THE FUTURE OF CITIES Some of the literature on the “crisis of the cities” rebukes the present by contrasting it with a mythical Golden Age when community life was neighborly, companionable, and untroubled. But no historian has succeeded in locating such a Golden Age [Fischer et al., 1977, p. 197}, and predictions pf urban collapse are equally unrealistic. It is difficult to see …
The Rural Nonfarmers The “rural nonfarm” category has teen our most rapidly growing population segment, increasing by 3.’Z percent between 1950 and 1960, by 48 percent between 1960 and 1970, and by 20 percent between 1970 and 1980, by which time nearly one-fourth of the population fell into this category. ( n called “suburbanites,” either their obliges are too <, tall …
The Town This town is intermediate between rural and urban communities. It is too large for all inhabitants to be acquainted with one’ another, yet small enough for informal relation- , ships to predominate. Social behavior more closely resembles the rural than the metropolitan city pattern. There is no ‘Census definition for the ~own; the ‘Classifications settlement of over 2,500 persons …
RURAL AND URBAN CONVERGENCE Although “rural” and “urban” are useful concepts, there has never been a sharp dividing line between .them. Even before the suburban movement and the urbanization of rural life, the two life-styles converged in the town URBAN PERSONALITY. What effects do the conditions of urban life have “upon urban personality? Earlier urban .sociologists, such as Park (1925], Sorokin and Zimmerman, [1929], and especially …
Urban Life and Personality The city is a place of contrasts. Cities are centers of learning, of the arts, of science and medicine, of excitement, glamour, and “progress,” while rural areas have been charged with provincialism, superstition, ignorance, – and bigotry. Cities are also centers of vice arid crime, of frivolous extravagance: of unbridled self-indulgence, and of insincere pretension. In short, the city …
Urban. Ecological Processes Change is continuous in the American city. The means through which the distribution of Has this pattern peen true of most major cities in the United States? Communitypeople and activities change are known as ecological processes. To understand them we must begin with the natural area, a collection of people and activities which are drawn together in mutual …
The Population Turnaround It is never safe to predict social change by simply projecting recent trends into the future. As recently as 1970, most social scientists assumed that urban growth and rural depopulation would continue indefinitely. They were dead wrong,” A 1969 Harris Poll reported that two-thirds of large-city residents wished to live elsewhere within ten years [Harris, 1970]. Many. have fulfilled their wish. …
The Ecological Pattern of Cities Most cities look as though they just happened grew without plan or design-and they did. While a few major cities such as Washington, D.C., once had a plan, they have long since outgrown it. But while most city growth is not planned, neither is it entirely haphazard. Cities have structure, and there is some reason for the …
The Antiurban Bias Ever since their earliest appearance, cities have been viewed with suspicion by rural peoples, The Old Testament prophets were. rural men, denouncing the sins and vices of the wicked cities. Jefferson despised cities and felt that only a nation of freeholdmg farmers could possibly r!main a democracy. Even city people share the antiurban bias, which sees the c-ry as …
THE URBAN ‘COMMUNITY The Development of Cities In order for the primitive Stone Age village to expand to a size of several hundred thousand, it needed a food surplus, a water supply, and a transportation system. Since a river valley provided all three, the first large cities arose six or seven thousand years ago in the valleys of the Nile, …
