ancient cities

876 Urban Health
significant contributions of geographers to theoretical
development.
Urban geography offers specific models for
urban theory such as the Los Angeles School of
Urbanism along with frameworks of analysis such
as world cities theory, which examines the hierarchy
of cities operating as command and control
centers of the global economy. Other voices argue
that greater appreciation must be given to the complexity
of the city. Jennifer Robinson, in her
Ordinary Cities (2006), critiques the hierarchical
approach to the global cities literature. She argues
for the examination of differences among cities
(ordinary cities) without resort to a binary of core
versus periphery. Her articulation of a postcolonial
urban theory acknowledges these differences
as diversity rather than hierarchical divisions
defined by a Western modernity. Reacting to a
tendency within urban research to overgeneralize
from a handful of specific cities, Ash Amin and
Stephen Graham, in “The Ordinary City,” also
call for an examination of ordinary cities, emphasizing
the importance of capturing a sense of the
contemporary city as a variegated and multidimensional
entity. They distill several elements of this
multiplicity, including the ways in which cities
combine intense face-to-face interaction and technologically
mediated communication with the
world beyond the city. Complex networks of
urban governance correspond to the increasingly
complex institutional base of cities and established
patterns of urban government. Theorization of
these shifts has drawn attention to issues of public
space and citizenship, changing housing markets,
and urban political ecology.
The changing theoretical frameworks influencing
research in urban geography has produced an
eclectic body of work. Nevertheless, while debates
within urban geography can appear intractable
and research themes multiply, recent intellectual
history suggests that geographers are addressing
the complexity and messiness of today’s urban
conditions in such ways to benefit our understanding
of the role of space and place in the constitution
of contemporary life.
Judith T. Kenny
See also Los Angeles School of Urban Studies; Soja,
Edward W.; Urban Studies; Urban Theory
Further Readings
Aiken, Stuart, Don Mitchell, and Lynn Staeheli. 2003.
“Urban Geography.” Pp. 237–64 in Geography in
America at the Dawn of the 21st Century, edited by
G. L. Gaile and C. J. Willmott. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Amin, Ash and Stephen Graham. 1997. “The Ordinary
City.” Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers, New Series 22:411–42.
Amin, Ash and Nigel Thrift. 2002. Cities: Reimagining
the Urban. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Dear, Michael, ed. 2002. From Chicago to L.A.: Making
Sense of Urban Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Fyfe, Nicholas and Judith T. Kenny, eds. 2005. The
Urban Geography Reader. London: Routledge.
Gaile, Gary L. and Cort J. Willmott, eds. 1989.
Geography in America. Columbus, OH: Merrill.
Robinson, Jennifer. 2006. Ordinary Cities: Between
Modernity and Development. London: Routledge.
Taylor, Peter, Ben Derudder, Pieter Saey, and Frank
Witlox, eds. 2007. Cities in Globalization. London:
Routledge.
Wilson, David. 2007. Cities and Race: America’s New
Black Ghetto. London: Routledge.
Ur b a n he a l t h
Urban health is a multidisciplinary field that
encompasses a wide array of social, built, and
physical factors of cities that influence individual
and community health. Among these are secure
and affordable housing and neighborhoods, affordable
and culturally appropriate health services,
food security, economic opportunity, adequate
transportation, and a healthful physical environment.
The roots of urban health as a field of study
extend back to the mid-nineteenth century.
The dire living and working conditions in newly
industrializing cities in Europe and the United States
contributed to rates of disease and death in urban
areas that often exceeded those in rural areas. These
conditions also served to mobilize social and health
reformers of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth
century. Unventilated and overcrowded housing, the
absence of building and sanitary code, sewage-
contaminated drinking water, and dangerous industrial
workplaces precipitated the major epidemics and
injuries of the day. These same conditions are endemic