GINSBURG, NORTON SIDNEY

GINSBURG, NORTON SIDNEY (1921– ), U.S. geographer. Ginsburg was born in Chicago. In World War II he served in the U.S. Navy and participated in actions with the Sixth Marine Division in north China. After the war he remained in the Far East as chief of the Research and Intelligence Center at Shanghai. In 1947 he taught geography at the University of Chicago (full professor, 1960). His major interests lay in urban geography, political geography, and economic development, with particular stress on East and Southeast Asia. In 1961 he was appointed director of the Association for Asian Studies. Apart from many papers, he published (with C.F. Roberts) Malaya (1958), was the co-author and editor of Pattern of Asia (1958), and edited Essays on Geography and Economic Development (1960). In 1961 he compiled the Atlas of Economic Development. The Japanese government invited him in 1962 to study Tokyo's urban problems, on which he reported in the Tokyo Memorandum: Reports on Tokyo Metropolitan Planning (1962). In 1980 he co-authored with Chi-Keung Leung China: Urbanization and National Development. He also coauthored Geographic Perspectives on the Wealth of Nations (with J. Osborn and G. Blank, 1986). In 1990 he published The Urban Transition: Reflections on the American and Asian Experiences. He edited A. Harmann's Historical Atlas of China (1968, new edition) and China: The '80s Era (1984). Ginsburg has also co-edited with Elizabeth Borgese 12 volumes of the Ocean Yearbook series (1979–96), a publication devoted to ocean-related issues. (Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)