城市社会学理论范式演进及其21世纪发展趋势

The Development of Theory Paradigm of Urban Sociology and the Trend in the 21st Century

近几年,城市研究备受社会和学界关注,尤其是以人为本的新型城镇化战略的提出更加推动了城市研究的繁荣。然而,尽管从事这方面的研究者越来越多,但多集中在实际问题的技术分析,对基本理论问题关注较少,比如,何谓城市性、如何理解城市空间以及什么是城市发展规律等。这就会造成:缺乏对基本理论认识的前提下所开出解决城市问题的政策"良药"往往很难奏效,有时甚至起到负作用,比如治理交通拥堵、住房紧张以及财富获得的社会不平等问题等。针对这种情况,有必要对城市研究的基本理论进行梳理与比较,为经验与应用研究提供参考指导。由于学科背景不同,聚焦的是最早提出城市研究并且影响深远的城市社会学理论范式:芝加哥学派人类生态学与马克思主义城市政治经济学。同时,还展望了21世纪的城市研究新趋势,尤其是在全球化与信息化推动下,城市研究走向更加开放多元,产生了一大批新的城市理论,如弗里德曼"地球是平的"、萨森"全球城市"、佛罗里达"创意阶层"以及克拉克"场景理论"等,从而也揭开了城市研究的新时代(后工业时代)。

Urban Research has attracted many attentions from academic circles in recent years, especially after the new urbanization strategy of China. Although more and more people are engaged in this aspect, but more focused on the technical analysis of he practical problems, less attention to the basic theory problem,for example, What is a city, how to understand the urban space, what is urban problems, etc. With the premise of the lack of understanding of the basic theory of the issues, the ＂good medicine＂ to solve the practical problem doesn’t work, sometimes can bring negative effects,for example, the urban policy about traffic congestion and housing problems. It’s argued that it is necessary to present the basic theory, analyzing and comparing, then providing empirical research with references. This article proposed the two basic theory paradigms of urban sociology ： humanistic ecology of Chicago school and Marxism political economics of Cities. In addition, we point out that with the globalization and information after entering the 21st century, urban studies are towards more open and pluralistic and many scholars have being creating a lot of new theories or perspectives, such as Friedmann’s “The earth is flat”, Sassen’s Global Cities, Florida’s Creative Class and Terry Clark’s the theory of Scenes. These have been starting up a new era of urban studies.