Ronald Horvath

Ronald J. Horvath (born 1937) has made contributions to the study of colonialism, African development, and urban geography of Sydney, Los Angeles, Detroit and Addis Ababa.

Horvath was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and educated at California State University, Long Beach (B.A., 1960) and UCLA (MA 1961, PhD 1966).

While working on his PhD on "Around Addis Ababa, a geographical study of the impact of a city on its surroundings" he taught at Haile Selassie I University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (1963–1965).

He was an assistant professor at the University of California Santa Barbara 1965–1967, Michigan State University, 1967–1972, during which time he participated in the foundation with William Bunge of the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute.

He was visiting COMGA professor at North Carolina Central University in 1969 and visiting professor at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver BC, 1974–1976 before migrating to Australia in 1976.

On returning to the US and publishing in these areas he was soon involved in support for political change and civil rights, and until the early 1970s applied himself to questions of colonialism, race, and poverty in American society.

A number of key publications resulted.

His participation in William Bunge's and Gwendolen Warren's Detroit Geographical Expedition placed him at the centre of radical, and controversial application of geographical teaching and knowledge in the inner city, activities that were disruptive to academic norms.

An early statement of his interest in transport geography and automobiles came in 1974, "If geographers are to participate more fully in planning and monitoring future technological growth, explicit recognition of the spatial dimensions of technological change will be necessary. Machine space, or territory devoted primarily to the use of machines, shall be so designated when machines have priority over people in the use of territory. Automobile territory in modern American cities exemplifies the concept of machine space."

(Horvath 1974: 167-168).

He taught geography at the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney from 1976 to 1996 before retiring as senior lecturer.

Since 2011, he has worked with the Sydney Alliance, which is dedicated building community and promoting social justice in the Sydney metropolitan region.

He married Barbara (Horvath), formerly an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney.

Horvath acquired a range of skills in urban studies and agricultural geography during graduate study and fieldwork in Africa.