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Population, Urbanization, and Environment15

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• Why should we worry about the rapid rate of global population increase?

• What makes city and rural living different?

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• How is the state of the natural environment a social issue?

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All across the Great Plains, towns are hanging on by a thread. This chapter investigates population patterns, explaining why people move from place to place, why some cities get so large, and why small towns sometimes die. It will also look at the effects on the physical environ- ment of population change and our way of life.

Demography: The Study of Population When humans first began to cultivate plants some 12,000 years ago, Earth’s entire Homo sapiens population was about 5 million, or about the number of people living in Colorado today. Very slow growth pushed the total in 1 C.E. to perhaps 300 million, or about the popu- lation of the United States today.

Starting around 1750, world population began to spike upward. We are currently adding nearly 83 million people to the planet each year; the world now holds 6.8 billion people.

The causes and consequences of this drama are the focus of demography, the study of human population. Demography (from the Greek, meaning “description of people”) is a cousin of sociology that analyzes the size and composition of a population and studies how and why people move from place to place. Demographers not only collect statistics but also raise important questions about the effects of population growth and suggest how it might be controlled. The following sections present basic demographic concepts.

Fertility The study of human population begins with how many people are born. Fertility is the incidence of childbearing in a country’s population. During a woman’s childbearing years, from the onset of menstruation (typically in the early teens) to menopause (usually in the late for- ties), she is capable of bearing more than twenty children. But fecundity, or maximum possible childbearing, is sharply reduced by cultural norms, finances, and personal choice.

Demographers describe fertility using the crude birth rate, the number of live births in a given year for every 1,000 people in a popu- lation. To calculate a crude birth rate, divide the number of live births in a year by the total population and multiply the result by 1,000. In the United States in 2008, there were 4.25 million live births in a pop- ulation of 304 million, yielding a crude birth rate of 14.0 (Hamil- ton, Martin, & Ventura, 2010).

January 18, Coshocton County, Ohio. Having just finished off the mountains of meat and potatoes that make up a typical Amish meal, our group of college stu- dents has gathered in the living room of Jacob and Anna

Raber, members of this rural Amish community. Anna, a mother of four, is telling us about Amish life. “Most of the women I know have five or six children,” she says with a smile, “but certainly not everybody—some have eleven or twelve!”

446 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

Chapter Overview This chapter explores three related dimensions of social change: population dynamics, urbanization, and increasing threats to the natural environment.

Looking for a new place to live after you finish college? Crosby, North

Dakota, would really like you to call it home. The town’s officials will do more than welcome

you—they will give you a free piece of land on which to build a house. As a bonus, they will

throw in a free membership in the local country club.

The old cattle town of Ellsworth, Kansas, also wants you. The town leaders will match

Crosby’s offer of free land and go one better, giving you $1,000 cash toward your down pay-

ment on a new home.

Perhaps the best deal of all is found in Plainville, another small Kansas town. In addition

to free land, you can forget about property taxes for the next ten years!

Why are these towns so eager to attract new residents? The answer is that they are all in

the Great Plains, the region of the United States extending from North Dakota all the way

down to Texas that has lost much of its population in recent decades. The governments of Crosby (current popula-

tion 1,100), Ellsworth (2,500), and Plainville (2,000) are offering these incentives because they are worried that

unless there is a turnaround, their towns may disappear like hundreds of other nearby communities already have

(Greene, 2005).

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A country’s birth rate is described as “crude” because it is based on the entire population, not just women in their childbearing years. In addition, this measure ignores differences among various cate- gories of the population: Fertility among the Amish, for example, is quite high, and fertility among Asian Americans is low. But the meas- ure is easy to calculate and allows rough comparisons of the fertility of one country or region to others. Part (a) of Figure 15–1 shows that compared to the rest of the world, the crude birth rate of North Americans is low.

Mortality Population size also reflects mortality, the incidence of death in a coun- try’s population. To measure mortality, demographers use the crude death rate, the number of deaths in a given year for every 1,000 people in a population. This time, we take the number of deaths in a year, divide by the total population, and multiply the result by 1,000. In 2008, there were 2.45 million deaths in the U.S. population of 304 million, yield- ing a crude death rate of 8.1 (Tejada-Vera & Sutton, 2009). Part (a) of Figure 15–1 shows that in global context, this rate is about average.

A third useful demographic measure is the infant mortality rate, the number of deaths among infants under one year of age for each 1,000 live births in a given year. To compute infant mortality, divide

the number of deaths of children under one year of age by the num- ber of live births during the same year and multiply the result by 1,000. In 2008, there were 27,600 infant deaths and 4.25 million live births in the United States. Dividing the first number by the second and multiplying the result by 1,000 yields an infant mortality rate of 6.49. Part (b) of Figure 15–1 indicates that by world standards, North American infant mortality is very low.

But remember the differences among various categories of peo- ple. For example, African Americans, with three times the burden of poverty compared to whites, have an infant mortality rate of 12.9, more than twice the rate for non-Hispanic whites of 5.7.

Low infant mortality greatly raises life expectancy, the average life span of a country’s population. U.S. males born in 2007 can expect to live 75.4 years, and females can look forward to 80.4 years. As part (c) of Figure 15–1 shows, life expectancy for North Americans is twenty- three years greater than that typical of low-income countries of Africa.

Migration Population size is also affected by migration, the movement of people into and out of a specified territory. Movement into a territory, or immigration, is measured as an in-migration rate, calculated as the number of people entering an area for every 1,000 people in the

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 447

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FIGURE 15–1 (a) Crude Birth Rates and Crude Death Rates, (b) Infant Mortality Rates, and (c) Life Expectancy around the World, 2009

By world standards, North America has a low birth rate, an average death rate, a very low infant mortality rate, and high life expectancy. 1 United States and Canada. 2 Australia, New Zealand, and South Pacific Islands.

Source: Population Reference Bureau (2009).

Global Snapshot

demography the study of human population

fertility the incidence of childbearing in a country’s population

crude birth rate the number of live births in a given year for every 1,000 people in a population

mortality the incidence of death in a country’s population

crude death rate the number of deaths in a given year for every 1,000 people in a population

infant mortality rate the number of deaths among infants under one year of age for each 1,000 live births in a given year

life expectancy the average life span of a country’s population

migration the movement of people into and out of a specified territory

sex ratio (p. 448) the number of males for every 100 females in a nation’s population

age-sex pyramid (p. 448) a graphic representation of the age and sex of a population

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population. Movement out of a territory, or emigration, is measured in terms of an out-migration rate, the number leaving for every 1,000 people. Both types of migration usually happen at the same time; the difference is the net migration rate.

All nations experience some degree of internal migration, that is, movement within their borders from one region to another. National Map 15–1 shows where the U.S. population is moving and the places being left behind (as suggested by the chapter opening, notice the heavy losses in the Plains States in the middle of the country).

Migration is sometimes voluntary, as when people leave a small town to move to a larger city. In such cases, “push-pull” factors are usually at work: A lack of jobs “pushes” people to move, and more opportunity elsewhere “pulls” people to someplace new. Migration can also be involuntary, such as the forced transport of 10 million Africans to the Western Hemisphere as slaves or when Hurricane Katrina caused tens of thousands of people to flee New Orleans.

Population Growth Fertility, mortality, and migration all affect the size of a society’s pop- ulation. In general, rich nations (such as the United States) grow almost as much from immigration as from natural increase; poorer nations (such as Pakistan) grow almost entirely from natural increase.

To calculate a population’s natural growth rate, demographers subtract the crude death rate from the crude birth rate. The natural growth rate of the U.S. population in 2008 was 5.9 per 1,000 (the crude birth rate of 14.0 minus the crude death rate of 8.1), or about 0.6 percent annual growth.

Global Map 15–1 shows that population growth in the United States and other high-income nations is well below the world average

of 1.2 percent. Earth’s low-growth continents are Europe (currently posting no growth) and North America (increasing by 0.6 percent). Near the global average are Oceania (1.1 percent), Asia (1.2 percent), and Latin America (1.4 percent). The highest-growth region of the world is Africa (2.4 percent).

A handy rule for estimating population growth is to divide a soci- ety’s population growth into the number 70; this yields the doubling time in years. Thus an annual growth rate of 2 percent (found in parts of Latin America) doubles a population in thirty-five years, and a 3 percent growth rate (found in some countries in Africa) drops the doubling time to just twenty-three years. The rapid population growth of the poorest countries is deeply troubling because these countries can barely support the populations they have now.

Population Composition Demographers also study the makeup of a society’s population at a given point in time. One variable is the sex ratio, the number of males for every 100 females in a nation’s population. In 2008, the sex ratio in the United States was 97, or 97 males for every 100 females. Sex ratios are ordinarily below 100 because, on average, women outlive men. Because Plainville, Kansas, has an aging population, its sex ratio is 89, or 89 males for every 100 females. In India, however, the sex ratio is 108 because parents value sons more than daughters and may either abort a female fetus or, after birth, give more care to a male infant, rais- ing the odds that a female child will die.

A more complex measure is the age-sex pyramid, a graphic repre- sentation of the age and sex of a population. Figure 15–2 on page 450 presents the age-sex pyramids for the United States and Mexico. Higher death rates as people age give these figures a rough pyramid shape. In the

448 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

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Gain 20% to 29.9% Gain up to 19.9% Loss up to 4.9% Loss 5% to 9.9% Loss more than 9.9%

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HAWAII

Cheryl Richardson, age 36, has just moved to Las Vegas to work in the expanding tourism industry, which has boosted the region’s population.

Tom and Ellen Posten, in their sixties, live in Wichita County, Kansas; like many other families in the area, their children have all moved out of the county in search of better jobs.

Seeing Ourselves NATIONAL MAP 15–1 Population Change across the United States

This map shows that since 2000, population has been moving from the heartland of the United States toward the coasts. What do you think is causing this internal migration? What categories of people do you think remain in counties that are losing population?

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2009).

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U.S. pyramid, the bulge near the middle reflects the high birth rates during the “baby boom” from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. The contraction for people in their twenties and thirties reflects the sub- sequent “baby bust.” The birth rate of 14.0 in 2008 is still well below its high of 25.3 in 1957.

Comparing the U.S. and Mexican age-sex pyramids shows dif- ferent demographic trends. The pyramid for Mexico, like that of other lower-income nations, is wide at the bottom (reflecting higher birth rates) and narrows quickly by what we would call middle age (due to higher mortality). In short, Mexico is a much younger society,

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 449

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Amat Al-Sharafi, age 35, has four children and lives in Yemen, a country where the birth rate is high and population is rapidly increasing.

Amélie Bouchard, age 34, lives in Canada, a nation with a low birth rate and slowly increasing population.

MONT. KOSOVO

Window on the World GLOBAL MAP 15–1 Population Growth in Global Perspective

The richest countries of the world—including the United States, Canada, and the nations of Europe—have growth rates below 1 percent. The nations of Latin America and Asia typically have growth rates around 1.5 percent, a rate that doubles a population in forty-seven years. Africa has an overall growth rate of 2.4 percent (despite only small increases in countries with a high rate of AIDS), which cuts the doubling time to twenty-nine years. In global perspective, we see that a society’s standard of living is closely related to its rate of population growth: Population is rising fastest in the world regions that can least afford to support more people.

Source: Population Reference Bureau (2009).

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with a median age of twenty-six, compared to thirty-seven in the United States. With a larger share of women still in their child- bearing years, therefore, Mexico’s crude birth rate (19) is half again the size of our own (14.0), and its annual rate of population growth (1.1 percent) is almost twice the U.S. rate (0.6 percent).

History and Theory of Population Growth In the past, people wanted large families because human labor was the key to productivity. In addition, until rubber condoms were invented in the mid-1800s, preventing pregnancy was uncertain at best. But high death rates from infectious diseases put a constant brake on population growth.

A major demographic shift began about 1750 as the world’s pop- ulation turned upward, reaching the 1 billion mark by 1800. This milestone (which took all of human history to reach) was matched barely a century later in 1930, when a second billion people were added to the planet. In other words, not only was population increas- ing, but the rate of growth was accelerating. Global population reached 3 billion by 1962 (just thirty-two years later) and 4 billion by

1974 (only twelve years later). The rate of world population increase has slowed recently, but the planet passed the 5 billion mark in 1987 and the 6 billion mark in 1999 and now stands at 6.8 billion. In no previous century did the world’s population even double. In the twentieth century, it quadrupled.

Currently, the world is gaining almost 83 million people each year; 98 percent of this increase is in poor countries. Experts predict that Earth’s population will be more than 9 billion in 2050 (United Nations Population Division, 2010). Given the world’s troubles feed- ing its present population, such an increase is a matter of urgent concern.

Malthusian Theory The sudden population growth 250 years ago sparked the develop- ment of demography. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), an Eng- lish economist and clergyman, warned that rapid population increase would lead to social chaos. Malthus (1926, orig. 1798) calculated that population would increase in what mathematicians call a geometric progression, illustrated by the series of numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and so on. At such a rate, Malthus concluded, world population would soon soar out of control.

450 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

FemaleMale

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10–19

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The population pyramid for high-income nations has a more “boxy” shape due to relatively low birth and death rates.

Lower-income nations have a more pronounced pyramid shape due to relatively high birth and death rates.

FIGURE 15–2 Age-Sex Population Pyramids for the United States and Mexico, 2010 By looking at the shape of a country’s population pyramid, you can tell its level of economic development and predict future levels of population increase. Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2010).

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Food production would also increase, Malthus explained, but only in an arithmetic progression (as in the series 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so on) because even with new agricultural technology, farmland is lim- ited. Thus Malthus presented a troubling vision of the future: people reproducing beyond what the planet could feed, leading ultimately to widespread starvation and war over what resources were left.

Malthus recognized that artificial birth control or abstaining from sex might change his prediction. But he considered one morally wrong and the other impractical. Famine and war therefore stalked humanity in Malthus’s mind, and he was justly known as “the dismal parson.”

CRITICAL REVIEW Fortunately, Malthus’s prediction was flawed. First, by 1850, the European birth rate began to drop, partly because with industrialization, children were becoming an economic liability rather than an asset and partly because peo- ple began using artificial birth control. Second, Malthus underes- timated human ingenuity: Modern irrigation techniques, fertilizers, and pesticides have increased farm production far more than he could have imagined.

Some people criticized Malthus for ignoring the role of social inequality in world abundance and famine. For example, Karl Marx (1967, orig. 1867) objected to his view of suffering as a “law of nature” rather than the curse of capitalism. More recently, “critical demographers” have claimed that saying poverty is caused by a high birth rate in low-income countries amounts to blaming the victims. On the contrary, they see global inequality as the real issue (Horton, 1999; Kuumba, 1999).

Still, Malthus offers an important lesson. Habitable land, clean water, and fresh air are limited resources, and increased economic productivity has taken a heavy toll on the natural envi- ronment. In addition, medical advances have lowered death rates, pushing up world population. In principle, of course, no level of population growth can go on forever. People everywhere must become aware of the dangers of population increase.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING What did Malthus predict about human population increase? About food production? What was his overall conclusion?

Demographic Transition Theory A more complex analysis of population change is demographic tran- sition theory, a thesis that links population patterns to a society’s level of technological development. Figure 15–3 on page 452 shows the demographic consequences at four levels of technological develop- ment. Preindustrial, agrarian societies (Stage 1) have high birth rates because of the economic value of children and the absence of birth control. Death rates are also high due to low living standards and

limited medical technology. Outbreaks of disease cancel out births, so population rises and falls with only a modest overall increase. This was the case for thousands of years in Europe before the Industrial Revolution.

Stage 2, the onset of industrialization, brings a demographic tran- sition as death rates fall due to greater food supplies and scientific medicine. But birth rates remain high, resulting in rapid population growth. It was during Europe’s Stage 2 that Malthus formulated his ideas, which accounts for his pessimistic view of the future. The world’s poorest countries today are in this high-growth stage.

In Stage 3, a mature industrial economy, the birth rate drops, curbing population growth once again. Fertility falls because most

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 451

This street scene in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, conveys the vision of the future found in the work of Thomas Robert Malthus, who feared that population increase would overwhelm the world’s resources. Can you explain why Malthus had such a serious concern about population? How is demographic transition theory a more hopeful analysis?

Using the age-sex pyramid for the United States shown in Figure 15–2, why do you think many people are concerned that there will not be enough workers to pay for the retirement of the baby boom generation? How does the pyramid shape change as more and more baby boomers enter retirement?

Seeing Sociology in Everyday Life

demographic transition theory a thesis that links population patterns to a society’s level of technological development

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children survive to adulthood, so fewer are needed, and because high living standards make raising children expensive. In short, affluence transforms children from economic assets into economic liabilities. Smaller families, made possible by effective birth control, are also favored by women working outside the home. As birth rates follow death rates downward, population growth slows further.

Stage 4 corresponds to a postindustrial economy in which the demographic transition is complete. The birth rate keeps falling, partly because dual-income couples gradually become the norm and partly because the cost of raising and schooling children continues to increase. This trend, coupled with steady death rates, means that population grows only very slowly or even decreases. This is the case today in Japan, Europe, and the United States.

CRITICAL REVIEW Demographic transition theory sug- gests that the key to population control lies in technology. Instead of the runaway population increase feared by Malthus, this the- ory sees technology slowing growth and spreading material plenty.

Demographic transition theory is linked to modernization the- ory, one approach to global development discussed in Chapter 9 (“Global Stratification”). Modernization theorists are optimistic that poor countries will solve their population problems as they industrialize. But critics, notably dependency theorists, strongly disagree. Unless there is a redistribution of global resources, they maintain, our planet will become increasingly divided into afflu- ent “haves,” enjoying low population growth, and poor “have- nots,” struggling in vain to feed more and more people.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING Explain the four stages of demographic transition theory.

Global Population Today: A Brief Survey What can we say about population in today’s world? Drawing on the discussion so far, we can identify important patterns and reach several conclusions.

The Low-Growth North

When the Industrial Revolution began in the Northern Hemi- sphere, population growth in Western Europe and North America was a high 3 percent annually. But in the centuries since, the growth rate has steadily declined, and in 1970, it fell below 1 percent. As our postindustrial society settles into Stage 4, the U.S. birth rate is at about the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, a point demographers call zero popula- tion growth, the rate of reproduction that maintains popula-

tion at a steady level. More than seventy nations, almost all of them rich, are at or below the point of zero population growth.

Among the factors that serve to hold down population in these postindustrial societies are the high proportion of men and women in the labor force, the rising costs of raising children, trends toward later marriage and singlehood, and the widespread use of contra- ceptives and abortion.

In high-income nations, then, population increase is not the pressing problem that it is in poor countries. On the contrary, many governments in high-income countries are concerned about a future problem of underpopulation because declining population size may be difficult to reverse and also because the swelling ranks of the elderly will have fewer and fewer young people to look to for support (Kent & Mather, 2002; United Nations Population Divi- sion, 2009).

The High-Growth South

Population is a critical problem in poor nations of the Southern Hemi- sphere. No nation in the world lacks industrial technology entirely; demographic transition theory’s Stage 1 applies only to remote rural areas of low-income nations. But much of Latin America, Africa, and Asia is at Stage 2, with mixed agrarian and industrial economies. Advanced medical technology, supplied by rich societies, has sharply reduced death rates, but birth rates remain high. This is why poor soci- eties now account for two-thirds of Earth’s people and 98 percent of global population increase.

In poor countries around the world, birth rates have fallen from an average of about six children per woman in 1950 to three or four today. But fertility this high will only intensify global poverty. That is why leaders in the battle against global poverty point to the impor- tance of reducing fertility rates in low-income nations. Notice, too, that

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452 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

Birth Rate Death Rate

Natural Increase

Level of Technology

Population Growth

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4

Preindustrial Early Industrial MatureIndustrial Postindustrial

Very Slow Rapid Slowing Very Slow

The United States is in this historical stage, with both a low birth rate and a low death rate.

FIGURE 15–3 Demographic Transition Theory Demographic transition theory links population change to a society’s level of technological development.

“Sixteen Impacts of Population Growth” by Lester R. Brown, Gary Gardner, and Brian Halweil on mysoclab.com

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a key element in controlling world population growth is improving the status of women. Why? Because of this sim- ple truth: Give women more life choices, and they will have fewer children. History has shown that women who are free to decide when and where to marry, bear children as a matter of choice, and have access to education and to good jobs will limit their own fertility (Axinn & Barber, 2001; Roudi-Fahimi & Kent, 2007).

The Demographic Divide

High- and low-income nations display very different pop- ulation dynamics, a gap that is sometimes called the demographic divide. In Italy, a high-income, very low growth nation, women average just over one child in their lifetimes. Such a low birth rate means that the number of annual births is actually less than the number of deaths. This means that at the moment, Italy is actually losing population. Looking ahead to 2050 and even assuming some gains from immigration, Italy’s population is pro- jected to be about the same as it is today. The share of elderly people in Italy—now 20 percent—will only increase as time goes on.

Look at how different the patterns are in a low- income nation such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa. There women still have an average of six to seven children, so even with a high mortality rate, this nation’s popula- tion will triple by 2050. The share of elderly people is extremely low—about 3 percent—and half the country’s people are below the age of fifteen. With such a high growth rate, it is no surprise that the problem of poverty is bad and getting worse: About three- fourths of the people are undernourished (Population Reference Bureau, 2009).

In sum, a demographic divide now separates rich countries with low birth rates and aging populations from poor countries with high birth rates and very young populations. Just as humanity has devised ways to reduce deaths around the world, so it must now bring down population growth, especially in poor countries where projections suggest a future as bleak as that imagined by Thomas Malthus cen- turies ago.

China stands out as a nation that that has taken a strong stand on reducing the rate of population increase. That country’s one-child policy, enacted back in the 1970s, has reduced China’s potential pop- ulation by about 250 million. Yet as the Thinking About Diversity box on page 454 explains, this policy has been controversial.

In much of the world today, mortality is falling. To limit popu- lation increase, the world—especially poor nations—must control births as successfully as it is fending off deaths.

Urbanization: The Growth of Cities

October 8, Hong Kong. The cable train grinds to the top of Victoria Peak, where we behold one of the world’s most spectacular vistas: the city of Hong Kong at night. A million bright, colorful lights ring the harbor

as ships, ferries, and traditional Chinese junks churn by. Few cities match Hong Kong for sheer energy: This small city is as economically productive as the state of Wisconsin or the nation of Finland. We could sit here for hours entranced by the spec- tacle of Hong Kong.

Throughout most of human history, the sights and sounds of great cities such as Hong Kong, New York, and Paris were simply unimaginable. Our distant ancestors lived in small, nomadic groups, moving from place to place as they depleted vegetation or hunted migratory game. The small settlements that marked the emergence of civilization in the Middle East some 12,000 years ago held only a small fraction of Earth’s people. Today, the largest three or four cities of the world hold as many people as the entire planet did back then.

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 453

Fertility in the United States has fallen during the past century and is now quite low. But some categories of the U.S. population have much higher fertility rates. One example is the Amish, a religious society living in rural areas of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other states. It is common for Amish couples to have five, six, or more children. Why do you think the Amish favor large families?

Typically, immigrants are younger than most people in their new country. What is the likely effect of high immigration on a country’s ability to support more and more older people?

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zero population growth the rate of reproduction that maintains population at a steady level

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454 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

THINKING ABOUT DIVERSITY: RACE, CLASS, & GENDER

What’s Happened to the Girls? China’s One-Child Policy

The parents had argued for hours. But the man was determined and the woman was exhausted. The father wrestled the sleeping baby girl from the mother’s arms. The decision was now made; the girl had to go. The father put several extra lay- ers of clothing on his daughter and lay the new- born girl in a cardboard box lined with blankets. Next to her, he placed a small bottle of milk. He walked off into the dark night toward the distant village, leaving behind the sobbing of his beloved wife—the baby’s mother—who cried out, “Please, I beg you, bring back my baby!”

Yet in her heart, she too knew that this must be done. Half an hour later, the father arrived in the village and found his way to the local school. For the last time, he kissed his daughter good- bye. He set her makeshift crib on the steps of the school’s front entrance, knowing that when dawn broke in an hour or so, she would be found and cared for. With tears in his eyes, he said a quick prayer to his ancestors to keep the baby safe from harm. Then he turned and again disappeared into the night, knowing that he would never see or hear from her again.

This story may be heartbreaking, but it is one that has occurred tens of thousands of times in China. What would prompt parents to give up a child? Why would a father abandon his daughter in a public place? The answer lies in China’s population control policy and the nation’s cultural traditions.

Back in the 1970s, the high Chinese birth rate was fueling an extremely rapid population increase. Government leaders could see that the country’s economic development depended on controlling population growth. As a result, they passed a law stating that a family can have only one child. Families who follow the one-child policy can expect rewards such as a better job, a higher salary, and maybe even a larger apartment. On the other hand, parents who violate the law by having a second child face a stiff fine, and their second child may not be eligible for educational and health care benefits.

The government actively promotes the one- child message in the mass media, in popular songs, and in the schools. But education is not the government’s only tactic—enforcement offi- cials can be found in most neighborhoods and workplaces. Most Chinese willingly comply with the policy, praising it as good for the country. Those who do not must face the consequences.

Modern China is determined to control pop- ulation increase. But China is also a country steeped in a tradition of male dominance. If gov- ernment rules permit only one child, most fami- lies would prefer a boy. Why? Parents see boys as a better investment because sons will carry on the family name and must care for their aging parents. On the other hand, girls will end up car- ing for their husbands’ parents, leading most Chinese to see raising daughters as a waste of precious resources. The Chinese government has expanded women’s rights and opportuni- ties, but patriarchal traditions are deeply rooted in the country’s history, and as is true every- where, attitudes change slowly.

Around the world, the one-child policy has attracted both praise and condemnation. On the positive side, analysts agree that it has suc- ceeded in its goal of reducing the rate of popula- tion increase. This trend, in turn, has helped raise living standards and lifted China to the ranks of

middle-income nations. Many one-child families are happy with the added income from women who now work outside the home, and parents now have more to spend on a child’s schooling.

But the one-child policy also has a dark side, shown in the story that began this box. Since the law was passed, as many as 1 million girls have “disappeared.” In some cases, par- ents who learn that the woman is carrying a female fetus may choose abortion so they can “try again.” In other cases, family members decide to kill a female infant soon after birth. In still other cases, girls survive but are never recorded in the birth statistics so that they grow up as “noncitizens” who can never go to school or receive treatment at a local health clinic. Finally, some parents, like those described ear- lier, give up or abandon their daughter in the hope that the child may find a home elsewhere.

China’s one-child policy has certainly held population increase in check. But it has had a dra- matic toll on the female population of China. In one recent year, the nation’s birth records showed almost 1 million fewer girls than boys. The Chinese population is now about 250 million lower than it would have been without the one-child policy, but it is also steadily becoming more and more male.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. Point to the reasons China’s one-child policy has attracted praise and also blame. On balance, do you think this is a good policy? Can you think of a bet- ter way to control population? Explain.

2. What about cases where parents think they can afford additional chil- dren? Should family size be a cou- ple’s decision? Or does government have a responsibility to look out for the entire country’s well-being?

3. Do you now understand why almost all of the babies U.S. parents adopt from China are girls?

Sources: Hesketh & Lu (2005), Baochang et al. (2007), and Yardley (2008).

China’s one-child policy is advertised on billboards throughout the country.

With global population increasing, would you support expanding the one-child policy to other countries? Why or why not?

Seeing Sociology in Everyday Life

As China’s economy continues to grow, what would demographic transition theory predict about that nation’s birth rate?

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Urbanization is the concentration of population into cities. Urbanization both redistributes population within a society and transforms many patterns of social life. We will trace these changes in terms of three urban revolutions: the emergence of cities begin- ning 10,000 years ago, the development of industrial cities after 1750, and the explosive growth of cities in poor countries today.

The Evolution of Cities Cities are a relatively new development in human history. Only about 12,000 years ago did our ancestors begin founding permanent settle- ments, which paved the way for the first urban revolution.

The First Cities

Hunting and gathering forced people to move all the time; however, once our ancestors discovered how to domesticate animals and cul- tivate crops, they were able to stay in one place. Raising their own food also created a material surplus, which freed some people from food production and allowed them to build shelters, make tools, weave cloth, and take part in religious rituals. The emergence of cities led to both specialization and higher living standards.

The first city that we know of was Jericho, which lies to the north of the Dead Sea in what is now the West Bank. When first settled 10,000 years ago, it was home to only 600 people. But as the cen- turies passed, cities grew to tens of thousands of people and became the centers of vast empires. By 3000 B.C.E., Egyptian cities flourished, as did cities in China about 2000 B.C.E. and in Central and South America about 1500 B.C.E. In North America, however, only a few Native American societies formed settlements; widespread urban- ization did not take place until the arrival of European settlers in the seventeenth century.

Preindustrial European Cities

European cities date back some 5,000 years to the Greeks and, later, the Romans, both of whom formed great empires and founded cities across Europe, including Vienna, Paris, and London. With the fall of the Roman Empire, the so-called Dark Ages began as people with- drew within defensive walled settlements and warlords battled for territory. Only in the eleventh century did Europe become more peaceful; trade flourished once again, allowing cities to grow.

Medieval cities were quite different from those familiar to us today. Beneath towering cathedrals, the narrow, winding streets of London, Brussels, and Florence teemed with merchants, artisans, priests, peddlers, jugglers, nobles, and servants. Occupational groups such as bakers, carpenters, and metalworkers clustered in distinct sections or “quarters.” Ethnicity also defined communities as people sought to keep out those who differed from themselves. The term “ghetto” (from the Italian word borghetto, meaning “outside the city

walls”) was first used to describe the neighborhood into which the Jews of Venice were segregated.

Industrial European Cities

As the Middle Ages came to a close, steadily increasing commerce enriched a new urban middle class called the bourgeoisie (French, meaning “townspeople”). Earning more and more money, the bour- geoisie soon rivaled the hereditary nobility.

By about 1750, the Industrial Revolution triggered a second urban revolution, first in Europe and then in North America. The tremendous productive power of factories caused cities to grow big- ger than ever before. London, the largest European city, reached 550,000 people by 1700 and exploded to 6.5 million by 1900 (A. F. Weber, 1963, orig. 1899; Chandler & Fox, 1974).

Cities not only grew but changed shape as well. Older winding streets gave way to broad, straight boulevards to handle the increas- ing flow of commercial traffic. Steam and electric trolleys soon criss- crossed the expanding cities. Because land was now a commodity to be bought and sold, developers divided cities into regular-sized lots (Mumford, 1961). The center of the city was no longer the cathedral but a bustling central business district filled with banks, retail stores, and tall office buildings.

With a new focus on business, cities became ever more crowded and impersonal. Crime rates rose. Especially at the outset, a few industrialists lived in grand style, but most men, women, and chil- dren barely survived by working in factories.

Organized efforts by workers eventually brought improvements to the workplace, better housing, and the right to vote. Public serv- ices such as water, sewer systems, and electricity further improved urban living. Today, some urbanites still live in poverty, but a rising standard of living has partly fulfilled the city’s historical promise of a better life.

The Growth of U.S. Cities As noted, most of the Native Americans who inhabited North Amer- ica for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans were migra- tory people who formed few permanent settlements. The spread of villages and towns came after European colonization.

Colonial Settlement, 1565–1800

In 1565, the Spanish built a settlement at Saint Augustine, Florida, and in 1607, the English founded Jamestown, Virginia. However, the first lasting settlement came in 1624 when the Dutch established New Amsterdam, later renamed New York.

New York and Boston (founded by the English in 1630) started out as tiny villages in a vast wilderness. They resembled medieval towns in Europe, with narrow, winding streets that still curve through

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 455

urbanization the concentration of population into cities

As the sections describing preindustrial and industrial cities explain, the size and shape of a city provides clues to a soci- ety’s technology and culture.

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lower Manhattan and downtown Boston. When the first census was completed in 1790, as Table 15–1 shows, just 5 percent of the nation’s people lived in cities.

Urban Expansion, 1800–1860

Early in the nineteenth century, towns sprang up along the trans- portation routes that opened the American West. By 1860, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago were all changing the face of the Mid- west, and about one-fifth of the U.S. population lived in cities.

Urban expansion was greatest in the northern states; New York City, for example, had ten times the population of Charleston, South Carolina. The evolution of the United States into the industrial-urban North and the agrarian-rural South was one major cause of the Civil War (Schlesinger, 1969).

The Metropolitan Era, 1860–1950

The Civil War (1861–1865) gave an enormous boost to urbanization as factories strained to produce weapons. Especially in the North, waves of people deserted the countryside for cities in hopes of find- ing better jobs. Joining them were tens of millions of immigrants, most from Europe, forming a culturally diverse urban mix.

In 1900, New York’s population soared past the 4 million mark, and Chicago, a city that had scarcely 100,000 people in 1860, was closing in on 2 million. Such growth marked the beginning of the metropolis (Greek for “mother city”), a large city that dominates an urban area socially and economically. Metropolises became the eco- nomic centers of the United States. By 1920, urban areas were home to a majority of the U.S. population.

Industrial technology pushed city populations higher and higher. In the 1880s, the tallest buildings, supported by steel girders and equipped with mechanical elevators, were ten stories high. In 1930, New York’s Empire State Building was hailed as an urban won- der, soaring 102 stories into the clouds.

Urban Decentralization, 1950–Present

The industrial metropolis reached its peak about 1950. Since then, something of a turnaround, called urban decentralization, has occurred as people have left downtown areas for outlying suburbs, urban areas beyond the political boundaries of a city. The old industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest stopped growing, and some lost considerable population in the decades after 1950. The urban land- scape of densely packed central cities evolved into sprawling subur- ban regions.

Suburbs and Urban Decline Imitating European nobility, some of the rich in the United States split their time between town houses in the city and country homes beyond the city limits. But not until after World War II did ordinary people find a suburban home within their reach. Thanks to more and more cars in circulation, new four-lane highways, government-backed mort- gages, and inexpensive tract homes, suburbs grew rapidly. By 1999, most of the U.S. population lived in suburbs, where they frequented nearby shopping malls rather than the older downtown shopping dis- tricts (Pederson, Smith, & Adler, 1999; Macionis & Parrillo, 2010).

As many older cities of the Snowbelt—the Northeast and Midwest—lost higher-income taxpayers to the suburbs, they strug- gled to pay for expensive social programs for the poor who remained. Many cities fell into financial crisis, and inner-city decay became severe. Especially to white suburbanites, the inner cities became syn- onymous with slum housing, crime, drugs, unemployment, the poor, and minorities (Stahura, 1986; Galster, 1991).

The decline of central cities has also led to a decline in the impor- tance of public space (Goldberger, 2002). Historically, city life was played out on the streets. The French word for a sophisticated person is boulevardier, which literally means “street person.” However, this term has a negative meaning in the United States today. The activity that once took place on public streets and in public squares now takes place in shopping malls, the lobbies of cineplex theaters, and gated res- idential communities—all privately owned spaces. Further reducing the vitality of today’s urban places is the spread of television, the Inter- net, and other media that people use without leaving home.

Sunbelt Cities and Urban Sprawl As the older Snowbelt cities fell into decline, Sunbelt cities in the South and West grew rapidly. The soaring populations of cities such

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Table 15–1 Urban Population of the United States, 1790–2040

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau (2009) and United Nations Population Division (2009).

Year Population (in millions) Urban Portion

1790 3.9 5.1% 1800 5.3 6.1 1820 9.6 7.3 1840 17.1 10.5 1860 31.4 19.7 1880 50.2 28.1 1900 76.0 39.7 1920 105.7 51.3 1940 131.7 56.5 1960 179.3 69.9 1980 226.5 73.7 2000 281.4 79.0 2020* 290.7 84.9 2040* 342.6 88.8

*Projection.

Looking at the table below, imagine how the lives of people who lived a century ago differed from what we experience today. What are some differences?

Seeing Sociology in Everyday Life metropolis a large city that socially and economically dominates an urban area

suburbs urban areas beyond the political boundaries of a city

megalopolis a vast urban region containing a number of cities and their surrounding suburbs

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as Los Angeles and Houston reflected a population shift to the Sunbelt, where 60 percent of people in the United States now live. In addition, most of today’s immigrants enter the country in the Sunbelt region. In 1950, nine of the ten largest U.S. cities were in the Snowbelt; in 2008, seven of the top ten were in the Sunbelt (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010).

Unlike their colder counterparts, these cities came of age after urban decentralization began. So while Snowbelt cities have long been enclosed by a ring of politically inde- pendent suburbs, Sunbelt cities have pushed their bound- aries outward to include suburban communities. Chicago covers 227 square miles; Houston is more than twice that size, and the greater Houston metropolitan region covers almost 9,000 square miles—an area the size of the state of New Hampshire.

The great sprawl of Sunbelt cities has its drawbacks. Many people in cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles claim that unplanned growth results in traffic- clogged roads leading to unattractive developments and schools that cannot keep up with the inflow of children. Not surprisingly, voters in many communities across the United States have passed ballot initiatives seeking to limit urban sprawl (Lacayo, 1999; Romero & Liserio, 2002; W. Sullivan, 2007).

Megalopolis: The Regional City Another result of urban decentralization is urban regions, or regional cities. The U.S. Census Bureau (2010) recognizes 374 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). Each includes at least one city with 50,000 or more people. The bureau also recognizes 581 micropolitan statis- tical areas, urban areas with at least one city of 10,000 to 50,000 peo- ple. Core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) include both metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas.

The biggest CBSAs contain millions of people and extend into several states. In 2008, the biggest CBSA was New York and its adja- cent urban areas in Long Island, western Connecticut, northern New Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania, with a total population of more than 22 million. Next in size is the CBSA in southern California that includes Los Angeles, Riverside, and Long Beach, with a population of almost 18 million.

As regional cities grow, they begin to overlap. In the early 1960s, the French geographer Jean Gottmann (1961) coined the term megalopolis to designate a vast urban region containing a number of cities and their surrounding suburbs. Along the East Coast, a 400-mile megalopolis stretches all the way from New England to Virginia. Other supercities cover the eastern coast of Florida and stretch from Cleveland west to Chicago.

Edge Cities Urban decentralization has also created edge cities, business centers some distance from the old downtowns. Edge cities—a mix of corpo- rate office buildings, shopping malls, hotels, and entertainment complexes—differ from suburbs, which contain mostly homes. The population of suburbs peaks at night, but the population of edge cities peaks during the workday.

As part of expanding urban regions, most edge cities have no clear physical boundaries. Some do have names, including Las Colinas (near the Dallas–Fort Worth airport), Tyson’s Corner (in Virginia, near Washington, D.C.), and King of Prussia (northwest of Philadelphia). Other edge cities are known only by the major high- ways that flow through them, including Route 1, which runs through Princeton, New Jersey, and Route 128 near Boston (Garreau, 1991; Macionis & Parrillo, 2010).

The Rural Rebound Over the course of U.S. history, as shown by the data in Table 15–1, the urban population of the nation has increased steadily. Immigra- tion has played a part in this increase because most newcomers set- tle in cities. There has also been considerable migration from rural areas to urban places, typically by people seeking greater social, edu- cational, and economic opportunity.

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In recent decades, many U.S. cities in the Sunbelt have spread outward in a process called urban sprawl. Los Angeles, for example, now covers about 500 square miles, and even with a vast system of freeways, people moving around the city often find themselves stuck in slow-moving traffic. What are other disadvantages of urban sprawl?

Is there a class difference in people’s use of the streets as a place to meet and greet others? For example, do you think working-class people are more likely to use the streets in this way than middle-class suburbanites?

Seeing Sociology in Everyday Life

The megalopolis, edge cities, and the “rural rebound” are all aspects of population decentralization as cities spread outward after 1950.

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However, in the 1990s, three-fourths of the rural counties across the United States gained population, a trend analysts have called the “rural rebound.” Most of this gain resulted from migration of peo- ple from urban areas. This trend has not affected all rural places: As the opening to this chapter explains, many small towns in rural areas (especially in the Plains States) are struggling to stay alive. But even in these areas, the losses have slowed in recent years (K. M. Johnson, 1999; D. Johnson, 2001).

The greatest gains have come to rural communities that offer scenic and recreational attractions, such as lakes, mountains, and ski areas. People are drawn not only to the natural beauty of rural com- munities but also to their slower pace: less traffic, a lower crime rate,

and cleaner air. A number of companies have relocated to rural coun- ties as well, which has increased economic opportunity for the rural population (K. M. Johnson, 1999; Johnson & Fuguitt, 2000).

Urbanism as a Way of Life Early sociologists in Europe and the United States focused their atten- tion on the rise of cities. We briefly examine their accounts of urban- ism as a way of life.

Ferdinand Tönnies: Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft In the nineteenth century, the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1937) studied how life in the new industrial metropolis dif- fered from life in rural villages. From this contrast, he developed two concepts that have become a lasting part of sociology’s terminology.

Tönnies (1963, orig. 1887) used the German word Gemeinschaft (“community”) to refer to a type of social organization in which peo- ple are closely tied by kinship and tradition. The Gemeinschaft of the rural village, Tönnies explained, joins people in what amounts to a single primary group.

By and large, argued Tönnies, Gemeinschaft is absent in the mod- ern city. On the contrary, urbanization creates Gesellschaft (“associa- tion”), a type of social organization in which people come together only on the basis of individual self-interest. In the Gesellschaft way of life, indi- viduals are motivated by their own needs rather than by a desire to help improve the well-being of everyone. By and large, city dwellers have little sense of community or common identity and look to other peo- ple mainly when they need something. Tönnies saw in urbanization the weakening of close, long-lasting social relations in favor of the brief and impersonal ties or secondary relationships typical of business.

Emile Durkheim: Mechanical and Organic Solidarity The French sociologist Emile Durkheim agreed with much of Tönnies’s thinking about cities. However, Durkheim countered that urbanites do not lack social bonds; they simply organize social life differently than rural people do.

Durkheim described traditional, rural life as mechanical solidarity, social bonds based on common sentiments and shared moral values. With its emphasis on tradition, Durkheim’s concept of mechanical solidarity bears a strong similarity to Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft. Urban- ization erodes mechanical solidarity, Durkheim explained, but it also generates a new type of bonding, which he called organic solidarity, social bonds based on specialization and interdependence. This concept, which parallels Tönnies’s Gesellschaft, reveals an important

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The rural rebound has been most pronounced in towns that offer spectacular natural beauty. There are times when people living in the scenic town of Park City, Utah, cannot even find a parking space.

Gemeinschaft a type of social organization in which people are closely tied by kinship and tradition

Gesellschaft a type of social organization in which people come together only on the basis of individual self-interest

How might Tönnies explain social patterns such as our high rate of divorce, widespread fear of crime, and incidents of “road rage” on the highways?

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difference between the two thinkers. Both felt that the growth of industrial cities weakened tradition, but Durkheim optimistically pointed to a new kind of solidarity. Where societies had been built on likeness, Durkheim now saw social life based on difference.

For Durkheim, urban society offers more individual choice, moral tolerance, and personal privacy than people find in rural vil- lages. In sum, Durkheim thought that something is lost in the process of urbanization, but much is gained.

Georg Simmel: The Blasé Urbanite The German sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918) offered a micro- level analysis of cities, studying how urban life shapes individual expe- rience. According to Simmel, individuals see the city as a crush of people, objects, and events. To prevent being overwhelmed by all this stimulation, urbanites develop a blasé attitude, tuning out much of what goes on around them. Such detachment does not mean that city dwellers lack compassion for others; they simply keep their distance as a survival strategy so that they can focus their time and energy on the people and things that really matter to them.

The Chicago School: Robert Park and Louis Wirth Sociologists in the United States soon joined the study of rapidly growing cities. Robert Park (1864–1944), a leader of the first U.S.

sociology program at the University of Chicago, sought to add a street- level perspective by getting out and studying real cities. As he said of himself, “I suspect that I have actually covered more ground, tramp- ing about in cities in different parts of the world, than any other liv- ing man” (1950:viii). Walking the streets, Park found the city to be an organized mosaic of distinctive ethnic communities, commercial centers, and industrial districts. Over time, he observed, these “natu- ral areas” develop and change in relation to one another. To Park, the city was a living organism—a human kaleidoscope.

Another major figure in the Chicago School of urban sociology was Louis Wirth (1897–1952). Wirth (1938) is best known for blend- ing the ideas of Tönnies, Durkheim, Simmel, and Park into a com- prehensive theory of urban life.

Wirth began by defining the city as a setting with a large, dense, and socially diverse population. These traits result in an impersonal, super- ficial, and transitory way of life for city dwellers. Living among mil- lions of others, urbanites come into contact with many more people than residents of rural areas. Thus when city people take notice of oth- ers at all, they usually know them not in terms of who they are but what they do—as, for instance, the bus driver, the pharmacist, or the grocery store clerk. These specialized urban relationships are sometimes pleas- ant for all concerned, but we should remember that self-interest rather than friendship is the main reason behind the interaction.

The impersonal nature of urban relationships, together with the great social diversity found in cities today, makes city dwellers more

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Peasant Dance (left, c. 1565), by Pieter Breughel the Elder, conveys the essential unity of rural life forged by generations of kinship and neighborhood. By contrast, Lily Furedi’s Subway (right) communicates the impersonality common to urban areas. Taken together, these paintings capture Tönnies’s distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.

Pieter Breughel the Elder (c. 1525/30–1569), Peasant Dance, c. 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna/Superstock. Lily Furedi, American. Subway. Oil on canvas, 99 x 123 cm. National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C./Smithsonian Institute.

How would Simmel explain cases of people turning away from others in need on the grounds that they simply “don’t want to get involved”?

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Tönnies’s concept of Gemeinschaft corresponds to Durkheim’s mechanical solidarity; Gesellschaft corresponds to organic solidarity.

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tolerant than rural villagers. Rural communities often jealously enforce their narrow traditions, but the heterogeneous population of a city rarely shares any single code of moral conduct (T. C. Wilson, 1985, 1995).

CRITICAL REVIEW In both Europe and the United States, early sociologists presented a mixed view of urban living. Rapid urbanization troubled Tönnies and Wirth, who saw per- sonal ties and traditional morality lost in the anonymous rush of the city. Durkheim and Park emphasized urbanism’s positive face, pointing to more personal freedom and greater personal choice.

One problem with all of these views is that they paint urban- ism in broad strokes that overlook the effects of class, race, and gender. There are many kinds of urbanites—rich and poor, black and white, Anglo and Latino, women and men—all leading dis- tinctive lives (Gans, 1968). As the Thinking About Diversity box explains, the share of racial and ethnic minorities in the largest U.S. cities increased sharply during the 1990s. We see social diversity most clearly in cities, where various categories of

people are large enough to form visible communities (Macionis & Parrillo, 2007).

CHECK YOUR LEARNING Of these urban sociolo- gists—Tönnies, Durkheim, Park, and Wirth—which were more positive about urban life? Which were more negative? In each case, explain why.

Urban Ecology Sociologists (especially members of the Chicago School) developed urban ecology, the study of the link between the physical and social dimensions of cities. For example, why are cities located where they are? The first cities emerged in fertile regions where the ecology favored raising crops. Preindustrial people, concerned with defense, built their cities on mountains (ancient Athens was perched on an outcropping of rock) or surrounded by water (Paris and Mexico City were built on islands). With the Industrial Revolution, economic con- siderations placed all major U.S. cities near rivers and natural har- bors that facilitated trade.

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THINKING ABOUT DIVERSITY: RACE, CLASS, & GENDER

Minorities Now a Majority in the Largest U.S. Cities

According to the 2000 census, minorities— Hispanics, African Americans, and Asians—were now a majority of the population in 48 of the 100 largest U.S. cities, up from 30 in 1990, and the number has surely increased since then.

What accounts for the change? One reason is that large cities have been losing their non- Hispanic white populations. For example, by 2000, Santa Ana, California, had lost 38 percent of the white population it had in 1990; the drop was 40 percent in Birmingham, Alabama, and a whopping 53 percent in Detroit, Michigan. The white share of the population of all 100 of the largest cities fell from 52.1 percent in 1990 to 43.8 percent in 2000, as the figure shows.

But perhaps the biggest reason for the minority-majority trend is the increase in immigra- tion. Immigration, coupled with higher birth rates among new immigrants, resulted in a 43 percent gain in the Hispanic population (almost 4 million people) of the largest 100 cities between 1990 and 2000. The Asian population also surged by

40 percent (more than 1.1 million people). The African American population was steady over the course of the 1990s.

Political officials and other policymakers examine these figures closely. Clearly, the future vitality of the largest U.S. cities depends on meet- ing the needs and taking advantage of the contri- butions of their swelling minority populations.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. Why are the minority populations of large U.S. cities increasing?

2. What positive changes and challenges does a minority-majority bring to a city?

3. Before Hurricane Katrina, African Americans represented 60 percent of the population of New Orleans; afterward, the share was about 40 percent. What difference might this change make in the city’s immediate future?

Sources: Schmitt (2001) and U.S. Census Bureau (2009).

Asian 6.6%Hispanic

22.5%

Non-Hispanic African American

24.1%

Non-Hispanic White 43.8%

Other 3.0%

Population Profile for the 100 Largest U.S. Cities, 2000 Racial and ethnic minorities make up a majority of the population of this country’s 100 largest cities. Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2001).

urban ecology the study of the link between the physical and social dimensions of cities

Urban ecology was a significant part of urban sociology until about 1970; after that, it declined in importance as urban political economy gained the attention of sociologists.

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Urban ecologists also study the physical design of cities. In 1925, Ernest W. Burgess, a student and colleague of Robert Park’s, described land use in Chicago in terms of concentric zones. City centers, Burgess observed, are business districts bor- dered by a ring of factories, followed by residential rings with housing that becomes more expensive the farther it is from the noise and pollution of the city’s center.

Homer Hoyt (1939) refined Burgess’s observations, not- ing that distinctive districts sometimes form wedge-shaped sec- tors. For example, one fashionable area may develop next to another, or an industrial district may extend outward from a city’s center along a train or trolley line.

Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman (1945) added yet another insight: As cities decentralize, they lose their single- center form in favor of a multicentered model. As cities grow, residential areas, industrial parks, and shopping districts typ- ically push away from one another. Few people want to live close to industrial areas, for example, so the city becomes a mosaic of distinct districts.

Social area analysis investigates what people in particular neighborhoods have in common. Three factors seem to explain most of the variation in neighborhood types: family patterns, social class, and race and ethnicity (Shevky & Bell, 1955; R. J. Johnston, 1976). Families with children look for areas with large apartments or single-family homes and good schools. The rich seek high-prestige neighborhoods, often in the central city near cultural attractions. People with a common race or ethnic her- itage cluster in distinctive communities.

Brian Berry and Philip Rees (1969) tied together many of these insights. They explained that distinct family types tend to settle in the concentric zones described by Burgess. Specifically, households with few children tend to cluster toward the city’s center, and those with more children live farther away. Social class differences are pri- marily responsible for the sector-shaped districts described by Hoyt; the rich occupy one “side of the tracks” and the poor the other. And racial and ethnic neighborhoods are found at various places through- out the city, consistent with Harris and Ullman’s multicentered model.

Urban Political Economy In the late 1960s, many large U.S. cities were rocked by major riots. As public awareness of racial and economic inequality increased, some analysts turned away from the ecological approach to a social-conflict understanding of city life. The urban political-economy model applies Karl Marx’s analysis of conflict in the workplace to conflict in the city (Lindstrom, 1995). Go to mysoclab.com

Political economists reject the ecological approach’s view of the city as a natural organism with particular districts and neighborhoods

developing according to an internal logic. Instead, they see city life as defined by people with power: corporate leaders and political offi- cials. Capitalism, which transforms the city into real estate traded for profit and concentrates wealth in the hands of the few, is the key to understanding city life. From this point of view, the decline in indus- trial Snowbelt cities after 1950 was the result of deliberate decisions by the corporate elite to move their production facilities to the Sunbelt (where labor is cheaper and less likely to be unionized) or move them out of the country entirely to low-income nations (Molotch, 1976; Castells, 1977, 1983; Lefebvre, 1991; Jones & Wilson, 1999).

CRITICAL REVIEW The fact that many U.S. cities are in crisis, with widespread poverty, high crime, and barely function- ing schools, seems to favor the political-economy view over the urban ecology approach. But one criticism applies to both: They focus on U.S. cities during a limited period of history. Much of what we know about industrial cities does not apply to preindus- trial towns in our own past or the rapidly growing cities in many poor nations today. It is unlikely that any single model of cities can account for the full range of urban diversity.

CHECK YOUR LEARNING In your own words, explain what the urban ecology theories and the urban political-economy theory teach us about cities.

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 461

The industrial revolution created great cities across the United States. In recent decades, however, the movement of industry abroad has brought decline to Detroit and other older cities in the “rustbelt.” From this abandoned warehouse, we see the headquarters of General Motors, which, in 2009, declared bankruptcy. What do you see as the future of such cities?

Go to the Multimedia Library at mysoclab.com to view the Core Concepts in Sociology video “Challenges Facing Cities”

The decline of industrial production is evident in the decline of industrial cities, such as Detroit.

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Urbanization in Poor Nations

November 16, Cairo, Egypt. People call the vast Muslim cemetery in Old Cairo the “City of the Dead.” In truth, it is very much alive: Tens of thousands of squat- ters have moved into the mausoleums, making this place

an eerie mix of life and death. Children run across the stone floors, clotheslines stretch between the monuments, and an occasional television antenna protrudes from a tomb roof. With Cairo gaining 1,000 people a day, families live where they can.

Twice in its history, the world has experienced a revolutionary expansion of cities. The first urban revolution began about 8000 B.C.E. with the first urban settlements and continued until perma- nent settlements were in place on several continents. About 1750, the second urban revolution took off; it lasted for two centuries as the Industrial Revolution spurred rapid growth of cities in Europe and North America.

A third urban revolution is now under way. Today, 75 percent of people in high-income countries are already city dwellers. But extraordinary urban growth is occurring in low-income nations. In 1950, about 25 percent of the people in poor countries lived in cities. In 2008, the world became mostly urban for the first time in history, with more than half of humanity living in cities (Population Refer- ence Bureau, 2009).

Not only are more people urban, but cities are also getting big- ger. In 1950, only seven cities in the world had populations over 5 million, and only two of these were in low-income countries. By 2007, forty-nine cities had passed this mark, and two-thirds of them were in less developed nations (Brockerhoff, 2000; United Nations, 2008).

This third urban revolution is the result of many poor nations entering the high-growth Stage 2 of demographic transition theory. Falling death rates have fueled population increases in Latin Amer- ica, Asia, and especially Africa. For urban areas, the rate of increase is twice as high because in addition to natural increase, millions of people leave the countryside each year in search of jobs, health care, education, and conveniences such as running water and electricity. As cities grow, so do suburbs.

Cities do offer more opportunities than rural areas, but they provide no quick fix for the problems of escalating population and grinding poverty. Many cities in less developed nations—including Mexico City, Egypt’s Cairo, India’s Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), and Manila in the Philippines—are simply unable to meet the basic needs of much of their population. All these cities are surrounded by wretched shantytowns, settlements of makeshift homes built from discarded materials. As noted in Chapter 9 (“Global Stratification”), even city dumps are home to thousands of poor people, who pick

through the waste hoping to find enough to eat or sell to make it through another day.

Environment and Society The human species has prospered, rapidly expanding over the entire planet. An increasing share of the global population now lives in large, complex settlements that offer the promise of a better life than that found in rural villages.

But these advances have come at a high price. Never before in history have human beings placed such demands on the planet. This disturbing development brings us to focus on the interplay of the natural environment and society. Like demography, ecology is another cousin of sociology, formally defined as the study of the inter- action of living organisms and the natural environment. Ecology rests on the research of natural scientists as well as social scientists. We shall focus on the aspects of ecology that involve familiar sociologi- cal concepts and issues.

The natural environment is Earth’s surface and atmosphere, including living organisms, air, water, soil, and other resources neces- sary to sustain life. Like every other species, humans depend on the natural environment to survive. Yet with our capacity for culture, humans stand apart from other species; we alone take deliberate action to remake the world according to our own interests and desires, for better and for worse.

Why is the environment of interest to sociologists? Environmen- tal problems, from pollution to global warming, do not arise from the natural world operating on its own. Such problems result from the choices and actions of human beings, making them social problems.

The Global Dimension The study of the natural environment requires a global perspective. The reason is simple: Regardless of political divisions between nations, the planet is a single ecosystem, which encompasses the interaction of all living organisms and their natural environment.

The Greek meaning of eco is “house,” reminding us that this planet is our home and that all living things and their natural envi- ronment are interrelated. A change in any part of the natural envi- ronment sends ripples through the entire global ecosystem.

Consider, from an ecological point of view, our national love of eating hamburgers. People in North America (and, increasingly, around the world) have created a huge demand for beef, which has greatly expanded ranching in Brazil, Costa Rica, and other Latin American nations. To produce the lean meat sought by fast-food cor- porations, cattle in Latin America feed on grass, which uses a great deal of land. Latin American ranchers clear the land for grazing by cutting down thousands of square miles of forests each year. These

462 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

Be sure you understand when and where the three urban revolutions occurred.

Making the Grade

ecology the study of the interaction of living organisms and the natural environment

natural environment Earth’s surface and atmosphere, including living organisms, air, water, soil, and other resources necessary to sustain life

ecosystem a system composed of the interaction of all living organisms and their natural environment

environmental deficit profound long-term harm to the natural environment caused by humanity’s focus on short-term material affluence

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tropical forests are vital to maintaining Earth’s atmosphere. Defor- estation ends up threatening everyone, including the people back in the United States enjoying their hamburgers (N. Myers, 1984a).

Technology and the Environmental Deficit Sociologists point to a simple formula: I = PAT, where environmen- tal impact (I) reflects a society’s population (P), its level of affluence (A), and its level of technology (T). Members of simpler societies— the hunters and gatherers described in Chapter 2 (“Culture”)—hardly affect the environment because they are few in number, are poor, and have only simple technology. Nature affects all aspects of their lives as they follow the migration of game, watch the rhythm of the seasons, and suffer from natural catastrophes, such as fires, floods, droughts, and storms.

Societies at intermediate stages of sociocultural evolution have a somewhat greater capacity to affect the environment. But the envi- ronmental impact of horticulture (small-scale farming), pastoral- ism (the herding of animals), and even agriculture (the use of animal-drawn plows) is limited because people still rely on muscle power for producing food and other goods.

Human control of the natural environment increased dramati- cally with the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Muscle power gave way to engines that burn fossil fuels: coal at first and then oil. The use of such machinery affects the environment in two ways: It consumes more natural resources and releases more pollu- tants into the atmosphere. Even more important, humans armed with industrial technology are able to bend nature to their will, tunneling through mountains, damming rivers, irrigating deserts, and drilling for oil in the arctic wilderness and on the ocean floor. This explains why people in rich nations, who represent just 23 percent of humanity, account for half of the world’s energy use (World Bank, 2009).

Not only do industrial societies use more energy, but they pro- duce 100 times more goods than agrarian societies do. Higher living standards are good in some ways, but they increase the problems of solid waste (because people ultimately throw away most of what they produce) and pollution (industrial production generates smoke and other toxic substances).

From the start, people recognized the material benefits of indus- trial technology. But only a century later did they begin to see its long- term effects on the natural environment. Today, we realize that the technological power to make our lives better can also put the lives of future generations at risk, and there is a national debate about how to address this issue. Seeing Sociology in the News on pages 464–65 describes one high school’s efforts to address environmental issues.

Evidence is mounting that we are running up an environmental deficit, profound long-term harm to the natural environment caused by

humanity’s focus on short-term material affluence (Bormann, 1990). The concept of environmental deficit is important for three reasons. First, it reminds us that environmental concerns are sociological, reflect- ing societies’ priorities about how people should live. Second, it sug- gests that much environmental damage—to the air, land, and water—is unintended. By focusing on the short-term benefits of, say, cutting down forests, strip mining, or using throwaway packaging, we fail to see the long-term environmental effects. Third, in some respects, the environmental deficit is reversible. Inasmuch as societies have created environmental problems, societies can undo many of them.

Culture: Growth and Limits Whether we recognize environmental dangers and decide to do some- thing about them is a cultural matter. Thus along with technology, culture has powerful environmental consequences.

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 463

The most important insight sociology offers about our physical world is that environmental problems do not simply “happen.” Rather, the state of the natural environment reflects the ways in which social life is organized— how people live and what they think is important. The greater the technological power of a society, the greater that society’s ability to threaten the natural environment.

I = PAT is an important environmental idea; be sure you understand its meaning.

Making the Grade Can you identify ways in which the mass media and our popular culture (music, films, and television) encourage people to support the logic of growth?

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The Logic of Growth

When you turn on the television news, you might hear a story like this: “The government reported bad economic news today, with the economy growing by only half a percent during the first quarter of the year.” If you stop to think about it, our culture defines an economy that isn’t growing as “stagnant” (which is bad) and an economy that is get- ting smaller as a recession or a “depression” (which is very bad). What is “good” is growth—the economy getting bigger and bigger. More cars, bigger homes, more income, more spending—the idea of more is at the heart of our cultural definition of living well (McKibben, 2007).

One of the reasons we define growth in positive terms is that we value material comfort, believing that money and the things it buys improve our lives. We also believe in the idea of progress, thinking that the future will be better than the present. In addition, we look to science to make our lives easier and more rewarding. In simpler terms, “having things is good,”“life gets better,” and “peo- ple are clever.” Taken together, such cultural values form the logic of growth.

An optimistic view of the world, the logic of growth holds that more powerful technology has improved our lives and that new discoveries will continue to do so in the future. Throughout the history of the United States and other high-income nations, the logic of growth has been the driving force behind settling the

wilderness, building towns and roads, and pursuing material affluence.

However, “progress” can lead to unexpected problems, includ- ing strain on the environment. The logic of growth responds by argu- ing that people (especially scientists and other technology experts) will find a way out of any problem placed in our path. If, for exam- ple, the world runs short of oil, scientists will come up with hydro- gen, solar, or nuclear engines or some as yet unknown technology to meet the world’s energy needs.

Environmentalists counter that the logic of growth is flawed because it assumes that natural resources such as clean air, fresh water, and fertile soil will always be plentiful. We can and will exhaust these finite resources if we continue to pursue growth at any cost. Echoing Malthus, environmentalists warn that if we call on the planet to support increasing numbers of people, we will surely destroy the environment—and ourselves—in the process.

The Limits to Growth

If we cannot invent our way out of the problems created by the logic of growth, perhaps we need another way of thinking about the world. Environmentalists therefore counter that growth must have limits. Stated simply, the limits-to-growth thesis is that humanity must put in place policies to control the growth of population, production, and the use of resources in order to avoid environmental collapse.

464 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

Boyz Under the Hood BY DAVID KUSHNER December 18, 2008

Even among the roughest schools in the country, West Philadelphia High School stands out. Situ- ated among boarded-up abandoned buildings and graffiti-covered crack houses, the school has had dozens of arson fires. A Spanish teacher was beaten bloody with a fire extinguisher. A music instructor got a broken jaw after being slugged by a pupil for trying to take away a cell phone. One 15-year-old girl was left for dead after having her face slashed while waiting for her school bus. She survived, but needed 114 stitches.

But in the automotive shop class in a garage next door, a group of African American students and their scrappy white teacher are making their school famous for something else: building the world’s greenest car. Kids in baggy jeans and side- ways hats mill around a sleek purple car they built that runs on biodiesel. Sparks fly from a chainsaw as one boy cuts through an aluminum plate, his long afro held back by the strap of his scuffed goggles.

Behind a windowed wall, half a dozen girls are busy at their iMacs. Samantha Wright . . . boots up a solar charging station she designed using an image of a rundown Philadelphia parking lot from Google Earth, and augmented it with green roofs and cars. “The photoactive panels convert the sunlight into direct energy,” she explains, pointing to a carport onscreen. “We’re changing the world, man. I never expected to be doing that.”

Like the other kids in the shop, Wright, the daughter of a phone sex worker and absentee dad, overcame incredible odds to find a haven here at the Electric Vehicle X Club, an after- school program that has been turning these cars and kids around, and that’s not all. While Wash- ington and Detroit hit the skids on delivering alternative fuel cars for the masses, these inner- city teens are churning out some of the most badass and competitive eco-wheels on the planet for as little as $15,000. As the blog Treehugger puts it, they’re “sending a message to the major U.S. auto manufacturers: if we can do it, why can’t you?”

In addition to clocking their suburban oppo- nents at state science fairs, the EVX Club has crushed colleges and high-financed corporate start-ups with back-to-back titles in the coveted Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s Tour De Sol, a prestigious eco-car challenge. They modified a Saturn to run on soybean fuel, and transformed a Slovakian kit car into a wildly sporty hybrid called the Hybrid X. “Hybrids don’t have to be slow and ugly like a Prius,” says 18-year-old EV member, Lawrence Jones-Mahoney. “They can be efficient and cool.”

Now the team is racing to prove their cars— and themselves—to the world. They’re the dark horse entrants in the Progressive Automotive X- Prize: a worldwide contest to build a car, suitable for mass production, that gets 100 miles per gal- lon. The contest runs through summer 2010, and the winner gets $10 million. . . .

Simon Hauger, the 38-year-old neighborhood hero who runs the West Philly High auto school, is working overtime with his students to win. But the checkered flag is theirs. “The fact that

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In The Limits to Growth, a controversial book that played a large part in launching the environmental movement, Donella Meadows and her colleagues (1972) used a computer model to calculate the planet’s available resources, rates of population growth, amount of land available for cultivation, levels of industrial and food produc- tion, and amount of pollutants released into the atmosphere. The model reflects changes that have occurred since 1900 and projects forward to the end of the twenty-first century. The authors concede that such long-range predictions are speculative, and some critics think they are plain wrong (Simon, 1981).

But right or wrong, the conclusions of the study call for seri- ous consideration. The authors claim that we are quickly consum- ing Earth’s finite resources. Supplies of oil, natural gas, and other energy sources are declining and will continue to drop, a little faster or more slowly depending on the conservation policies of rich nations and the speed with which other nations such as India and China continue to industrialize. Within the next 100 years, resources will run out, crippling industrial output and causing a decline in food production.

This limits-to-growth theory shares Malthus’s pessimism about the future. People who accept it doubt that current patterns of life are sustainable for even another century. Perhaps we can all learn to live with less. This may not be as hard as you might think: Research shows, for example, that as material consumption has gone up in

recent decades, there has been no increase in levels of personal hap- piness (D. G. Myers, 2000). In the end, environmentalists warn, either make fundamental changes in how we live, placing less strain on the natural environment, or widespread hunger and conflict will force change on us.

Solid Waste: The Disposable Society Across the United States, people generate a massive amount of solid waste—about 1.4 billion pounds each and every day. Figure 15–4 on page 466 shows the composition of a typical community’s trash.

As a rich nation of people who value convenience, the United States has become a disposable society. We consume more products than virtually any other nation, and many of these products have throwaway packaging. For example, fast food is served in cardboard, plastic, and Styrofoam containers that we throw away within minutes. But countless other products, from film to fishhooks, are elaborately packaged to make them more attractive to the customer and to dis- courage tampering and theft.

Manufacturers market soft drinks, beer, and fruit juices in alu- minum cans, glass jars, and plastic containers, which not only use up finite resources but also create mountains of solid waste. Count- less items are intentionally designed to be disposable: pens, razors, flashlights, batteries, even cameras. Other goods, from lightbulbs to

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 465

we’ve come this far,” Hauger says, looking around the room, “we’ve already won.” . . .

When a go-kart was donated to the school, Hauger decided to start an after-school science group that would work on building an electric motor for the kart. He called it the Electric Vehi- cle Club. One by one, kids trickled in after school—gang members, drug dealers. One kid had a 150 IQ, but a mom on crack and a dad dying of AIDS. The kid was bouncing between foster homes and stealing credit cards on the side. But when Hauger slapped a wrench in the kid’s hand, he was transformed. “When he would work on a project, he would block out all the crap in his life,” Hauger recalls, “and he became a mad scien- tist. Working on this made all the math and sci- ence hands on.” . . .

As word of Hauger’s club spread, kids got turned on not only by getting under the hood, but by mak- ing cars that can better the planet—and busting labels along the way.“There’s a stereotype that urban kids are just violent and don’t care about anything,” says Wright, “but we know the environment is important, and we can do something about it.”

For the EV club’s next project, they modified a silver Jeep Wrangler to go electric. Clueless how to proceed, they hit the Net—downloading instructions from an obscure eco-geek magazine called Mother Earth. With Hauger guiding them and improvising plenty, they ripped out the gas engine and stored 217 lead acid batteries in a cus- tom aluminum casing. When they drove their electric hot rod Jeep into the city’s science fair of microscopes and Bunsen burners, jaws dropped. “The judges didn’t know what to do with it,” Hauger recalls. Then they gave West Philly High the top prize. . . .

As the current 15 kids on the EVX team mill around the garage, talk turns to the plans for the Auto X prize. “As crazy as it sounds, I think we have a shot at winning,” Hauger says. While the competition is focusing on high-priced cars that look like the Jetsons, the EVX team is taking a decidedly more accessible—and they hope— winning approach. . . .

. . . The EVX team’s legacy is already spreading among those in the eco-car pursuit. “It’s inspiring that a contest can inspire a group like that to

compete,” says Darryl Siry, spokesperson for Tesla,“it says something about who they are. I rec- ommend they not listen to people who tell them this is how it’s done. Innovation comes from fig- uring out solutions and answers to problems in new ways.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. Do you think that many people think of envi- ronmental issues as the concerns mainly of more well-off people? Explain.

2. Would you make environmental study part of the curriculum of every school in the country? Why or why not?

3. What specific strategies or policies would you suggest to encourage greater environmental understanding on the part of this country’s young people?

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Yard Was te 13%

Plastic 12%

Metal 8%

Food W aste 13%

Paper 31%

Glass 5%

Othe r 18%

automobiles, are designed to have a limited useful life, after which they become unwanted junk. As Paul Connett (1991) points out, even the words we use to describe what we throw away—waste, trash, refuse, garbage, rubbish—show how little we value what we cannot immediately use. But this was not always the case, as the Seeing Soci- ology in Everyday Life box explains.

Living in a rich society, the average person in the United States consumes hundreds of times more energy, plastics, lumber, and other resources than someone living in a low-income nation such as Bangladesh or Tanzania (and nearly twice as much as someone liv- ing in many other high-income countries such as Japan or Sweden). This high level of consumption means that we in the United States not only use a disproportionate share of the planet’s natural resources but also that we generate most of the world’s refuse.

We like to say that we throw things “away.” But more than half of our solid waste never goes away. It ends up in landfills, which are, literally, filling up. Material in landfills can also pollute groundwater stored under Earth’s surface. Although in most places laws now reg- ulate what can be discarded in a landfill, the Environmental Protec- tion Agency has identified 1,269 dump sites across the United States containing hazardous materials that are polluting water both above and below the ground. In addition, what goes into landfills all too often stays there, sometimes for centuries. Tens of millions of tires, disposable diapers, and other items that we bury in landfills each year do not decompose and will be an unwelcome legacy for future generations.

Environmentalists argue that we should address the problem of solid waste by doing what many of our grandparents did: turn “waste” into a resource. One way to do this is through recycling, reusing resources we would otherwise throw away. Recycling is an accepted practice in Japan and many other nations, and it is becom- ing more common in the United States, where we now reuse about 33 percent of waste materials. The share is increasing as more munic- ipalities pass laws requiring reuse of certain materials such as glass bottles and aluminum cans and as the business of recycling becomes more profitable.

Water and Air Oceans, lakes, and streams are the lifeblood of the global ecosystem. Humans depend on water for drinking, bathing, cooling, cooking, recreation, and a host of other activities.

According to what scientists call the hydrologic cycle, the planet naturally recycles water and refreshes the land. The process begins as heat from the sun causes Earth’s water, 97 percent of which is in the oceans, to evaporate and form clouds. Because water evaporates at lower temperatures than most pollutants, the water vapor that rises from the seas is relatively pure, leaving various contaminants behind. Water then falls to the Earth as rain, which drains into streams and rivers and finally returns to the sea. Two major concerns about water, then, are supply and pollution.

Water Supply

Less than one-tenth of 1 percent of Earth’s water is suitable for drink- ing. It is not surprising, then, that for thousands of years, water rights have figured prominently in laws around the world. Today, some regions of the world, especially the tropics, enjoy plentiful fresh water, using only a small share of the available supply. High demand, cou- pled with modest reserves, makes water supply a matter of concern in much of North America and Asia, where people look to rivers rather than rainfall for their water. In China, deep aquifers are dropping rap- idly. In the Middle East, water supply is reaching a critical level. Iran is rationing water in its capital city. In Egypt, people can consume just one-sixth as much water from the Nile River today as in 1900. Across northern Africa and the Middle East, as many as 1 billion peo- ple may lack the water they need for irrigation and drinking by 2025 (“China Faces Water Shortage,” 2001; International Development Research Center, 2006).

Rising population and the development of more complex tech- nology have greatly increased the world’s appetite for water. The global consumption of water (now estimated at almost 4,000 cubic kilometers, or 140 trillion cubic feet, per year) has doubled since 1950 and is rising steadily. As a result, even in parts of the world that receive plenty of rainfall, people are using groundwater faster than

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FIGURE 15–4 Composition of Community Trash We throw away a wide range of material, with paper the single largest part of our trash. Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (2009).

Do you think that having more, in a materialistic sense, is the path to personal happiness? Why or why not?

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it can be replenished naturally. In the Tamil Nadu region of south- ern India, for example, people are drawing so much groundwater that the local water table has fallen 100 feet over the past several decades. Mexico City—which has sprawled to some 1,400 square miles—has pumped so much water from its underground aquifer that the city has sunk 30 feet in the past century and continues to drop about 2 inches per year. Farther north in the United States, the Ogallala aquifer, which lies below seven states from South Dakota to Texas, is now being pumped so rapidly that some experts fear it could run dry in just a few decades.

In light of such developments, we must face the reality that water is a valuable and finite resource. Greater conservation of water by indi- viduals (the average person in the United States consumes 3 million gallons in a lifetime) is part of the answer. However, households around the world account for just 10 percent of water use. We need to reduce water consumption by industry, which uses 20 percent of the global total, and farming, which consumes 70 percent of the total for irrigation.

Perhaps new irrigation technology will reduce demand for water in the future. But here again, we see how population increase, as well as economic growth, strains our ecosystem (Postel, 1993; Population Action International, 2000; United Nations World Water Assessment Programme, 2009; U.S. Geological Survey, 2009).

Water Pollution

In large cities from Mexico City to Cairo to Shanghai, many people have no choice but to drink contaminated water. Infectious diseases such as typhoid, cholera, and dysentery, all caused by waterborne microorganisms, spread rapidly through these populations. In addi- tion to ensuring ample supplies of water, we must protect the quality of water.

Water quality in the United States is generally good by global standards. However, even here the problem of water pollution is steadily growing. Across the United States, rivers and streams absorb hundreds of millions of pounds of toxic waste each year. This pollution

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SEEING SOCIOLOGY IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Why Grandma Macionis Had No Trash

Grandma Macionis, we always used to say, never threw away anything. She was born and raised in Lithuania—the “old country”—where growing up in a poor village shaped her in ways that never changed, even after she came to the United States as a young woman and settled in Philadelphia.

In her later years, when I knew her, I remem- ber the family traveling together to her house to celebrate her birthday. We never knew what to get Grandma because although she didn’t have all that much, she never seemed to need anything. She lived a simple life and had sim- ple clothes and showed little interest in “fancy things.” She used everything until it wore out. Her kitchen knives, for example, were worn narrow from decades of sharpening. And she hardly ever threw anything away—she recy- cled all her garbage as compost for her veg- etable garden.

After opening a birthday present, she would carefully save the box, wrapping paper, and ribbon, which meant as much to her as whatever gift they surrounded. We all expected her to save every bit of whatever she was given, smiling to each other as we watched

her put everything away, knowing she would find a way to use it all again and again.

As strange as Grandma sometimes seemed to her grandchildren, she was a product of her culture. A century ago, there was little “trash.” If a pair of socks wore thin, people mended them, probably more than once. When they were beyond repair, they were used as rags for clean-

ing or sewn, along with other old clothing, into a quilt. For her, everything had value, if not in one way, then in another.

During the twentieth century, as women joined men working outside of the home, income went up and families began buying more and more “time-saving” products. Before long, few people cared about the home recycling that

Grandma practiced. Soon cities sent crews from block to block to pick up truckloads of discarded material. The era of “trash” had begun.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. Just as Grandma Macionis was a product of her culture, so are we. What cultural val- ues make people today demand time- saving products and “convenience” packaging?

2. Do you recycle drink containers, paper, or other materials? Why or why not?

3. In what ways does this box demonstrate that the state of the natural environment is a social issue?Grandma Macionis, in the 1970s, with the author.

Las Vegas is one of the fastest-growing U.S. cities—and it is built in a desert. Do you think the future water needs of this city’s people (and those of the entire Southwest) are ensured? What will we do if the answer turns out to be no?

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Have you taken any steps to reduce your use of our limited resources? What about efforts to reduce trash and energy use?

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results not just from intentional dumping but also from the runoff of agricultural fertilizers and lawn chemicals.

A special problem is acid rain—rain made acidic by air pollution— which destroys plant and animal life. Acid rain (or snow) begins with power plants burning fossil fuels (oil and coal) to generate electric- ity; this burning process releases sulfuric and nitrous oxides into the air. As the wind sweeps these gases into the atmosphere, they react with the air to form sulfuric and nitric acids, which turns atmos- pheric moisture acidic.

This is a clear case of one type of pollution causing another: Air pollution (from smokestacks) ends up contaminating water (in lakes and streams that collect acid rain). Acid rain is truly a global phe- nomenon because the regions that suffer the harmful effects may be thousands of miles from the source of the pollution. For instance, British power plants have caused acid rain that has devastated forests and fish in Norway and Sweden, 1,000 miles to the northeast. In the United States, we see a similar pattern as midwestern smokestacks have harmed the natural environment of upstate New York and New England.

Air Pollution

Because we are surrounded by air, most people in the United States are more aware of air pollution than contaminated water. One of the unexpected consequences of industrial technology—especially the factory and the motor vehicle—has been a decline in air quality. In London, fifty years ago, factory smokestacks, automobiles, and coal fires used to heat households all added up to what was probably the worst urban air quality in the world. The fog that some residents jok- ingly called “pea soup” was in reality a deadly mix of pollutants: In 1952, an especially thick haze that hung over London for five days killed 4,000 people.

Air quality improved in the final decades of the twentieth cen- tury. Rich nations passed laws that banned high-pollution heat- ing, including the coal fires that choked London. In addition, scientists devised ways to make factories and motor vehicles oper- ate much more cleanly. The cleanest of today’s automobiles emit only a small percentage of the pollutants released by the typical car in 1960.

If people in high-income countries can breathe a bit more eas- ily than they once did, those living in poor societies face problems of air pollution that are becoming more serious. One reason is that peo- ple in low-income countries still rely on wood, coal, peat, or other “dirty” fuels to cook their food and heat their homes. In addition, nations eager to encourage short-term industrial development may pay little attention to the longer-term dangers of air pollution. As a result, many cities in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Asia are plagued by air pollution as bad as London’s pea soup back in the 1950s.

The Rain Forests Rain forests are regions of dense forestation, most of which circle the globe close to the equator. The largest tropical rain forests are in South Amer- ica (notably Brazil), west-central Africa, and Southeast Asia. In all, the world’s rain forests cover some 1.5 billion acres, or 4.5 percent of Earth’s total land surface (United Nations Environment Programme, 2009).

Like other global resources, rain forests are falling victim to the needs and appetites of the surging world population. As noted earlier, to meet the demand for beef, ranchers in Latin America clear forested areas to increase their supply of grazing land. We are also losing rain forests to the hardwood trade. People in rich nations pay high prices for mahogany and other woods because, as the envi- ronmentalist Norman Myers (1984b:88) puts it, they have “a pen- chant for parquet floors, fine furniture, fancy paneling, weekend yachts, and high-grade coffins.” Under such economic pressure, the world’s rain forests are now less than half their original size, and they continue to shrink by at least 1 percent (58,000 square miles) annually, which amounts to about one acre every second. Unless we stop this loss, the rain forests will vanish before the end of this century, and with them will go protection for Earth’s biodiversity and climate.

Global Warming

Why are rain forests so important to our natural environment? One reason is that they cleanse the atmosphere of carbon dioxide (CO2). Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the amount of car- bon dioxide produced by humans (mostly from factories and auto- mobiles) has risen sharply. Much of this CO2 is absorbed by the oceans. But plants also take in carbon dioxide and in the process expel oxygen. This is why the rain forests—our largest concentration of plant life—are vital to maintaining the chemical balance of the atmos- phere.

The problem is that production of carbon dioxide is rising while the amount of plant life on Earth is shrinking. To make matters worse, rain forests are being destroyed mostly by burning, which releases even more CO2 into the atmosphere. Experts estimate that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is now 40 percent higher than it was 150 years ago (Gore, 2006; United Nations Envi- ronment Programme, 2009; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2010).

High above Earth, carbon dioxide acts like the glass roof of a greenhouse, letting heat from the sun pass through to the surface while preventing much of it from radiating away from the planet. The result of this greenhouse effect, say ecologists, is global warming, a rise in Earth’s average temperature due to an increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Over the past century, the global temperature has risen about 1.3° Fahrenheit (to

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Have you experienced changes in your own world resulting from global warming or other issues discussed here?

Seeing Sociology in Everyday Life

rain forests regions of dense forestation, most of which circle the globe close to the equator

global warming a rise in Earth’s average temperature due to an increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

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an average of 58° F.). Scientists warn that it could rise by 5° to 10° F. during this century. Already, the polar ice caps are melting, and scientists predict that increasing temperatures could melt so much ice that the sea level would rise to cover low-lying land all around the world. Were this to happen, water would cover all of Bangladesh, for example, and much of the coastal United States, including Washington, D.C., right up to the steps of the White House. On the other hand, the U.S. Midwest, currently one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world, probably would become arid.

Some scientists point out that we cannot be sure of the consequences of global warming. Others point to the fact that global temperature changes have been tak- ing place throughout history, perhaps having little or nothing to do with rain forests. A few are optimistic, suggesting that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might speed up plant growth (because plants thrive on this gas), and this increase might correct the imbal- ance and nudge Earth’s temperature downward once again. But the consensus of scientists is clear: Global warming is a serious prob- lem that threatens the future for all of us (Kerr, 2005; Gore, 2006; International Panel on Climate Change, 2007; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2010). Go to mysoclab.com

Declining Biodiversity

Our planet is home to as many as 30 million species of animals, plants, and microorganisms. As rain forests are cleared and humans extend their control over nature, several dozen unique species of plants and animals cease to exist each day.

But given the vast number of living species, why should we be concerned about the loss of a few? Environmentalists give four rea- sons. First, our planet’s biodiversity provides a varied source of human food. Using agricultural high technology, scientists can cross familiar crops with more exotic plant life, making food more boun- tiful and more resistant to insects and disease. Thus biodiversity helps feed our planet’s rapidly increasing population.

Second, Earth’s biodiversity is a vital genetic resource used by medical and pharmaceutical researchers to provide hundreds of new compounds each year that cure disease and improve our lives. For example, children in the United States now have a good chance of surviving leukemia, a disease that was almost a sure killer two generations ago, because of a compound derived from a tropical flower called the rosy periwinkle. The oral birth control pill, used by tens of millions of women in this country, is another product of plant research, this one involving the Mexican forest yam.

Third, with the loss of any species of life—whether it is the mag- nificent California condor, the famed Chinese panda, the spotted

owl, or even a single species of ant—the beauty and complexity of our natural environment are diminished. And there are clear warn- ing signs: Three-fourths of the world’s 10,000 species of birds are declining in number.

Finally, unlike pollution, the extinction of any species is irre- versible and final. An important ethical question, then, is whether people living today have the right to impoverish the world for those who will live tomorrow (N. Myers, 1991; E. O. Wilson, 1991; Brown et al., 1993).

Environmental Racism Environmental problems threaten us all. But most environmental issues harm some people more than others. Conflict theory has given birth to the concept of environmental racism, patterns of develop- ment that expose poor people, especially minorities, to environmental hazards. Historically, factories that spew pollution have stood near neighborhoods housing the poor and people of color. Why? In part, the poor themselves were drawn to factories in search of work, and their low incomes often meant they could afford housing only in undesirable neighborhoods. Sometimes the only housing that fit their budgets stood in the very shadow of the plants and mills where they worked.

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 469

Water is vital to life, and it is also in short supply. The state of Gujarat, in western India, has experienced a long drought. In the village of Natwarghad, people crowd together, lowering pots into the local well, taking what little water is left.

Do you worry much about global warming? Why or why not? Do you think global warming could affect you personally? How?

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Nobody wants a factory or dump nearby, but the poor have lit- tle power to resist. Through the years, the most serious environmen- tal hazards have been located near Newark, New Jersey (not in upscale Bergen County), in southside Chicago (not in wealthy Lake Forest), or on Native American reservations in the West (not in affluent suburbs of Denver or Phoenix) (Commission for Racial Justice, 1994; Bohon & Humphrey, 2000).

Looking Ahead: Toward a Sustainable Society and World The demographic analysis presented in this chapter points to some disturbing trends. We see, first, that our planet’s population has reached record levels because birth rates remain high in poor nations and death rates have fallen just about everywhere. Reducing fertility will remain a pressing issue throughout this century. Even with some recent decline in the rate of population increase, the nightmare of Thomas Malthus is still a real possibility, as the Controversy & Debate box explains.

Further, population growth remains greatest in the poorest countries of the world, which cannot support their present popula-

tions, much less their future ones. Supporting 83 million additional people on our planet each year, 81 million of whom are in poor soci- eties, will take a global commitment to provide not only food but also housing, schools, and employment. The well-being of the entire world may ultimately depend on resolving the economic and social problems of poor, overpopulated countries and bridging the widen- ing gulf between “have” and “have-not” nations.

Urbanization is continuing, especially in poor countries. Peo- ple have always sought out cities in the hope of finding a better life. But the sheer numbers of people who live in the emerging global supercities, including Mexico City, São Paulo (Brazil), Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Mumbai (India), and Manila (Philippines), have created urban problems on a massive scale.

Throughout the world, humanity is facing a serious environ- mental challenge. Part of this problem is population increase, which is greatest in poor societies. But part of the problem is the high lev- els of consumption in rich nations such as our own. By increasing the planet’s environmental deficit, our present way of life is borrowing against the well-being of our children and their children. Globally, members of rich societies, who currently consume so much of Earth’s resources, are mortgaging the future security of the poor countries of the world.

The answer, in principle, is to create an ecologically sustainable culture, a way of life that meets the needs of the present generation

without threatening the environmental legacy of future genera- tions. Sustainable living depends on three strategies.

First, we need to bring population growth under con- trol. The current population of 6.8 billion is already straining the natural environment. Clearly, the higher world population climbs, the more difficult environmen- tal problems will become. Even if the recent slowing of population growth continues, the world will have 9 bil- lion people by 2050. Few analysts think that Earth can support this many people; most argue that we must hold

the line at about 7 billion, and some argue that we must decrease population in the coming decades (Smail, 2010).

A second strategy is to conserve finite resources. This means meeting our needs with a responsible eye toward the

future by using resources efficiently, seeking alternative sources of energy, and in some cases, learning to live with less.

A third strategy is to reduce waste. Whenever possible, simply using less is the best solution. Learning to live with less

will not come easily, but keep in mind that as our society has con- sumed more and more in recent decades, people have not become any happier (D. G. Myers, 2000). Recycling programs, too, are part of the answer, and recycling can make everyone part of the solution to our environmental problems.

470 CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

With its focus on inequality, environmental racism is linked to the social-conflict approach.

Making the Grade ecologically sustainable culture a way of life that meets the needs of the present generation without threatening the environmental legacy of future generations

If human ingenuity created the threats to our environment we now face, can humans also solve these problems? In recent years, a number of designs for small, environmentally friendly cars show the promise of new technology. But do such innovations go far enough? Will we have to make more basic changes to our way of life to ensure human survival in the centuries to come?

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In the end, making all three of these strategies work depends on a more basic change in the way we think about ourselves and our world. Our egocentric outlook sets our own interests as standards for how to live; a sustainable environment demands an ecocentric outlook that helps us see that the present is tied to the future and that everyone must work together. Most nations in the southern half of the world are underdeveloped, unable to meet the basic needs of their people. At the same time, most countries in the northern half of the world are overdeveloped, using more resources than Earth can sustain over time. The changes needed to create a sustainable ecosys- tem will not come easily, and they will be costly. But the price of not

responding to the growing environmental deficit will certainly be greater (Brown et al., 1993; Population Action International, 2000; Gore, 2006).

Finally, consider that the great dinosaurs dominated this planet for some 160 million years and then perished forever. Humanity is far younger, having existed for a mere 250,000 years. Compared to the rather dimwitted dinosaurs, our species has the gift of great intelli- gence. But how will we use this ability? What are the chances that humans will continue to flourish 160 million years—or even 160 years—from now? The answer depends on the choices made by just one of the 30 million species living on Earth: human beings.

Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 471

Apocalypse: Will People Overwhelm the Planet?

NUSHAWN: I’m telling you, there are too many peo- ple already! Where is everyone going to live?

TABITHA: Have you ever been to Kansas? Or Wyoming? There’s plenty of empty space out there.

MARCO: Maybe now. But I’m not so sure there’ll be all that room for our children—or their children. . . .

Are you worried about the world’s rapidly increasing population? Think about this: By the time you finish reading this box, more than 1,000 people will have been added to our planet. By this time tomorrow, global population will have risen by more than 200,000. Currently, as the table shows, there are four births for every two deaths on the planet, pushing the world’s population upward by almost 83 million people annually. Put another way, global popu- lation growth amounts to adding another Germany to the world each year.

It is no wonder that many demographers and environmentalists are deeply concerned about the future. Earth has an unprecedented population: The 2.8 billion people we have added since 1974 alone exceed the planet’s total in 1900. Might Thomas Malthus—who pre- dicted that overpopulation would push the world into war and suffering—be right after all? Lester Brown and other neo-Malthusians predict a coming apocalypse if we do not change our ways. Brown (1995) admits that Malthus failed to imagine how much technology (especially fer- tilizers and plant genetics) could boost the planet’s agricultural output. But he maintains that Earth’s rising population is rapidly outstrip- ping its finite resources. Families in many poor countries can find little firewood, members of rich countries are depleting the oil reserves, and everyone is draining our supply of clean water and poisoning the planet with waste. Some ana-

lysts argue that we have already passed Earth’s “carrying capacity” for population and that we need to hold the line or even reduce global pop- ulation to ensure our long-term survival.

But other analysts, the anti-Malthusians, sharply disagree. Julian Simon (1995) points out that two centuries after Malthus predicted catastrophe, Earth supports almost six times as many people who, on average, live longer, healthier lives than ever before. With more advanced technology, people have devised ways to increase productivity and limit popula- tion increase. As Simon sees it, this is cause for celebration. Human ingenuity has consistently proved the doomsayers wrong, and Simon is betting that it will continue to do so.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

1. Where do you place your bet? Do you think Earth can support 8 or 10 billion people? Explain your reasoning.

2. Almost all current population growth is in poor countries. What does this mean for the future of rich nations? For the future of poor ones?

3. What should people in rich countries do to ensure the future of children everywhere?

Sources: Brown (1995), Simon (1995), Scanlon (2001), and Smail (2007).

CONTROVERSY & DEBATE

Global Population Increase, 2009

Births Deaths Net Increase

Per year 138,949,000 56,083,000 82,866,000 Per month 11,579,083 4,673,583 6,905,500 Per day 380,682 155,652 227,030 Per hour 15,862 6,402 9,460 Per minute 264 107 158 Per second 4.4 1.8 2.6

What share of the world’s people do you think are concerned about global population increase?

Seeing Sociology in Everyday Life Make five predictions about the state of the world

population and also the state of the planet’s environment fifty years from now. Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Why?

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Chapter 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

HINT If expansion is “good times,” then contraction is a “recession” or perhaps even a “depression.” Such a worldview means that it is normal—or even desirable—to live in a way that increases stress on the natural environment. Sustainability, an idea that is especially important as world population increases, depends on learning to live with what we have or maybe even learning to live with less. Although many people seem to think so, it really doesn’t require a 6,000-pound SUV to move around urban areas. Actually, it might not require a car at all. This new way of thinking requires that we do not define social standing and personal success in terms of what we own and what we consume. Can you imagine a society like that? What would it be like?

Why is the environment a social issue? As this chapter explains, the state of the natural environment depends on how society is organized, especially the importance a culture attaches to consumption and economic growth.

We learn to see economic expansion as natural and good. When the economy stays the same for a number of months, we say we are experiencing “stagnation.” How do we define a period when the economy gets smaller, as happened during the fall of 2008?

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Population, Urbanization, and Environment CHAPTER 15 473473473473473

1. Here is an illustration of the problem of runaway growth (Milbrath, 1989:10): “A pond has a single water lily growing on it. The lily doubles in size each day. In thirty days, it cov- ers the entire pond. On which day does it cover half the pond?” When you realize the answer, discuss the implica- tions of this example for population increase.

2. Draw a mental map of a city familiar to you with as much detail of specific places, districts, roads, and transportation facilities as you can. Compare your map to a real one or,

better yet, a map drawn by someone else. Try to account for the differences.

3. As an interesting exercise, carry a trash bag around for a single day, and collect everything you throw away. Most peo- ple are surprised to find that the average person in the United States discards close to 5 pounds of paper, metal, plastic, and other materials daily (over a lifetime, that’s about 50 tons).

Applying SOCIOLOGY in Everyday Life

What would it take to convince members of our society that smaller (rather than bigger) might be better? Why do we seem to prefer not just bigger cars but bigger homes and more and more material possessions?

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CHAPTER 15 Population, Urbanization, and Environment

Making the Grade

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Demography: The Study of Population

… Demography analyzes the size and composition of a population and how and why people move from place to place. Demographers collect data and study several factors that affect population (p. 446).

FERTILITY

• Fertility is the incidence of childbearing in a country’s population.

• Demographers describe fertility using the crude birth rate.

MORTALITY

• Mortality is the incidence of death in a country’s population.

• Demographers measure mortality using both the crude death rate and the infant mortality rate.

MIGRATION

• The net migration rate is the difference between the in-migration rate and the out- migration rate.

pp. 446–47 p. 447

pp. 447–48

POPULATION GROWTH In general, rich nations grow as much from immigration as from natural increase; poorer nations grow almost entirely from natural increase.

POPULATION COMPOSITION Demographers use age-sex pyramids to show graphically the composition of a population and to project population trends.

p. 448 pp. 448–50

History and Theory of Population Growth

demographic transition theory (p. 451) a thesis that links population patterns to a society’s level of technological development

zero population growth (p. 452) the rate of reproduction that maintains population at a steady level

• Historically, world population grew slowly because high birth rates were offset by high death rates.

• About 1750, a demographic transition began as world population rose sharply, mostly due to falling death rates.

• In the late 1700s, Thomas Robert Malthus warned that population growth would outpace food production, resulting in social calamity.

• Demographic transition theory contends that technological advances gradually slow population increase.

• World population is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050.

… Currently, the world is gaining 83 million people each year, with 98% of this increase taking place in poor countries (p. 450).

pp. 450–53

Urbanization: The Growth of Cities

urbanization (p. 455) the concentration of population into cities

metropolis (p. 456) a large city that socially and economically dominates an urban area

suburbs (p. 456) urban areas beyond the political boundaries of a city

megalopolis (p. 457) a vast urban region containing a number of cities and their surrounding suburbs

The FIRST URBAN REVOLUTION began with the appearance of cities about 10,000 years ago.

• By about 2,000 years ago, cities had emerged in most regions of the world except North America and Antarctica.

• Preindustrial cities have low buildings; narrow, winding streets; and personal social ties.

A SECOND URBAN REVOLUTION began about 1750 as the Industrial Revolution propelled rapid

urban growth in Europe.

• The physical form of cities changed as planners created wide, regular streets to allow for more trade.

• The emphasis on commerce, as well as the increasing size of cities, made urban life more impersonal.pp. 453–55

p. 455

IN THE UNITED STATES, urbanization has been going on for more than 400 years and continues today.

• Urbanization came to North America with European colonists.

• By 1850, hundreds of new cities had been founded from coast to coast.

• By 1920, a majority of the U.S. population lived in urban areas.

• Since 1950, the decentralization of cities has resulted in the growth of suburbs and edge cities and a rebound in rural population.

• Nationally, Sunbelt cities—but not the older Snowbelt cities—are increasing in size and population. pp. 455–58

demography (p. 446) the study of human population

fertility (p. 446) the incidence of childbearing in a country’s population

crude birth rate (p. 446) the number of live births in a given year for every 1,000 people in a population

mortality (p. 447) the incidence of death in a country’s population

crude death rate (p. 447) the number of deaths in a given year for every 1,000 people in a population

infant mortality rate (p. 447) the number of deaths among infants under one year of age for each 1,000 live births in a given year

life expectancy (p. 447) the average life span of a country’s population

migration (p. 447) the movement of people into and out of a specified territory

sex ratio (p. 448) the number of males for every 100 females in a nation’s population

age-sex pyramid (p. 448) a graphic representation of the age and sex of a population

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Urbanism as a Way of Life

Gemeinschaft (p. 458) a type of social organization in which people are closely tied by kinship and tradition

Gesellschaft (p. 458) a type of social organization in which people come together only on the basis of individual self-interest

urban ecology (p. 460) the study of the link between the physical and social dimensions of cities

… Rapid urbanization during the nineteenth century led early sociologists to study the differences between rural and urban life. These early sociologists included, in Europe, Tönnies, Durkheim, and Simmel, and in the United States, Park and Wirth.

FERDINAND TÖNNIES built his analysis on the concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. • Gemeinschaft, typical of the rural village, joins

people in what amounts to a single primary group.

• Gesellschaft, typical of the modern city, describes individuals motivated by their own needs rather than the well-being of the community.

EMILE DURKHEIM agreed with much of Tönnies’s thinking but claimed that urbanites do not lack social bonds; the basis of social soldarity simply differs in the two settings.

• Mechanical solidarity involves social bonds based on common sentiments and shared moral values. This type of social solidarity is typical of traditional, rural life.

• Organic solidarity arises from social bonds based on specialization and interdependence. This type of social solidarity is typical of modern, urban life.

p. 458

pp. 458–59

GEORG SIMMEL claimed that the overstimulation of city life produced a blasé attitude in urbanites.

ROBERT PARK, at the University of Chicago, claimed that cities permit greater social freedom.

p. 459 pp. 459–60

LOUIS WIRTH saw large, dense, heterogeneous populations creating an impersonal and self- interested, though tolerant, way of life.

Urbanization in Poor Nations

• The world’s first urban revolution took place about 8000 B.C.E. with the first urban settlements.

• The second urban revolution took place after 1750 in Europe and North America with the Industrial Revolution.

• A third urban revolution is now occurring in poor countries. Today, most of the world’s largest cities are found in less developed nations.

p. 462

Environment and Society

ecology (p. 462) the study of the interaction of living organisms and the natural environment

natural environment (p. 462) Earth’s surface and atmosphere, including living organisms, air, water, soil, and other resources necessary to sustain life

ecosystem (p. 462) the interaction of all living organisms and their natural environment

environmental deficit (p. 463) profound long-term harm to the natural environment caused by humanity’s focus on short-term material affluence

rain forests (p. 468) regions of dense forestation, most of which circle the globe close to the equator

global warming (p. 468) a rise in Earth’s average temperature due to an increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

environmental racism (p. 469) patterns of development that expose poor people, especially minorities, to environmental hazards

ecologically sustainable culture (p. 470) a way of life that meets the needs of the present generation without threatening the environmental legacy of future generations

The state of the ENVIRONMENT is a social issue because it reflects how human beings organize social life.

• Societies increase the environmental deficit by focusing on short-term benefits and ignoring the long-term consequences brought on by their way of life.

• The more complex a society’s technology, the greater its capacity to alter the natural environment.

• The logic-of-growth thesis supports economic development, claiming that people can solve environmental problems as they arise.

• The limits-to-growth thesis states that societies must curb development to prevent eventual environmental collapse.

pp. 462–63

pp. 464–65

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES include

• Disposing of solid waste: More than half of what we throw away ends up in landfills, which are filling up and which can pollute groundwater under Earth’s surface.

• Protecting the quality of water and air: The supply of clean water is already low in some parts of the world. Industrial technology has caused a decline in air quality.

• Protecting the rain forests: Rain forests help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and are home to a large share of this planet’s living species. Under pressure from development, the world’s rain forests are now half their original size and are shrinking by about 1% annually.

• Global warming: Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are causing the average temperature of the planet to rise, melting the ice caps and bringing other dramatic changes to the natural environment.

• Environmental racism: Conflict theory has drawn attention to the fact that the poor, especially minorities, suffer most from environmental hazards.

pp. 465–70

pp. 459–60

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36 95

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