sociology 36 hours

SOC 1020 Lecture Nine

Prof. D. Fasenfest

Urban Society As we become a more urbanized society, most, though not all, of our social problems are centered in the inner cities. There is still a high level of rural poverty in our country, but with the decline of rural populations the highest relative concentration of poverty, crime, and all the other problems we have been studying are now found in our growing cities. Why do you suppose that is? Shaw and McKay argued that cities grow outward in a series of concentric circles. In the early days of the city’s development, all commerce was centered on a few streets…usually a Main Street and a High Street…though those names are usually replaced in larger cities with the names of important local or national persons. Residences develop on the outskirts of these commercial enterprises. As the Industrial Revolution developed factories began to move into these central areas to be near their workers. So, did a multitude of people looking for jobs. For many industries and in many growing industrial cities one’s status was revealed by how far from the workplace you could live, how long you could travel to work. As the cities became overcrowded, unhealthy and dangerous, people with higher earnings or wealth moved into the outlying areas. In a city like Detroit areas like Palmer Woods and Indian Village housed the owners and managers while Grand Boulevard had the homes of mid-level supervisors. Eventually wealthier people moved further away (to the Grosse Pointes and Bloomfield Hills communities) and the cascading expansion represented the choice of wealth versus the limitations of poverty. This process continued until we have what we have today. All this was sustainable until cities began to face a loss of jobs. At first industry moved to the outlying areas to take advantage of lower cost land. Ironically, even as the industrial areas in most cities became dirty, noisy places, the cost of land and construction rose. This left decaying structures which made those close in, working class and poor neighborhoods even darker and more undesirable places to live. Those who could afford it moved out of the cities to growing suburban “bedroom” communities on the outskirts of our cities. In some states urban expansion followed this pattern—for example Western Avenue of Chicago was so named because it was the western edge of a city that soon annexed communities further to the west as it grew. In other states, like Michigan with strong restrictions on annexation, growth was not possible (we only have to look at the anomaly of Highland Park and Hamtramack—independent and self-governing cities—in the heart of Detroit to see how limiting these laws can be). In the end what we have are inner city areas that are run down, polluted, unsafe and unhealthy. Housing in these areas is inadequate and often substandard. Crime rates and poverty are high. The quality of life in these areas is low. If you drive from the center of the city out, you’ll notice that the farther you get from the center, the more money, less pollution and less crime you encounter. This is pretty standard in most cities. Although we have laws the require rental units to be kept at a certain standard of repair, they are not often enforced to the letter, if at all. Rental units in poor communities often get overrun with

rodents and roaches. Plumbing may not work accurately, and furnaces may be faulty. With no other options open to them, the tenants may just stay in these homes. There is often e a cycle in poor urban neighborhoods…demand repairs that make the property unaffordable as landlords raise rents to cover the cost of those repairs, or live with the problems and have shelter, even if it is inadequate. Buying their own home isn’t likely an option, even if they could afford the monthly payments (while most people who pay rent are in effect paying the mortgage on the building, and in some markets a mortgage payment may be less than rent on the property), because they do not have either the credit or the down payment for the purchase. Along with not having the capital for the down payment, banks tend to see these groups and neighborhoods as a poor risk investment making it hard to get approved in these areas. Pollution plays an important role in urban decline. On one hand, older factory neighborhoods have the long-term consequence of polluting industries (layers of soot and high levels of other air-pollutants, excessive ground levels of heavy metals or industrial waste, ground water contamination) that resulted when these actions were not well regulated and the impact on the community not well known. Rents are lower to attract residents who would not live there other than the fact that their poverty leaves them with little choice (and we have seen the health impacts of things like high lead content paint on the walls of these older dwellings). On the other hand, poor neighborhoods are less well equipped (in terms of political or economic clout) to block the location of newer industries that may only pollute in “safe” ways (excessive noise of trucking or warehousing nodes, or the foul smell of waste processing plants). These new “residents” may add to the community’s tax base but make the surrounding residential area less desirable and hasten the out-migration of those who can afford alternatives. Inner cities face job loss for many reasons. As factories close and jobs get outsourced, the inner city is often not able to make the shift to the information age jobs that are needed. This leads to one of two general outcomes. Either a spiraling decline outlined above, or the area becomes revitalized—often referred to as gentrified, or it falls into urban decay. Gentrification happens when poor city areas become desirable to developers and the middle class. As this happens you have an odd mix of successful middle-class families living side by side with impoverished individuals. When property values continue to increase, rentals disappear as it becomes more profitable to sell these rentals to land developers. As high tech, high skilled jobs move in, low skill jobs disappear. The poor are displaced to new neighborhoods…typically those of the working class that are barely hanging on…and this neighborhood falls into disrepair as the cycle continues. The previously poor area has new economic life breathed into it. On the outside it appears that the problems of the inner city have been taken care of. In reality, the problems have simply shifted a few miles down the road. Sometimes these processes take a long time. Cities like Chicago or New York experienced cycles of change as neighborhoods housed the working poor, became derelict as jobs left the area, and then experienced a renaissance as new economic activity attracted a different kind of tenant. Some urban scholars point to counter-cultural activities as an indicator of future gentrifications. Artists and musicians looking for inexpensive space because most are poor enter a declining area. Soon small shops and coffee houses follow, and the area takes on a “hip” label as younger people with more money come to shop and experience an “urban” culture. Housing is run down and cheap and “yuppies” (young, urban pioneers) working in the city buy these

homes and invest great sums to renovate in order to live closer to the offices in which they work, cutting commuting times. And before you know it, the remaining poor plus the original culture pioneers—still poor—can no longer live in these increasingly prosperous communities. Seen in some grand perspective we can summarize the life of our older cities (if they are viewed as successes today) as follows: 1) industry drives growth and builds populations, 2) success creates new peripheral communities for the more affluent, leaving poor and working class families in the older inner city dwellings, 3) industry and commerce leave the city, along with the more successful second generation immigrant children who now populate a growing suburban ring (which some cities can absorb as they grow, others cannot). 4) inner cities house the poor in cheaper, run-down space that attracts alternative uses and often act as incubators for cultural activities, 5) third-generation children from the suburbs with professional jobs “re-colonize” older buildings if there are inner city “clean” office jobs (technology, medicine, finance, law, insurance, etc) and create a process of gentrification, 6) rising desire for inner city life creates higher housing costs, drives out the poor and the city is “reborn”. Cities like Chicago now experience rapid growth with poorer people living on the outskirts. New York City becomes a financial center, and the poor are driven to the further reaches of the city’s limits. Even Detroit experiences a minor resurrection in the core downtown area with its high-priced condos and office buildings—although this is not as extensive as other cities and large pockets of poverty remain, with most of the growth in incomes and property development still in its suburban reaches. But urban America is still characterized by the racial segregation that occurs. Minorities in the US have fewer opportunities for economic success. As a result, they typically are over represented in the populations of the poor inner city. Looking within these cities, you will find that these groups segregate from one another as well. In Detroit, for example, you will find neighborhoods of poor people that have ethnic identities. There are black, Latino, white, middle- eastern and Asian neighborhoods. There are also areas with Serbian and Albanian immigrants. Marx argued that one mechanism to keep the poor from succeeding is to pit them against each other. The struggle for resources leads to fierce competition within the groups, so rather than banding together in solidarity, they tend to blame other groups for their poverty. Cities have other problems as well, that are not linked to poverty. Simmel argued that people in cities have to learn to shut down their perceptions to avoid sensory overload. This leads to a disconnected attitude. We saw the danger of this in the 1980s when a woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death outside of her New York apartment building. Even though she screamed for help in a well-lit area and was heard by most of her neighbors, no one called the police. When interviewed, they all said that they expected someone else to call and didn’t want to get involved. This led to the development of the “bystander effect” theory, which argues that people only help when they have no other option. Cities are complex organizations that have particular histories driven by the activities of the area, the geography of the region and the nature of population change. Cities that started as port cities became nodes of immigrants and the original “melting pots” as wave after wave of immigrants piled up and filled crowded tenements. Industries rose up to take advantage of this population

but sooner or later demands of space and cost drove industries elsewhere and these port cities tended to become financial capitals (think of Boston, New York, San Francisco). Cities that started as junctions in the prairie attracted new residents and new industries after the commodity transit points became overwhelmed by its own population growth. Space permitted the expansion of factories to its outer areas and these cities experienced cycles of expansion and transformation (think of Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City). And finally, cities grow because of population pressures in older cities, starting from nothing to become shiny new destinations that, over time, experience all the problems of older cities (think of Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Dallas and Santa Fe). By 2020 it is estimated that over 85% of our population will live in cities, with over 50% of the population either immigrants from or decedents of immigrants from places other than Europe. The US has reinvented itself many times and will continue to do so in the future—each time defined by the population growth through immigration and the redistribution of that population. Much like the 1800s was characterized by a land-based westward expansion, and the 1900s by the growing industrial expansion building our major cities, the 2000s will be a century of urban concentration and the emergence of a new way of organizing economic activities that will have a major impact on our urban society.