12 Regions and land mosaics
The urban region is a distinctive and increasingly important type of region.
In this case a single major city is of central importance and surrounding land
is closely linked with the city. The predominant role of the city is the main
difference between an urban region and ageographic region.Anadded cultural
dimension is also present in an urban region. Typically an ‘‘urban culture” exists
in the city, promulgated by a particular population formed by and committed
tocity life. People of an urban culture can move rather seamlessly from city to
city, where they may thrive and contribute. However, normally they have little
commitment to the urban region surrounding a city. A sense of place, either for
aparticular city or its urban region, may be limited.
Certain cities are well known for a long history of regional studies and plan-
ning. Certainly London, Chicago, and Berlin are among the leaders in this group.
London’s greenbelt, nearby Letchworth’s earlier greenbelt, London’s intense
dependence on resources of the surrounding countryside, and many more char-
acteristics have been grist for leading urban scholars and planners (Munton1983,
Turner1992,Parsons and Schuyler2000,Hall2002). Berlin, encompassed in the
Brandenburg Region, has undergone dramatic physical changes, and with the
meticulous German planning tradition has also merited much scholarly atten-
tion (Sukoppet al.1995, Breusteet al.1998,Kuhbler2000,vonKrosigk2001,
Bahlburg2003).
Chicago is of special note for several reasons: (a) a City Beautiful Movement
launched in Chicago in the 1890s which influenced American city centers and
architecture; (b) an influential broad-scale 1909 Plan of Chicago; (c) a group
of social scientists, including Robert Park, who drew in part from ecological
principles to understand urban dynamics; (d) a subsequent sequence of plans
with greenways including Cook and DePage counties; and (e) a recent push
fora‘‘green” Chicago with numerous parks, green roofs, and natural areas
(Schmid1975,Cronon 1991 ,Nowak1994,Cityspace1998,Greenberg2002,Daley
2002,Platt2004). Of course many other cities including Tokyo, New York, Paris,
Melbourne, Beijing, Moscow, and Mexico City have had major regional emphases,
in some cases including important environmental dimensions (Sit1995,Pezzoli
1998,Ishikawa2001,Hall2002).
The literature of urban history, urban studies, and urban planning focuses
on the city, yet is continuously marked by a series of leaders who highlight the
importance of the urban region. Illustrative are the works of Geddes (1915),
Cronon (1991), Fainstein and Campbell (1996), Warren (1998), Ravetz (2000),
Soja (2000), Bullardet al.(2000), Hall (2002), and Dreieret al.(2004). Much less
common are cases that emphasize natural systems, in addition to the tradi-
tional economics, transportation, and housing, as key factors in urban regions