ABSTRACT
The main source of consciously structural-functional planning theory is to be found in Webber’s (1964) collection. Each of the academic contributors was at the time a member of the City and Regional Planning Faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, and each in their different ways was concerned to bring planning into the mainstream of social science from the architectural ghetto. The key theoretical contribution is made by Donald Foley though the more celebrated essay is Webber’s paper, somewhat grandiosely entitled The urban place and the nonplace urban realm’. A useful critical summary is supplied by John Dyckman who questions the unitariness of conventional descriptions of urbanity given by planners, criticizing the ways in which administrative boundaries are treated as sacro sanct, and points out that The functionalist view which is ascendant in these essays finds this distinction of activity by place of occurrence exaggerated’ (p. 226). This means that urbanity is to be conceived as a matter of social process in space rather than land use bounded by space.
