The Methodological Dimension Of Urban Research

Cities are one of the important achievements of human civilization and cultural development.Especially since the Second World War,post-war reconstruction has promoted the new process of urbanization.Since the 21 st century,the level of urbanization has further accelerated.At the same time,Cities are also beginning to receive more and more academic attention.Different perspectives on the subject have different considerations for cities.Among them,urban economics,urban sociology,and urban culture are very representative.First,urban economics believes that the main characteristics of cities are scale effects,and the law of urban development is urban and rural.The dialectical trend of interdependence,urban-rural opposition,and urban-rural integration,while the real estate economy highlights the value of cities in the form of land rents.Second,urban sociology focuses on the differences between the two lifestyles based on the differences between the cities and the countryside;Finally,urban culture focuses on the cognitive paradigm of urban culture,which is based on the promotion of cultural vitality.However,they also encountered their own theoretical crisis.The way in which urban economics logicalized urban-rural relations,urban economic competition,and absolute rent value was simply to "invert" cities and division of labor;urban sociology must presuppose the separation of urban and rural areas as a prerequisite.Then,the city is only the application of sociological theory,thereby eliminating the particularity of the city;urban culture does not recognize the "modernity" of the urban cultural crisis and the root of the crisis of modernity is capital logic.In general,urban economics,urban sociology,and urban culture have led to fragmented urban research.In the study of fragmented cities,the city has acquired the physical appearance of modern society.It has become a static geographical space.At the same time,it has also become a " Subject trash can ".Cities can be any pre-label for a subject.As a result,cities are divided up by different disciplines,thus presenting a fragmentation phenomenon.On this basis,each urban discipline attempts to break the boundaries of disciplines and try to establish urban platforms between various disciplines.When cities are regarded as consumption spaces,they have reached agreement and reconciliation.In the process of transforming a production-oriented city into a consumption-oriented city,cities become entities of homogeneous consumption space.Consumer personality and consumption identity jointly construct the era landscape of the consumer society,so the carrier of the consumer society must be the city,the focus of alienation in the consumer city has settled the disputes between various disciplines,and it has also ended the development of the city.The emergence of consumer cities is also constantly being questioned.On the one hand,urban issues still plague consumer cities;on the other hand,false needs,incomplete information,state intervention and consumer domination logic,etc.,have shaken the rationality and legitimacy of consumer cities.Although the voice of questioning has always been a romantic critique,they,together with consumer cities,have opened up the premise of urban research,that is,the conflict between individuals and society is the cause of the predicament of urban research theory.The source of conflict between individuals and society is the abstraction of the two.The theoretical foundation of the abstract individual is the theory of social contract.Although it has produced a reflection on the nature of man,gradually shifted the focus from the relationship between man and nature to the relationship between man and himself,and devoted himself to the universality of human nature.It is necessary to establish an idealized human society,but its logical cycle of arguments and arbitrary assumptions of human nature cause the society to stagnate to ideals.The theoretical basis of abstract society is sociology.Although it emphasizes that the nature of human beings is sociality,heterogeneity between people,and the uniqueness of social laws.But sociology also has social change theory and social structure.The theory of social change focuses on the subjectivity and social openness of people such as will,reason,purpose,and motivation,while the theory of social structure focuses on the objectivity and closedness of social laws.Social contract theory adheres to individualism and rationalism;social change theory adheres to voluntarism and functionalism;social structure theory adheres to the theory of elements and the supremacy of laws.From the origin of the history of ideas,these theories are consistent with the development of capitalism and abstract The individual and abstract society are nothing more than the theoretical form and the form of knowledge of abstract labor.The actual form of abstract labor is modern currency.Modern currency has two opposite functions,on the one hand,the expansion of social interaction,and on the other hand,individual independence.The premise of modern currency is wage labor,whose core is dominant power.Abstract individuals and abstract societies are constantly moving toward revisionism,and their fundamental fallacy is the historical dissolution of money,and modern money is regarded as the “light of human society”.Therefore,to reexamine individuals and society,we must start by answering what history is.Hegel pioneered this aspect.He believes that the relationship between people is a right,and the process of generating rights is the unfolding process of human history.The historical generation of rights and the diversity of rights are weaving warp and weft lines of human history.Dialectics of rights question any principled presupposition about human society.History is a self-development process of people’s lives.Correspondingly,Hegel believes that the city is a product of a certain historical stage.Family life,social needs and social interaction constitute the historical premise of the city.The results of urban development cannot be used as the starting point of urban research.Cities not only produce public life and Political life includes both the overall nature of people’s lifestyles and the particularities of lifestyles.However,when the "national" category replaced the "city","civil society" and other categories,the ideal country as the absolute spirit incarnation of the living world became the end of human society.Eventually,logical necessity replaced historical necessity,and in the history of urban civilization became The link of "absolute spirit" At the same time,the future dimension of the city is also enclosed in the logic history of "absolute spirit".In Marx’s view,the idea state always excludes the "poverty" phenomenon of civil society.The reason is that Hegel’s philosophical foundation is private property,and private property is the result of alienated labor.This fundamentally dissolves the past The potential premise of observation.The reason why historical views in the past are speculative history and logical history is that they set human nature as self-awareness,and self-awareness “pretends as perceptual,reality,and life” in an epistemological way.Communist society is an active sublation of private property,and it is also a world historical process in which individuals and society are united,and people and nature are united.The essence of history is labor.If labor and capital are not grasped,it will inevitably "lost itself" in the "fog" of real life.This is the comprehensive liquidation of abstract individuals and society by Marx’s early philosophy.Therefore,the activities of realistic individuals are the premise of history.The activities of producing material subsistence,perceptual needs,people’s own production,social relations,and labor consciousness constitute the ontological explanation of realistic individuals.The aspect also presents the entire law of alienated labor history in the way of social existence and social consciousness,productivity and production relations,economic foundation and superstructure.This is a clear distinction between "subject society" and "ideological history".The former excludes nature from "history," and the latter merely explains and describes the existing.Then,from the perspective of historical materialism,cities are one of the inevitable ways to explain the history of human civilization,that is,the history of human civilization is embedded in the city,and the city history is used to explain itself.It is a unified organic whole with the history of human civilization.Therefore,the essence of the city is the spatial form of perceptual communication.The dialectical relationship between practice,space,and the city is a concrete embodiment of history.Urban dialectics is not a contradictory thinking.It points to more possibilities with authenticity,which also responds to the question of why the "space philosophy",which is detached from the basis of practice,has been questioned.At the same time,it is not only the physical object of the city that can have a city philosophy.In comparison,the city philosophy emphasizes the concreteness,innovation,cross-border,and risk of practical activities.In this sense,urban philosophy can become a historical science,which also clarifies two issues.First,urban philosophy cannot be understood simply as departmental philosophy or applied philosophy.Second,it is separated from urban Marxism and urban Marxism.Controversy.Therefore,the inner unity of urban development and the urban spirit;the inner unity of urban history and the future of the city;the inner unity of urban ideas and urban issues together constitute the methodological principles of modern urban research.The unity of sexuality and integration will make the city realistic in the future,so that the path of urban liberation will lead to the liberation of people.This is also the foundation of historical materialism to continuously explore the urbanization road with Chinese characteristics.