PROGRESS OF WESTERN STUDIES ON URBAN SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY SINCE 1990

Western scientific geography originated from the influential quantitative revolution in 1950s. As a result, rapid progresses were achieved in both geographical theory and methodology, of which spatial analysis and positivism school played a vitally important role in the domain of human geography. Yet in 1960s various social problems, such as long-standing economic depression, severer social polarization, more obvious social inequity, appeared frequently and popularly throughout western world, bringing about sharp oppositions towards traditional geography studies in that they cared little about man's needs and real facts. In face of humanism since 1970s, western human geography experienced social-cultural transforming. Urban social geography, as one of the most important branches in western human geography system, has been the hottest concern and focus for western geographers' studies in recent years. This paper, firstly gives the definitions of social geography from different angles of views and different scholars. Secondly, it abstracts three characteristics from three aspects. In the third place, it generalizes main aspects of western urban social geography studies. In general, each research branch changes greatly respective focuses, from main introductions of basic spatial factor distribution to wider involvement of social, cultural, political factors, attaching more importance to such domains as production of space and spatial construction reconstruction, etc. What's more, lots of new researches are caring more about spatial meanings as well as cultural metaphors. Fourthly, it points out some personal appraisals. Generally speaking, western urban social geography studies are characterized by problem-orientation, multiple topics, local tropism as well as qualitative methods.