Urban History for Planners - 中国城乡规划行业网.pdfVIP

Urban History for Planners Carl Abbott Portland State University This article analyzes the conceptual and historiographic differences between the closely related fields of urban history and planning history. It reviews the origins of urban history as a distinct field and argues that work in urban history falls into three broad categories dealing with civic life, individual and group relations, and the physical evolution of urban places. It identifies topics that are particularly fruitful and generate new scholarship, and suggests ways in which each of these realms of urban history raises questions of relevance to urban planning and urban policy. Keywords: urban history; historiography; city planning history lanning history and urban history are two different things. There’s plenty of overlap, of course, in scholarly topics and scholarly practitioners, but the two fields have developed distinct institu- P tional structures and identities. There is a Journal of Planning History and a Journal of Urban History , the one edited from a depart- ment of urban planning and the other from a department of history. The Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH) took its initial energy and direction from planning professor Larry Gerckens. The Urban History Association (UHA) took its initial impetus and guidance from history professors Kenneth Jackson and Michael Ebner. SACRPH holds biennial conferences in odd-numbered years, and the UHA in even-numbered years. Each organization has given a “best book” award since the beginning of the 1990s but only once to the same book.1 The next few pages sketch the outlines of urban history and indicate the ways that it link