The City in Cultural Context
John A. Agnew, John Mercer, David Edward SopherAlthough there has been an explosion of information and research in urban geography and in urban studies generally since 1960, the study of cities and of urbanization has remained unbalanced. We have often forgotten that it is people - through institutions - who have the central role in building and developing cities, and in bringing about the various transformations embodied in the urbanization process.
A major problem has been caused by assigning too much explanatory power to such concepts as 'the market,' and 'the mode of production,' while not paying enough attention to human actions and to the attitudes, values, and beliefs that relate to those actions. We have not attended to Park's dictum (Park 1936, p.133): 'Cities . .. are, with all their complexities and artificialities, man's most imposing creation, the most prodigious of human artifacts.' By saying so, however, we are not imputing unlimited authority or even equal authority to all individuals to make decisions regarding city building or urbanization. Nor do we endorse the beguiling but dangerous notion of consumer sovereignty.
The self-confidence of behavioral studies and analyses of decision making has been shaken by work that has laid bare the constraints under which human intentions are realized. These constraints, which are real enough and have had varying influence on different people in different contexts, are themselves socially constructed. They are the result of human agency, past and present.