Exploring the Urban Community : A GIS Approach

This contemporary, well-written treatment of urban geography covers all the important traditional topics such as urban spatial structure, central place theory, neighborhood change, and industrial locations analysis, and also expands upon these to include contemporary topics such as global cities, gender, activism, technology, postmodernism, trans-nationalism, sexuality, and environmental justice.  It features strong integration of GIS technologies and emphasizes its importance as a skill in the professional field.


Urban Geography and the Spatial Display of Urban Environments; The Dynamics of Cities; Defining the Metropolis; The Internal Structure of Cities; Systems of Cities; Neighborhoods; Migration and Residential Mobility; Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Poverty; Industrial Location; Urban Core and Edge City Contrasts; Environmental Problems; Urban and Regional Planning.


A useful reference for urban planners and other professionals.

Richard P. Greene holds a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Northern Illinois University. Greene has published in a variety of journals including Landscape and Urban Planning, The Social Science Journal, the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Urban Geography, and Economic Geography. 

Greene’s emphasis is on urban regeneration, edge cities, and land conversion processes on the urban-rural fringe, with expertise on Chicago, Los Angeles, and China’s urban system.  He conducts applied GIS research with regional and local governments in the Chicago metropolitan area, and he developed a GIS system for evaluating the loss of prime farmland to urbanization for the American Farmland Trust.

Greene is co-editor of Chicago’s Geographies: Metropolis for the 21st Century, and is currently serving as the Book Review Editor for The Social Science Journal, and is on the editorial board of the Urban Geography Journal. He is a member of the Association of American Geographers, Arid Lands Studies Association, and the Western Social Science Association (WSSA).

James B. Pick holds a B.A. from Northwestern University, an M.S.Ed. from Northern Illinois University, and  a Ph.D. from the University of California Irvine. Pick is professor in the School of Business at University of Redlands. He is the author of 120 journal articles, book chapters, and refereed proceedings in the research areas of urban studies, population, renewable energy, management information systems, and geographic information systems. He is author or co-author of eleven books.

His awards include three Outstanding Faculty Research Awards from University of Redlands, Outstanding Alumni Award of College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Northern Illinois University, and Fulbright Senior Lecturer/Research Award in Mexico. He has been funded by the Ford Foundation, U.S. Small Business Administration, and other agencies, and serves on five journal editorial boards.