The Spatial Approach to the Urban Question: A Comment

Two ways of defining the urban question are possible, the social and the spatial. The former has received considerable attention and has been widely discredited. The latter has rarely been defined with clarity and has been inadequately treated in recent reviews. The spatial approach rests upon a view of cities as places where proximity offers uniquely urban opportunities and problems. Such a definition is inadequate, not because space is unimportant but because urban and nonurban space do not differ in kind.