Understanding urban geography through different Philosophical

perspectives
In order to understand urban processes we need to look into different parameters of interactions
in a city. For that we will go through different approaches like Environmentalism, Positivism,
Behaviouralism, Humanism, Structuralism, Managerialism, Post-modernism and Moral–
philosophy to address the urban questions.

The approaches mentioned above are primarily concerned with social, economic, ideological,
political, legal and cultural structure that governs the city superstructure. Urban landscapes are
the vantage point of plurality in the terms of economic production, consumption, social
networks, and cultural activities. But at the same time this plurality also leads to alienation,
abstraction in the city life; as a result of that we are now seeing supermarkets in a metropolitan
city are becoming socially dead places.

In order to understand the Environmentalism to address the urban phenomenon I would like to
recite one of the famous works in 1956 that is “Man’s role in changing the face of the earth”
which explain the extent of human transformation of the land. Levis Mumford in the final
chapter of this book also says that humans had enormous capacity to change the earth but still
unwilling to control themselves. Here environmentalism should not be misunderstood with
environmental determinism. This concern was also taken by W.D Pattison in his essay “Four
Traditions of geography”, where in Man-Land tradition he says “man appearing as an
independent agent, and land as a sufferer from action”.

In earlier time urban geography was reflected upon the relationship between people and
environment where urban site and situation as well as origins and growth of the towns were
mostly determined by environmental factors. Earlier urban town classification and urban
morphological analysis were done based on site, situation, relief and climate. But things have
shifted from environmental factors to economies of locations, also patterns of settlement has
shifted towards the importance of transportation system. But the environmental factors alone
could not tell the entire stories of urban geography. A shift takes place from environmental
factors to human behavior, which introduced a social dimension to urban geography.

There comes philosophy of Positivism to correlates and understand the urban processes. It
makes urban geography more scientific. Any philosophy is an activity, not the dusty principles to
be studied and memorized so is the positivism. Positivism mainly works on scientific method of
investigation based on hypothesis testing, statistical inference and theory construction.
Quantitative revolution particularly spatial analysis school in 1950s and 60s gave impetus to this
set of philosophy. Positivism led to redefinition of urban geography as the science of spatial
relationship accompanied by a shift from exceptionalism to nomothetic approach that is search
for abstract or universal laws. New models were started develop on settlement patterns as well as
on flows of goods and services between places. Distance decay method used to understand the
urban phenomena such as consumer behavior and travel pattern. Around 1970s development of
multivariate techniques through social area approach helped in understanding of bases of
residential differentiation within the city. These techniques also counts the economic rationality
of human behavior that is individual decision is based on utility maximization and minimization
of cost involve. But we cannot account urban processes solely on the basis of set of empirical
and objective theorization of a pattern in urban setup. Since spatial forms in urban built-up are
largely as a result of prevailing social forces and value motivated human behavior. So at this
point of time there was another approach that came up in understanding of urban question is
Behaviouralism.

Behaviouralism works through cognitive mapping processes and decision making to examine
migration, consumer behavior, residential mobility and preferences, perceived neighborhood
areas and images of the city. Human behavior changes according to available choices between
spatial alternative, which leads to development of a settlement pattern. People make choices
where many decisions are habitual. Some major decisions regarding environmental use may also
be habitual, but such behavior usually develops only after many conscious choices. Simon’s
concept of bounded rationality also works here because rational decision-making is constrained,
therefore, people make decisions in the context of the world as they observe and interpret it,
which may differ from others’ perceptions. It regards Individuals as active decision makers in the
urban built-up. But behavioralism is not more different to positivism because much of the
methodology was retained despite the main focus have been on values, goals and motivations of
human behavior. It was still seeking law like generalizations. The behaviouristic approach is
largely aiming to build general statements out of observations of ongoing processes.

Too much positivist orientation of behavioral approach leads to development of Humanistic

approach for understanding urban interactions. This philosophy gives importance to human
awareness, consciousness and creativity. This leads to a shift in approach from positivist
principles of statistical inference to logical inference based on ethnography, which also
demonstrate the social construction of urban space. Humans are ‘more concerned with
understanding why certain activities take place rather than what patterns they produce in space.
But the urban phenomena are more than mere power of individuals to determine their own
behavior. Urban interaction and decision making are by and large are govern by some set of
existing structure which guide every individuals. So this led to development of structuralism,
which says why structure is the source of social formation and mode of production.

Structuralism sets wider perspective in understanding of urban geography. The major work in
this area was done by David Harvey, Manuel castells, Levi-Strauss, and Althusser. As castells
put the city as the center for collective production of labor powers in capitalist mode of
production which leads to questions of the urban social movement politics and planning. In his
work city, class and power he raises the urban questions based upon the organization of
collective means of consumptions as the basis of daily life of all social groups like housing,
education, health, culture, commerce and transport.
Althusser points upon the ideological bases of social formation like religion, culture and ethics
and he correlated it with economic structure which he termed as infrastructure. While Lavi-
Straus putted emphasis upon linguistics and semiotics in defining and formation of social
structure which is the neccesory condition in capitalist mode of production. Structuralism deals
with the people within a boundary of set of laws, it is not only about empirical phenomena but it
was also cause of social, political and economic structure of the city as Althusser pointed out. It
was based on Marxist philosophy and it is clearly distinguish between the accumulation of
wealth and the equality of resources among the masses. But the problem with this theory is it
over-emphasizes on the structural aspects which has failed to address the changing nature of man
behavior with respect to city. Then comes managerialism as an approach to address the urban
question.

R.E Pahl in his analysis of city sets the concept of Managerialism where he talked about a set of
influential professionals who can intermediates between production and distribution system. It
also works as a pool between the decision makers and the masses. But it many a times it
becomes unable to address the real issues of the masses. So managerialism not gain much
currency and consequently a new theory of postmodernism developed which tries to address the
urban problem mainly based upon rationality and alienated from the existing notions of the past.
Postmodernism tries to views city by multiple viewpoints and perspectives, and in decision
making in the formation of that city everyone’s participation should be ensured. But this
approach was also criticized based upon its too little rationality. Which leads to other prospects
of Moral Philosophy has been emerged in scenario which talked about the ethical perspective. It
is systematically defending and recommending right and wrong conduct of a person. That is the
changing world view of social justice within political economy. This criticized over-emphasis
on consumerism as well as rationality which could lead to wrong decisions in urban set-up.
Moral philosophy is contextual with time and space and varies accordingly. So it is different
from universal ethics where it provide loophole to be criticize.

Name

Chandramani choubey