Allan R. Pred
Allan R. Pred, one of the leading humanist geographers of the past half century, passed away of lung cancer on January 5th in Berkeley, California. Pred retired last spring following a career of 44 years at the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as the Chair of the Department of Geography between 1979 and 1988.
Pred graduated first in his class from Antioch College in 1957. Attracted by the cross-disciplinary nature of geography, he first attended Penn State and later the University of Chicago, where he completed his PhD in 1962. He then arrived at the University of California, Berkeley, as an assistant professor of geography at the age of only 25.
A prolific author, Pred published 22 books and monographs during his career and more than 70 articles and book chapters. His international reputation as an acute observer, analyst, and theorist of American urbanism emerged largely from the publication of three books: The Spatial Dynamics of US Urban Industrial Growth 1800-1914 (1966), Urban Growth and the Circulation of Information, 1790-1840 (1973), and Urban Growth Theory and City Systems in the US, 1840-1860 (1980).
After 1980, Pred turned his attention to the dynamics of both the cities and culture of Sweden. He also readjusted his focus at the time toward investigations of the production of modernity. At the same time, he developed an unusual writing style that mixed ethnographical research with personal commentary. His studies of Sweden included Lost Words and Lost Worlds: Modernity and the Language of Everyday Life in Late-Nineteenth Century Stockholm (1990), and Even in Sweden:Racisms, Racialized Spaces, and the Popular Geographical Imagination (2000). For his contributions to social science in Sweden, Pred was rewarded with an honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala in 1992, and later with the Willy Brandt Professorship.
Pred will be remembered in part for an idiosyncratic prose style at once poetic, stark, and rich—the creative result, at least in part, of the inspiration he found in the work of Walter Benjamin. He will also be remembered for his many contributions to campus life at Berkeley.
Pred received the Anders Retzius Medal from the Swedish Society for Geography and Anthropology in 1991. He was presented with Lifetime Achievement Honors by the Association of American Geographers in 2005.
Alan Pred (Necrology). 2007. AAG Newsletter 42(2): 20.
