ABSTRACT
This theme raises a series of questions, since it begins with a number of more or less explicit prior assumptions. This paper intends to discuss two of them, as they are, in our opinion, closely linked: first, the priority given to the environmental crisis as a practical aim of geography, and second, the relevance of human ecology as an integrative theory. These two postulates will first be questioned in general and then more concretely by viewing human ecology in the context of one of its fields of application: the urban field. With respect to the specific problems of the city, and in particular that which will be defined as the ‘crisis of urbanity’, human ecology will be evaluated as a ‘globalizing’ theory. The idea is not to make a case against human ecology, a theory sufficiently general, even vague enough, to be ‘immune’ to any such undertaking but to show, by analysing the different approaches to the urban phenomenon by authors who consider themselves human ecologists, some deficiencies which question the claim of globalization. An attempt will thus be made to show that the main deficiency in the approach to the urban field through human ecology consists in its lack of articulation to a coherent social theory. In order not to content ourselves with a critical position but rather to initiate a discussion on the form that such a conceptualization of the urban field should take, the reference to two social theories recently formulatedGiddens’ theory of structuration and Habermas’ theory of communicative action-will end this presentation, in an attempt to see to what extent they allow an understanding of the question of the crisis of urbanity.
