アメリカ合衆国における都市地理学研究の動向

抄録

The article reviews the progress of urban geography in the United States during the 1980s. Since urban geography contains a variety of topics and perspectives, it is difficult to recognize any noticeable movement which stands out in the discipline during the decade. Under this circumstance, the article highlights the importance of historical perspective in urban geography, which has been pointed out in some recent review articles. The importance of historical perspective is justified in that, to understand what is where in the urban context, it is necessary to comprehend the process which has resulted in the present distribution, location, spatial interaction, et cetera. Thus, the historical perspective does not simply imply the study of urban phenomena in the past, but it does emphasize the study of change which took place over time.
The importance of historical perspective thus defined is reviewed for two major areas of study in urban geography : the system of cities and the internal structure of cities. The latter category is further divided into subareas of study such as urban morphology and the interpretation of urban landscape. In any areas of urban geography, it is hoped that a study with the historical perspective enriches our understanding of contemporary cities that change quickly.
This article also reviews topics and perspectives in urban geography that are popular in the United States but not in Japan. These include ethnicity, gender, poverty, and aging and the aged in urban living. The underlying perspective in these issues is equity, the lack of which Japan is sometimes criticized for. With increasing amount of ideas and people exchanged at the international scale, it is expected that the above issues will be studied more intensively in Japanese urban geography.