Emergent Urban Forms, or Emergent Post-Modernisms? A Comparison of Large U.S. Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

Post-modern urban theory has problematized the universality of existing models of urban form by focusing on fluidity and complexity in the urban landscape. Urban form is "chaotic," "galactic," and even "random" according to this view. Somewhat lost in this perspective are the emergent urban forms occurring in a wide variety of cities. This paper challenges the universalization of landscape complexity that lies at the core of post-modern urbanism by examining landscape changes in the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. The key findings are that landscape complexity vis the mid-20th century city is overstated—not least because the latter was itself quite complicated—and that the unyielding focus on difference deflects attention away from important processes like inner-city revalorization, inner-suburban devalorization, and outer-suburban valorization that are reshaping very different cities in largely similar ways.