ancient cities

934 Urban Studies
CEDDU (El Centro de Estudios Demográficos,
Urbanos y Ambientales) was founded at the El
Colegio de México in 1964 to study population
and urbanization in Mexico and Latin America. In
Chile, the Centro Interdisciplinario de Desarrollo
Urbano was founded in 1968 at the Pontificia
Universidad Católica (this followed establishment
of the Comité Interdisciplinario de Investigación y
Enseñanza del Planeamiento y del Desarrollo
Urbano with the support of the Ford Foundation
in 1964). The Instituto de Estudios Urbanos was
established in Colombia in 1997.
The case of Finland is particularly interesting.
The Centre for Urban and Regional Studies was
launched in 1968 as a joint venture of Finnish
universities and as a multidisciplinary research
and educational unit. Not until 1998, however,
did the University of Helsinki devote professorships
to urban studies. These professors were
financed jointly by the university, the City of
Helsinki, and the Ministry of Education. Initially,
only six were funded, though later the number
was expanded. This did not lead to the establishment
of urban studies programs, however; the
professorships were located in already-existing
academic departments such as history, geography,
and social policy.
Outside the United States, then, urban studies is
mainly blended into the social sciences and architecture.
It lacks a separate identity and to the
extent that it is relatively distinct from other fields
of knowledge, it bears the influence of U.S. urban
studies.
Empirical research and theoretical explanation
common to social science research in the United
States has long dominated the field. Although the
empirical bias of urban studies was challenged in
the 1990s by a renewed interest from the humanities
in things urban, the commitment to explanation
was not abandoned. Within the new cultural
studies and older American studies programs,
scholars turned to the city to explore such topical
issues as popular culture, race and ethnicity, consumption,
and immigration. Much of this work
revolved around the interaction of place and identity
and the nature of the urban experience, particularly
as it occurred on the street. Indicative of
this cultural turn was the emergence of the Los
Angeles School of Urban Studies. Mainly a project
of geographers, it cast Los Angeles as the
emblematic urban region of twenty-first century
urbanism. Moreover, it de-emphasized the political
economy approach of the new urban sociology
and an earlier urban studies and substituted in its
place postmodern representational and cultural
perspectives. The Los Angeles School’s interest in
the built environment coincided with a renewed
interest in architecture and urban design among
urban scholars. In fact, urban design programs
became more prevalent in the United States in the
1990s, and this reinforced and broadened academic
interest in cities and their potential for
renewal. These endeavors, though, were appendages
to the urban studies field, sitting on its margins
but not derailing the basic thrust established
when it emerged in the 1960s.
The dominant motivating interest then—as it is
now—was urban problems, what initially was captured
by the call to “be relevant.” This puts urban
studies in another light. Not just an alternative to
the traditional social science disciplines, urban
studies simultaneously has been a platform for
launching research forays into the realm of public
policy, thereby bringing urban studies closer to the
public professions of city planning, policy analysis,
public management, and social welfare. Many
articles in urban studies and related journals and
most presentations at Urban Affairs Association
conferences have an explicit policy dimension;
their intent is to explore an urban problem (e.g.,
residential segregation) or intervention (community-development
corporations) and offer advice as
to how that problem can be ameliorated or the
intervention improved. Because the traditional
social science disciplines (with the exception of
economics) have conferred little value on policy
research, urban studies offers a place to pursue
policy interests. In short, and in this guise, urban
studies is a continuation of the middle-class reformism
of the early twentieth century.
Urban studies, though, has not escaped the
orbit of the social sciences and this has hindered its
development. It retains the theoretical inclinations
and methodological predilections of the social sciences.
Consequently, its adherents have given little
attention to the identity of their field. Unlike the
disciplines where labels matter, “urban studies” is
rarely used as a professional marker. Instead, its
practitioners are content to remain different from,
but always in touch with and never antagonistic