TY - JOUR
T1 - The comparative metropolitan analysis project
AU - Gober, Patricia
N1 - Funding Information:
While one can quibble, some 25 years after the fact, about the unevenness of contributions, differing writing styles and philosophies about how to write a policy paper, which variables to include and which ones to exclude from the Atlas, and the nuances of cartographic presentation, these volumes are, in my mind, a remarkable achievement in American urban geography in the 1970s. From a disciplinary perspective, they reveal what the intellectual leaders of the 1960s thought was important to the field and to the nation. Some 65 geographers contributed to the written portions, and another 26 participated in the cartographic representations. A sizable portion of the community of American urban geography at the time was at work on this project. It bore the imprimatur of the Association of American Geography, and it was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2002/8/1
Y1 - 2002/8/1
N2 - The rise in spatial analysis, numerical methods, and theory testing of the 1960s thrust the field of urban geography into a period of reductionist research, one that assumed the urban system was no more than the sum of its parts and that these parts could be studied without reference to the system itself. Amid this reductionist approach to urban inquiry came the Comparative Metropolitan Analysis Project of the 1970s, which sought to use results of the 1970 Census to assess progress on a range of urban-policy issues, including race, class, poverty, and housing in the nation's 20 largest metropolitan areas. The project produced (1) a comparative atlas of the 20 urban regions, (2) a book assessing management and performance in 12 major policy areas, and (3) a collection of 20 short monographs outlining the physical, social, and economic make-up of urban areas, highlighting both common problems and local individuality. This essay reviews the history, intellectual context, and significance of the project with an eye toward the fundamental tension between its integrative and outward-looking aspirations and disciplinary trends of fragmentation, specialization, and insularity. Due to this tension, the project quickly disappeared from our disciplinary consciousness.
AB - The rise in spatial analysis, numerical methods, and theory testing of the 1960s thrust the field of urban geography into a period of reductionist research, one that assumed the urban system was no more than the sum of its parts and that these parts could be studied without reference to the system itself. Amid this reductionist approach to urban inquiry came the Comparative Metropolitan Analysis Project of the 1970s, which sought to use results of the 1970 Census to assess progress on a range of urban-policy issues, including race, class, poverty, and housing in the nation's 20 largest metropolitan areas. The project produced (1) a comparative atlas of the 20 urban regions, (2) a book assessing management and performance in 12 major policy areas, and (3) a collection of 20 short monographs outlining the physical, social, and economic make-up of urban areas, highlighting both common problems and local individuality. This essay reviews the history, intellectual context, and significance of the project with an eye toward the fundamental tension between its integrative and outward-looking aspirations and disciplinary trends of fragmentation, specialization, and insularity. Due to this tension, the project quickly disappeared from our disciplinary consciousness.
KW - Comparative atlas
KW - Metropolitan vignette
KW - Synthesis
KW - Urban policy
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U2 - 10.2747/0272-3638.23.5.423
DO - 10.2747/0272-3638.23.5.423
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0036663908
SN - 0272-3638
VL - 23
SP - 423
EP - 432
JO - Urban Geography
JF - Urban Geography
IS - 5
ER -