The Social Dimensions of Modern Urbanism

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The Social Dimensions of Modern Urbanism
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Introduction

• A geographers task is to show the nature and
  cause of spatial differentiation.
• Urban social geography takes into consideration
  the complex interaction among people, social
  groups and the diverse socio-economic
  environments that exist within the city.
• In order to understand spatial order, one must
  first understand the urban ultrastructure.

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Urban Life in Western Culture

• The relationship between people and their urban
  environment has been viewed in a negative
  manner.
• Those espousing this opinion tend to be
  deterministic (belief that environment dictates
  behaviour) and place emphasis on urban ills.

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What Is the Best Living Environment?

• 1 in 5 Americans prefer urban environments
• 30 find suburban to be the best
• Majority (44) feel rural or small town to be
  the best

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The City As a Necessary Evil

• As people move from urban to rural environments,
  it appears that a better quality of life is
  felt
• Problem data relating to these studies are hard
  to interpret as it is subject to ambiguity
• This leads to the idea of the city as a
  necessary evil

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• The contradictory state of being regarding city
  life has been a popular subject matter in art and
  literature
• Raymond Williams points out that many British
  writers wrote of the negative feelings
  surrounding the city, some contrasting it with
  the romanticist portrayal of the country

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Experiences of Otherness

• Charles Baudelaire realized that within the city
  one can have experiences of otherness
• This experience was possible due to the diversity
  of the city

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The Image of the City

• Claude Fischer referred to the city as a montage
  of mixed and clashing elements
• New York is a good example of a city of diversity
• It portrays the stereotypes of being horrific and
  a place of opportunity

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• Fischer presents 4 basic themes relating to the
  ambivalent images of the city
• A sense of tension exists as neither rural or
  urban is universally better or worse
• A division among people into anti-urbanists or
  pro-urbanists occurs

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Urbanism Social Theory

• Deterministic and Environmental view seeks to
  understand the social and psychological
  implications of urbanism and urbanization as it
  has taken place since the Industrial Revolution.
• This view is mainly informed by the works of
  Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel.

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Pre Industrial Societies

• Had small homogeneous populations who knew each
  other, had the same interests and work.
• They looked and thought alike, and thusly has a
  consensus of values and norms.

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Large Cities Durkheims Dynamic Density

• Population is subject to new forms of economic
  and social organization due to economic
  specialization, innovations in transport and
  communication technologies.
• More contact with people but primary
  relationships are harder to maintain.

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• Weakening of social cohesion and consensus
• threat to social order
• rational approaches to social
  organization
• formal controls
• Occasionally these formal controls fail which can
  cause social disorganization and deviant
  behaviour.

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Chicago School Robert Park

• 1920s and 30s the ideas of Simmel and others
  are adopted and modified.
• Urbanization brings about a new environment, new
  types of people, and new ways of life. Mosaic
  of little worlds which touch but do not overlap
• Led to Human Ecology in which there is an
  application of ideas from the plant and animal
  worlds to the study of urban societies and
  patterns.

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Wirthian Theory

• Suggests that social life in the city is
  characterized by
• Increased crime rates
• Social ills and disorganization
• Caused by
• Population size
• Population density
• Heterogeneity of the population

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• City dwellers must become aloof or emotionally
  buffered in their relationships
• Intense stimulation provided by the city may
  cause physic overload leading to anxiety, etc.
• Fragmentation of social life and anomie can
  develop.
• Urbanites are unsupported in crisis and
  unrestrained in pursuing ego-centred behaviour.
• Increased social incompetence, loneliness, mental
  illness and deviant behaviour.

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Studies of Helpfulness Conflict

• Studies of helpfulness are experiments which
  gauge the reactions of strangers.
• Show that city dwellers are less helpful than
  those in small communities or rural areas.
• Studies of conflict are experiments show that
  both group and interpersonal conflicts are more
  common in larger communities.
• Support Wirthian theory

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Studies of Social Ties Psychological States

• Studies of social ties try to compare the number
  and quality of personal relationships.
• Generally, they show no difference in the quality
  and number of relationships based on community
  size or they show greater integration among city
  dwellers.
• Studies of psychological states show that there
  is as much stress and alienation in small
  communities as larger cities if not more.
• These studies undermine Wirthian Theory.

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Private and Public Worlds

• Public spheres are places where people are
  strangers and must be reserved, careful,
  non-intrusive, and indifferent.
• Sennett claims that we have purposely created a
  divide between the subjective and worldly
  experience and created our cities to maintain
  this divide.
• This avoiding exposure attitude is situational
  behaviour and not a psychological state
  therefore, it says nothing about peoples actions
  and attitudes in the private sphere.

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The Question Can Then Be Raised

• Have people lost the capacity for the deep,
  long-lasting, multifaceted relationship but
  gained the capacity for superficial, fleeting
  relationships?

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Social Interaction and Social Networks in Urban
Settings

• Social Linkages (relationships with friends,
  family, friends-of-friends, etc.) are often very
  complex
• represent the foundations of
• social organization

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• Social network analysis tries to explain the
  structure of social interaction by treating
  persons as points and relationships as connecting
  lines
• This allows the researcher to map out the
  complex reality of the interpersonal worlds
  surrounding specific individuals
• Facilitates not only the mapping of the
  morphology of networks but also the
  quantification of certain key characteristics
  such as connectedness, centrality, proximity, and
  range

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• average in North American cities is about 400
  contacts
• Less than ½ of one persons network knowing one
  another independently of that person
• few of these social ties provide significant
  levels of support and companionship

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Figure 7.1 The Morphology of a husbands social
network. Source Smith and Smith (1978), p. 106
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• Self- help networks often emerge in cities and
  are often the natural neighbour someone who
  helps resolve the problems of others by becoming
  involved in their life
• usually untrained amateurs who may not
  consciously recognize their own role in
  helping others.

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Chicago School

• deterministic ideas of Robert Park
• distinctive feature is the conception of the city
  as a kind of social organism
• Park concluded that order in human communities
  must emerge through the operation of natural
  processes such as dominance, segregation,
  impersonal competition and succession
• somewhat naïve because it was conceived when the
  appeal of social Darwinism and classical economic
  theory was strong

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Central Concept of the Chicago School

• Impersonal competition between individuals
• for favourable locations within the city

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• segregation occurred because different types of
  people are able to afford and live in different
  areas
• economic differentiation was seen as the cause of
  residential segregation, and the local dominance
  of a particular group was attributed to its
  relative competitive power (higher class
  individuals have greater competitive power than
  lower class individuals)

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• succession occurred as richer communities were
  built up, poorer communities deteriorated and the
  relative attractiveness of these communities
  shifted over time

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Ernest Burgess created the Concentric Zone Model
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See page 216 in text
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• Three types of study were produced by the School
  of
• Human Ecologists
• Studies focusing on the process of competition,
  dominance, and succession and their consequences
  for the spatial distribution of populations and
  land use
• Detailed descriptions of the physical features of
  natural areas along with the social economic
  and demographic characteristics of their
  inhabitants
• Studies of the ecological context of specific
  social phenomena such as delinquency,
  prostitution and mental disorders.

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Criticism of the Ecological Approach

• excessive reliance on competition as the basis of
  social organization
• the failure of its general structural concepts
  (such as natural areas and concentric zonation)
  to hold up under comparative examination
• complete exclusion of cultural and motivational
  factors in explaining residential behaviour

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• Walter Firey Social values could and often did
  override impersonal, economic competition as
  the basis for socio-spatial organization

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Reformulations

• Wirth
• synthesis of the effects of urban life on
  individual and social behaviour
• 1st significant shift away from the biotic
  approach

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Hatt

• emphasized that the natural areas, defined as
  distinct places with a homogenous population and
  distinctive social characteristics, could offer a
  useful framework for further social analysis

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Hawley (1950)

• presented the ecological approach as the study of
  the form and development of community structure,
  emphasizing the functional inter-dependence
  within communities that results from the
  collective adaptation to competition

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Schnore (1965)

• able to place human ecology in perspective by
  elaborating in detail the preconditions and
  assumptions implicit in the work of Burgess and
  others
• Suttle (1968), Kearsley (1983), and Warf (1990)
• used this research to work on more modern
  ecological patterns of the city.

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See page 219 in text
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• Many researchers have begun to describe and
  analyze the external characteristics of urban
  communities in ways that are separate from any
  specific theoretical framework
• called abstract empiricism

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Social Interaction in Urban Environments

• Developed from Simmels suggestion that the
  essentials of social organization are to be found
  in the forms of interaction among individuals
• Called interactionist research
• seeks to establish the nature of non-random
  interaction patterns between two or three
  individuals
• nature of interaction is classified according to
  whether it takes place in the context of primary
  or secondary settings

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• Primary relationships- those between family and
  friends
• Secondary relationships- those between
  individuals who are grouped together to achieve a
  particular end (e.g. sports or social clubs)

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• Social Distance differences between people
  based of factors such as class, status, and power
  leading to separation in social life
• less there is between people the greater the
  probability of interaction of some kind
• physical and social distance are intimately
  connected in urban areas