Abbott will address the relation between urban studies and urban planning, mainly the early years of both. By the end of the Second World War, urban sociology was a mature field in the United States, as was urban planning. Yet, there was almost no relation between them. Why? When Patrick Abercrombie's Plan for Greater London 1944 is compared with Louis Wirth's famous 1938 article "Urbanism as a Way of Life," we find sophisticated arguments on both sides. But the one document gave definitive shape to one of the largest metropolitan regions in the world, while the other remained at the center of a largely intellectual discourse about large cities in the abstract. Divergent, yet both concern the dynamics and nature of cities. This pushes us back to the first forty years of urban studies within the Chicago School as well as to the evolution of urban planning in Britain.
Professor Andrew Abbott home page: http://home.uchicago.edu/aabbott/
Associate Professor Christian Abrahamsson will function as a commentator after Professor Abbott’s lecture