Understanding Urbanism

Abstract

By 2050 almost 70 per cent of the world’s people are predicted to live in cities. This chapter begins with a discussion about the difference between urbanisation and urbanism, and suggests that it is at the intersections of the various definitions of these ideas that the most important discussions about cities take place. The Aboriginal context of urban development in Australia is discussed as a case in point. The substantive sections provide six brief contextual primers for the chapters in this book, covering: (1) professions and practices; (2) morphology and change; (3) scales and agglomerations; (4) infrastructures and services; (5) experiences and cultures; and (6) inquiry and analysis. The conclusion suggests to understand the relationships between the physical form and social function of cities, and how urbanisation makes people, changes places, shifts power relations, creates property or changes cultures requires a very broad range of data collection and analysis tools, as well as a broad sweep of urbanism theory.