PACIFIC VIEWS OF URBAN GEOGRAPHY IN THE 1960S

The 1960s were times of considerable change both within the discipline of geography and in the geography of urban areas. Urban geography came of age in a time when suburbanization and major population decentralization were transforming both inner cities and the outer reaches of the newly expanding cities. Geographers joined planners to investigate the nature and significance of these changes and moved from largely descriptive interpretations of cities and city sites to attempts to theorize the urban transformation. The move to theory and conceptualization placed urban geography at the heart of the changing concept of the discipline and it remains central even in the face of increasing splintering of human geography. The influence of a small group of geographers at the University of Chicago and the University of Washington resonated across the U.S., and the Pacific, through the edited collection of articles in Readings in Urban Geography (Mayer and Kohn) and Studies of Highway Development and Geographic Change (Garrison, Berry, Marble, Nystuen and Morrill). Those volumes contained theoretical insights and rich empirical analysis, hallmarks of the creativity of urban geographers in the 1960s. [Key words: urban geography, University of Chicago, University of Washington.]