ancient cities

322 Gottdiener, Mark
5. Both social classes and different social groups
are essential elements of industrial and
postindustrial societies.
6. The sociospatial approach emphasizes the
interaction between society and space. To class,
gender, race, and other social characteristics
that define the difference among groups in
contemporary society, the element of space itself
needs to be added.
The importance of space as an independent category
of analysis reflects Henri Lefebvre’s notion
of space as product and condition of production.
In The New Urban Sociology, Gottdiener further
elaborates the dynamism of space and the interdependence
of actors producing space, saying that
the spatial arrangements found in urban and
suburban settlement space have both manifest
and latent consequences: They influence human
behaviour and interaction in predictable ways,
but also in ways the original planner or developer
may not have been anticipated. But individuals,
through their behaviour and interaction
with others, constantly alter existing spatial
arrangements and construct new spaces to express
their needs and desires. (p. 19)
Multicentered Metropolitan Region:
The New Form of Settlement Space
For Gottdiener, the emergence of the multicentered
metropolitan region is a qualitative change that
ranks in importance with invention of the city
itself as a separate social form. When analyzing
this new form, Gottdiener argues against technological
determinism. He shows that the long process
of suburbanization since the nineteenth century
can be understood through real-estate investment
and speculation, government housing programs
and tax subsidies to homeowners, and the big
demographic and social changes after World War
II. Automobiles and highways are not the cause of
urban change, but one of its means.
The distinguishing characteristic of the MMR is
the way downtown has spun off its functions to
other centers so that each is more functionally
specialized, including the old city center. A twin
process of overall decentralization and local
recentralization of functions and a parallel deconcentration
and local reconcentration of population
characterizes the MMR. Decentralization involves
the dispersal not only of actions but also of social
organization. Although there are differences
between the speculation-led U.S. process and more
planned urban regions in Europe and Asia, the
general effects of sprawl and clustering do play a
role across the contexts.
In the field of urban studies, the sociospatial
approach, with the MMR as the unit of analysis, is
unique in its ability to provide a rigorous theoretical
framework for the study of a broad range of
empirical issues. Examples of subjects that can be
better understood include urbanization and suburbanization,
immigration and ethnicity, urban problems
such as racism and housing shortage, and
issues of third world urbanization such as shanty
towns, planning, and social policy.
Conclusion
Throughout his career, Gottdiener has developed
the unifying sociospatial framework. In The New
Urban Sociology, he confesses that “Lefebvre is
responsible for many of the ideas that inform the
sociospatial perspective” (p. 71). Gottdiener’s relation
to Lefebvre recalls Lefebvre’s relation to
Marx. Both Gottdiener and Lefebvre took a certain
critical orientation and key concepts from the
preceding thinker and developed them to serve the
situation and intellectual climate of their own
time. Marx (and Engels) theorized about capitalism
when its spatial product, the industrial city,
was just emerging. Lefebvre used Marxian concepts
to study the city at a time when the centrality
of the industrial city was challenged by the new
regional settlement form, MMR. Building on
Lefebvre’s conception of space, Gottdiener has
achieved a mature theory about the political, economic,
and cultural aspects of that form. In his
oeuvre, several topics not discussed in this entry’s
concise introduction further valorize the condition
of the new settlement space. Those include urban
crises and uneven metropolitan development, sociology
of air travel, postmodern lifestyles, and
global tourist attractions.
Panu Lehtovuori