Domain Analysis of Urban Studies A Knowledge Organization Approach

Abstract

Urban studies is a complex domain that investigates cities to understand urban life. newlineThrough diverse multidisciplinary theories and growth of urban literature, its newlinecanonical knowledge as a field of enquiry and research has gained global attention newlinehaving merits of its own in the rapidly urbanizing twenty-first century. Urban studies newlineclassification is inherently a contested area of research since the urban definitions do newlinenot have a consensus and are highly fragmented through general, conceptual contours newlinein their vocabularies in the global North/South divides. Having built necessary newlinetolerance to it, urban epistemologies and canons of knowledge do not have newlinedisciplinary status, but are derived from multiple fields, disciplines, and specialties, newlinegrown over the past centuries historically drawn from social theories classical, newlinepostmodern, and contemporary. This study investigate the domain of urban studies newlineencompassing its concepts, theories and foundations in an interdisciplinary context, newlinewhich constitute general disciplines, disciplinary specialties and cognate disciplines newlinethe intellectual landscape of urban studies. newlineThis analysis mapped key concepts of the urban domain to control their vocabularies, newlineterminologies and relationships with the domains of knowledge organization systems newlineand library and information science. The research is conducted using domain analysis newlinetechniques to study urban studies discourses, including examining the urban newlineknowledge organization systems mapped in the existing classification schemes, newlinesubject headings, thesauri and ontologies. In this analysis of urban classification five newlinekey facets of urban were derived: sector, discipline, method, geography and program. newlineFurther, five themes were discussed in building the urban knowledge systems: human newlinesettlements, urban areas, urbanization, urban systems and urbanism. We found major newlineclassification schemes having urban concepts are distributed across social sciences newlineand arts. Based on this this mapping, we propose a classification of urban studies newline(CUS)