Report: Urban Research Sunnyside UpAuthor(s): J. W. R. WhitehandSource: Area, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1983), p. 28Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20001865 .

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Urban research sunnyside up

A report of a conference on Canadian-American urban development held at the University of Guelph, Ontario, 24-28August 1982.

This was the largest urban history bonanza in North America for some years. It was attended by about 250 delegates, mostly North American historians or geographers, but with two historians and two geographers from Britain 'for the valuable comparative cultural perspective they can bring to the proceedings ', as my invitation put it. For my own part, it was an excellent oppor tunity for an inside view of North American scholars tackling on their home ground a wide range of aspects of urban development, including government, education, religion, planning, industry, housing, recreation, architecture, commerce, and land development. Although the prime objective of the conference was to study the themes of power and decision-making in urban development within a comparative Canadian-American context, perhaps its main achieve ment was in creating an environment conducive of interaction between researchers from a variety of backgrounds. From a personal standpoint considerable interest attached to the different methodological positions that speakers adopted, with social scientific approaches tending in my view to complement rather than vie with literary ones. Discussions spanning such a diversity of topics could not be expected to add up to a coherent view of urban development. The session on the future of urban history served to emphasise the great range of issues that historians and geographers felt either would or, perhaps more often, should gain the attention of scholars interested in urban studies in the immediate future. These included the generation of theory, though not perhaps as conspicuously as might have been anticipated in geographical circles a decade or so ago and, hardly surprisingly, the study of policy making-a prominent aspect of what was referred to as applied urban history.

My outsider's notes on the socio-academic scene are unlikely to find their way into the volume based on the proceedings, so a few of them may be worth sharing here. Reference was made (by a historian) to at least one historian suffering from 'computer tapeworms' and the likening of some notions presently being floated to meringues-inviting from outside but subject to sudden collapse-was a salutary simile for those journalists at heart egged on by Area to put their names to the latest trans-Atlantic happening. We all fall for it at some level, and at the lowest level I cannot refrain from referring to a serious outbreak of what is perhaps best described as the 'personification of inverted commas'. This involves the speaker breaking-off in mid sentence and indulging in gesturing that when I was at school would have incurred the severest penalties. I should add, perhaps more seriously, although I remained unclear as to its ramifi cations, that there is a detectable 'bottom up ' school within American urban history. This will doubtless be understood by cognoscenti on this side of the Atlantic, although the comments on the subject by one of the older generation of American historians are too rude to repeat here. The sumptuous banquet that capped the social proceedings could have all sorts of symbolic significance for this school. Based on the form of a late nineteenth century Board of Trade dinner, complete with seven Victorian-style courses and wines, it lasted, together with after-dinner addresses, in excess of five hours. It made an IBG Annual Dinner seem like a coffee break.

J. W. R. Whitehand University of Birmingham

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