ancient cities

916 Urban Psychology
Contrast With Other Social Sciences
Within urban studies, urban psychology has an odd
position among the other social sciences of urban
anthropology, urban economics, urban history,
urban politics, and urban sociology. Each of these
is an established specialty, with its own college
courses, textbooks, journals, and organizations of
theorists and practitioners. Meanwhile, in the
United States and elsewhere, psychology is in most
ways the largest of the social sciences by far—in its
number of students, faculty, organizations, even
licensing of its practitioners—yet urban psychology
in the year 2009 barely exists as a discipline, with
no journal, organization, or degree program.
Though Milgram’s 1970 manifesto on urban
psychology quickly became a citation classic (cited
more than 1,000 times by other authors), why did
its impact seem to diffuse rather than expand? A
few reasons seem clear.
1. Milgram. Urban psychology was only one of
Milgram’s many creative contributions to his field.
When he died at age 51 in 1984, he had been
teaching small doctoral classes averaging only 10
students, so he had few alumni to continue his
distinct approach to urban social psychology.
2. American Psychological Association (APA).
Since half of the 84,000 psychologists in the APA
were trained as clinical practitioners more than
researchers, Milgram’s own field of psychology
did not adopt his approach. The APA commissioned
a task force on urban initiatives in 1994,
which issued in 2005 a report titled Towards an
Urban Psychology: Research, Action, and Policy.
This 100-page report contains just one sentence (on
p. 15) citing Milgram’s essay and focuses instead on
cumulating research-based solutions to familiar
inner-city issues: aging, socioeconomic status, poverty,
violence, homelessness, drugs, HIV/AIDS,
Table 1 Five Theories of Urban Behavior
mental disorders, and associated career opportunities
for psychologists.
3. Micro versus macro. Not least of all, it
appears that psychology’s focus on the individual
has caused it to eschew the mega-issues that attract
other social sciences—such as climate change, globalization,
urbanization, and political change. The
APA Division 34, Population and Environment,
has always been one of the smallest, with 351 (or
0.4 percent) of APA members. Like urban psychology,
environmental psychology has ruminated
about its dissipation in the 1990s—why more
architects and urban planners are not seeking its
research-based expertise on crowding, environmental
design, and person–environment fit.
Theories of Urban Behavior
Urban psychologists have tested five very different
theories to explain urban behavior: adaptation, situation,
selection, S-O-R (Stimulus-Organism-
Response), and subcultural (Table 1). For instance,
compared with villages, the typically higher percapita
crime rate in cities can be explained in different
ways, for example, that cities (1) cause residents
to develop criminal tendencies (adaptation); (2) simply
present more immediate opportunities for crime
(situation); (3) attract more criminals to move from
villages, while repelling noncriminals (selection);
(4) push some toward criminality and others away
from it (S-O-R); and (5) cause the formation of
criminal subcultures that, in turn, promote criminal
behavior in individuals.
Each of the five competing theories has research
support.
1. Adaptation theory is supported by the field
experiments of Milgram, David Glass, and
others, documenting how the city’s stimulus
1. Adaptation: The city environment produces long-term, internal changes within the individual.
2. Situation: Urban behavior is a response to one’s immediate, external environment.
3. Selection: It is a certain type of individual who chooses to live in the city.
4. S-O-R: The impact of the city environment on behavior depends on the type of individual involved.
(Stimulus-Organism-Response)
5. Subcultural: The city environment affects individuals only indirectly, through the formation of subcultures.