Urbanism

The urban studies (also urban studies ) is an interdisciplinary research field of exploration and description of towns under social, geographical, historical, environmental and urbanistic point of view is devoted to. Political, economic and cultural structures aspects are research interest. This combines the aspects of urbanism humanities, natural sciences and engineering, and the social sciences.

Issues

Based on the heuristic assumption of a difference of urban life forms that can be distinguished from rural or rural to urban studies explored in general places of highest population density and urban socialization. With the increasing urbanization of the world population on a global scale and the simultaneous Deurbanisation in industrialized nations urban issues take on an ever larger space. In German-speaking countries are predominantly urban studies these theoretical issues understood. On the other hand, terms such as urbanization English, French urbanisme, Spanish also usually urbanismo yet concrete, practical intended and include the additional meaning of the German urban planning and urban planning (see also urbanization ).

Typical questions of urbanism affect the spatial and social organization within cities and their role as fixed or nodes within the globalizing information and capital flows. Participating disciplines include:

• Urban design, urban planning, urbanism urban Development
• Urban ethnology
• Urban Geography
• Town History
• Urban Sociology
• Urban Ecology

Urbanism

Under the slogan Urbanism a number of heterogeneous concepts of urbanism is summarized, each trying to take the phenomenon of " city " as a whole into account. Beyond these, architectural theory programmaticals such as the new urbanism on the term to bundle with it a number of urban planning demands. The term " Urbanism " is thus always twice to understand: on the one hand sociological- descriptive, on the other hand aesthetic- normative.

History

Urbanitas referred to in ancient rhetoric, first a stylistic quality, namely, the ingenious, elegant and witty expression that reflects the refinement of the Greco -Roman city of culture. This background aspect moved, viewed historically, more and more into the foreground. In the Enlightenment, particularly the authors of the Encyclopedia, is still marked with urbanité the old style ideal, but have also associated the " politeness in the language, in the spirit and morals ". Immanuel Kant praises the visual arts that they promote the " urbanity of forming cognitive powers " and thus contribute to a refinement of the life forms.

" Urbanity " eventually refers to the aesthetic ideal social life itself. This aspect is, however, with the population explosion in the cities since the industrial revolution centrally.

The term urbanism comes down to Ildefonso Cerdá back ( Teoría general de Urbanización, 1867): He met the theoretical problem of finding for European cities to a form of planning that neither the impractical has become architectural theories of the Baroque, nor to the grid pattern planned colonial settlements in North America recourse.

In the 20th century, the term will soon be divided among the disciplines: In sociology it operates particularly in the so-called " Chicago school " where he refers to a leading to higher morality and moral mode of socialization in the modern metropolis. In architecture, especially the programmatic writings Le Corbusier's work.

Postmodernism

Life in the city as a specific form of life will be notified by Jean- Francois Lyotard as a failed project of modernity: Postmodern thinking is only possible in the marginal zones of the cities, because the urban utopia to create a culture for the people, had failed. Cities Lyotard sees only as a tourist museums an already obsolete life form. Roland Barthes 's L' empire des signes (1970 ) by comparing Tokyo with western cities: the decentralized structure of Tokyo, he contrasts the classic centralized order of European cities, the aporetic basic pattern of Western metaphysics, the dialectic of center and periphery, for him represents.

In The Ordinary City ( 1997) Ash Amin and Stephen Graham argue that the " urban landscape " ( "urban landscape" ) must be understood as a place of multiple, over situation Direction spaces, times and networks of relationships, places and subjects in globalized networks of economic, social and cultural change integrated.

Education and training

Urban Studies can be studied at the Bauhaus University Weimar in Bachelor and Master. The interdisciplinary and international master European Urban Studies is offered since 1999 here. At the Technical University of Munich, Faculty of Architecture, ( consecutively for architects, landscape architects, city planners ) are from WS 2011/ 12, the two Masters ' Architectural Urban Studies ' (Consecutive architecture) and ' urbanism, landscape and city ' offered.

At the Technical University of Darmstadt, a Master's Degree in History - Environment - are studied city, which deals with urban studies from a historical and ecological perspective. In addition, there is a LOEWE Research Focus, which deals with the " Intrinsic Logic of Cities ". It can be worn by sociologist Martina Löw, the architectural historian Werner Durth and the historian Dieter Schott professors and other related disciplines.

The class Brandlhuber working on the AdBK Nuremberg under the name of " architectural and urban research."