A Typology of Urban Consumption Theories in Urbanism

Over the past few decades, scholars have studied the contemporary city and its mechanisms through a variety of approaches. Despite the variations in research orientations, what all these scholars agree on, is the widespread, profound and rapid transition of the contemporary city compared to its earlier sample which can be defined as development of consumerism in the contemporary city. This is an extreme change because the productive role of cities has always prevailed over their other features since the Industrial Revolution. Especially over the last 50 years, a wide variety of theories (from various disciplines) have explored contemporary society from this perspective. Understanding and analyzing this vast array of studies could be tricky for urban researchers, which highlights the need for a typological study in this area.

The current paper aims to characterize the set of urban consumption theories.

A qualitative research strategy is used to provide a clear framework for the classification of consumption theories that have been proposed in different sciences.

Results suggests that urban consumption theories could be classified into three macros and forty-three micro types.

Macro-types of urban consumption theories are the economical category of consumption, sociology of consumption and hybrid approach. These classifications can be very useful for researchers who intend to theorize or enter such studies—theories directly applied to urban science are more elaborated.