Study of Prologues: The City Reader

Komgrij Thanapet

About The City Reader • The First Edition was published in 1996 and the followed

edition was published in 2000, 2003, 2007, and 2011• It could say that “The City Reader” series have a new

edition in every 4 years.• The Editor of the series are always “Richard T. LeGates” and

“Frederic Stout”.• For every edition, there is some kind of rearrangements

and modifications such as name of the “Parts” and “added+ re/moved” chapters”, or even dedication.

• There are other special titles in “Reader” series such as “Sustainable Urban Development Reader”

Change of Prologue • From the first edition to the second, “The Urbanization of the

Human Population” by KINGSLEY DAVIS , published in Scientific American (1965) was the prologue of The City Reader. Then, it has become the first chapter in the first part, The Evolution of Cities, since the third edition.

• The prologue of the fifth chapter is “How to Study Cities” by Richard T. LeGates, the editor, himself. “How to study Cities” became prologue chapter since the 3rd Edition.

• “How to Study Cities” was adapted from an article “Urban Studies”, written by LeGates himself, published in International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavior Science.

• From the third edition, “How to Study Cities” has been edited from 6 pages to 4 pages in the forth and 5 pages in the fifth edition.

Must read

Interresting

Prologue

The fifth edition prologue: StructureThe prologue, in the fifth edition, has been

organized into 4 parts;• Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Teaching

about Cities • Theory and Practice• Methods for Studying Cities• Organizations and Journals Devoted to the

Study of Cities

Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Teaching about Cities: Various Disciplines of Studies

There are many groups of “Urban Studies”.• Related to “Social Science” such as “Urban

Geography” “Urban Sociology” “Urban Politics” “Urban Economics” and so on.

• Related to professional practice such as “urban Planning” “Urban Design” “Architecture” etc.

• or Related to such a Interdisciplinary cultural studies

Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Teaching about Cities: Cause of Differentiation

Today higher education has been organized into school, collage, faculty, or even division. Such a kind of this movement has created more “single discipline” in the departmental level.

According to these, the academics have been located within different departments or programs.

By the way, in general, department of urban and regional planning or urban studies must have professors from various disciplinary.

This is why “the city reader” and its’ series must be multidisciplinary anthology ,

Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Teaching about Cities: Become Hyper-disciplinary Among the social sciences, the graduate from this department may have

to learn cross-disciplinary such as sociology of suburbanization. By the way, in UK, department of city and regional planning are often

located with in other professional design schools, such as architecture, and may be become “Built-environment”.

Qualitative and Quantitative methods of researches are another cause of discipline deviation. One side research method could create rigid thinking for its discipline.

On the other hand, interdisciplinary made the outcome knowledge more holistic and more phenomenological. (but it could be less rigor from single discipline.)

Mentioned! “GIS became the new ground for interdisciplinary could ิbe met.”

Theory and Practice“Theory in the social sciences is intended to provide a

framework for understanding”But connection between urban theory and urban

practice must be bridged. (Mention to to Peter Hall’s Article)

“Theory can inform practice and practice can inform theory.”

• For example John Forester's theories about mediating urban planning conflicts was initiated from interviews with practicing planners.

METHODS FOR STUDYING CITIES“The best urban research designs often combine both

quantitative and qualitative research and triangulate on problems using multiple methods.”

Computer skill becomes the most significant tool of quantitative analysis, especially SPSS.

But urban studies must understand the factors of “Time” and phenomenon of changes from periods. Mentioned to Kingsley Davis’s research, some research needs “Longitudinal Research Design”. (+cross sectional)

Mentioned, GIS and Geographic Space Analysis is a required tool because urban and region is spatial phenomenon.

Interview and Observation skills are also important for today quantitative research.

When reading the book, read both substance and methods.

ORGANIZATIONS DEVOTED TO THE STUDY OF CITIES: Research group, School, ConferenceResearch groups• the Urban Affairs Association (UAA)• the European Urban Research Association (EURA)Schools (American, EU and Others) • the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP)• the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP)• The Global Planning Education Association Network (GPEAN)• the Global Planning Educators Interest Group (GPEIG), based from

ACSP membersConferences • World congresses of planning schools (from 2001 and every five

years)

ORGANIZATIONS DEVOTED TO THE STUDY OF CITIES: Professional and Related OrganizationsProfessional Organization• the American Planning Association (APA)• the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI)Related Organizations in Specific Fields • American Sociological Association (ASA)• the American Political Science Association (APSA)• the Association of American Geographers (AAG)

What’s about Asian?

Journals• Journal of Urban Affairs• Urban Studies• International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

specialize• Journal of Planning Education and Research (published by the

ACSP)• American Planning Association Journal (published by the

APA)• Town Planning Review (UK)• Urban Forum published in Chinese by Tongji University, China

How this Prologue be organized: Personal Annotation Richard T. LeGates tries to set reading frame for the reader

on cities studies related to contents in “The City Reader”. The prologue is differed from the introduction, LeGates

does not try to tell about everything in the book. He focuses only on “interdisciplinary”, encouraging to use

both qualitative and quantitative and to get start for “the urban study research” both in academics and professional sides.

Most of all “the City Reader” is a good starting point because it leads to many sources of study material.

THE URBANIZATION OF HUMAN POPULATION

KINGLEY DAVIS , published in American (1965) Prologue of the First and Second Edition

Why was an article published in 1965 became the prologue of a book published in 1996 ?

It has still been the first chapter until the last edition.

Structure of the Article • What is urbanization?: The differentiation between

Urbanization and Growth of the City • History of European Urbanization from the

Medieval through Industrial Revolution as the interrelationship between Rural and Urban migration, and until American suburban development. (none-farm residence)

• Urbanization in Developing Cities; past and future in the term of rural-urban migration model

• The size of urban population at 100,000 is not guarantee that it is a size or urbanization area. Some cultures may be smaller and some are bigger in number.

• “100,000” became the index of Davis’s work because it is big enough for many cultures. It is also convenient to count and measure the city in this size, and statistically significant.

• Urbanization area could not be scoped with political administrated boundaries. (New York – New Jersey)

Learning about Davis’s Urbanization Studies: Scope

Learning about Davis’s Urbanization Studies: in duality• It is not only the growth of population occurred

positive ration between the birth and mortality. The urbanization is a ratio between who tend to live in the urban area, with reasons, and migrate from another area or rural; so called rural-urban migration.

• Post-urbanization could mean the movement after the growth of the city was stop from the rural migration. It does not mean the city stop growing. Somehow, for agglomeration, some are urbanization, some are just a city growth.

• Urbanization is about carrier path, economic opportunity, and proportion between required labor forces and capacity of land.

• Urban job is always low locational conditions related to number or work forces such as factories, compared with rural-agricultural area.

• None-farm activities in rural area leads to suburban development.

Today farming in Urban Area is an urbanization or just a kind of urban growth!?!?

Learning about Davis’s Urbanization Studies: backwards!?

• Rate of urbanization in developing country is more tremendous in scale than former urbanization areas, compared with 600 years of European city development and 50 years development of many Asian and South-American cities.

• Urbanization in the developing country has been occurred at the same time when the country is growing. It is not only rural-urban migration. It is related to low mortality rate and high birth rate, without preparation for urban infrastructure and utilities.

• Urbanization in the developing country have to confront with both high growth of national population and higher growth rate or urban population. These led to squatter urbanization in many countries.

Learning about Davis’s Urbanization Studies: Developing

What’s method we can learn?• It is represented “Longitudinal Research Design”,

concerned urbanization study according to the condition of times and historical movement.

• It shows how to use mathematical forecast and models with historical analysis and social-economic analysis.

• Davis’s work became an example of interdisciplinary research, which balance between quantitative and qualitative research, mentioned as later urban studies requirement.

Prologues: between the second and the fifth• There are some different among study and read “for

Understanding” and “To Understand”. • The purpose of prologue in the second edition seems to

make us understand cause and future of urbanism but the fifth one is just to let us know about how to do the research on urban studies.

• Personally, even the fifth one could encourage me to do a better research but the prologue of the second can encourage me to look back to urbanism in my country.

Remember that this article was written in 1960s!

1965, 1996, and 2011

But Something is Never Changed.