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This chapter opens with a consideration of eighteenth-century Paris, and three modern-day
global cities: London, New York and Tokyo, using these to prompt the question of what the
urban experience is like, how it is changing, and how is it differentiated across the world. In
the twentieth century observers began to distinguish between towns and cities, the latter
being more cosmopolitan and international, often as a result of cross-national migration to
new cities like Chicago. From the start, attitudes to cities have been polarized, with
assessments ranging from civilized virtue to smoking inferno. Such views found
expression in novels and poetry, much of which focused on the extreme inequalities of
urban settings.
From here, the chapter moves on to outline and compare theories of urbanism. Beginning
with the basic ideas of Weber and Tnnies, introducing Simmels Metropolis and Mental Life
as a Classic Study. We then move on to a full account of the Chicago School urban research,
from which two themes are outlined: the urban ecology approach and urbanism as a way
of life. The ecological approach uses a metaphor adapted from physical science: cities were
organisms which responded to their environmental conditions, a view supported empirically
by the tendency for cities to grow beside sources of water, fertile land or transport
networks. Similarly, within cities themselves there is a natural balance between competing
groups, who often become spatially segregated. The analogy of species in a lake is used to
support this idea.
Urban ecology is associated with the image of a city of concentric rings with the inner city at
its core. Beyond this decaying core the rings are cut into segments which are competed for
by different population subgroups. Hawley later revived this approach by stressing
interdependence between areas rather than the continual competition for scarce resources.
Businesses in the core service the populations of other areas; those populations in turn
provide a labour force. The perspective overall has made enormous contributions, but most
Chicago School work draws very heavily on the US experience and tends to disregard the
importance of interventionist planning and design in the process of urban evolution.
Wirths concept of the urban way of life (presented here as a Classic Study) stresses the
overall effect of the city on social life and in particular the paradox of proximity and
anonymity. In other words, the existence of greater opportunity for social interaction leads
to greater superficiality and instrumentality in those meetings. Again, Wirth was largely
working from the experience of American cities and is thought, even by his close
Polity Press 2013
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TEACHING TOPICS
1. Representations of the city
This topic aims to isolate the main processes and features of the modern city. There is also
an attempt to examine the varying attitudes towards urban living which have accompanied
its development.
2. The Chicago School
The aim here is to place key writers in historical and geographical context. Another key goal
is to demonstrate the continuity between the Chicago School and contemporary urban
sociology.
3. Urban growth and urban decline
This topic stresses the immense contrast between the relative decline in urban living in the
West and the continuing mushrooming of cities in the developing world. The focus is on
corrective policies in the West and on population issues in the developing world.
4. Governing cities
Here the emphasis is on the role of cities as active agents of socio-economic activity, and
the recognition of the emergence of a number of tiers of global cities as described by Sassen
and by Castells. In particular this topic examines the concept of the city as an engine of
regeneration and a site of cultural experience.
ACTIVITIES
Activity 1: Representations of the city
A. Read pages 206-8 on the ideas of Weber, Tnnies and Simmel. Look for the similarities in
their views of urban life. Which, if any, seems to be more positive about the possibilities of
urban living? Why?
B. Read the two passages below. The first is an account of nineteenth-century English
urbanization. The second relates Ebeneezer Howards later enthusiasm for a different kind
of pattern.
Night spread over the coal-town: its prevailing colour was black. Black clouds of
smoke rolled out of the factory chimneys, and the railroad yards, which often cut
clean into the town, mangling the very organism, spread soot and cinders
everywhere. The invention of artificial illuminating gas was an indispensable aid to
this spread: Murdocks invention dates back to the end of the eighteenth century,
and during the next generation its use widened, first in factories, then in homes;
first in big cities, later in small centres; for without its aid work would frequently
have been stopped by smoke and fog. The manufacture of illuminating gas within
the confines of the towns became a characteristic feature: the huge gas tanks
reared their bulk over the urban landscape, great structures, on the scale of a
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Not only transportation and communication, but the segregation of the urban
population tends to facilitate the mobility of the individual man. The processes of
segregation establish moral distances which make the city a mosaic of little worlds
which touch but do not interpenetrate. This makes it possible for individuals to pass
quickly and easily from one moral milieu to another, and encourages the fascinating
but dangerous experiment of living at the same time in several different
contiguous, but otherwise widely separated, worlds. All this tends to give to city life
a superficial and adventitious character; it tends to complicate social relationships
and to produce new and divergent individual types. It introduces, at the same time,
an element of chance and adventure which adds to the stimulus of city life and
gives it, for young and fresh nerves, a peculiar attractiveness. The lure of great cities
is perhaps a consequence of stimulations which act directly upon the reflexes. As a
type of human behaviour it may be explained, like the attraction of the flame for
the moth, as a sort of tropism.
The attraction of the metropolis is due in part, however, to the fact that in the long
run every individual finds somewhere among the varied manifestations of city life
the sort of environment in which he expands and feels at ease; finds, in short, the
moral climate in which his peculiar nature obtains the stimulations that bring his
innate dispositions to full and free expression. It is, I suspect, motives of this kind
which have their basis, not in interest nor even in sentiment, but in something
more fundamental and primitive which draw many, if not most, of the young men
and young women from the security of their homes in the country into the big,
booming confusion and excitement of city life. In a small community it is the normal
man, the man without eccentricity or genius, who seems most likely to succeed.
The small community often tolerates eccentricity. The city, on the contrary,
rewards it. Neither the criminal, the defective, nor the genius has the same
opportunity to develop his innate disposition in a small town that he invariably
finds in a great city.
(Robert Park, Suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the urban
environment, in Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, The City, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 196, pp. 401)
While urbanism, or that complex of traits which makes up the characteristic mode
of life in cities, and urbanization, which denotes the development and extensions of
these factors, are thus not exclusively found in settlements which are cities in the
physical and demographic sense, they do, nevertheless, find their most pronounced
expression in such areas, especially in metropolitan cities. In formulating a
definition of the city it is necessary to exercise caution in order to avoid identifying
urbanism as a way of life with any specific locally or historically conditioned cultural
influences which, though they may significantly affect the specific character of the
community, are not the essential determinants of its character as a city.
It is particularly important to call attention to the danger of confusing urbanism
with industrialism and modern capitalism. The rise of cities in the modern world is
undoubtedly not independent of the emergence of modern power-driven machine
technology, mass production, and capitalistic enterprise; but different as the cities
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B. Read pages 227-32, Urbanization in the developing world, and also the Global Society
Box 6.1 (pages 229-30) on Mumbai. Make notes on the contrasts between the megacities in
developing countries and the way London, New York and Tokyo are portrayed in the
opening paragraphs of the chapter.
C. Now read the sections on pages 236-8. List the ways in which space can act as a thinking
board for broader social changes relating to living more sustainably.
Activity 4: Governing cities
Read pages 238-40 of the text.
A. Study this passage from a Fabian Society pamphlet making the case for elected mayors:
Localities today compete with each other for resources, inward investment and,
indeed, citizens. Whether its Birmingham and London competing for Millennium
lottery monies in Britain, or Liverpool and Valencia competing to build the Ford
Escorts in Europe, or increasingly Tokyo and Derbyshire competing to produce TVs
in the global economy, competition has become a key task for government at the
local level. Thats a change from the pre-Thatcher era and its a change we have to
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Perhaps most important of all, local publics should favour growth and support the
ideology of value-free development. This public attitude reassures investors that
the concrete enticements of a locality will be upheld by future politicians. The
challenge is to connect civic pride to the growth goal, tying the presumed economic
and social benefits of growth in general to growth in the local area. Probably only
partly aware of this, elites generate and sustain the place patriotism of the masses.
According to Boorstin, the competition among cities helped create the booster
spirit as much as the booster spirit helped create the cities.
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ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Is the urban a place or a way of being?
2. Assess the contemporary relevance of the Chicago School for an understanding of the
urban condition.
3. Compare the relative fortunes of urban centres in the First and the Third World since the
1960s.
4. Discuss the view that places have become little more than commodities to be sold to the
highest bidder.
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MAKING CONNECTIONS
Representations of the city
Images of and attitudes towards cities can be gauged with further reference to theories of
globalization in Chapter 4. The impact of urban life on the environment is tackled in Chapter
5 and the importance and power of visual representations can be further appreciated after
some study of media influence (Chapter 18).
The Chicago School
The emphasis on the fate of the individual in an urban environment leads to obvious
parallels with the interactionist paradigm and the structuring of space and time, both the
subject of Chapter 8. The Chicago School has also come to stand for a particular tradition of
fieldwork and could therefore be used as an illustration in relation to Chapter 2.
Urban growth and urban decline
The experience of the poor and homeless of both developed and developing countries can
be used to link into the chapters on poverty and global inequality (Chapters 13 and 14). The
general problems of the contemporary city also feature in the context of environmental
risks in Chapter 5.
The importance of place
Once again the idea of spacetime as constitutive ties this topic back to Chapter 8; it also
raises important questions about the role of localities in political and economic decisionmaking. One might want to consider especially the debates about political and social
movements discussed in Chapter 22.
SAMPLE SESSION
Governing cities
Aims: To demonstrate the strategies and techniques employed in the marketing of cities.
Outcome: By the end of the session students will be able to:
1. Articulate reasons for the practice of place marketing.
2. Apply many of the techniques to a specific example.
3. Locate their own decisions about location and migration within the debates about
place.
Preparatory tasks
Students will divide into two groups and each group will be given a place (a city or a region
is best) to sell. The groups should read thoroughly the boxed inset about the staging of the
2012 Olympic Games in London (pages 241-2). In addition, they should access background
information and publicity material from the cities that competed to host the 2012
Olympics. They should then research and prepare material for presentations: one group
taking the role of the organizing committee reassuring London taxpayers of the benefits
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