Urbanism is the study of how inhabitants of urban areas, such astowns andcities, interact with thebuilt environment.[1][2][3] It is a direct component of disciplines such asurban planning, a profession focusing on the design and management of urban areas, andurban sociology, an academic field which studies urban life.[4][5]
Manyarchitects,planners,geographers, andsociologists investigate the way people live in densely populatedurban areas. There is a wide variety of different theories and approaches to the study of urbanism.[6] However, in some contexts internationally,urbanism is synonymous withurban planning, andurbanist refers to anurban planner.
The termurbanism originated in the late nineteenth century with the Spanishcivil engineerIldefons Cerdà, whose intent was to create an autonomous activity focused on the spatial organization of the city.[7] Urbanism's emergence in the early 20th century was associated with the rise of centralizedmanufacturing,mixed-use neighborhoods,social organizations and networks, and what has been described as "the convergence between political, social and economiccitizenship".[8]
Urbanism can be understood asplacemaking and the creation ofplace identity at a citywide level, however as early as 1938Louis Wirth wrote that it is necessary to stop 'identify[ing] urbanism with the physical entity of the city', go 'beyond an arbitraryboundary line' and consider how 'technological developments intransportation andcommunication have enormously extended the urban mode of living beyond the confines of the city itself.'[9]
Gabriel Dupuy appliednetwork theory to the field of urbanism and suggests that the single dominant characteristic of modern urbanism is its networked character, as opposed to segregated conceptions of space (i.e.zones, boundaries and edges).[10]
Stephen Graham andSimon Marvin[who?] argue that we are witnessing a post-urban environment where decentralized, loosely connectedneighborhoods and zones of activity assume the former organizing role played by urban spaces. Their theory ofsplintering urbanism involves the "fragmentation of the social and material fabric of cities" into "cellular clusters ofglobally connected high-service enclaves and networkghettos" driven by electronic networks that segregate as much as they connect. Dominique Lorrain argues that the process of splintering urbanism began towards the end of the 20th century with the emergence of thegigacity, a new form of a networked city characterised by three-dimensional size, network density and the blurring of city boundaries.[11]
Manuel Castells suggested that within anetwork society, "premium" infrastructure networks (high-speedtelecommunications,"smart" highways,global airline networks) selectively connect together the most favored users and places and bypass the less favored.[11] Graham and Marvin argue that attention to infrastructure networks is reactive tocrises or collapse, rather than sustained and systematic, because of a failure to understand the links between urban life and urban infrastructure networks.
Douglas Kelbaugh identifies threeparadigms within urbanism:New Urbanism,Everyday Urbanism, and Post-Urbanism.[12]
Paul L. Knox refers to one of many trends in contemporary urbanism as the "aestheticization ofeveryday life".[13]
Alex Krieger states thaturban design is less a technical discipline than amind-set based on a commitment to cities.[14]
Other contemporary urbanists such asEdward Soja andLiz Ogbu focus on urbanism as a field for applying principles ofcommunity building andspatial justice.[15][16]
