Introduction

Our readings for this module span the concepts that are the foundation for the course: urban, geography, and taken together, urban geography.

What is Urban?

Although we don’t delve deeply into the history of cities (CSU has a course for that), it is nonetheless a good idea to have bit of background on the type of settlement that we’ll spend our semester learning about. From the e-book Urban Literacy: Learning to Read the City Around You, please read Chapter 1: Cities.

It’s also worth noting that the urban form you see before you today didn’t evolve without it’s challenges. Thus, from the e-book US History, in the chapter on The Growing Pains of Urbanization, 1870-1900, please read the section on
Urbanization and its Challenges

What is geography?

Defining geography is no easy task! It’s more than memorizing state capitals and being a valued asset in games of Trivial Pursuit! Geography means looking at the world through a spatial lens. Your first reading on this topic, Defining Geography: does a great job at framing this geographic perspective using just a few common questions: What is Where, Why There, Why care?

Your second reading, What is Geography?, introduces you to a few of the concepts that are at the center of geographers’ concern, and it also has a good description of Geography’s four subfields.

What about urban geography?

Finally, we get to put these together and talk about Urban Geography.

The first reading, Urban Geography – Concepts and Terminology provides a great introduction to the types of problems that urban geographers often study, and introduces you to a lot of important vocabulary.

The second reading is the Urban Geography entry in the Encyclopedia of Human Geography. It provides a useful overview of the academic field of urban geography and its six subfields. Here is a link to the encyclopedia entry.