WHAT IS URBANISM?

Tatjana Medvedev

Tatjana Medvedev

Dec 17, 2023 · 3 min read

“Urbanism AU is proposing to update the definition of Urbanism stated in Wikipedia. We are publishing current definition that is incomplete and in need of revision in order to truly service our profession. We are inviting all like-minded professionals with access to Wikipedia editing to contribute to this cause”

 
Below is the Wikipedia’s definition of Urbanism:  
Urbanism is the study of how inhabitants of urban areas, such as towns and cities, interact with the built environment. It is a direct component of disciplines such as urban planning, which is the profession focusing on the physical design and management of urban structures and urban sociology, which is the academic field of the study of urban life and culture.[citation needed]
Many architects, planners, and sociologists investigate how people live in densely populated urban areas. There is a wide variety of theories and approaches to studying urbanism.[1] However, in some international contexts, urbanism is synonymous with urban planning, and the urbanist refers to an urban planner.

WHAT IS URBANISM
Urbanism’s emergence in the early 20th century was associated with the rise of centralized manufacturing, mixed-use neighbourhoods, social organizations and networks, and what has been described as “the convergence between political, social and economic citizenship”.[2]
Urbanism can be understood as placemaking and the creation of place identity at a citywide level; however, as early as 1938, Louis Wirth wrote that it is necessary to stop ‘identify[ing] urbanism with the physical entity of the city’, go ‘beyond an arbitrary boundary line’ and consider how ‘technological developments in transportation and communication have enormously extended the urban mode of living beyond the confines of the city itself.’

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