ancient cities

programs hoped to raise the stature of the field and
provide a forum for sharing ideas. Over the years,
the group expanded and mounted annual conferences;
the first was held in Washington, D.C., in
1971. By the late 1970s, an estimated 100 urban
studies programs were in operation in colleges and
universities in the United States with at least 50
universities granting master’s degrees and a smaller
number conferring PhDs. In 1980, the council published
the first issue of the Journal of Urban Affairs,
a journal seemingly without disciplinary affiliations
and thus significantly unlike those mentioned earlier.
A year later, the council changed its name to
the Urban Affairs Association. By 2008 the Urban
Affairs Association had more than 60 institutional
members and more than 500 individual members
and had become a key forum for urban scholars in
the United States and Canada.
Whereas the locus of urban studies has been
primarily within the United States, concerns with
the city were not as geographically confined. The
Journal of Urban Affairs, in fact, was preceded by
two other non-discipline-based publications: Urban
Studies in 1964 and the International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research in 1977, both of
which have become premier journals in the field.
Urban Studies: An International Journal of
Research in Urban Studies was founded in 1964 at
the University of Glasgow to provide an international
forum of social and economic contributions
to the fields of urban and regional planning. The
journal has expanded to include the increasing
range of disciplines and approaches that have been
brought to bear on urban and regional issues. The
International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research was the outgrowth of an effort by a
handful of urban political economists from
England, France, and Italy to create a journal with
a “radical approach to urban problems” and one
that was macrosociological, empirical, comparative,
and interdisciplinary.
Not until the late 1990s did a counterpart to the
Urban Affairs Association appear outside the
United States. In 1997, the European Urban
Research Association was launched with institutional
and individual members from Finland,
Bulgaria, New Zealand, Turkey, the United
Kingdom, Germany, Israel, and other countries. It
holds annual conferences and in 2008 launched a
journal titled Urban Research and Practice Journal.
Urban Studies
933
The European Urban Research Association built
on the interest of the European Union in urban
issues, specifically the European Urban Knowledge
Network established in 2004 and the Junior
Network for International Urban Studies (an
informal network for young scholars) established
in 2005. Providing political support is Eurocities,
a network of mayors from the local governments
of more than 120 large cities in the European
Union, a counterpart to the U.S. Conference of
Mayors, was established in 1932.
The International Network for Urban Research
and Action (INURA) was founded in Switzerland
in 1991 to develop and promote the interaction of
social and environmental urban movements with
research and theoretical analysis. INURA brings
together theorists and practitioners sharing a common
critical approach toward contemporary urban
development. Members are involved in urban
renewal projects, the urban periphery, communityled
environmental projects, inner-city labor markets,
social housing provision, and other initiatives.
Research is closely tied to, and is a product of,
local action and initiative; the association hosts
semi-annual meetings and has a regular series of
publications.
Although the journal Urban Studies is published
from the Department of Urban Studies at
the University of Glasgow, academic urban studies
programs are rare outside the United States.
Urban researchers and scholars reside mainly in
social science disciplines or in architecture, where
city and regional planning is often taught. Research
centers may be found at Birmingham, Bristol,
Cambridge, and elsewhere, but urban studies as a
stand-alone program of study is uncommon;
despite this, urban research and scholarship,
occurring either at the margins or outside the traditional
social sciences, are found in many countries
and on all continents. The self-identification
of urban researchers and scholars in different
countries occurred at different times. In France,
1968 was a crucial year (as described by Henri
Lefebvre in numerous interviews). The Amsterdam
Study Centre for the Metropolitan Environment
was founded in 1993, the Cities Programme was
established within the London School of Economics
in 1998, and the Center for Metropolitan Studies
at the Technical University in Berlin was established
in 2004.