspectives 265
The Beginning: Philanthropy and Reform 265
Early European Traditions 266
EBENEZER HOWARD AND GARDEN CITIES 266
PATRICK GEDDES AND SCIENTIFIC PLANNING 267
United States: Jacob Riis and the Tenement Commissions 269
Progressive Era Reforms 269
SETTLEMENT HOUSES 270
THE PARK MOVEMENT 271
THE CITY BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT 272
The City Practical 273
The New Deal 273
Policy and Planning for Renewal and Growth (1945–1973) 274
Europe: Planning For Renewal 274
◼ Urban View 11.2: The Visible Legacy of Urban Policy and Planning in European Cities 276
The United States: Planning for Growth 277
The Courts and Urban Policy in the United States 277
SCHOOL DESEGREGATION 277
RESTRICTIVE COVENANTS 277
CIVIL RIGHTS 278
Federal Policy Initiatives 278
Evangelical Bureaucrats 279
Neoliberal Policy and Planning 280
THE PROPERTY RIGHTS MOVEMENT 280
Planning as Dealmaking 280
◼ Urban View 11.3: Kelo v. City of New London Eminent Domain Lawsuit 281
◼ Urban View 11.4: Urban Regeneration in London’s Docklands 281
MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENTS AND CLUSTER ZONING 283
◼ Urban View 11.5: Competitive Regionalism 283
Planning for Healthy and Livable Cities 284
Sustainability and Green Urbanism 284
◼ Urban View 11.6: Cities Take Environmental Sustainability Efforts into Their Own Hands 285
◼ Urban View 11.7: Sustainable Metropolitan Planning Efforts in the United States 286
Metropolitan Governance and Planning 286
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 288 • Review Activities 288
Part 5 People and Places 289
Chapter 12 THE RESIDENTIAL KALEIDOSCOPE 291
Learning Outcomes 291
Chapter Preview 291
◼ Urban View 12.1: The French Ghetto Beat of a Muslim Rapper 293
Social Interaction and Residential Segregation 293
Territoriality 294
The Foundations of Residential Segregation 295
Social Status 295
Household Type 297
◼ Urban View 12.2: The Social Construction of Race 297
Ethnicity 298
Lifestyle 301
◼ Urban View 12.3: Social Exclusion and Migrant Workers in European Cities 303
Interpretations of Residential Ecology 304
The Chicago School: Human Ecology 304
CRITICISMS OF HUMAN ECOLOGY 306
FACTORIAL ECOLOGY 306
◼ Urban View 12.4: Residential and Economic Structure in European Cities 307
Recent Changes to the Foundations of Residential Segregation 307
New Divisions of Labor, New Household Types, and New Lifestyles 309
NEW ROLES FOR WOMEN 310
◼ Urban View 12.5: The Ethnoburb—A New Suburban Ethnic Settlement 311
NEW PATTERNS OF HOUSEHOLD FORMATION 312
INCREASED MATERIALISM AND NEW LIFESTYLES 313
◼ Urban View 12.6: “Inconspicuous Consumption?” 315
Social Polarization and Spatial Segregation 316
The New Residential Mosaic: “Lifestyle” Communities 318
◼ Urban View 12.7: GIS Marketing Applications Help Starbucks to Brew up Better Locational Analyses 319
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 321 • Review Activities 321
Chapter 13 THE CITY AS TEXT: ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN 323
Learning Outcomes 323
Chapter Preview 323
◼ Urban View 13.1: Disney’s Celebration: Designing the Happiest Place on Earth? 324
Architecture and the Dynamics of Urban Change 325
Architecture and Exchange Value 325
Architecture and the Circulation of Capital 325
Architecture and Legitimation 326
MEANING AND SYMBOLISM 326
Architecture versus “Mere Building” 326
The Style of Production/The Production of Style 326
Arcadian Classicism and the “Middle Landscape” 327
PUBLIC PARKS 328
Beaux Arts and the City Beautiful 328
The American Way: Skyscrapers 329
Modernism: Architecture as Social Redemption 330
ARTS AND CRAFTS AND ART NOUVEAU 331
THE EARLY MODERNISTS 331
THE BAUHAUS AND THE MODERN MOVEMENT 332
LE CORBUSIER 333
AN AMERICAN RESPONSE 335
THE CRITIQUE OF MODERNISM 336
The Postmodern Interlude 338
NEW URBANISM 339
HISTORIC PRESERVATION 340
Design for Dystopia 341
FORTRESS L.A. 341
“Starchitects,” “Starchitecture,” and World Cities 342
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 345 • Review Activities 345
Chapter 14 URBANIZATION, URBAN LIFE,
AND URBAN SPACES 347
Learning Outcomes 347
Chapter Preview 347
◼ Urban View 14.1: The Writing on the Wall for Territoriality? Taggers Respect Community Mural Painted in “Neutral” Colors 348
Social Life in Cities 348
Theoretical Interpretations of Urban Life 349
The “Moral Order” of City Life 349
◼ Urban View 14.2: “Sex and the City”: Prostitution 350
ANOMIE AND DEVIANT BEHAVIOR 351
LIBERATING ASPECTS OF URBAN LIFE 352
Urbanism as a Way of Life 352
The Public and Private Worlds of City Life 353
Changing Metropolitan Form and New Forms of Urbanism 354
URBAN VILLAGES 354
◼ Urban View 14.3: Homosexuality and the City 355
SUBURBAN COMMUNALITY, “HABITUS,” AND CONTEMPORARY LIFESTYLES 357
Community and Territory 358
COGNITION, PERCEPTION, AND MENTAL MAPS OF THE CITY 358
APPRAISIVE IMAGES 360
Lifeworlds and the “Structuration” of Social Life 361
◼ Urban View 14.4: Disability and the City 362
Time-Space Routines 363
◼ Urban View 14.5: Structuration: Time and Space in People’s Everyday Life 364
Gendered Spaces 365
The Creation of Women’s Spaces 365 Changing Roles, Changing Spaces 367
Discrimination by Design: Domestic Architecture and Gender Differences 369
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 369 • Review Activities 369
Chapter 15 PROBLEMS OF URBANIZATION 371
Learning Outcomes 371
Chapter Preview 371
◼ Urban View 15.1: Homeless Students Struggle to Keep Up 372 Problem? What Problem? 372
From Haunts of Vice to Gang Wastelands—and Back 373
Problems of the Early Industrial City 373
Problems of the Industrial City 374
Problems of the Post-War City (1945–73) 376
Problems of the Neoliberal City 376
Poverty 377
The Cycle of Poverty 378
◼ Urban View 15.2: Poverty, Stress, and Civil Disorder in U.S. Cities 380
POVERTY IN U.S. METROPOLITAN AREAS 381
DUAL CITIES? 382
Criminal Violence 385
◼ Urban View 15.3: High School Student Drug Abuse 387
Spatial Patterns 387
◼ Urban View 15.4: Russian Mafia Crime and Corruption—Not Just in Russian Cities Anymore 389
The Effects of Crime on Urbanization and Urban Life 389
◼ Urban View 15.5: Terrorism and Cities 391
Homelessness 392
The Causes of Homelessness 394
Infrastructure and Environmental Problems 397 Water Supply Problems 398
◼ Urban View 15.6: Brownfield Redevelopment 400
Air Pollution 400
◼ Urban View 15.7: High-Speed Rail in Europe 402
Infrastructure Crisis 402
◼ Urban View 15.8: London’s Traffic Congestion Charge 406
Persistent Future Problems 407
FOLLOW UP: Key Terms 409 • Review Activities 409
Notes 411 Glossary 427
Credits 441 Index 446
Urbanization and Urban Geography 1
This book introduces urban geography by focusing on the processes and outcomes of urbanization that are so important for the people who live in cities. Cities are products of many forces. They are engines of economic development and centers of cultural innovation, social transformation, and political change. At the same time, urban areas vary in everything from employment opportunities for job seekers to patterns of land use in neighborhoods, racial composition in metropolitan regions, and social behavior in urban society. Given the considerable range of issues that urban geography encompasses, we need to try to develop a consistency in our approach. Understanding theories about cities and the way they change—rather than simply listing their various attributes—will help to ensure that we maintain a consistency and will give us greater insight into the way cities work. Although we will sometimes need to look closely at specific people and events, our goal is to focus on understanding how to read the economic, social, and political “blueprints” that give shape and character to various kinds of cities and urban life. By “generalizing” in this way, we will have a more immediate and richer understanding of each new aspect of urbanization that we encounter.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
■ Assess how and why the concepts of space, territoriality, distance, and place influence everyone in cities.
■ Describe why several approaches to urban geography have arisen, and how it is possible to gain urban insights from each.
■ Explain how urban geographies result from long-term changes involving the interrelated dynamics of economic, demographic, political, cultural, technological, environmental, and social change.
■ Compare and contrast the broad phases in the nature of capitalism and their importance for cities in the United States since the 1700s.
■ Understand the ways in which the rapidly increasing interdependence of the world-system has impacted cities and the people living in them.
CHAPTER PREVIEW
The fundamental task of the student of urban geography is to make sense of the ways that towns and cities have changed and are changing, with particular reference to the differences both between urban places and within them. As a student, you will understandably find yourself asking some fundamental questions. What exactly is urban geography, and how does it relate to other aspects of geography and to other social science subjects? What is involved in urbanization, and what outcomes of urbanization that affect people are important in studying urban geography? This first chapter answers those questions and introduces some of the organizing principles and concepts that recur throughout the book.
First, we address the question of urban geography as a subject for academic study, emphasizing the importance of concepts of space, territoriality, distance, and place that influence everyone in cities. We then review the various approaches that have been taken to the study of cities from a geographical perspective. We will see that
Cities are hives of human activity and crucibles of social, cultural, and political change, where there is always something happening. Urban geography can help us to understand, analyze, and interpret urban landscapes such as in this photograph of Woodruff Park and the people enjoying a wonderful view of the downtown skyline of Atlanta, Georgia.
they are all encompassed by the overall framework for study that is adopted in this book: a framework that allows us to deal with various aspects of urban geography in terms of their relationship to urbanization as a process.
The second half of the chapter addresses this question of urbanization as a process. Here we see how urban geographies and urban change associated with every aspect of people’s lives are the result (and sometimes the cause) of long-term changes in economic development and in the interrelated dynamics of technological, demographic, political, social, cultural, and environmental change. Because these changes are being framed increasingly at the global scale, our framework for studying urban geography also views urbanization from a global perspective involving people and cities from all over the world. Finally, we look ahead to the contents and organization of the rest of the book.
URBAN VIEW 1.1
THE STUDY OF URBAN GEOGRAPHY
Like other aspects of human geography, urban geography is concerned with “local variability within a general context.”1 This means that it is concerned with understanding both the distinctiveness of individual places (at the scale of towns and cities or particular neighborhoods) and the regularities within and between urban areas in terms of the spatial relationships between people and their environment (see Urban View 1.1 entitled “The Art of Taking Back a Neighborhood: The Heidelberg Project”). We should immediately note that environment here includes not only the natural physical environment but also the built environment (everything from homes, factories, offices, and schools to roads and bridges), the economic environment (economic institutions, the structure
The Art of Taking Back a Neighborhood: The Heidelberg Project2
Multicolored polka dots decorating one house, a boat filled with stuffed toy animals nearby, and a vacant lot with rows of car hoods painted with faces (Figure 1.1). The Dotty Wotty House, Noah’s Ark, and Faces in the Hood are just some of the guerrilla art installations on Heidelberg Street in Detroit by Tyree Guyton, a trained artist, whose philosophy is:
I believe that my job as an artist is to help people to see! I wanted to use my talents to bring about positive change in my community . . . I use art as a catalyst for social change. I chose to start right here in my own neighborhood and yet I realized that the first change had to start with me. Changing my mind and seeing with my eye of understanding helped to eradicate my fears and limitations. Social change must start with self and then you can change the entire world around you.
And you cannot help notice the change immediately as you arrive at Heidelberg Street, having passed city block after city block with as many vacant lots as houses, uncut grass and invading weeds, and trash littering the crumbling sidewalks. For the urban geographer, this is an unforgettable example of “local variability within a general context.” The distinctiveness of the Heidelberg Project reflects the kind of local variability that is possible in a particular city despite the general context of urban decline due to regularly repeated stories of deindustrialization, suburbanization, and poverty in Rustbelt cities like Detroit.
What started with decorating Tyree Guyton’s grandfather’s house with polka dots 25 years ago has become the nonprofit Heidelberg Project, which attracts 275,000 visitors of all ages each year. But it has not only changed former crack houses and abandoned homes into art that explodes with bright paint and discarded items, it has also helped keep the street free of trash and crime, create a strong sense of community, and provide educational opportunities for neighborhood children to experience the transformative potential of art.
The Heidelberg Project’s social importance was recognized with a 2004 Places Award by the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA):
Clearly this work is not only about what you see. It’s about the dialogue it engenders . . . The Heidelberg Project offers
an alternative vision to young children in one of America’s most blighted urban areas; it broadens community awareness of the power of art; and it brings a new sense of important social realities to the consciousness of visitors.
FIGURE 1.1 An abandoned house is covered with discarded toy stuffed animals to become art as part of the Heidelberg Project in Detroit that has also helped to keep this street free of trash and crime, create a strong sense of community, and provide educational opportunities for neighborhood children to experience the transformative potential of art.
and organization of economic life, and so on), and the social environment (including norms of behavior, social attitudes, and cultural and political values that shape interpersonal relations among people).
For urban geographers some of the most important questions therefore include the following: What attributes make cities and neighborhoods distinctive? How did these distinctive identities evolve? Are there significant regularities in the spatial arrangement of towns and cities across a country or region of the world? Are there significant regularities in the spatial organization of land use within cities and in the spatial patterns of people in neighborhoods by social status, household type, or race? The urban geographer will also need to know about the causes of any regularities that do exist. How, for example, do people choose where to live and what are the constraints on their choices? How do people’s areas of residence affect their behavior? What groups, if any, can manipulate the spatial organization of towns and cities? And who profits from such manipulation?
In posing these questions, urban geographers have learned that the answers are ultimately to be found in the wider context of economic, social, and political life. Cities must be viewed as part of the economies and societies that maintain them. The study of cities cannot be undertaken in isolation from the study of history, economic development, sociocultural change, or the increasing interdependence of places within the world economy. A proper understanding of cities requires an interdisciplinary approach. The traditional focus of geography—the interrelationships between people and their physical and social environments—requires geographers to draw on the work of researchers in those related disciplines. Accordingly, the chapters you are about to read will be peppered with references to the work of economists, sociologists, political scientists, historians, city planners, and even artists.
Space, Territoriality, Distance, and Place
Urban geography is a coherent and distinctive framework of study through the central themes of space, territoriality, distance, and place. For the geographer, space is not simply
a medium in which economic, social, political, and historical processes are expressed. It is also a factor that influences patterns of urban development and the nature of the relationships between different social groups within cities. From this perspective, cities are simultaneously the products and the shapers of economic, social, and political change. Partitioning space through the establishment of legal boundaries is also important because it affects the dynamics of cities in several ways. For example, the establishment of municipal boundaries restricts a city’s capacity to raise revenue to its own territory, while electoral boundaries affect where people vote and the outcome of local elections and politics.
Territoriality is the tendency for particular groups within society—ethnic groups, gangs, gated communities—to attempt to establish some form of control, dominance, or exclusivity within a localized area. Group territoriality depends primarily on the logic of using space as a focus and symbol of group membership and identity as a means of regulating social interaction. It is important for the geographer because it is often the basis for individual and group behavior that creates distinctive spatial settings within cities. These spatial settings in turn mold the attitudes and behavior of the people living in cities.
Distance is important for several reasons. It affects the behavior of both producers and consumers of all goods and services. It influences patterns of social interaction and the shape and extent of social networks. Variations in people’s physical accessibility to opportunities and to amenities such as jobs, schools, stores, parks, and hospitals are important in determining the local quality of life.
Finally, place is important because of the geographer’s traditional and fundamental concern with areal differentiation and the distinctiveness of regions and localities. The distinctiveness of particular metropolitan regions, cities, districts, and neighborhoods is central to the analytical heart of urban geography: mapping variability, identifying regularities in spatial patterns, and establishing the linkages that constitute functional regions and subareas. In addition, the sense of place (Figure 1.2) that people associate with certain
FIGURE 1.2 A wall mural. A distinctive mural in a Hispanic neighborhood in Milwaukee, WI, near Cesar Chavez Drive and across from the Sixteenth Street Community Health Center that provides health care, health education, and social services to low-income residents in the neighborhood. Community art such as this provides a remarkably clear expression of the sense of place and territoriality that are fundamental to the spatial organization of people in cities.
cities and localities is important, because it can influence their decisions: where to live, where to locate an office or a factory, whether to hire someone from a particular place, or whether to walk alone through a certain part of town, for example.
Approaches to Urban Geography
Urban geography has evolved to encompass a variety of approaches to its subject matter. This is the result of a more general intellectual evolution of ideas in the social sciences. For example, a widespread “quantitative revolution” has occurred both in urban geography and in the social sciences as a whole. Two developments spurred this revolution. Large quantities of reliable socioeconomic data about cities and city neighborhoods became available from sources such as the censuses of population and housing in many countries. At the same time, tools to analyze and shape this information were becoming widely available in the wake of new digital technologies and geographic information systems (GIS). Modern analytical and modeling techniques have made a decisive contribution to the social sciences. They have allowed the urban geographer to see farther, with more clarity, and have provided the means by which to judge theories about urbanization.
Like other fields, urban geography has also been influenced by changing social values. As each society’s comprehension of urban problems has grown, attitudes toward research in urban geography have become more flexible. Much of the research undertaken today in urban geography has relevance far beyond the ivory towers of academia and involves a more active engagement with the needs and concerns of local communities, private companies, and government. Urban geographers are likely to be consulted on issues that range, for example, from optimal political redistricting (redrawing the boundaries of local voting districts) to the evaluation of government policies aimed at enhancing local economic development in distressed central city neighborhoods.
Finally, changes in cities themselves and in the nature of urbanization have also contributed to the evolution of approaches to urban geography. As we have become aware of changes in cities and have looked more closely at those changes, new topics for study have emerged. A good example is the increased interest that geographers have taken in community well-being after the cuts to many public services in richer countries like the United States that have hit some poorer and older people very hard over the past couple of decades. An equally striking, more recent example is the interest by geographers in the link between local housing markets and international finance after the financial meltdown of 2008–09 and the personal misfortunes of families losing their homes due to foreclosure.
The details of the evolution of urban geography as an academic subject are beyond the scope of this book. It is important, however, to establish a few central points about that evolution. Several decades ago, work in urban geography (or “settlement geography,” as it was more commonly known) saw towns and cities as adaptations to natural physical circumstances. Attributes of urban settlements were interpreted as responses to local sites, regional resources, and the opportunities and constraints surrounding them. So, for example, the growth of Pittsburgh as a steel town can be interpreted spatially, from this perspective, in terms of the availability of local sources of coal, iron ore, limestone, and water, along with proximity to large markets for iron and steel products that benefited local businesspeople and workers.
Another body of work within this spatial description approach that dominated the early development of the subject was focused on the “morphology” of towns and cities—their physical form, their plan, and their various townscapes and “functional areas” (that is, districts with a distinctive mixture of interrelated land uses). Keeping with the example of Pittsburgh,
1.3 An urban geographer looking at this neighborhood of young families with children would want to discover what it has in common with similar neighborhoods in other cities and what makes it distinctive from them.
FIGURE
these studies would likely have emphasized the influence of the city’s hilly topography on the layout of its streets and neighborhoods, and perhaps shown how urban growth and land use were “fixed” by the limited amounts of flat land (along the Monongahela River) that the captains of industry at the time saw as suitable for large ironworks.
Gradually, scientific principles influenced attitudes toward knowledge, and both settlement and morphology studies fell out of favor. In their place there emerged a spatial analysis approach based on the philosophy and methodology of positivism that had been developed in the natural sciences. This philosophy was founded on the principle of verification of facts and relationships through accepted scientific methods. The rise of positivism affected all of geography and most of the social sciences, and the “quantitative revolution” reinforced it. Its practitioners came to redefine urban geography as the science of urban spatial organization and spatial relationships, and, as a science, it focused on the construction of testable models and hypotheses. One example of the many possible positivistic approaches to aspects of Pittsburgh’s urban geography would be an attempt to quantify the relationship between neighborhood social status and proximity to steel mills. The hypothesis might be that neighborhood social status tends to increase steadily with distance from a steel mill. If this were demonstrated with verifiable evidence, the next step might be to begin to develop a theory by replicating the study in other industrial cities.
This more abstract approach has contributed a great deal to our understanding of cities, and it continues to be a mainstay of urban studies. But sometimes its abstractions and overdependence on statistical data can seem flat and lifeless in the face of the urban realities of people’s lives to which they are applied. The abstractions tend to leave unanswered many of the important questions concerning underlying processes and meanings. So, although it might be useful to be able to use census tract data to establish and quantify a tendency for neighborhood social status to increase with distance from an industrial plant, we are left without any sense of how the relationship came about: Who made what decisions, and why, in the process of establishing the relationship? How might any exceptions to the overall relationship be explained?
In response to such questions, a behavioral approach emerged. This approach focuses on the study of individual people’s activities and decision making in urban environments. Although the behavioral approach continued to use a positivist methodology, explanatory concepts and analytical techniques were also derived from social psychology and some key ideas came from social philosophy, with its insights into human needs and impulses.
The behavioral approach’s relative neglect of the importance of cultural context for understanding people’s actions and the meanings attached to those actions led to the emergence of the humanistic approach. The behavioral approach’s positivist methodology was replaced by methods, such as ethnography and participant observation, that attempted to answer questions that capture people’s subjective experiences. For Pittsburgh, what kind of meaning does the presence of a steel mill carry for different individuals within the city? How do
people’s feelings about steelworkers’ neighborhoods affect their decisions about where to live in Pittsburgh? Like the behavioral approach, though, the humanistic approach has been criticized for not paying enough attention to the constraints on people’s decision making and behavior.
As a result, another approach, generally referred to as the structuralist approach , gained momentum within urban geography. This approach is cast, in contrast to the behavioral and humanistic approaches, at the scale of macroeconomic, macrosocial, and macropolitical changes. It focuses on the implications of such changes for urbanization and on the opportunities and constraints they present for the behavior and decision making of different groups of people. At its broadest level, this approach draws on a combination of macroeconomic theory, social theory, and the theories and concepts of political science, and includes the political economy approach. For example, a political economy approach to Pittsburgh’s urban geography would certainly want to relate the patterns of growth and decline of both steel mills and their associated blue-collar neighborhoods to the broader structure of, among other things, access to capital by businesses for investment in industry, the availability of skilled labor, the framework of government policies affecting industrial and residential development, and deindustrialization associated with corporate restructuring within the global economy.
The structuralist analyses of the structure of social inequality paved the way for explicitly incorporating the experience of women into urban geography. The feminist approach deals with the inequalities between men and women, and the way in which unequal gender relations are reflected in the spatial structure of cities. For Pittsburgh, the feminist approach might be interested in examining changing gender roles as the urban labor force has restructured following the closing of the steel mills, such as the trend for some women in two-earner households to be overrepresented in certain fast-growing part-time occupations.
The structure-agency approach was an attempt to unite the structuralist approach’s concern with macrolevel social, economic, and political structures with the humanistic approach’s emphasis on human agency. Structuration theory sees society’s social structures as created and recreated by the social practices of human agents, whose actions are themselves constrained by these social structures. As a result, it is impossible to predict the exact outcome of the interactions between social structure and human agency. Despite the elegance of this theorization, empirical investigation has proved difficult because it is not easy to analyze the continuous and complex interrelationships between structure and agency. A study of Pittsburgh might involve questions about how the gentrification of some central city neighborhoods is the result of an intricate set of interactions between human agents, including landowners, mortgage lenders, planners, and realtors; institutions such as the city government; and social structures involving planning regulations such as land use zoning and building codes.
Finally, the influence of literary theory has led to the emergence of poststructuralist approaches, including the postmodern approach. The postmodern approach strongly opposes
the idea that any general theories can explain cities and the people who live in them. Instead, it accepts the shifting and unstable nature of the world and concentrates on questions of who defines meaning, how this meaning is defined, and to what end. It is concerned with understanding the power of symbolism, images, and representation as expressed in language, communication, and the urban landscape. Again, using the example of Pittsburgh, a postmodern approach would likely examine the city government’s attempts to “reinvent” the city within the global economy as it restructures away from steel and toward jobs in the high-tech and services industries. This approach would draw attention to the city government’s use of language and communication to deliberately construct certain images of
URBAN VIEW 1.2
Census Definitions
Just what is meant by an “urban” settlement varies a good deal from one country to another. For the Bureau of the Census in the United States, the term urban applies to the territory, people, and housing units located within urbanized areas and urban clusters.3
• An urbanized area (UA) is a densely settled area (whether or not the territory is legally incorporated as a city) with at least 50,000 people and a density of at least 1,000 people per square mile at the urban core and at least 500 people per square mile in the surrounding territory.
• An urban cluster (UC) consists of an urban core with a population density of at least 1,000 people per square mile and at least 500 people per square mile in the surrounding territory that together encompass a population of at least 2,500 people, but fewer than 50,000 people.
Because such definitions of urbanized depend on administrative boundaries, they do not capture the concentrations of people that live in a number of contiguous jurisdictions that form one continuous metropolitan sprawl. The U.S. Bureau of the Census began to use standardized definitions of metropolitan areas in the 1950 census under the designation of standard metropolitan area (SMA). The term was changed to standard metropolitan statistical area (SMSA) by the 1960 census and to metropolitan statistical area (MSA) in 1983.
Within urban areas, detailed census information is available by census tracts, block groups, and census blocks:
• Census tracts. These geographical subareas have boundaries that were drawn with the objective of delineating small populations that are relatively uniform in terms of their demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. They vary a good deal in territorial extent and population size, although tracts within metropolitan areas contain between 1,000 and 8,000 people. As metropolitan America has grown, so has the number of census tracts recognized by the Census Bureau. The boundaries of many longerestablished census tracts have remained the same over several decades, making it possible to use census data to analyze neighborhood change in certain areas. Elsewhere, however, modifications to tract boundaries and the addition of new tracts make intercensal comparison difficult.
• Block groups. Every census tract is divided into as many as 9 block groups, each of which contains an average of
the city (that may not reflect reality) that, in turn, are designed to influence the views and decisions of potential investors and residents.
For the most part, all these approaches can be regarded as potentially complementary. Although it is neither possible nor desirable to merge them into some kind of all-encompassing model or theory of urbanization, it is possible to gain insights from each. To that extent, all these approaches are represented in this book (with classic examples pointed out). This does not mean, however, that the reader will be faced with sudden or unexpected shifts. The material in this book is organized to emphasize urban geography as the outcome of urbanization as a process.
10 census blocks. A block group consists of all blocks whose numbers begin with the same digit in a census tract. Block groups generally contain between 300 and 3,000 people. Block groups are important because they are the smallest geographical area for which detailed data are tabulated.
• Census blocks. Census blocks generally correspond to the physical configuration of city blocks and are bounded by streets or other prominent physical features. They are the smallest statistical unit for which census data are available, although the range of data is not detailed, being limited to basic population and housing characteristics.
In preparing the 1990 census, the U.S. Bureau of the Census developed an electronic database called the Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) system. TIGER files contain address ranges, latitude and longitude coordinates, and the location of roads, railways, rivers, and other physical features. They can be linked with small-area census data to form the basis of sophisticated Geographic Information System (GIS) applications that offer a great deal of potential for research in urban geography. GIS—organized collections of computer hardware, software, and geographic data that are designed to capture, store, update, manipulate, and map geographically referenced information—has grown rapidly to become an important method of urban geographic analysis. GIS technology allows an enormous range of urban problems to be analyzed. For instance, it can be used to identify the most efficient evacuation routes for people from all or part of a city in the event of a terrorist attack, to monitor the spread of infectious diseases within and between cities, to analyze the impact of proposed changes in the boundaries of legislative districts, to identify potential customers in the vicinity of a new business, and to provide a basis for urban and regional planning.
The changing realities of urbanization present a continual challenge to the census in delineating geographic units that reflect actual patterns of urban and metropolitan change. So census tabulations include data not only for MSAs but also metropolitan areas (MAs), for primary metropolitan statistical areas (PMSAs), consolidated metropolitan statistical areas (CMSAs) and core based statistical areas (CBSAs), each designed to provide a standardized framework for comparisons and analysis at different spatial scales.
URBANIZATION: PROCESSES AND OUTCOMES
Figure 1.4 provides a useful outline of urbanization as a process. It is clear from the diagram that urbanization involves much more than a mere increase in the number of people living and working in cities and metropolitan regions. It is driven by a series of interrelated processes of change—economic, demographic, political, cultural, technological, environmental, and social. It is also modified by locally and historically contingent factors such as topography and natural resources or an “accident” of birth that resulted in Henry Ford being born in Dearborn, Michigan, that ultimately resulted in the Ford Motor Company being headquartered in Detroit and not somewhere else in the United States. It is true that the overall result of urbanization has been a tendency for more and more people to live and work in ever-larger cities and metropolitan regions (although, as we will see, this is not a necessary condition of urbanization). At the same time, urbanization results in some important changes in the character and dynamics of the urban system (the complete set of urban areas regionally, nationally, or even internationally), and within cities and metropolitan regions, it causes changes in patterns of land use, in social ecology (the social and demographic composition of neighborhoods), in the built environment, and in the nature of urbanism (the forms of social interaction and ways of life that develop in urban settings). Certain groups of people might view some of these outcomes as problems. Government policies, legal changes, city planning, and urban management might eventually address those problems, often resulting in changes (sometimes unanticipated) that in turn affect the dynamics that drive the overall urbanization process.
As suggested by Figure 1.4, the relationships among these processes are complex. Urbanization is not only influenced by the direct effects of these dynamics, but it also experiences “feedback” effects. Meanwhile, almost every aspect of urban
PROCESSES
ECONOMIC CHANGE
DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE
POLITICAL CHANGE
CULTURAL CHANGE
SOCIAL CHANGE
TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE
LOCALLY & HISTORICALLY CONTINGENT FACTORS
URBANIZATION
change is itself to some extent interdependent with some of the others. This complexity can be confusing! We will eliminate much potential confusion with concepts and examples introduced in this chapter. Bear in mind, though, that Figure 1.4 presents a very broad framework that covers the entire subject matter of urban geography. The farther you get into the book, therefore, the more meaningful Figure 1.4 will become. The economic, demographic, political, cultural, social, technological, and environmental processes and relationships implied in the diagram will be elaborated, and the urban outcomes that affect people will be detailed. It is recommended, therefore, that you refer to Figure 1.4 from time to time, putting each new set of material into overall perspective.
Economic Change
At the heart of the dynamics that drive and shape urbanization are economic changes. The sequence and rhythm of economic change will be a recurring theme as we trace and retrace the imprint of urbanization. It is the evolution of capitalism itself that has structured this imprint that affects everyone living in cities. Figure 1.5 summarizes the main features of this evolution. In the United States, there have been several broad phases in the nature of capitalism, and we are now in the early stages of a significantly different phase, framed in the context of globalization.
The earliest phase, lasting from the late eighteenth century until the end of the nineteenth, was a phase of competitive capitalism, the heyday of free enterprise and laissez-faire economic development, with the political economy of the country characterized by classical liberalism: competition between small family businesses and with few constraints or controls imposed by governments or public authorities. In the earlier years of this phase, the dynamism of the entire system rested on the profitability of agriculture and, increasingly, manufacture and
OUTCOMES
URBAN SYSTEMS
LAND USE
BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND TOWNSCAPE
SOCIAL ECOLOGY
URBANISM
SOCIALLYDEFINED PROBLEMS POLITICAL CONFLICT POLICY RESPONSES; PLANNING
Major phases of capitalism
Technology systems
CompetitiveManaged (Keynesianism)
OrganizedAdvanced
Water power
Steam engines
Cotton textiles
Iron works
Infrastructure development
Urban governance and politics
Role of central government Urban systems
Metropolitan form
Canal building First railway boom
Laissez-faire Economic Liberalism
Negligible (liberalism)
Mercantile urban systems (regional)
Coal-powered steam engine
Steel
Railways
Machine tools
World shipping
Internal combustion engine
Oil and plastics
Electrical engineering
Aerospace
Radio
Telecommunications
boom
Municipal Socialism and Machine Politics
Boosterism and the Politics of Reform
automobile boom
Cities as Growth Machines
Increasing: regulator
Strong (direct): manager/regulator
Organization of industry (national frameworks)
Globalized
Microelectronics
Digital
telecommunications
Biotechnology
Informatics
and airports Broadband and satellite systems
Metropolitan Fragmentation and Progrowth Coalitions
Strong (indirect): partner/facilitator
Re-modernization of Institutions, Entrepreneurialism, Neoliberalism
Decreasing: broker (neoliberalism) (egalitarian liberalism)
Pedestrian City Transitional City Industrial City Cities of sectors and zones
“machinofacture” (industrial production that was based less on handicraft and direct labor power than on mechanization, automation, and intensively used skilled labor).
After the Civil War, the extensive railroad system and a strengthened federal system helped to create an economy that was truly national in scale. The most successful family businesses grew bigger and began to take over their competitors. Business became more organized as corporations set out to serve regional or national consumer markets rather than local ones. Labor markets became more organized as wage norms spread, and government began to be more organized as the need for regulation in public affairs became increasingly apparent. By the turn of the twentieth century, these trends had reached the point where the nature of capitalist enterprise had changed significantly. It could now be characterized as organized capitalism—a label that came to be increasingly appropriate with the evolution of the economy over the next 75 years or so. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the system’s dynamism (that is, the basis of profitability) shifted away from industrial manufacture and machinofacture as a new labor process took hold. This process was Fordism, named
Metropolitan spatial decentralization
Suburban infill
Metropolises of central cities surrounded by urban realms
World Cities and international networks
Megapolitan regions
change and urban development in
after Henry Ford, the car manufacturer who was a pioneer of the principle of mass production, based on assembly line techniques and “scientific” management (known as Taylorism), together with mass consumption, based on higher wages for workers and sophisticated advertising techniques targeted at consumers.
The success of Fordism was associated with the development of a rather tense but nevertheless workable relationship between business interests and the labor unions, whose new strength was in itself another important element of “organization.” Meanwhile, the role of government had also expanded—partly to regulate the unwanted side effects of free-enterprise capitalism and partly to mediate the relationship between organized business and organized labor. After the Great Depression of 1929–1934, government’s role expanded dramatically to include responsibility for full employment, the management of the national economy, and the organization of various dimensions of the social well-being of people. The market failures that had triggered the Depression undermined the legitimacy of classical, laissez-faire liberalism and led to its eclipse by an egalitarian liberalism that relied on government to manage economic development and soften the unwanted
FIGURE 1.5 The long-term view. A summary of some of the major features of economic
the United States.
side effects of free-market capitalism for those people most adversely impacted. This top-down approach to economic management, with a commitment to low unemployment, is often referred to as Keynesianism, after the British economist John Maynard Keynes.
After World War II, another important transformation in the nature of capitalist economies became evident. Developed countries like the United States and Canada experienced a shift away from industrial production and toward services, particularly sophisticated business and financial services, as the basis for profitability. It is denoted in Figure 1.5 as an evolution from organized capitalism to advanced capitalism. This shift began to transform occupational structures for workers, sparking deindustrialization—a decline in manufacturing jobs but not in manufacturing production.
Broadly speaking, the key dynamic of urbanization during the two centuries spanning the 1770s and the 1970s was interurban competition for jobs and investment, with the unwanted side effects of uneven development being cushioned increasingly by local, regional, and national government intervention. This long evolution of the capitalist economy saw the emergence of institutions that mutually confirmed and supported one another in an overall process of modernization: the nationstate, the Fordist company, the nuclear family, the system of industrial relations, the welfare state, and the formal institutions of science and technology.
But from the mid-1970s on, cities in the United States, along with others around the world, were caught up in a very different dynamic. The increasing globalization of the economy allowed huge transnational corporations to outmaneuver the national scope of both governments and labor unions by moving routine production and assembly operations to lower-cost, less developed parts of the world as part of a new international division of labor (NIDL). This contributed to a profound destabilization of the relationship between business, labor, and government in developed countries like the United States. Meanwhile, Fordism began to be a victim of its own success, with mass markets for many products becoming saturated. As it became increasingly difficult to extract profits from mass production and mass consumption, many enterprises sought profitability through serving specialized market niches. Instead of standardization in production, specialization required variability and, above all, flexible production systems. There was a rapid decline of the old base of manufacturing industries and the onset of a “new economy” based on digital technologies and featuring advanced business services, cultural products industries, and knowledge-based industries, all framed within the context of a new international division of labor and international finance. The internationalization of economic geography weakened the leverage of both big government and big labor, destabilizing the organized capitalism of the midtwentieth century and allowing a fundamental intensification of the economic and spatial logic of capital—especially big capital. Much of this was directly at odds with the top-down managed capitalism and planned modernization of the previous two centuries, tipping the U.S. space-economy into a significant new phase dominated by neoliberalism: a selective return to the freemarket ideas of classical liberalism. The Reagan administration
of the 1980s dismantled much of the Keynesian welfare state, deregulated industry, ushered in an era of public-private cooperation in place-making and economic development, and rekindled libertarian ideas about the primacy of private property rights. Urban planning has morphed into public-private cooperation, while state and local governments increasingly behave like businesses in their attempts to attract economic development and balance the books. In attempts to recapture some control over the global scale of the new economic logic and its social, cultural, and environmental implications, national governments have become increasingly collaborative, supranational entities have emerged, many institutions have extended their focus from a national to an international frame of reference, and many local and regional organizations have become involved in cross-border collaborative networks of one sort or another.
For some observers, this points to nothing less than the onset of a second major phase of modernization in which the structures and institutions of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury modernization are both deconstructed and reconstructed (Figure 1.5). Whereas urban development during the first modernity was framed by competitiveness within closed geographic systems (national states) that were competing with one another, urban development at the onset of this second modernity is subject to competitiveness at the global scale.
The significance of this historical evolution for urbanization, urban geography, and cities and the people living in them is fundamental. Each new phase of capitalism saw changes in what was produced, how it was produced, and where it was produced. These changes called for new kinds of cities, while existing cities had to be modified. At the same time, of course, cities themselves played important roles in the transformation of capitalist enterprise. As centers of innovation, cities and towns have traditionally functioned as engines of economic growth that provide opportunities for new forms of livelihood and improved prosperity. But despite producing the bulk of national wealth, cities are also locations of exploitation and unemployment. Within a global economy in particular, the costs and benefits of globalization are unevenly distributed among the people that live in cities. The challenge for cities in the global economy of the twenty-first century is to function not only as engines of economic growth but also as agents of change for greater social justice and urban sustainability.
Demographic Change
One of the most important subsets of interdependence suggested in Figure 1.4 is that between demographic change and urbanization. Cities are, in a fundamental way, the product of their people. Put another way, the size, composition, and rate of change of urban populations significantly shape the character of urbanization. Yet the condition of cities themselves can in turn influence those characteristics. Crowded and degraded slums, for example, can lead to higher death rates; cities with good amenities tend to attract particularly large numbers of migrants; and border towns and big cities with international ports and airports tend to attract a disproportionate share of
URBAN VIEW 1.3
Globalization and Cities
The urbanization processes that produce the urban outcomes shown in Figure 1.4 operate at different spatial scales. The rapidly increasing interdependence of the world-system means that the economic and social well-being of cities and the people living in them depends increasingly on complex interactions that are framed at a global scale. Globalization has had profound effects on cities and systems of cities because of the close interaction between global and local forces—a process that has been called glocalization or the global-local nexus. The process and its outcomes involve uneven development both within and among cities. Globalization has led, for example, to the emergence of so-called world cities—command centers such as New York, London, and Tokyo that are key players in the new concentrated financial system.
Although globalization is a complicated and controversial topic, we can identify a number of interrelated dimensions— economic, cultural, and political—associated with its processes and urban outcomes. Economic globalization reflects the fact that, although urban, regional, and national circumstances remain very important, what happens in any given city and how it affects, for example, workers or shoppers, is broadly determined by its role in systems of production, trade, and consumption that have become global in scope. The term globalization is usually associated with the growing importance of transnational corporations operating across a number of countries. The activities of these companies, in the spheres of both production and marketing, are increasingly integrated at a global scale in a new international division of labor. Products are made by workers in multiple locations from components manufactured by workers in other places to take advantage of the full range of geographical variations in costs. With a global assembly system, labor-intensive work can be done where labor is cheap, raw materials can be processed near their source of supply, and final assembly can be done close to major urban markets.
Cultural globalization is associated with the development of a broader global culture. This is a controversial idea, but it essentially involves the widespread diffusion of Western values of materialism. Globalization can be seen in the popularity of Hollywood films or the spread of the hamburger. Indeed, Ritzer4 coined the term “McDonaldization” to denote the ways in which processes of mass consumption are eroding cultural differences
immigrants. Meanwhile, urban economic well-being often mediates the relationships between demographic change and urbanization. So, for example, both birth rates and migration rates depend a great deal on people’s perceptions and expectations of economic opportunities.
Political Change
The broad ideological swings and shifts that occur from time to time are an important aspect of the influence of political change on urbanization. One well-known example is the reform movement that emerged in the United States in the 1870s and 1880s in response to a variety of social problems. As we will see in
among people around the world. It is argued that globalization involves the homogenization of culture—the development of cultural interrelatedness of people throughout the world. New telecommunications systems—especially within urban areas— that allow rapid transmission of information and images to people’s homes and electronic devices have facilitated this process. But there has been resistance by some people to these global forces through the assertion of local cultural identities, including various popular social movements seeking greater autonomy at the level of regions and cities.
Political globalization has been associated with the reduced power of national governments to shape their own destinies. In large measure this has been bound up with the globalization of financial markets so that money can now flow rapidly across national boundaries. In addition, because transnational corporations can switch investment from one country to another, public bodies, including city governments, have little choice but to adopt incentive strategies to compete in attracting and keeping internationally mobile companies and their investment in an effort to promote jobs and economic prosperity for workers and residents.
Altogether, these various dimensions of globalization present an enormous challenge to the effectiveness and appropriateness of the economic, political, social, and cultural structures and institutions that had evolved over the two centuries beginning with the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s. Globalization has brought hybridity and cosmopolitanism to the national cultures and social systems of people in many parts of the world. As a result, many social and cultural structures and norms have been subject to change or obsolescence, while new, transnational, social and cultural phenomena have emerged. Similarly, globalization has intensified transnational economic and political interdependence, prompting the reform of many economic and political institutions and the emergence of new supranational institutions and networks. For many observers, it all amounts to the onset of a second modernity, a distinctive break from the national frameworks of urban and economic development to a globalizing framework with an entirely new set of possibilities and competitive opportunities; and, of course, the attendant conflicts and contradictions of a new world order.
Chapter 10, the reform movement had an important and lasting influence on urban affairs. A very different and more recent example is that of the political shift at the national and international level before the beginning of the “War on Terrorism”: the end of the Cold War, which had a marked effect on the economies and workers in some Sunbelt cities that had been heavily dependent on defense-related industries (see p. 88).
In this last example we see again the mediating role of economic change. Indeed, politics has become intimately related to economic development. Economic issues are important to people and almost always appear in local elections, while both the need for local services and the ability to pay for them by people living in cities are functions of local
economic prosperity. As suggested by the direction of the arrows in Figure 1.4, urbanization also directly affects political change in some ways. One example is the way that coalitions of urban voters shaped the basis of modern party politics at the national level during the 1930s and 1940s in the United States (p. 239). Another is the electoral significance of suburban voters who have more recently formed an important foundation of support for the Republican Party. Urbanization also affects political change indirectly through people’s perceptions of the problems associated with various dimensions of urban change, because their perceptions inform and frame many of the issues that are contested in the political arena.
Cultural Change
We can find parallel examples of the interdependence of urbanization and cultural change. The broad cultural shift of the “postmodernity” (p. 338) of the 1980s, for example, brought, among other things, a renewed interest in the past that has engaged many people and found expression in urban form through historic preservation and the recycling of architectural styles. Meanwhile, urbanization has contributed to cultural dynamics through the youth subcultures— distinguished by features such as clothing, slang, music, and vehicles, including skateboards—that have flourished in certain urban settings. Other aspects of the interdependence between urbanization and culture involve still further processes of change. The materialism of mainstream American culture, for example, has affected urbanization through home ownership trends and patterns of residential development, but it has depended on processes of economic change that have been associated with workers’ wages not keeping pace and rising personal debt (see p. 318). It is not only (or always) economic change that is important in mediating such
FIGURE 1.6 People disembarking the ferry at Coronado Island, with the skyline of San Diego, California, in the background. The economic and demographic profile of San Diego has been influenced by its military bases, climate, scenery, recreational opportunities, and proximity to the Mexican border.
interrelationships. As we will see (p. 96), demographic change is also important, the “baby boom” generation having been the innovators and “carriers” of successive aspects of cultural change from the counterculture of the 1960s to the yuppie materialism of the 1980s and the “suburban bling” of the private master-planned developments of the 2000s.
Technological Change
At the broadest level, and in parallel with the overall evolution of capitalism, we should recognize that the economy has been carried along by a succession of technology systems that have been fundamental to the changing conditions that producers have had to confront. These are indicated in Figure 1.5 in terms of the clusters of energy sources, transportation technologies, and key industries that characterized each system:
• Early mechanization based on waterpower and steam engines; the development of cotton textiles, pottery, and iron working; and the development of river systems, canals, and turnpike roads for the assembly of raw materials and the distribution of finished products for sale to consumers.
• The development of coal-powered steam engines, steel products, railroads, world shipping, and machine tools that affected workers everywhere.
• The development of the internal combustion engine, oil and plastics, electrical and heavy engineering, cars, aircraft, radio, and telecommunications whose legacy continues for people in cities today.
• The exploitation of nuclear power, the development of limited access highways, durable consumer goods industries, aerospace industries, electronics, and petrochemicals were a further breakthrough affecting people in cities.
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Objection has often been taken, especially by philosophical writers, to the crudeness of Einstein’s initial requisitions, viz. a clock and a measuring scale. But the body of experimental knowledge of the world which Einstein’s theory seeks to set in order has not come into our minds as a heaven-sent inspiration; it is the result of a survey in which the clock and the scale have actually played the leading part. They may seem very gross instruments to those accustomed to the conceptions of atoms and electrons, but it is correspondingly gross knowledge that we have been discussing in the chapters concerned with Einstein’s theory. As the relativity theory develops, it is generally found desirable to replace the clock and scale by the moving particle and light-ray as the primary surveying appliances; these are test bodies of simpler structure. But they are still gross compared with atomic phenomena. The light-ray, for instance, is not applicable to measurements so refined that the diffraction of light must be taken into account. Our knowledge of the external world cannot be divorced from the nature of the appliances with which we have obtained the knowledge. The truth of the law of gravitation cannot be regarded as subsisting apart from the experimental procedure by which we have ascertained its truth.
The conception of frames of space and time, and of the nonemptiness of the world described as energy, momentum, etc., is bound up with the survey by gross appliances. When they can no longer be supported by such a survey, the conceptions melt away into meaninglessness. In particular the interior of the atom could not conceivably be explored by a gross survey. We cannot put a clock or a scale into the interior of an atom. It cannot be too strongly insisted that the terms distance, period of time, mass, energy, momentum, etc., cannot be used in a description of an atom with the same meanings that they have in our gross experience. The atomic physicist who uses these terms must find his own meanings for them —must state the appliances which he requisitions when he imagines them to be measured. It is sometimes supposed that (in addition to electrical forces) there is a minute gravitational attraction between an atomic nucleus and the satellite electrons, obeying the same law
as the gravitation between the sun and its planets. The supposition seems to me fantastic; but it is impossible to discuss it without any indication as to how the region within the atom is supposed to have been measured up. Apart from such measuring up the electron goes as it pleases “like the blessed gods”.
We have reached a point of great scientific and philosophic interest. The ten principal coefficients of curvature of the world are not strangers to us; they are already familiar in scientific discussion under other names (energy, momentum, stress). This is comparable with a famous turning-point in the development of electromagnetic theory. The progress of the subject led to the consideration of waves of electric and magnetic force travelling through the aether; then it flashed upon Maxwell that these waves were not strangers but were already familiar in our experience under the name of light. The method of identification is the same. It is calculated that electromagnetic waves will have just those properties which light is observed to have; so too it is calculated that the ten coefficients of curvature have just those properties which energy, momentum and stress are observed to have. We refer here to physical properties only. No physical theory is expected to explain why there is a particular kind of image in our minds associated with light, nor why a conception of substance has arisen in our minds in connection with those parts of the world containing mass.
This leads to a considerable simplification, because identity replaces causation. On the Newtonian theory no explanation of gravitation would be considered complete unless it described the mechanism by which a piece of matter gets a grip on the surrounding medium and makes it the carrier of the gravitational influence radiating from the matter. Nothing corresponding to this is required in the present theory. We do not ask how mass gets a grip on space-time and causes the curvature which our theory postulates. That would be as superfluous as to ask how light gets a grip on the electromagnetic medium so as to cause it to oscillate. The light is the oscillation; the mass isthe curvature. There is no causal effect to be attributed to mass; still less is there any to be attributed to
matter. The conception of matter, which we associate with these regions of unusual contortion, is a monument erected by the mind to mark the scene of conflict. When you visit the site of a battle, do you ever ask how the monument that commemorates it can have caused so much carnage?
The philosophic outcome of this identification will occupy us considerably in later chapters. Before leaving the subject of gravitation I wish to say a little about the meaning of spacecurvature and non-Euclidean geometry.
Non-Euclidean Geometry. I have been encouraging you to think of space-time as curved; but I have been careful to speak of this as a picture, not as a hypothesis. It is a graphical representation of the things we are talking about which supplies us with insight and guidance. What we glean from the picture can be expressed in a more non-committal way by saying that space-time has nonEuclidean geometry. The terms “curved space” and “non-Euclidean space” are used practically synonymously; but they suggest rather different points of view. When we were trying to conceive finite and unbounded space (p. 81) the difficult step was the getting rid of the inside and the outside of the hypersphere. There is a similar step in the transition from curved space to non-Euclidean space—the dropping of all relations to an external (and imaginary) scaffolding and the holding on to those relations which exist within the space itself.
If you ask what is the distance from Glasgow to New York there are two possible replies. One man will tell you the distance measured over the surface of the ocean; another will recollect that there is a still shorter distance by tunnel through the earth. The second man makes use of a dimension which the first had put out of mind. But if two men do not agree as to distances, they will not agree as to geometry; for geometry treats of the laws of distances. To forget or to be ignorant of a dimension lands us into a different geometry. Distances for the second man obey a Euclidean geometry
of three dimensions; distances for the first man obey a nonEuclidean geometry of two dimensions. And so if you concentrate your attention on the earth’s surface so hard that you forget that there is an inside or an outside to it, you will say that it is a twodimensional manifold with non-Euclidean geometry; but if you recollect that there is three-dimensional space all round which affords shorter ways of getting from point to point, you can fly back to Euclid after all. You will then “explain away” the non-Euclidean geometry by saying that what you at first took for distances were not the proper distances. This seems to be the easiest way of seeing how a non-Euclidean geometry can arise—through mislaying a dimension—but we must not infer that non-Euclidean geometry is impossible unless it arises from this cause.
In our four-dimensional world pervaded by gravitation the distances obey a non-Euclidean geometry. Is this because we are concentrating attention wholly on its four dimensions and have missed the short cuts through regions beyond? By the aid of six extra dimensions we can return to Euclidean geometry; in that case our usual distances from point to point in the world are not the “true” distances, the latter taking shorter routes through an eighth or ninth dimension. To bend the world in a super-world of ten dimensions so as to provide these short cuts does, I think, help us to form an idea of the properties of its non-Euclidean geometry; at any rate the picture suggests a useful vocabulary for describing those properties. But we are not likely to accept these extra dimensions as a literal fact unless we regard non-Euclidean geometry as a thing which at all costs must be explained away.
Of the two alternatives—a curved manifold in a Euclidean space of ten dimensions or a manifold with non-Euclidean geometry and no extra dimensions—which is right? I would rather not attempt a direct answer, because I fear I should get lost in a fog of metaphysics. But I may say at once that I do not take the ten dimensions seriously; whereas I take the non-Euclidean geometry of the world very seriously, and I do not regard it as a thing which needs explaining away. The view, which some of us were taught at
school, that the truth of Euclid’s axioms can be seen intuitively, is universally rejected nowadays. We can no more settle the laws of space by intuition than we can settle the laws of heredity. If intuition is ruled out, the appeal must be to experiment—genuine openminded experiment unfettered by any preconception as to what the verdict ought to be. We must not afterwards go back on the experiments because they make out space to be very slightly nonEuclidean. It is quite true that a way out could be found. By inventing extra dimensions we can make the non-Euclidean geometry of the world depend on a Euclidean geometry of ten dimensions; had the world proved to be Euclidean we could, I believe, have made its geometry depend on a non-Euclidean geometry of ten dimensions. No one would treat the latter suggestion seriously, and no reason can be given for treating the former more seriously.
I do not think that the six extra dimensions have any stalwart defenders; but we often meet with attempts to reimpose Euclidean geometry on the world in another way. The proposal, which is made quite unblushingly, is that since our measured lengths do not obey Euclidean geometry we must apply corrections to them—cook them —till they do. A closely related view often advocated is that space is neither Euclidean nor non-Euclidean; it is all a matter of convention and we are free to adopt any geometry we choose.[27] Naturally if we hold ourselves free to apply any correction we like to our experimental measures we can make them obey any law; but was it worth while saying this? The assertion that any kind of geometry is permissible could only be made on the assumption that lengths have no fixed value—that the physicist does not (or ought not to) mean anything in particular when he talks of length. I am afraid I shall have a difficulty in making my meaning clear to those who start from the assumption that my words mean nothing in particular; but for those who will accord them some meaning I will try to remove any possible doubt. The physicist is accustomed to state lengths to a great number of significant figures; to ascertain the significance of these lengths we must notice how they are derived; and we find that
they are derived from a comparison with the extension of a standard of specified material constitution. (We may pause to notice that the extension of a standard material configuration may rightly be regarded as one of the earliest subjects of inquiry in a physical survey of our environment.) These lengths are a gateway through which knowledge of the world around us is sought. Whether or not they will remain prominent in the final picture of world-structure will transpire as the research proceeds; we do not prejudge that. Actually we soon find that space-lengths or time-lengths taken singly are relative, and only a combination of them could be expected to appear even in the humblest capacity in the ultimate worldstructure. Meanwhile the first step through the gateway takes us to the geometry obeyed by these lengths—very nearly Euclidean, but actually non-Euclidean and, as we have seen, a distinctive type of non-Euclidean geometry in which the ten principal coefficients of curvature vanish. We have shown in this chapter that the limitation is not arbitrary; it is a necessary property of lengths expressed in terms of the extension of a material standard, though it might have been surprising if it had occurred in lengths defined otherwise. Must we stop to notice the interjection that if we had meant something different by length we should have found a different geometry? Certainly we should; and if we had meant something different by electric force we should have found equations different from Maxwell’s equations. Not only empirically but also by theoretical reasoning, we reach the geometry which we do because our lengths mean what they do.
I have too long delayed dealing with the criticism of the pure mathematician who is under the impression that geometry is a subject that belongs entirely to him. Each branch of experimental knowledge tends to have associated with it a specialised body of mathematical investigations. The pure mathematician, at first called in as servant, presently likes to assert himself as master; the connexus of mathematical propositions becomes for him the main subject, and he does not ask permission from Nature when he wishes to vary or generalise the original premises. Thus he can
arrive at a geometry unhampered by any restriction from actual space measures; a potential theory unhampered by any question as to how gravitational and electrical potentials really behave; a hydrodynamics of perfect fluids doing things which it would be contrary to the nature of any material fluid to do. But it seems to be only in geometry that he has forgotten that there ever was a physical subject of the same name, and even resents the application of the name to anything but his network of abstract mathematics. I do not think it can be disputed that, both etymologically and traditionally, geometry is the science of measurement of the space around us; and however much the mathematical superstructure may now overweigh the observational basis, it is properly speaking an experimental science. This is fully recognised in the “reformed” teaching of geometry in schools; boys are taught to verify by measurement that certain of the geometrical propositions are true or nearly true. No one questions the advantage of an unfettered development of geometry as a pure mathematical subject; but only in so far as this subject is linked to the quantities arising out of observation and measurement, will it find mention in a discussion of the Nature of the Physical World.
[19] Cylindrical curvature of the world has nothing to do with gravitation, nor so far as we know with any other phenomenon. Anything drawn on the surface of a cylinder can be unrolled into a flat map without distortion, but the curvature introduced in the last chapter was intended to account for the distortion which appears in our customary flat map; it is therefore curvature of the type exemplified by a sphere, not a cylinder.
[20] This relativity with respect to a standard unit is, of course, additional to and independent of the relativity with respect to the observer’s motion treated in chapter II.
[21] In so far as these casual influences are not entirely eliminated by the selection of material and the precautions in using the rod, appropriate corrections must be applied. But the rod must not be corrected for essential characteristics of the space it is measuring. We correct the reading of a voltmeter for temperature, but it would be nonsensical to correct it for effects of the applied voltage. The distinction between casual and
essential influences those to be eliminated and those to be left in depends on the intention of the measurements. The measuring rod is intended for surveying space, and the essential characteristic of space is “metric”. It would be absurd to correct the readings of our scale to the values they would have had if the space had some other metric. The region of the world to which the metric refers may also contain an electric field; this will be regarded as a casual characteristic since the measuring rod is not intended for surveying electric fields. I do not mean that from a broader standpoint the electric field is any less essential to the region than its peculiar metric. It would be hard to say in what sense it would remain the same region if any of its qualities were other than they actually are. This point does not trouble us here, because there are vast regions of the world practically empty of all characteristics except metric, and it is to these that the law of gravitation is applied both in theory and in practice. It has seemed, however, desirable to dwell on this distinction between essential and casual characteristics because there are some who, knowing that we cannot avoid in all circumstances corrections for casual influences, regard that as license to adopt any arbitrary system of corrections a procedure which would merely have the effect of concealing what the measures can teach us about essential characteristics.
[22] A. N. Whitehead, The Principle ofRelativity, Preface.
[23] On the other hand a quantum (see chapter IX) has a definite periodicity associated with it, so that it must be able to measure itself against a time-extension. Anyone who contemplates the mathematical equations of the new quantum theory will see abundant evidence of the battle with the intervening symbol
[24] Hegel, Werke (1842 Ed.), Bd. 7, Abt. 1, p. 97.
[25] Because I can attach no meaning to an orbit other than an orbit in space and time, i.e. as located by measures. But I could not assume that the alternative orbit would be meaningless (inconsistent with possible measures) until I tried it.
[26] See p. 236.
[27] As a recent illustration of this attitude I may refer to Bertrand Russell’s Analysis of Matter, p. 78 a book with which I do not often seriously disagree. “Whereas Eddington seems to regard it as necessary to adopt Einstein’s variable space, Whitehead
regards it as necessary to reject it. For my part, I do not see why we should agree with either view; the matter seems to be one of convenience in the interpretation of formulae.” Russell’s view is commended in a review by C. D. Broad. See also footnote, p. 142.
