ancient cities

to, their home disciplines. Of course, such an
observation might be challenged. Defenders of the
status quo could convincingly argue that urban
studies is not meant to replace the disciplines but
rather to offer researchers and scholars a place
where they can apply their disciplinary skills to an
object of mutual concern. Not widely appreciated
within their home disciplines, there they can exercise
an interdisciplinary approach to the city.
Neither the former not the latter requires specification
of a distinct identity; theory can be borrowed
and methods mixed.
The counterresponse is that such an attitude suppresses
the promise of urban studies by giving insufficient
attention to the complexity and reality of
cities. If urban studies is ultimately about what happens
in particular places and about setting a foundation
for governmental or collective action, then it
needs to reject the theoretical pretensions of the
social sciences: global pronouncements, decontextualized
propositions, value neutrality, and quantitative
assessments. In short, theoretical aspirations
and methodological techniques that mimic the natural
sciences in their (false) objectivity and rigor need
to be abandoned. An approach that embraces the
particular, the local, common sense, case methods,
and collective action is more likely to bring forth the
“promise” of urban studies to solve the problems of
the city. In this way, urban studies can be more than
an appendage to the twentieth-century edifice of the
academic social science disciplines.
Robert A. Beauregard
See also Los Angeles School of Urban Studies; New
Urban Sociology; Urban Theory
Further Readings
Aiken, Michael and Manuel Castells. 1977. “New Trends
in Urban Studies: Introduction.” Comparative Urban
Research 4(2–3):7–10.
Berry, Mike and Gareth Rees. 1994. “Australian Urban
and Regional Research: An Introduction.”
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
18(4):549–54.
Flyvbjerg, Bent. 2001. Making Social Science Matter.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Glass, Ruth. 1989. “Urban Sociology in Great Britain: A
Trend Report.” Pp. 27–50 in Cliches of Urban Doom
and Other Essays. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Urban System
935
Gottdiener, Mark D. and Leslie Budd. 2005. Key
Concepts in Urban Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Hasimoto, Kazutaka. 2002. “Urban Sociology in Japan:
The Changing Debates.” International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research 26(4):726–36.
Miller, D. W. 2000. “The New Urban Studies.” The
Chronicle of Higher Education 47(50):A15–A16.
Paddison, Ronan. 2001. “Studying Cities.” Pp. 1–9 in
Handbook of Urban Studies, edited by R. Paddison.
London: Sage.
Seekings, Jeremy. 2002. “Introduction: Urban Studies in
South Africa after Apartheid.” International Journal
of Urban and Regional Research 24(4):832–40.
Topolov, Christian. 1989. “A History of Urban Research:
The French Experience since 1965.” International
Journal of Urban and Regional Research
13(4):625–51.
Zacks, Stephen. 2004. “Urban Studies.” Metropolis
24(1):36, 39.
Ur b a n sy s t e m
Cities are not isolated entities; rather, they are
related to other cities through multiple connections
and exchanges. These relationships create
spatial interdependencies, functional differentiation,
and growth and thereby generate persistent
structural features that become generic properties
of urban systems. The theory of urban systems has
been progressively enriched from static explanations
to dynamic ones and through model building
and comparison with observations.
Historical Background
Historians and archaeologists have confirmed the
emergence of urban systems in four or five regions
of the world (Mesopotamia–Middle East, Indus
Valley, South China, and Middle America) between
8000 and 3000 BC. In all cases, the emergence
occurred about 3,000 years after agriculture had
been invented in the region. Urban settlements
have a specific societal functionality: Whereas villages
rely on local resources and do not develop
beyond the ecological limits of their site, cities,
many of which had once been villages, use resources
from distant sites to reduce the local limitations