This is a list of urban theorists
notable
Notability is the property
of being worthy of notice, having fame, or being considered to be of a high degree of interest, significance, or distinction. It also refers to the capacity to be such. Persons who are notable due to public responsibi ...
in their field, in alphabetical order:
*
Christopher Alexander (1936-2022)
*
Donald Appleyard
Donald Sidney Appleyard (July 26, 1928 – September 23, 1982) was an English-American urban designer and theorist, teaching at the University of California, Berkeley.[Christopher Charles Benninger
Christopher Charles Benninger (born 1942) is one of India's highly decorated architects. His award-winning projects are, The Mahindra United World College of India, The Samundra Institute of Maritime Studies, The Suzlon One Earth world headquar ...](_bl ...<br></span></div> (1928-1982)
* Michael E. Arth
* <div class=)
(1942)
*
Walter Block
Walter Edward Block (born August 21, 1941) is an American Austrian School economist and anarcho-capitalist theorist. He currently holds the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Economics at the School of Business at Loyola Universit ...
(1941)
*
Ernest Burgess
Ernest Watson Burgess (May 16, 1886 – December 27, 1966) was a Canadian-American urban sociologist born in Tilbury, Ontario. He was educated at Kingfisher College in Oklahoma and continued graduate studies in sociology at the University of Ch ...
(1886-1966)
*
Peter Calthorpe (1949)
*
Manuel Castells
Manuel Castells Oliván (; ; born 9 February 1942) is a Spanish sociologist. He is well known for his authorship of a trilogy of works, entitled The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. He is a scholar of the information society, co ...
(1942)
*
Ildefons Cerdà
Ildefons Cerdà i Sunyer (; es, Ildefonso Cerdá Suñer; December 23, 1815, Centelles – August 21, 1876, Caldas de Besaya) was a Spanish urban planner and engineer who designed the 19th-century "extension" of Barcelona called the ''Eixampl ...
(1815-1876)
*
Gordon Cullen
Thomas Gordon Cullen (9 August 1914 – 11 August 1994) was an influential British architect and urban designer who was a key motivator in the Townscape movement. Cullen presented a new theory and methodology for urban visual analysis and design b ...
(1914-1994)
*
Mike Davis (1946)
*
Constantinos Doxiadis
Constantinos A. Doxiadis (); also spelled Konstantinos. (14 May 1913 – 28 June 1975), often cited as C. A. Doxiadis, was a Greek architect and urban planner. During the 1960s, he was the lead architect and planner of Islamabad, which was t ...
(1914-1975)
*
Andrés Duany
Andrés Duany (born September 7, 1949) is an American architect, an urban planner, and a founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism.
Early life and education
Duany was born in New York City but grew up in Cuba until 1960.
He attended The Ch ...
(1949)
*
Richard Florida
Richard L. Florida is an American urban studies theorist focusing on social and economic theory. He is a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and a Distinguished Fellow at NYU's School of Professional Studies. ...
*
John Friedmann
John Friedmann (April 16, 1926 – June 11, 2017) was an Honorary Professor in the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and Professor Emeritus in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Aff ...
*
Joel Garreau
Joel Garreau (born 1948) is an American journalist, scholar, and author.
In 1981, Garreau published ''The Nine Nations of North America''. In 1991, he published '' Edge City: Life on the New Frontier''. In 2005, he published ''Radical Evolutio ...
*
Patrick Geddes
Sir Patrick Geddes (2 October 1854 – 17 April 1932) was a British biologist, sociologist, Comtean positivist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town planner. He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban planning ...
(1854-1932)
*
Jan Gehl
*
Paul Goodman
Paul Goodman (1911–1972) was an American writer and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Goodman was prolific across numerous literary genres and non-fiction topics, including the arts, civil rights, decen ...
*
Percival Goodman
Percival Goodman (January 13, 1904 – October 11, 1989) was an American urban theorist and architect who designed more than 50 synagogues between 1948 and 1983. He has been called the "leading theorist" of modern synagogue design, Philip N ...
(1904-1989)
*
Adam Greenfield
Adam Greenfield is an American writer and urbanist, based in London. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1968.
Early life
Greenfield attended New York University, graduating with a degree in Cultural studies in 1989. Between 1995 and 200 ...
*
Peter Hall (1932-2014)
*
David Harvey
David W. Harvey (born 31 October 1935) is a British-born Marxist economic geographer, podcaster and Distinguished Professor of anthropology and geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He received his P ...
*
Ebenezer Howard
Sir Ebenezer Howard (29 January 1850 – 1 May 1928) was an English urban planner and founder of the garden city movement, known for his publication ''To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform'' (1898), the description of a utopian city in whic ...
(1850-1928)
*
Arata Isozaki
Arata Isozaki (磯崎 新, ''Isozaki Arata''; born 23 July 1931) is a Japanese architect, urban designer, and theorist from Ōita. He was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in 1986 and the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2019.
Biography
Isozaki was ...
*
Allan Jacobs
Allan B. Jacobs (born 29 December 1928) is an urban designer, renowned for his publications and research on urban design. His well-known paper ''"Toward an Urban Design Manifesto"'', written with Donald Appleyard, describes how cities should be ...
(1928)
*
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs (''née'' Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book '' The Death and Life of Great American Cities ...
(1916-2006)
*
Kiyonori Kikutake
(April 1, 1928 – December 26, 2011) was a prominent Japanese architect known as one of the founders of the Japanese Metabolist group. He was also the tutor and employer of several important Japanese architects, such as Toyo Ito, Shōzō Uc ...
(1928-2011)
*
Rem Koolhaas (1944)
*
Kisho Kurokawa
(April 8, 1934 – October 12, 2007) was a leading Japanese architect and one of the founders of the Metabolist Movement.
Biography
Born in Kanie, Aichi, Kurokawa studied architecture at Kyoto University, graduating with a bachelor's ...
(1934-2007)
*
Fumihiko Maki
is a Japanese architect who teaches at Keio University SFC. In 1993, he received the Pritzker Prize for his work, which often explores pioneering uses of new materials and fuses the cultures of east and west.
Early life
Maki was born in Tokyo. ...
*
James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler (born October 19, 1948) is an American author, social critic, public speaker, and blogger. He is best known for his books ''The Geography of Nowhere'' (1994), a history of American suburbia and urban development, ''The Long ...
*
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...
(1887-1965)
*
Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre ( , ; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of s ...
(1901-1991)
*
Jiří Löw
*
Kevin A. Lynch
Kevin Andrew Lynch (January 7, 1918 – April 25, 1984) was an American urban planner and author. He is known for his work on the perceptual form of urban environments and was an early proponent of mental mapping. His most influential books inc ...
(1918-1984)
*
Rob Krier Rob Krier (born 1938 in Grevenmacher) is a Luxembourgian sculptor, architect, urban designer, and theorist. He is former professor of architecture at Vienna University of Technology, Austria. From 1993 to mid-2010 he worked in partnership with arc ...
(1938)
*
Richard L. Meier
Richard Louis Meier (1920 - February 26, 2007) was a US regional planner, systems theorist, scientist, urban scholar, and futurist, as well as a Professor in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California at Berkeley. He was ...
(1920-2007)
*
Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a w ...
(1895-1990)
*
Saverio Muratori Saverio Muratori ( Modena, 1910 – Rome, 1973) was an Italian architect, regarded as one of the pioneers of typomorphological investigations of urban form.Moudon, Anne Vernez, "Getting to Know the Built Landscape: Typomorphology", in Franck, Karen ...
(1910-1973)
*
Clarence Perry
Clarence Arthur Perry (1872 – September 6, 1944) was an American urban planner, sociologist, author, and educator. Perry devised the neighbourhood unit plan, a residential community scheme disseminated through the Regional Plan of New York and I ...
(1872-1944)
*
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (born December 20, 1950) is a professor at the University of Miami's School of Architecture and an architect and urban planner in Miami, Florida.
Plater-Zyberk is considered to be a representative of the New Urbanism scho ...
*
Miguel Robles-Durán
Miguel Robles-Durán (born July 25, 1975, Mexico City, Mexico) is an urbanist, Associate Professor of Urbanism (tenured) at The New School / Parsons The New School for Design in New York City, and co-founder of the non-profit Cohabitation Strategi ...
*
Witold Rybczynski
Witold Rybczynski (born 1 March 1943) is a Canadian American architect, professor and writer. He is currently the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor Emeritus of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.
Early life
Rybczynski was born in E ...
*
Thomas Sieverts
Thomas Sieverts (born 8 June 1934) is a German architect and urban planner. He is the author of '' Zwischenstadt'' (1997; first published in English in 2000 as ''Cities without Cities: An interpretation of the Zwischenstadt''), a book which addre ...
*
Camillo Sitte
Camillo Sitte (17 April 1843 – 16 November 1903) was an Austrian architect, painter and urban theorist whose work influenced urban planning and land use regulation. Today, Sitte is best remembered for his 1889 book, ''City Planning According to ...
(1843-1903)
*
Edward Soja
Edward William Soja (; 1940–2015) was a self-described urbanist, a noted postmodern political geographer and urban theorist on the planning faculty at UCLA, where he was Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, and the London School of Ec ...
(1940-2015)
*
Ignasi de Solà-Morales (1942-2001)
*
Kenzo Tange
is a common masculine Japanese given name.
Possible writings
Kenzō can be written using different kanji characters and can mean:
*賢三, "wise, three"
*健三, "healthy, three"
*謙三, "humble, three"
*健想, "healthy, concept"
*建造, "bu ...
(1913-2005)
*
Robert Venturi
Robert Charles Venturi Jr. (June 25, 1925 – September 18, 2018) was an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major architectural figures of the twentieth century.
Together with h ...
(1925-2018)
*
William H. Whyte
William Hollingsworth "Holly" Whyte Jr. (July 11, 1917 – July 11, 1999) was an American urbanist, sociologist, organizational analyst, journalist and people-watcher. He identified the elements that create vibrant public spaces within the city ...
(1917-1999)
*
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...
(1867-1959)
*
Sharon Zukin
Sharon L. Zukin (born September 7, 1946) is an American professor of sociology who specializes in modern urban life. She teaches at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. As of 2014, she was also a distinguished f ...
(1946)
See also
*
Index of urban planning articles
*
Index of urban studies articles
Urban studies is the diverse range of disciplines and approaches to the study of all aspects of cities, their suburbs, and other urban areas. This includes among others: urban economics, urban planning, urban ecology, urban transportation systems, ...
*
List of urban planners
List of urban planners chronological by initial year of plan.
* c. 332 BC Dinocrates – Alexandria, Egypt
* c. 408 BC Hippodamus of Miletus – Piraeus (port of Athens), Thurii, Rhodes
* 330-336 CE Constantine – Byzantium replanned and rebuil ...
*
Urban design
Urban design is an approach to the design of buildings and the spaces between them that focuses on specific design processes and outcomes. In addition to designing and shaping the physical features of towns, cities, and regional spaces, urban de ...
*
Urban geography
Urban geography is the subdiscipline of geography that derives from a study of cities and urban processes. Urban geographers and urbanists examine various aspects of urban life and the built environment. Scholars, activists, and the public have ...
*
Urban economics
Urban economics is broadly the economic study of urban areas; as such, it involves using the tools of economics to analyze urban issues such as crime, education, public transit, housing, and local government finance. More specifically, it is a bra ...
*
Urban sociology
Urban sociology is the sociological study of life and human interaction in metropolitan areas. It is a normative discipline of sociology seeking to study the structures, environmental processes, changes and problems of an urban area and by doin ...
*
Urban studies
Urban studies is based on the study of the urban development of cities. This includes studying the history of city development from an architectural point of view, to the impact of urban design on community development efforts. The core theoretica ...
References
{{Reflist
Urban theorists
Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to:
* Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas
* Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities
Urban may also refer to:
General
* Urban (name), a list of people ...
Urban
Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to:
* Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas
* Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities
Urban may also refer to:
General
* Urban (name), a list of people ...