American Historians and the Study of Urbanization

Rethinking American Urban History: New Directions for the Posturban Era

“…The edited volume of PSHP research which appeared three years later (Hershberg 1981) disappointed some scholars for failing adequately to address some of the relevant social science literature, especially as it related to changing economic structure, which Hershberg promised to include under his interdisciplinary umbrella (Hammack 1985). But the volume did advance well beyond the previous mobility studies in adopting an approach set by Eric Lampard (1961), since identified as social ecology. Urban development, Hershberg (1981) argued, should be examined as a process, neither as a dependent variable nor as a locus in which events merely took place, but as an independent variable through which behavior and experience were shaped.…”

“…NOTES 1 In their preface Thernstrom and Sennett (1969: vii) describe interdisciplinary scholarship, use of quantitative data, and "an eagerness to broaden the scope of urban studies to embrace the social experience of ordinary, unexceptional people" as related traits in the new urban history. 2 In using the terms "a changing morphology" and "high density building," Sharpe and Wallock (1983) refer to major strains in urban history as they emerged in the 1960s: social ecology, identified with Eric Lampard (1961), and Roy Lubove's (1967) city-building approach. 3 Katz's critique of mobility studies built on earlier criticisms by David Montgomery (1974) and James Henretta (1977).…”

The new urban history and its alternatives: some reflections on recent U.S. scholarship on the twentieth-century city

“…Eric Lampard, for instance, in a growing number of suggestive but somewhat didactic articles, has urged the study of urbanization as a 'societal process', a method which would require urban historians to examine such 'interacting elements' as population, topography, economy, social organization, political process, civic leadership and urban imagery. 6 In a similar vein, Roy Lubove suggested the utility of the 'city-building process' as a conceptual framework for analysing decision-making, social organization and urban change. Lubove illustrated this methodology in a little-heralded but nevertheless important book, Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh: Government, Business, and Environmental Change (1969).…”