Political Science and the Study of Urbanism

Cities as political objects

“…The city was framed as a part-scientific, part-prescriptive object -as a space for progressive reform. From around 1910 onwards, the city provided a focus for the new administrative sciences to engage in urban experiments (Galand, 1957;Herson, 1957;Payre, 2007). More than the city, stricto sensu, these early analysts were interested in the large city, or the metropolis.…”

From Political Sociology to Political Economy

“…This was less true in sociology, which at least saw the influential Middletown research (Lynd and Lynd, 1937), than in political science. Thus, during the 1950s, political scientists (Herson, 1957;Daland, 1957) were bemoaning the sorry state of urban research and the &dquo;lost world of municipal government.&dquo; Surveying the urban government texts of the 1950s, Herson (1957: 330) could claim, with only slight exaggeration, that there must be some &dquo;master mold&dquo; out of which they were all cast and that their &dquo;center of gravity&dquo; was administrative theory rather than urban politics. In political science, writers hammered away at the problems of fragmented metropolitan government while research on urban politics was very nearly nonexistent.…”