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3. INTELLECTUAL VIEWS ON THE

QUALITY OF URBAN LIFE

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EARLY INTELLECTUAL VIEWS ON URBANIZATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR QUALITY OF LIFE

• How did intellectual, writers, and commentators in the late 19th century city view urbanization?

 • What meanings were ascribed to urbanization

and its consequences? • Was an urban way of life viewed as

something desirable or undesirable?

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SYNOPSIS

• Early urbanization and industrialization generated some uniformly negative images of an urban way of life.

 • The pervading image of urban America was of a

living environment that worsened the human condition.

 • As Reisman observes (1967, p. 149): "The late

nineteenth century industrial city had little to commend it as a human environment."

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Synopsis (con’t)

• Most early writings focused on the disruption and destruction of communal patterns and relationships—that is, close family ties, strong close-knit communities, which were characteristic of rural America.

 •  Fundamentally, city and rural life portrayed as an imagery of

opposites.

 • The American city was considered dirty, noisy, smelly,

crowded, and unattractive in appearance.

 • Rural America attributed with just the opposite of these

qualities.

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Synopsis (con’t)

• Many of these themes captured by German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936).

•  In 1887 published a book called, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft describing two contrasting types of human social life or types of social relationships:

 GEMEINSCHAFT, or "community," which characterized the countryside or rural village and the surrounding agricultural land worked communally by its inhabitants.

 GESELLSCHAFT, or "association," which characterized the large city.

• In response to an industrializing Europe (1815-1914)

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GEMEINSCHAFT social relationships (con’t):

• Social life was characterized by "intimate, private, and exclusive living together."

 • Members were bound by common language and traditions.

 • People bond together because they are alike—common

beliefs and customs

 • They recognized "common goods, common evils, common

friends, and common enemies."

 • A strong sense of "we-ness," or "our-ness."

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GEMEINSCHAFT social relationships:

• Corresponds to the historical and popular notion of “community.”

 •  Human or social relationships that are embodied in family,

kinship groups, and friendship networks. • There is a strong sense of community, distinguished by

common beliefs and values and shared traditions.

• Similar occupations. • One worked together for the common good.

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GESELLSCHAFT social relationships:

• Human relationships distinguished by their competitive and impersonal qualities.

 • More emphasis on individual differences, selfish interests,

even hostility towards others. • Among city dwellers, a belief in the common good is rare. • Ties of family, friends, and neighborhood are of little

significance. • There is a complex division of labor, in which many different

people specialize in many different occupations and depend on others (like organs of the body).

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The Industrialization and the Urbanization of Society

• Resulted in an evolution from a predominantly Gemeinschaft pattern of social relationships to one dominated by Gesellschaft social patterns.

 

• A shift from social organization based on the family and on close neighborly relationships to the social organization characteristics of the capitalist firm, and its formal, bureaucratized and unemotional rules of conduct.

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OTHER COMPARABLE CONTINUUMS:

Charles Cooley in 1909:

• Small village is characterized by "primary" or face-to-face relationships.

• Urban society is characterized by impersonal "secondary" relationships.

•  

Robert Redfield in the 1940s:

• "folk"

• "urban" cultures.

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Durkheim

• French sociologist (1858-1917)

• mechanical solidarity (people united automatically, without thinking): social bonds constructed on likeness, on common beliefs and customs, on common rituals and symbols.

 • organic solidarity (a society based on individual differences,

division of labor and the interplay of specialists).

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TO SOCIAL THEORISTS:

• The city was seen as modern society in microcosm.

 • Thus, the ways of life in urban places were viewed as

harbingers of life in the emerging civilization.

 • “The pull of the idea of the country is towards old ways,

human ways, natural ways. The pull of the idea of the city is towards progress, modernization, development.”

 

William's, The Country and the City (1973).

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THREE FORMAL THEORIES ABOUT THE CITY

AND

THEIR IMPACTS ON SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING OF INDIVIDUALS AND POPULATIONS

 Represent three conflicting views on the effects of urban life on the human condition and

population's well-being.

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• Deterministic Theory of Urban Life (Wirth, late 1930s).

• Compositional Theory (Gans and Lewis, early 1960s)

• Subcultural Theory (Fischer, late 1970s)

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WIRTH'S DETERMINISTIC THEORY OF URBAN LIFE

• The urban place or settlement conceptualized in ecological terms:

LargeDenseOccupied by socially heterogeneous individuals

 • From these ecological characteristics he deduces the

effects of an urban way of life.

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CONSEQUENCE ONE:PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS and INTERPERSONAL ESTRANGEMENT

• Bombardment of stimulation. • People adapt by insulating themselves from other people. • City dwellers become aloof, brusque, and impersonal in their

dealings with others, emotionally buffered in their human relationships.

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• But still some people experience "psychic overload" (Stanley Milgram): irritation, anxiety, and nervous strain.

 • Social bonds that connect people to one another are

loosened--even destroyed and without them people are left both unsupported and unrestrained.

 • This interpersonal estrangement produces a decline of

community cohesion and a corresponding loss of "sense of community."

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IN WIRTH’S WORDS:

"The contacts of the city may indeed be face to

face, but they are nevertheless impersonal,

superficial, transitory and segmental. The

reserve, the indifference and the blasé outlook

which urbanites manifest in their relationships

may thus be regarded as devices of immunizing

themselves against the personal claims and

expectations of others."

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CONSEQUENCE TWO:SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION

• The size, density, and heterogeneity of a population produces a multi-faceted and highly differentiated community.

 

• Why: Because there is more competition, more specialization, division of labor, multiple bureaucracies, and certain locations are better for some activities than others.

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Among the many manifestations: • The spatial segregation of neighborhoods by race, ethnicity,

and income.Resulting in a mosaic of social worlds that touch but do

not interpenetrate • The spatial segregation of different nonresidential land uses

(the diversity of locales--office districts, industrial areas, entertainment districts, retail areas).

 • The diverse places where people conduct their activities: work

in one place, family life in another, recreation in yet another.

• The diverse social circles or networks of people: co-workers, neighbors, friends, and kin/family.

 • A society's diverse social institutions: e.gs.: multiple

government agencies, specialized school systems, multiple bureaucracies.

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THE RESULT: WEAKENED SOCIAL BONDS: • At the community level, people differ so much from each

other in such things as their jobs, their neighborhoods, and their life-styles that moral consensus becomes difficult.

  (Example: The poor are deserving of help by society or

the death penalty is desirable.)

• The differentiation of urban life also weakens the cohesion of the small, intimate, "primary" groups of society, such as family, friends, and neighbors—believed central for social order and individual well-being.

• Why: The beneficial effects of these groups are weakened because they encompass less of an individual's time and individuals can rely on these persons less to satisfy their needs, or feel less controlled by these groups.

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WIRTH ARGUES THAT ANOMIE RESULTS IN:

• A social condition in which the norms—the informal rules and conventions of proper and permissible behavior—are feeble. People do not agree about the norms, do not endorse them, and tend to challenge or ignore them.

 • How much faith do you put on a handshake?

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• In the place of these impersonal checks, formal integration results.That is, rules and regulations for everything and multiple

types of social institutions to enforce them. • But formal integration can never fully replace a communal

order based on consensus and the moral strength of small primary groups (as was the case in the small village or town).

 • Consequently, more anomie must develop in urban than

in nonurban places. • Shedding of social groups results in people left unsupported

to suffer their difficulties alone

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Summary of Wirth

• Thus, Wirth associates an urban way of life with stress, estrangement, individualism, and social disorganization.

 • Psychological level: stress and personal

estrangement.

 • Social disorganization: differentiation and social

isolation.

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Compositional Theory (Gans & Lewis, early 1960s)

• Challenges the Determinist Theory of Wirth• Essence of theory offered in following passage:

 

"Lewis: Social life is not a mass phenomenon. It

occurs for the most part in small groups, within the

family, within neighborhoods, within the church, and so

on. Consequently, the variables of NUMBER, DENSITY,

and HETEROGENEITY are not crucial determinants of

social life or personality. "

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• This theory thinks of city as a "mosaic of social worlds."

 

• Exemplified by enclaves such as immigrant neighborhoods, singles buildings, high-end neighborhoods, child-rearing family dominated neighborhoods, student ghettos.

 

• These private milieus endure even in the most urban of environments. That is, people live in their own social worlds despite the population masses found in cities.

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• Thus, urbanism does not weaken small, primary groups.

 • People are enveloped and protected by their social worlds.

 • It matters little to the average group, whether there are

100 people in the town or 100,000 people.

• Today’s reality: Think about the bigness of the University of Florida

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• Rather, individuals' behavior, well-being, social supports, and social situations are determined by their economic position, cultural characteristics, and their marital and family status.

 • That is, it is the composition of a population not its ecology

or context that matters most

 • NOT by the size, density, and heterogeneity of their cities.

 • Unlike deterministic theory, the viability of a city’s

social worlds (subgroups with common beliefs, life-styles, religions, ethnicity, or way of life) is impervious to ecological factors.

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SUBCULTURAL THEORY (FISCHER, LATE 1970S)

• Urbanism DOES independently affect social life—not, however, by destroying social groups as determinism suggests, but instead by helping to create and strengthen them.

 

• Like compositional theory, subcultural theory maintains that intimate social circles persist in the urban environment.

 

• Like compositional and determinist theories, emphasizes importance of social groups.

 

• In this theory, subcultural groups and social groups, synonymous.

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• However, like determinism, this theory maintains that ecological factors do produce significant effects in the social orders of communities.

 • In contrast to determinism, however, these ecological

factors support the emergence and vitality of distinctive subcultures.

 • Specifically, subcultural theory argues that these social

groups are affected directly by living in an urban area, particularly because of its larger "critical mass."

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Urbanism Helps To Create New Subcultural Groups

• Large communities attract larger numbers of migrants from wider areas than do small towns, who bring with them diverse cultural backgrounds, and thus contribute to the formation of a diverse set of social worlds. 

• Thus, there are greater possibilities of existing subgroups with members having common interests. 

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Urbanism Helps To Create New Subcultural Groups (con’t):

• Large urban size produces the structural differentiation stressed by the determinists—occupational specialization, the rise of specialized institutions, special interest groups, and distinctive land uses.

To each of these structural units are usually attached subcultures.

Examples: doctors, professors, students, white collar workers operate in their own social worlds.

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Urbanism also intensifies subcultures: First Way.

• Because of "critical mass", there is a population size large enough to permit what would otherwise be only a small group of individuals to become a vital active subculture.

Assume that one in every thousand persons is

intensely interested in modern dance.

In a small town of 5,000 that means five such persons. They can only engage in conversation about dance.

BUT in a city of one million, there would be a thousand persons.

Support studios and occasional ballet performances. Similarly, large universities can support diverse

newspapers or clubs.

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Urbanism also intensifies subcultures: Second Way

 

• People in different social worlds often do interact,

but this interaction involves conflict (U.S. citizens

vs. immigrants; town vs. gown). Because of

conflict between social groups, members of these

groups embrace their own social world even more

firmly, thus contributing to its further self-identity.

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Subcultural Theory: Summary• An urban way of life creates and intensifies social groups or

subcultures.

 

• Like compositional theory, emphasizes importance of social worlds or the value of close-knit social groups.

 

• Like determinist theory, an urban way of life has effects on social groups and individuals.

 

• Unlike determinist theory, an urban way of life has beneficial affects.