A Typology of Urban Consumption Theories in Urbanism

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PhD candidate in Islamic Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Tabriz Islamic Art University, Tabriz, Iran

2 Associate Professor, Department of Islamic Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Tabriz Islamic Art University, Tabriz, Iran

Abstract

Background: Over the past few decades, scholars have studied the contemporary city and its mechanisms through a variety of approaches. Despite the variations in research orientations, what all these scholars agree on, is the widespread, profound and rapid transition of the contemporary city compared to its earlier sample which can be defined as development of consumerism in the contemporary city. This is an extreme change because the productive role of cities has always prevailed over their other features since the Industrial Revolution. Especially over the last 50 years, a wide variety of theories (from various disciplines) have explored contemporary society from this perspective. Understanding and analyzing this vast array of studies could be tricky for urban researchers, which highlights the need for a typological study in this area.
Objectives: The current paper aims to characterize the set of urban consumption theories.
Methodology: A qualitative research strategy is used to provide a clear framework for the classification of consumption theories that have been proposed in different sciences.
Result: Results suggests that urban consumption theories could be classified into three macros and forty-three micro types.
Conclusion: Macro-types of urban consumption theories are the economical category of consumption, sociology of consumption and hybrid approach. These classifications can be very useful for researchers who intend to theorize or enter such studies—theories directly applied to urban science are more elaborated.

Highlights

Identifying three macro-types and more than forty micro-types of consumption and urban theories.

The study of historical materialism and historical-geographical materialism as the philosophical foundations of political economy theories, structuralism as the philosophical foundation of sociological theories, and finally idealism and materialism as the philosophical foundations of the hybrid approaches are also among the most significant highlights of the current study.

Keywords

References

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Urban Planning Knowledge
Volume 4, Issue 4
January 2021
Pages 19-36

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History

  • Receive Date: 17 September 2019
  • Revise Date: 02 March 2020
  • Accept Date: 08 April 2020

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