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Editors' note: Larry Ford, who taught geography at San Diego State University from 1971 to 2009, was to deliver a version of this essay at the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers Annual Meetin...

********** Doing fieldwork has long been associated with a career in geography. But that tradition of working in the field is threatened by a number of armchair alternatives, including obsessions with the information explosion and social theory. The danger in theory and computer-data mining, as in many other sedentary approaches, is their saturation with packaged interpretations that miss the random and often contradictory encounters that define a complicated and messy world. After all, the information explosion is really a "stuff" explosion, and considerable effort is required to convert such stuff into valuable information. There is a temptation to give credence to existing data sets and information sources, even in the absence of personal field observations and experiences. This temptation, of course, has been around for as long as libraries, data sets, and computers have. But as the World Wide Web has made immense quantities of "stuff" available instantaneously, the problem has grown. I tend to agree with the geographer John Borchert that we are being buried by a kind of information overload and that "a temporary but probably protracted ignorance explosion has accompanied the information explosion" (1991, 230). Heavy reliance on theory, absent the rich contradictions of place-based research, can also generate prepackaged interpretations. As temptations increase to critique the world through the lens of a particular theory, we run the risk of being ever more distanced from actual people and places. If we use an abstract conceptual framework to examine place characteristics that are themselves abstractions (inner city, class divisions, urban sprawl) we pile up sophisticated analyses that are far too internally consistent to capture the chaotic real world. For example, the planner-geographer Ed Soja's assertion (a la Frederick Jameson) that Los Angeles's Bonaventure Hotel is a "heterotopia," an "evocative countersite in which all other real sites within the synchronous culture are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted" (1995, 20), with its best Bauhaus-evoking bluster, channels observations by zealous theoreticians into a kind of intellectual Los Angeles River: all concrete, with no chance for deviating m eanders. Fieldwork can and should be carried out, encouraging varied perceptions of reality. Theory can then be used productively, and with a grain of salt. Without fieldwork, everything is boilerplate. Having stated philosophical reasons for valuing fieldwork, I feel obliged to point out that these play only a partial role in my enthusiasm for spending a lot of time in the field--or, more accurately, on the street. We all have different reasons for wanting to do fieldwork, and many of them have as much to do with idiosyncrasies as with academic philosophies. In my case, I love to move through space--to run, to climb, to crawl, and, most of all, to walk. I love doing fieldwork because it constitutes a kind of aerobic academics. As a result, I've often been able to cover a good bit of territory between bouts of writing, interviewing, library research, and the like. I learn by walking and lurking because each time I experience a setting, especially at odd hours like midnight in the rain, new questions, moods, and strategies are inspired that usually prove useful when I return with a more structured approach. I make notes and sketch maps continually and, at least during daylight hours, take photographs of whate ver strikes me as interesting. I like to think on my feet. But crosswise observation is foremost: I love to lurk. I can't say that spending long hours hiking 10 or 15 miles back and forth through the field is for everyone, but I really enjoy it. I couldn't argue, in good conscience, for the value of doing fieldwork without first admitting how much fun random encounters with people and places are (Figure 1). Because I'm almost always looking at urban neighborhoods, such encounters can sometimes be exciting. …

It is difficult to find a major American city today that has not used ethnic-theme neighborhoods in a revitalization strategy. "Little Italys" play major roles in the personalities of New York City, Boston, Massachusetts, Baltimore, Maryland, Cleveland, Ohio, San Diego, California, and a number of other cities. Columbus, Ohio, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, have German villages. Detroit, Michigan, and Chicago, Illinois, have Greek towns. Chinatowns are common from Philadelphia and New York in the East to San Francisco, California, and Vancouver, British Columbia, in the West. San Antonio, Texas, Los Angeles, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, celebrate a Mexican heritage. Even black neighborhoods, long seen as nothing to be proud of--the Harlem Renaissance notwithstanding--are now recognized as important places; Sweet Auburn in Atlanta, Georgia, and Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, are notable examples. More recently, Little Saigons have appeared from Washington, D.C., to Orange County, California. Nearly all of these cities view ethnic districts as cultural and economic assets. The districts are places to be promoted in the tourist literature as interesting places to eat, shop, and be entertained. They are places that enrich local culture and add to the spice of urban life. Sometimes, entire towns have been completely transformed in an effort to create--and often invent--ethnic landscapes. Solvang, California, used a Danish village architectural theme to attract investment and filled nearly every building in the center of town with Nordic shops and restaurants. Leavenworth, Washington, has used many of the same procedures to make itself totally Bavarian (Frenkel and Walton 2000). Meanwhile, Santa Fe has been plastered into a replica of Taos-style pueblos. Throughout the United States there are Amish towns and "Wild West" towns, most with some variation on the ethnic identity theme. Despite the obvious inauthenticity, most of these places have some sort of kitschy charm and are economic assets for their regions. Indeed, Dydia DeLyser suggested that place authenticity, not adherence to an accurate architectural history, is what works for people on the ground (1999). Our purpose in this article is to explore the idea that American-style ethnic-theme districts can serve to help revitalize declining central-city districts in Europe. European cities are now experiencing two trends that make them more like their U.S. counterparts. First, many of them have an increasingly large, exotic, non-European immigrant population, and, second, growing numbers of marginal, if not skid-row, central-city neighborhoods could benefit from focused revitalization efforts. We use the examples of Little Italy in San Diego, California, and an emerging Chinatown in Trieste, Italy, to compare possible procedures for using the celebration of ethnic identity in the promotion of marginal central-city districts. CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF AMERICAN ETHNIC DISTRICTS: THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM The positive view of the role that ethnic districts can play in American cities has not always prevailed. As most students of urban history know, it was not that long ago that ethnic diversity in the United States meant inevitable conflict and turf battles (Ward 1971). Beginning with massive Irish immigration during the 1840s, many cities practiced extreme discrimination, exclusion, and even organized violence to suppress "un-American" ethnic groups. The Irish, Russian Jews, Chinese, African Americans, and Mexicans had some of the worst experiences, but it was not uncommon for everyone from French Canadians to Poles to have their cultural identities suppressed. Even the Germans, arguably the largest group of "foreigners" to populate the American continent, were often seen as an undesirable element, especially in times of war. In Columbus, for example, a solidly German neighborhood that had its start as early as the 1820s became extremely suspect during and just after World War I. …

To a very real degree, we see what we have words to describe. Common words are used to shape our descriptions of urban landscapes and urban form. Over the past several decades, much of the literature on cities, especially North American cities, has focused on descriptions of central cities and suburbs: for instance, the relative decline of downtowns in the face of the explosive growth of suburban areas (Hartshorn 1992; Knox 1994). The increasing popularity of a variety of terms such as "inner city" and "edge city" have contributed to a polarized view of the urban world (Garreau 1991; Beauregard 1995). We have constructed a pervasive duality that seems to pit central city against suburbs. Economic and demographic trends are approached primarily to demonstrate the impacts they are having on one side or the other. Even the literature on downtown and central-city revitalization tends to see the "good news" for the center in the context of its battle with the suburban periphery (Frieden and Sagalyn 1989). Writings on topics as diverse as downtown decline and revitalization, suburban sprawl, the changing demographic and racial composition of urban areas, housing quality, gentrification, economic-base studies, and patterns of uneven development all include an emphasis on conflict and competition between the urban core and the suburban periphery (Jakle and Wilson 1992). The result has been a pervasive polarization in our thinking, with little emphasis on middle ground between the two extremes. The polarities are marked: central (inner) city-suburb; downtown-edge city; poor-rich; diverse-homogeneous; gray/brown-green; congested-spacious; old-new; obsolete-modern; minority-white; mass transit-automobile; high crime rate-safe. This emphasis on the continuing struggle between center and periphery has masked a very important and underrecognized attribute of most cities - namely, the existence of "midtowns" [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. Midtowns, or relatively centrally located nodes of economic and social activity, have played important roles indeed in the evolution of North American cities and even more important roles in the new global cities of other parts of the world. The most famous example of a midtown in North America is Midtown Manhattan, a district that began as a distinctive shopping, office, and entertainment node separated from "Downtown" Manhattan by several layers of industrial and residential neighborhoods. Over the years, the two areas have become so well connected that today they are usually lumped together as a sort of "greater downtown," especially because Midtown now contains the lion's share of office space, hotel rooms, and department stores. Despite the visibility of this Manhattan phenomenon, midtowns have been slow to gain recognition in most other urban areas. A TYPOLOGY OF NORTH AMERICAN MIDTOWNS A wide variety of midtowns have developed in the United States and Canada over the past century, but perhaps the concept can be clarified by focusing on a few major examples [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED]. At least six types of midtowns play important roles in the morphology of North American cities: downtown overflow; major spines or boulevards; cultural/university centers; neighborhood and/or inner suburban commercial districts; older mall and office complexes; and large, centrally located commercial infill sites. Of course, these types are not mutually exclusive, and hybrids abound. Still, recognizing the existence of these important midtowns can help us to decrease our reliance on center-periphery polarities. For example, much of the literature, including Joel Garreau's Edge City, classifies North American midtowns as edge cities even when they are within walking distance of the traditional downtown and are in no sense on the edge of the metropolitan area. But geography matters: The exact location of major nodes of activity in relation to the overall structure of the urban region should be considered more carefully. …

Although models of Latin American city structure are an interesting topic in their own right, they have also been providing us with an opportunity to discuss urban models in general. William Crowley's comments on my "A New and Improved Model of Latin American City Structure" are a case in point (Ford 1996; Crowley 1998). Some of Crowley's comments border on the trivial and curmudgeonly, but he does raise some very important and serious issues that all would-be modelers should take into consideration. It seems to me that Crowley has introduced three questions or issues that serve to inspire debate. They are: What is this fuzzy thing called "urban structure" that we are attempting to model? What is the purpose of any given model, and who is the intended audience? How can we incorporate sufficient complexity into a schematic model without spoiling its effectiveness as a heuristic device? Even though easy answers to these questions are unlikely, our quest for them merits being made more explicit. At least some of Crowley's criticisms probably would not have emerged had I stated my goals, concerns, and caveats more clearly. The first question, seeking form for this thing called urban structure, is the most difficult to answer, from both an operational and a philosophical standpoint. It is true, as Crowley points out, that most of our models have been land-use models that have not even begun to explore the full flavor of urban complexity. This is a real conundrum for those who have come to realize the importance of such things as the roles of gender and age in framing daily trip movements, the diurnal ebbs and flows of activity patterns, and the iconic value of landscapes. Much about the city is left out in any land-use model, and we should make it clear that we are telling only part of the story. In addition, we should encourage people with different interests to develop new ways of approaching schematic models and/or contribute to the debate about their value. I must admit that I did not ponder these issues in developing the models under discussion. I assumed that the land-use-model tradition in geography would carry the day and that further philosophizing would only get in the way of clear generalization. Still, we need to recognize and make clear that there are other ways to "structure" the urban experience. The second question, about the purpose and audience of the model, is easier to deal with, though it too has often been given scant attention. Crowley asserts that the original Griffin-Ford model (Griffin and Ford 1980) is too simplistic and that we omitted much that should have been included when it was first published. He implies that the omissions were due to an inadequate survey of the literature or, perhaps, to the authors' myopia. In fact, although the assertion may have some validity, the simplicity of the original model resulted from neither of those flaws. Our initial and tentative versions of it had considerable complexity. We deliberately streamlined the final version into what Crowley refers to as "neatness" simply because we wanted a model that would be directly comparable with the three simple and basic models used to describe North American cities. Our goal was to create a Latin American version of a concentric zone-sector-multiple nuclei model. Our intended audience was quite large and general. We wanted to reach people who were only vaguely interested in Latin America, along with those who had deeper interests in the region. Above all, we wanted it to be teachable. Had our intended audience only been scholars already doing research in Latin America, the initial model would have been very different. But then, if we had made this purpose clearer, some of Crowley's confusion might have been avoided. Simply put, we left things out on purpose. …

Models of urban spatial structure take on a life of their own. We still refer to the Concentric Zone Model of Burgess and Hoyt even though it was developed to describe Chicago during the mid-1920s. This is not totally bad. Good models, those that illustrate the processes of urban growth and change in straightforward form, are flexible and can be modified to fit particular settings. As heuristic devices they teach conceptual frameworks at very basic levels. The model of Latin American city structure by Ernst Griffin and myself that was published in the Geographical Review in 1980 has held up well, given the number of times it has appeared in citations. Comprehensible at a glance, the model can be adjusted to fit particular local conditions. On the other hand, cities do change, especially in rapidly growing regions such as Latin America, so it stands to reason that models ought to change as well. In addition, models profit from modification every now and then, if only to include some of the insights and suggestions tendered by authors who have critiqued them over time. I therefore offer a new and improved model of Latin American city structure, one which - I hope - combines the simplicity and process orientation of the original with a few important new urban characteristics [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. Most of the other models of Latin American city structure that have been put forward are more complex and elaborate than the one we designed. For example, the German geographers Jurgen Bahr and Gunter Mertins included not only a far larger assortment of morphological districts in their models but also arrows aimed at adding a dynamic element (Bahr 1976; Bahr and Mertins 1981). Though insightful, these models tend to be unnecessarily complicated, with major patterns and processes given the same attention as minor intracity flows. The model of Mexican border cities put forward by Daniel D. Arreola and James R. Curtis (1993) provides another example of complexity, with three times as many districts and features as our 1980 version. Atop the complexity heap is William K. Crowley's (1995) attempt to create a model based on the merger of three separate submodels portraying commercial, industrial, and residential land uses. The result is a complete depiction of each possible element of Latin American city structure at an overwhelming level of detail - rather as if a map of the London subway system had been printed on an Indonesian batik fabric. Although these and other models are too complex, it is also possible that our 1980 version is now too simple. The trick is to add new key elements without destroying heuristic simplicity and process orientation. A model, after all, is not a map: Not everything need be shown. With that in mind, I offer the modified model depicted in Figure 1. The new model retains the simple, circular form of the original and its essential elements - central business district (CBD), commercial spine, elite residential sector, three concentric rings of diminishing residential status (Zone of Maturity, Zone of In Situ Accretion, and Zone of Peripheral Squatter Settlements), and sectors of disamenity. Though not cartographically depicted in the model, all of the zones are assumed to contain mixed uses to some extent. For example, all residential areas include retail, eating, and recreational establishments, and many contain small industrial concerns. These cannot be included visually without creating a mess. On the other hand, some changes can be made without adding too much complexity. The new model incorporates six changes, as follows: * The new model's downtown is divided into two parts: CBD and Market. This reflects the fact that many Latin American downtowns now have a number of modern office, hotel, and retail structures quite separate from the more traditional and mixed market districts. The contrast between small, street-oriented businesses and self-contained megastructures suggests an increasing split of the downtown into modern and traditional sections. …

The essays in this issue of the Geographical Review speak for themselves, but it is possible to increase their effect as a coherent group by addressing some common themes that are touched on but not fully examined. I have four themes - or, more accurately, burning questions - in mind. First, when speaking of changes in the American city, it is important to keep in mind the degree to which time-specific models are the reference. These models were developed to describe cities during a specific historical era. To what degree, for example, are the models, generalizations, and concepts based on the seminal literature that was developed to describe and explain the industrial cities of the early decades of the twentieth century? Do we see change primarily because we have accepted the urban patterns depicted in our classic literature as the norm? Do we need a more flexible definition of norms in the forever-changing urban areas of the United States in order to write more meaningfully about change? Second, we need to recognize the existence of both place-specific and universalizing generalizations. Are we in the process of creating new attempts at general models to explain the American city, or are we becoming increasingly focused on how things play out in individual places or locales? Geographers have spent several decades searching for broad and important general patterns, but now the emphasis in many circles has drifted toward the explanation of unique locales. When we discuss patterns in specific places, do we need to stress the generalizing aspects of the processes involved, or can we feel satisfied with a good story about a particular place? Third, there is the matter of scale. What role does the sheer areal extent of the spatial patterns under discussion play in the interpretation of the relevant processes? Are new, qualitatively different processes under way, or are the main trends in contemporary urban areas due primarily to the massive extent of the patterns? How might we use maps and other visual devices more effectively to explicate these new geographies? Fourth, what role does the rate or pace of change play in the development of new concerns and generalizations? It may be that change is occurring so rapidly that the literature must always lag behind the current trends. Understanding must therefore always be a sort of fuzzy layering of different and, occasionally, polar opposite events. We may be in the midst of an information explosion, but we still need time to ponder the often-conflicting data that are cruising down the superhighway. Human brains need time to reflect. Every trend requires a temporal perspective. Before examining the individual essays in this issue, I want to explore these four themes in greater detail. First is the time-specific nature of models. Clearly, many generalizations and models used to describe the American city need to be updated. The old models of urban structure, with central business districts and suburbs, should be revised to incorporate the new reality of the city of realms. But what is new? What are the norms against which we are measuring change? Many of the seemingly radical changes affecting American cities may not be all that new. In some cases we have been there before, though on a different stage and with a different cast of characters. Much is made of the postmodern, post-Fordist city of consumption in the recent literature on urban change. The argument suggests that a shift is under way from cities based on production, with landscapes of industry and labor, to cities of consumption, based on display, recreation, shopping, and the like. On a field trip around the Twin Cities area in 1986, Richard Hartshorne remarked that fifty years earlier a similar field-trip route led only to discussions of production facilities such as factories and mills, but the 1980s focus was on new malls, gentrifying neighborhoods, parks, and other aspects of consumption and the good life. …

INDONESIA is the fourth-largest country in the world, with an area of almost 2 million square kilometers and more than 185 million inhabitants. More than 50 million Indonesians are classified as urban, a figure that is expected to increase to more than 70 million by 2000. It is estimated that in 1992 Indonesia had seven urban areas surpassing one million people and twenty-two other cities with populations in excess of 250,000 (Sensus penduduk 1990). Many Indonesian cities have been expanding very rapidly in recent years, with a few exceeding a growth rate of 6 percent annually. An important limitation in examining urban trends outside the largest cities is that only fifty-four urban places, a small minority of the total, have municipal status, which means that they are the only ones with official boundaries and population counts. Most population clusters, even some with more than 100,000 people, are still categorized as desas, or collections of villages, and lack local government. They are administered from the provincial or higher level of authority. In 1980, Indonesia had an estimated three hundred urban places with more than 20,000 people (Hamer, Steer, and Williams 1986). In other words, if anything, the degree of urbanization in Indonesia is underestimated. Indonesia is not a homogeneous country: diversity includes numerous cultural groups and a territory that is a vast archipelago. Its cities reflect this diversity. On Java and Sumatra urbanization dates back to the eighth century A.D., when Srivijaya, near present-day Palembang, was the center of a trading empire on the Strait of Malacca. For the next five centuries, various inland sacred or palace Hindu-Buddhist cities dominated the islands that constitute Indonesia (Reed 1976). Mataram, Kediri, Borobudur, and, more recently, Jogjakarta and Solo are examples of the once Indianized, but now Islamic, cosmic cities on Java alone. Traditional, religious-inspired urban form still characterizes a few settlements, most notably the sultan's capital of Jogjakarta, and this form is also a feature of some coastal trading cities that are now common throughout the urban hierarchy. Most of the large coastal cities are provincial capitals. Given the far-flung and disconnected physical geography of Indonesia, the role of regional centers is especially important, from Medan in North Sumatra to Manado in North Sulawesi. The central government has long been caught in a dilemma over the role of these disparate capitals. On the one hand, the most efficient way to control an effective national territory in a new and somewhat arbitrarily defined country is to create a system of dynamic, reasonably autonomous cities. They would provide the needed infrastructure to help spread the fruits of economic development throughout the country and would minimize the core-periphery problem of hypergrowth in Jakarta, the national capital. On the other hand, Indonesia has long been reluctant to encourage too much regional autonomy because of troublesome secessionist movements, especially in the country's remote extremities (Drake 1989). The central government carefully controls linkages such as international air routes and trade patterns, although in recent years this grip has loosened to the benefit of regional cities. There are many pros and cons in the development of strong regional capitals, and ideological positions play an important role. In recent years, the central government has strongly favored more regional autonomy and economic equality, so numerous smaller cities are growing. The number of complicated governmental regulations that encourage, or even require, industries to locate at or near Jakarta in order to interact with decision makers has been reduced. Financing procedures have been deregulated and liberalized, and banking has become nearly ubiquitous because foreign banks are now free to open branches in cities other than Jakarta. As a result, many regional centers are now expanding more rapidly than is the capital. …

During the past decade, preservation has become a viable force in halting innercity decay. A survey by the Urban Land Institute showed that in 1975, "significant" private-market renovation occurred in 70% of American cities with a population of 250,000, and that 60 separate neighborhoods in 20 of the largest cities were undergoing major revitalization. In addition, the success of such places as Ghirardhelli Square in San Francisco and Quincy Market in Boston inspired the nationwide renovation of old warehouses, factories, wharves, and train stations for commercial use. There is an emerging consensus that historic districts can greatly benefit cities. However a great deal of confusion still exists concerning proper criteria for designating "historic" district and procedures for delineating appropriately sized and shaped urban areas. The National Trust for Historic Preservation published a book A Guide to Delineating Edges of Historic Districts which summarizes standard criteria. Most historic districts are quite small and focus upon concentrations of architectural and historic important landmarks. Edges are defined by obvious and convenient criteria such as topography, land use, major streets, and building type. Geographers are identifying and delineating various types of regions or districts in center city. Studies defining the CBD (Central Business District) and land use changes in the Transition Zone have estabished procedures for identifying functional arrangements and spatial patterns. Other studies, such as "The Industrial Revolution and the Emergence of Boston's Central Business District" have explored such functional arrangements in the distant and recent past. Geography, has a long history of interest in spatial pattern and landscape and their interactions. The establishement of historic districts, because of their popularity and potential impact on city structure, would seem a likely focal point for merging spatial and landscape traditions. To be effective, historic district designation must consider the design of cities as well as the design of buildings.

IJUANA is one of those places that almost everyone has heard of. Mention the city's name and vivid images come to mind: the Tijuana jail, raunchy cantinas and strip joints, prostitutes, drugs, sad-eyed donkeys painted to look like zebras, and taxi drivers selling pictures of their "sisters." Everyone knows about Tijuana. Mention that you are doing research in the city and people wink knowingly, titter lecherously, or intimate that they know what kind of "research" you are doing (you sly devil, you). Somehow Tijuana has become tainted.' It lies beyond the pale of legitimate social scientific inquiry. A perusal of academic journals yields virtually no articles on Tijuana, and the recent (and only) scholarly book on the city does little more than reinforce the Tijuana stereotype.2 Yet Tijuana is a fantastically dynamic place. It is one of the world's most rapidly growing cities,3 a focus of massive internal migration, and a center of Mexican economic development. It is a true urban culture hybrid, with a landscape and morphology that have resulted from a volatile mixture of central Mexican tradition and Southern California pizzazz. The tremendous cultural and economic interaction taking place along the border is reshaping cultural values, attitudes, and preferences. This cultural hybridization is reflected everywhere in the landscape and is begging to be explained. We have therefore decided to do just that.

RBAN geography is concerned with space and place-two-dimensional patterns and three-dimensional landscapes. But rarely are these two approaches adequately merged in the study of a city. The urban landscape is an architectural container that constrains and directs spatial decisions, imparts personality to place, and plays a major role in the creation of positive and negative images of places that can affect the future character of the urban landscape. Across time, changes in the socioeconomic and technological structure of society greatly influence some sections of the city but have little effect on others. Some urban landscapes have long-term staying power, while others have undergone massive alteration.1 The purposes of this article are to examine the role of ordinary, that is, common domestic, house architecture in shaping the geography of the city and to explore the relationship between this architecture and spatial-temporal changes in cities. In addition to identifying and mapping house types and presenting a typology of urban houses grouped according to their salient characteristics, we compare house-type distributions and neighborhood definitions, and discuss the societal acceptance, or staying power, of particular house types in the context of spatial-temporal change. These issues are studied in two cities: Columbus, Ohio, and San Diego, California. Both are moderately large cities with residential landscapes composed primarily of single-family houses. Both city governments have strong commitments to improving environmental quality and urban design; both have expressed interest in monitoring changes in the urban landscape; and both are attempting to develop methods and procedures that would encourage recycling of existent buildings and upgrading of neighborhood quality. Both cities have neighborhood commissions to advise local government on problems of neighborhood change, have passed ordinances to review designs, and have developed design plans for specific neighborhoods. We delimited a sector with maximum diversity of house types in Columbus and San Diego. Data for the delimitation were obtained from field observations