Chicago: Transformations of an Urban System

Founders Professor at the University of Texas, Brian Berry received his doctoral degree from the University of Washington in 1958. In the 1960s he helped lead the quantitative revolution in geography. As a faculty member at the University of Chicago, he served as dissertation supervisor to numerous students who later became productive research faculty and leaders in the discipline throughout the United States and Canada. Berry's pioneering work in urban geography added methodological rigor and empirical dimensions to the analysis of established concepts. He was particularly influential in developing "factorial ecology" as a means of understanding the social geography of cities. His work in retail geography is well known, particularly through The Geography of Market Centers and Retail Distribution (1967). He helped document and analyze the population turnaround specifically in the sunbelt and nonmetropolitan growth in the 1970s. Berry helped define research directions in urban systems analysis and in the geography of development.