Contemporary Lesson 10
Contemporary Lesson 10
Although the dominance of cities is a relatively recent phenomenon, cities have been
in existence for approximately 9,000 years, and human cultural development is directly
linked to them. In fact, the term civilization comes from the Latin word civis, meaning “a
person living in a city”.
In the late 19th century, German sociologist (1855-1937) Ferdinand Tonnies developed
a theoretical continuum to analyze the difference between rural and urban living. He
developed two concepts that have becoming a lasting part of sociology’s terminology.
Tonnies used the German word Gemeinschaft (meaning roughly community) to refer
to a type of social organization in which people are closely tied by kinship and tradition.
Gemeinschaft, is a society made up of a large population characterized by loose
associations, a complex division of labor, secondary relationship, and formal social control.
Urbanization refers to the movement of masses of people from rural to urban areas
and an increase in urban influence over all spheres of culture and society. Social scientist
recognize that the number of people residing within the political boundaries of cities is
less important than the complex communication, transportation, economic, and social
networks that link people in cities and towns to those in suburbs and the surrounding
rural areas. In the United States, their Census Bureau collects and analyze data from
standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs) which include a city, or a city and its
surrounding suburbs, with a population of 50,000 or more.
Urban studies in some affluent countries became closely identified with human
ecology, a subfield of sociology that focuses on recurring spatial, social, and cultural
patterns in a particular social environment, in this case, cities. Human ecologists view a city
as an ecosystem-a community of organisms sharing the same physical environment. Spatial
relations are analytical basis for human ecology, which focuses on the physical shape of
cities, economic and social relations between cities, and social relations and in teraction
between people.
The term urbanization refers to an increase in the proportion of people living in the
cities, and urbanism reflects changes in attitudes, values, and lifestyles resulting from
urbanization. According to Wirth (1978), urbanism affects people negatively because the
city’s large size, high population density, and great heterogeneity lead to impersonality,
anonymity, and such individual problems as loneliness, alcoholism, and suicide. Further,
urbanism entailed a way of life in which the city affects hoe people feel, think, and
interact.
PATTERNS OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Ernest Burgess, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, was interested in how the
ecological arrangement of cities affects the economic resources of groups and individuals and
the degree to which people can profitably utilize urban space. He noticed that lands uses
influence residential patterns and segregation based on race, social class, and other
characteristics of people and places of business. According to Burgess (1925) as cited by
Thompson and Hickey (2006) concentric zone model, cities develop in a series of zones
represented by concentric circles radiating out from the central business district.
Zone 1 – is the central business district- the heart of the city and the center of distribution of
goods and services, it is the location of important businesses, financial institutions, and retail
outlets.
Zone 2 – as Burgess called it, is the zone of transition because it is subject to rapid change. In
many major cities, this area has been where immigrants first settled and established urban
enclaves such as Chinatown and Little Sicily. Zone 2 often reflects the cultures of numerous
foreign countries, and as a result of the marginality experienced by many of its inhabitants,
it is characterized by high rates of delinquency, crime, alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, and
other forms of deviant behavior. Factories often also locate in and around Zone 2, thereby
increasing rail and truck traffic, transients, and pollution. The zone of transition is marked
by urban decay, in part because speculators and absentee landlords who own land and
buildings there do not invest heavily in their maintenance.
Zone 3 – Factory workers and other blue-collar laborers live in Zone 3, which contains
residential hotels, apartments, trailer parks, and other types of working class housing. As
immigrants become assimilated, find jobs, and can afford permanent housing, they often
move into Zone 3.
Zone 4 – is primarily a residential area for middle-class and upper-class housing. Since
World War II, people living in Zone 4 have found it inconvenient and undesirable to drive
downtown to shop, bank, and receive necessary services, so branch banks, shopping malls
Medical clinics, hospitals, and other services have sprung up and in around Zone 4 to meet
their needs.
Zone 5 – is a commuter zone where people live in suburban areas or smaller incorporated
towns far enough away to avoid the undesirable elements of the city (crime, drugs, and so
on) yet close enough to enjoy its amenities (theater, professional sports, and necessary
goods and services) as well as to commute to their place of work.
Burgess’s ecological model provided sociological insight into urban development. Since
then, other urban sociologists have offered models they thought would more accurately
illustrate the process.
Urban sociologists Chauncey Harris and Edward Ullman (1945, as cited by Thompson
and Hickey, 2006) offered yet another explanation of urban development with their
multiple-nuclei model or multicentered model. According to their model, cities evolve from
several nuclei that shape the character and structure of the areas surrounding them.
For example, the central business district serves as one important nucleus while a college
or university across town serve as another. If the community has a prison, it might serve as
another distinct nucleus for development, and a major manufacturing plant would provide
the nucleus for yet another area.
The models proposed by Burgess, Hoyt and Harris and Ullman are just that models
representing ideal types. The models may or may not accurately described the specific
development of actual cities. Nevertheless, they provide important sociological insights as
to how spatial relationships and differential land use affect population patterns and social
life.
Most global cities from 1900 through the mid-1960s, urbanization patterns reflected a
steady migration from rural to urban areas. Over the past three decades, however, while
cities have continued to grow, most migration has been into the fringe
Areas around major cities. The traditional concept of the city grew increasingly inadequate
to describe urbanization in the case of global cities such as London, Paris, New York, and
Tokyo. The newer term metropolis means a major urban area that includes a large central
city surrounded by several smaller incorporated cities and suburbs that join to form one
large recognizable municipality. The greater metropolitan area of New York City for
example, has a population of over 17 million and includes people who live in the city’s five
boroughs-Manhattan, the Bronx, Brookly, Queens, and Staten Island and Westchester
Country and even in Connecticut and New Jersey. Similarly, Los Angeles has absorbed the
communities of Anaheim, Beverly Hills, and several satellite cities, and today metropolitan
Los Angeles includes at least nine separate cities and 60 self-governing communities.
Metropolitan Manila, in this case with a population of more than 12 million people
includes the cities of Manila, Quezon, Pasay, Caloocan, Paranaque, Mandaluyong, Pasig, Las
Pinas, San Juan, Marikina, Valenzuela, Navotas, Malabon, Taguig, Muntinlupa, Makati, and
the municipality of Pateros.
Perhaps the most important variable, however, was the idyllic stereotype of suburban
living promoted by the mass media. According to television, motion pictures, and popular
magazines, the suburbs provided all the amenities of urban life yet were far enough away
to avoid the hassles of the city.
PROBLEM IN CITIES
1. The greatest problem facing major cities is generating enough revenue to provide
adequate services and protection for their residents. Most major cities raise taxes to
compensate for shrinking revenues but this in turn encourages more residents and
businesses to flee the city and locate in surrounding suburb.
2. Urban decay hits the central city as major businesses move from the downtown area to
to more profitable suburban locations. Old buildings subsequently either remain vacant
and deteriorate or become multiple-unit slum housing, low-rent hotels, “adult”
bookstore and theaters, centers for drug distribution and other criminal activities, and
repositories for the urban homeless.
3. The central cities have increasingly become the domicile of the poor. Although many of
the poor reside in rural areas, the proportion of urban poor increased between 1980
And 1990. Much urban poverty is a result of a growing urban underclass of poorly
educated and unskilled minorities who lack the skills and education to make the transition
from an industrial to a service economy.
5. Inner-city decay. Even if some city governments in global cities attempt to revitalize
central cities by razing dilapidated buildings and replacing them with modern high-rise
office buildings, apartment complexes, and condominiums, they could not contain the
proliferation of street people, drug dealers, and prostitutes who do their illegal trades,
especially during night time.