反思都市史——比较都市史与规划史阅读书目的导言

A Reflection on Urban Histories:An Introduction to Readings of Comparative Urban Histories and Planning Histories

百花齐放的都市史成就展现在出版上,包括了社会与文化取向的都市史、在通史写作之外对都市形式课题与对城市设计的历史研究、威尼斯学派的批判史学以及新马克思主义的历史地理学、社会学与史学等方面的杰出学术贡献。作者指出面对21世纪网络社会的挑战,工业社会崛起时的都市化方法论假设必须通过理论的检验才能面对1980年代后中国大陆都市现实中浮现的悖论性空间与社会。以马克思·韦伯为代表的两方现代城市的普同价值,不仅不易区分中国城市的政治性格与繁华市井的都市氛围,而且面对新的信息技术冲击,在研究分析上显得过时,在实践上难接地气。所以,值得由比较的角度重建亚洲的都市史写作,而规划史则是其中重要的现代专业者反思空间实践的历史环节。

The flourishing achievement has expressed in the publications including urban history from the social cultural approach, focusing the urban form issues beyond the general history as well as on city design through historical studies, the critical history of the School of Venice, and the outstanding Neo-Marxist academic contributions from historical geography, sociology and history etc. In front of the challenges of the network society in the twenty-first century, the author points out the methodological presuppositions of urbanization in the rising industrial society have to go through theoretical examined then to face the emerging paradoxical space and society in the urban reality of China after 1980s. And the universal values of western modern cities represented by Marx Weber, cities, could be not only hard to distinguish the political characters of cities and the urban milieu of bustling marketplaces or lively streets of Chinese cities, but also obsolete in the new information technological impacts for analytical research, disarticulating with the local for practice. Therefore, it worth to reconstruct the writing through a comparative perspective of Asian urban histories, and planning histories are critical historical links in urban histories to reflect spatial practice for modern professional.