Gottdenier Book

“The best urban sociology textbook available!
This updated version of Gottdiener
Gottdiener
Hutchison
and Hutchison’s respected text stands out for its critical sociospatial approach
accenting key development actors, attention to urban theming and semiotics,
savvy discussions of racial/gender issues, and studied attention to global contexts
of U.S. and overseas urban development.”
—JOE FEAGIN, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
“The New Urban Sociology blends theory and examples to give readers an accessible
and engaging work suitable for undergraduates, urban scholars, and general readers.
Gottdiener and Hutchison provide an innovative and brilliantly structured text to shed
fresh light on the dominant trends and global processes shaping cities and urban life.”
—KEVIN FOX GOTHAM, TULANE UNIVERSITY
“Bringing our understanding of global urban trends and recent urban policies bang up
to date, The New Urban Sociology embraces a wide range of social, cultural, economic
and political themes and issues. Clearly organized and smartly written, the volume will
be of immense value to students of urban studies, urban history, and sociology and
anyone interested in the key metropolitan issues of our time.”
—MARK CLAPSON, UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER
“Hutchison and Gottdiener make this book more and more user friendly in
the fourth edition. . . . This book deserves to be read not only by upper-level
undergraduate and graduate students, but also by scholars who are looking
for a brief (but effective) overview on the city.”
—GABRIELE MANELLA, UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA
Organized around an integrated paradigm—the sociospatial perspective—the fourth edition of

this breakthrough text considers the impact of social factors such as race, class, gender, lifestyle,
economics, culture, and politics on the development of metropolitan areas. Moving beyond
the traditional city–suburb dichotomy, The New Urban Sociology provides a unique focus on the
continuously changing nature of metropolitan regions. It integrates the social ecological with
the political economy paradigm through a fresh theoretical approach emphasizing the importance
of space to social life and real estate to the economy and urban development. This fully revised
edition features a new chapter on metropolitan social policy and expanded discussions of inter-
national regions, key concepts, and the effect of the economic crisis on housing markets, public
policy, and urban development.
Mark Gottdiener is professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY.

Ray Hutchison is professor of sociology and chair of urban and regional studies at the University
of Wisconsin–Green Bay.
Cover Image © Jon Arnold/JAI/Corbis

Cover Design: Miguel Santana & Wendy Halitzer
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9780813344256-text_Layout 1 5/10/10 9:34 AM Page i
THE NEW
URBAN
SOCIOLOGY
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Fourth Edition
THE NEW
URBAN
SOCIOLOGY
Mark Gottdiener
University at Buffalo
Ray Hutchison
University of Wisconsin–Green Bay

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Copyright © 2011 by Westview Press

Published by Westview Press,
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of
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Designed by Trish Wilkinson

Set in 10 point Adobe Garamond
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gottdiener, Mark.
The new urban sociology / Mark Gottdiener, Ray Hutchison. — 4th ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8133-4425-6 (alk. paper)
1. Metropolitan areas—United States. 2. Suburbs—United States.
3. Urbanization—United States—History. 4. Sociology, Urban—United States.
5. Sociology, Urban. 6. Urbanization. I. Hutchison, Ray. II. Title.
HT334.U5G657 2010
307.76—dc22 2010011487
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Mark Gottdiener dedicates this fourth edition to the memory of his

parents, Moritz and Aranka Gottdiener.
Ray Hutchison dedicates this fourth edition to Dulce Reyes Hutchison,

whose journey from Manila to Chicago brought our global world to-
gether, and to Leilani, Heather, and Jessica, who will complete the new
global world of the twenty-first century.
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CONTENTS
Preface to the Fourth Edition xiii
1 THE NEW URBAN SOCIOLOGY 1

Urban Regions, 1
Defining the Metropolitan Region, 6
Megacities Around the World, 9
A New Approach to Urban Sociology, 13
Global Capitalism and the Metropolis, 13
Supply-Side Factors in Urban Development, 15
The Importance of Culture in Metropolitan Life, 17
The Sociospatial Approach, 19
Key Concepts, 21
Discussion Questions, 21
2 THE ORIGINS OF URBAN LIFE 23

Ancient Urbanization, 28
Classical Cities, 30
Urbanization After AD 1000, 33
The Medieval Order and the Renaissance City, 38
Capitalism and the Rise of the Industrial City, 41
Key Concepts, 47
Important Names, 47
3 THE RISE OF URBAN SOCIOLOGY 49

Georg Simmel on the City, 52
Louis Wirth and Urbanism as a Way of Life, 55
vii
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viii CONTENTS
The Chicago School of Urban Sociology, 58

From Human Ecology to Urban Ecology, 69
Conclusion, 72
Key Concepts, 73
Important Names, 73
4 CONTEMPORARY URBAN SOCIOLOGY 75

Political Economy and the City: Classic Approaches, 76
The Revival of Urban Political Economy: Henri Lefebvre, 80
Class Conflict Theories: Gordon, Storper, and Walker, 82
Capital Accumulation Theory, 84
Approaches by Urban Sociologists: The Growth Machine vs.
the Sociospatial Perspective, 86
Real Estate and Government Intervention, 89
Semiotics and Urban Culture, 93
The Global Economy, 95
Summary: The Sociospatial Perspective, 97
Key Concepts, 98
5 URBANIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES 99

The Stages of Urban Growth, 99
The Colonial Period: 1630 to 1812, 101
The Era of Industrial Expansion: 1812 to 1920, 105
The Rise of the Metropolis: 1920 to 1960, 114
Key Concepts, 122
6 SUBURBANIZATION, GLOBALIZATION, AND

THE EMERGENCE OF THE MULTICENTERED REGION 123
Deindustrialization and Globalization: Processes That
Have Changed Both Cities and Suburbs Since the 1960s, 130
Globalization and Uneven Development, 131
How Deindustrialization and Globalization Affected Suburbs, 133
Beyond Suburbia: The Emergence of the Multinucleated Region, 138
Recent Trends in Metropolitan Regions, 141
The Shift to the Sun Belt, 144
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CONTENTS ix
Key Concepts, 153

7 PEOPLE AND LIFESTYLES IN THE METROPOLIS:

URBAN AND SUBURBAN CULTURE 155
Class Differences and Spatial Location, 156
Women, Gender Roles, and Space, 165
The City as a Special Place: Nightlife, Urban Culture, and
Regeneration of Downtowns, 171
Urban Culture and City Revitalization, 172
Ethnicity and Immigration, 176
Conclusion: Ethnic and Cultural Diversity Across the Metropolis, 182
Key Concepts, 183
8 MINORITY SETTLEMENT PATTERNS,

NEIGHBORHOODS, AND COMMUNITIES IN THE
MULTICENTERED METRO REGION 185
Voluntary and Involuntary Movements of Minorities, 185
Neighborhoods and Community, 194
The Difference Between Neighborhood and Community, 200
New Forms of Community, 202
Social Networks as Communities Without Proximity, 205
Summary, 206
Key Concepts, 207
9 METROPOLITAN PROBLEMS: RACISM,

POVERTY, CRIME, HOUSING, AND FISCAL CRISIS 209
The Sociospatial Approach to Social Problems, 210
Racism and Poverty, 211
Increasing Income Inequality, Unemployment, and Poverty, 221
The Housing Crisis and Society’s Failure to Provide Adequate
Affordable Housing, 222
Homelessness, 227
Crime, 229
The Fiscal Crisis and Public Service Problems, 239
Summary, 241
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x CONTENTS
Key Concepts, 242

10 URBANIZATION IN THE DEVELOPED NATIONS 245

Western Europe, 248
Eastern Europe, 265
Japan, 271
Summary, 276
Key Concepts, 278
11 GLOBALIZATION AND URBANIZATION

IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD 279
Changing Perspectives on Urbanization, 283
The Demographic Transition, 287
Primate City Development Patterns, 289
Shantytown Development, 290
The Informal Economy and Coping Strategies, 294
Urban Social Movements and Politics, 295
Patterns of Urbanization, 297
Summary, 317
Key Concepts, 318
12 METROPOLITAN PLANNING AND

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 321
Sprawl, 323
A Short History of Metropolitan Planning, 326
The Sociology of Land-Use Planning, 329
Utopian Schemes: Howard, Le Corbusier, and Wright, 332
Planning Critics: Jacobs and Krier, 336
Other Trends in Planning Today, 338
Summary of Planning Issues, 340
Environmental Issues, 341
Key Concepts, 348
Important Names, 348
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CONTENTS xi
13 METROPOLITAN SOCIAL POLICY 349

The Tragedy of the Commons, 350
Uneven Development and Policy: Redistributive Programs, 352
Urban and Metropolitan Policy, 355
Privatism and Issues of Social Justice, 363
Urban Policy: The Political Debate, 367
Regional Governance, 369
Key Concepts, 372
14 THE FUTURE OF URBAN SOCIOLOGY 375

Understanding Our New Urban World, 376
Urban Structure and Urban Culture, 388
The Future of the City, 390
The Future of the Urban Inquiry, 393
Key Concepts, 395
Important Names, 395
Bibliography 397
Index 425
About the Authors 435
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PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
Occasionally, a colleague among urban sociologists will ask, “Say, what’s so ‘new’
about The New Urban Sociology after all these years?” It sounded frivolous at first,
but we have come to realize that this is a serious question, although not in the way
the questioner intended, if not an attempt to state a criticism. It is a great pleasure to
produce a fourth edition of this text that began as an idea of Mark Gottdiener’s in
1991 and was first published three years later. Ray Hutchison joined the project as
coauthor for the second edition, and later, alarmed at the excessive cost of hardcover
books in this area, we switched publishers and arranged for a third edition to be put
out by Westview in a paperback format. We have all been very pleased at the re-
sponse to that change and the continued use of our text in the classroom.
So, what is still “new” about The New Urban Sociology? Our original formulation of
the new paradigm directly attacked the previous dominant approach of urban ecology
that was grounded in neo-Classical economics with the market of many buyers and sell-
ers as supreme along with its neo-Liberal political and planning prescriptions that
weighted market solutions heavily despite government subsidies. The new urban sociol-
ogy replaced this view with the more realistic one of an economy and political system
hegemonically controlled by large, powerful interests that moved to make their concerns
the most important in our universally acknowledged “mixed” economy, where govern-
ment intervention usually favored those powerful interests and not level-playing-field
markets. To suggest, as some have, that our view, along with the theory of Henri
Lefebvre, and the political economy based on our perspective, are not still “new” means
that much of the rhetoric and ideological attacks against better planning, better control
over our urban environments, and better management of job creation and profit making
no longer have adherents among writers of urban sociology texts competing with ours.
This is clearly not the case. The new urban sociology remains the best explanatory para-
digm for the urban crisis, both current and past, despite the publication and use of other
textbooks that retain elements of previous and discredited “free market” paradigms.
Other aspects of our approach also have yet to take hold in a way that would un-
dercut the newness of the “new” perspective. Despite the overwhelming reality of how
everyday life is organized today in the United States and increasingly in developed
xiii
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xiv PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
countries elsewhere as a regional, expanding space that we call the mutlicentered metro-
politan region, many urbanists persist in placing the term the city exclusively at the center
of their analysis. They speak of world cities, edge cities, megacities. Anyone with a rudi-
mentary knowledge of maps and spatial reasoning who can chart places of residence, lo-
cations of businesses, airports, and manufacturing and retailing sites can easily see the
immense regional spread of socioeconomic activity as well as the formation of mini-
centers that have taken over many of the functions of the classical, historical central city
itself. To be sure, the City of London is still the financial center of the United Kingdom,
but the City of London is not the city of London, because the latter is an increasingly
multicentered metropolitan region encompassing a vast area of homes, businesses, recre-
ational, and government minicenters. Clearly as well, New York City must be consid-
ered globally central, but when people who should be better informed of spatial urban
characteristics speak of it as a world city, they are almost exclusively talking about Man-
hattan, and even more specifically, Wall Street and its attendant services and spin-off
businesses. Looming as an immense regional agglomeration outside Manhattan is a vast
expanse of urbanized, multicentered space encompassing parts of New Jersey, Connecti-
cut, and even the edge of the Philadelphia region in Pennsylvania, as well as the rest of
the New York State areas around the five boroughs of the city. In short, what remains
still “new” to some people is the basic need to grasp the size and internal dynamics of
this new form of urban space that we call the multicentered metropolitan region.
Lastly, when urbanists ask us to explain what is still “new” about our new para-
digm, introduced in the 1990s, we often point to simplistic, sound-bite sociology that
has crept into explanations for spatial dynamics in place of deep-level analysis that un-
derstands fully the contributions of Henri Lefebvre and his academic followers. How
can people still speak of a “growth machine” after decades of deindustrialization and
global labor sourcing? How can they believe there is a one-to-one correspondence be-
tween the “use value” of property allegedly enjoyed by consumers versus the “ex-
change value” enjoyed by developers, when, ever since 1930s real estate reforms, the
major economic investment of Americans is their home and the prospect of future in-
creases in its exchange value? How can urbanists speak of the importance of cities for
all people when most Americans, according to the census, have lived in suburbs since
the 1970s, and when the federal government can make such a mess of the devastation
of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina that, almost a decade later, middle-income and
poor people remain displaced from their beloved region and its way of life? And given
all the alternative approaches advertised by other urban sociology textbooks in com-
petition with ours, how can they begin to truly help students understand the current
economic meltdown when it can be explained directly, easily, and quite usefully by
reading The New Urban Sociology’s approach to the role of real estate speculation and
investment, Henri Lefebvre’s second circuit of capital, in bringing about such crises
and a failure of the market?
In this fourth edition, we have updated the material in previous editions to cover
the persisting importance of understanding the “new” approach in order to explain the
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PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION xv
housing crisis, the failures of the market and influence-controlled government inter-
vention, the contradictions of use versus exchange value, the fallacy of the “growth ma-
chine,” the falseness of the old, urban ecology paradigm, and the critical need for more
social justice in dealing with persisting social, political, and economic problems of
everyday urban life in the massive, multicentered metropolitan region. New immi-
grants, new forms of employment, new growth poles like airports, new cultural forms,
new political struggles, new changes in the global positions of countries like India,
Brazil, and China, new patterns of global labor sourcing and transnational corporate
dynamics, new issues of social justice and environmental concerns, and the like, con-
tinue to make this edition of the New Urban Sociology as relevant today as it was when
the first edition came out over twenty years ago. We hope that it will be as useful in the
classroom as have previous versions of this new paradigm.
We offer our heartfelt thanks to the many people who have adopted this text for
classroom use. We strongly appreciate all the feedback sent to us by teachers in the
trenches of academia who have employed our text and found it most student-friendly
and enjoyable to teach. We are so very thankful for your patronage and hope that this
version, because it updates tables with the latest census data, and because it deals with
the most contemporary of urban issues today, such as the need for affordable housing
and continued infrastructure neglect of our regional spaces as well as the new cultural
patterns of settlement, will continue to satisfy your teaching needs.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The development of The New Urban Sociology through four editions has been an ex-
tended project. It could not have been accomplished without the crucial help provided
by a number of people. We wish to thank friends in academia and beyond for their
support: Andrew Austin, Bob Antonio, Marcelo Cruz, Karen Dalke, David Diaz, Joe
Feagin, Kevin Gotham, Harvey Kay, Bruce Haynes, Chigon Kim, Nestor Rodriguez,
Eric Monkkonen, Peter Muller, Adam Parrillo, Mario Small, Leonard Wallock, and
Talmadge Wright in the United States; Phil Gunn, Lena Lavinas, Sandra Lincioni,
Circe Monteiro and Sueli Schiffer in Brazil; Jens Tonboe in Denmark; Lorenzo Tripodi
in Germany; Alexandros Lagopoulos and Nikos Komninos in Greece; Mark Clapson
and Chris Pickvance in England; Gabrielle Manella and Simone Giometti in Italy;
Dorel Abraham in Romania; Lynn Smith in Scotland; Milan Prodanovic and Sonya
Prodanovic in Serbia; and Richard Wolff in Switzerland. Students at the University of
Wisconsin-Green Bay have provided valuable comments and editorial support, includ-
ing Randy Roethle and Tanya Krall (third edition) and Lora Boncher, See Colin Quin-
tana, and Emily Vetting (fourth edition).
We thank the editing/design/production team of Sandra Beris, Nancy King, and
especially Alex Masulis at Westview.
We would like to thank our colleagues who served as reviewers for earlier editions:
Brian Aldrich, Winona State University; Brian Barry, Rochester Institute of Technology;
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xvi PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
Craig Calhoun, then at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and now at New
York University; Robert L. Carroll, University of Cincinnati; Scott Ford, Florida State
University; Anthony Filipovitch, Minnesota State University at Mankato; Karl Flaming,
University of Colorado–Denver; Judith Friedman, Rutgers University; Kevin Fox
Gotham, Tulane University; Geoffrey Grant, South Dakota State University; George
Kephart, Pennsylvania State University; Jerry Lembcke, College of Holy Cross; An-
thony Mendonca, Community College of Allegheny County; Charles Price Reavis,
CUNY–John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Nestor Rodriguez, University of Hous-
ton; Thomas Shannon, Radford University; Steven L. Vassar, Mankato State University;
and J. Talmadge Wright, Loyola University.
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CHAPTER
1
THE NEW URBAN SOCIOLOGY
W e live in an urban world. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, more than 3
billion persons—about half of the world’s population—lived in urban areas. By 2030
this number is expected to increase from 3 to more than 5 billion persons—some 60
percent of the total world population. Most of this increase will occur in the develop-
ing world, much of it in megacities where many if not most persons live in shanty-
towns, and with incomes below the poverty level (United Nations, 2007). This will be
the first urban century in human history, and the well-being not just of families and
households but of human society more generally will depend upon our creating a safe
and just urban environment—something that human populations have not been par-
ticularly adept at doing. A beginning point in this very significant challenge is the
study of urban sociology, which will give us the tools for understanding not just how
urban regions grow and develop but also for understanding the impact of urban life on
persons living in cities, suburbs, and metropolitan regions, and the even greater impact
of world urbanization on human societies and the natural environment. This is the
goal of our textbook, and this is your subject of study for the next several months.
URBAN REGIONS
People most often speak about the city or the suburban town they live in but rarely
about the region. Yet the best way to understand urban growth is to appreciate that it
is regional in scale. We might say that we are from Arlington Heights, but we work,
shop, attend schools, go to churches, synagogues, or mosques, and pursue recreation
in an increasing variety of locations, all within an expanding metropolitan area. Ur-
ban texts in the past have addressed this issue, but they do not take it to heart as the
central organizing principle of the discussion as this text does. In Eric Bogosian’s bril-
liant film Suburbia, actress Parker Posey portrays an L.A. record promoter on tour
who grew up in the affluent Southern California suburbs. When asked by a group of
small-town teenagers where she is from, she replies, “I come from an area.” We under-
stand that the words city and suburb fail to connect with the more contemporary real-
ity of daily life.
1
2 1: THE NEW URBAN SOCIOLOGY
The metropolitan regions of the United States contain an incredible array of

people. Our life opportunities vary according to social class, race, gender, ethnicity,
age, and family status, among other factors. These important social variables, which
are often treated as the traditional subject matter of sociology, in reality interact with
locational, or spatial, factors such as the clustering of homes according to family in-
come, the journey to work or school, the diverse ways people pursue a particular
lifestyle, the particular patterning of our social networks, the regional search for cul-
tural experiences. In this text we will capture the reality of contemporary urbanism
by studying the patterns of everyday life embedded within the urban and suburban
settlement spaces that make up the multicentered metropolitan region. These settle-
ment spaces are given special cultural meanings and value by the people living within
them. Discovering how these settlement spaces have come to be, the role that eco-
nomic, political, and social institutions play in creating and changing these spaces,
and the processes by which these spaces are given meaning by local inhabitants are all
part of the sociospatial perspective of the new urban sociology.
If we flew over our metropolitan regions, we would be struck most strongly by
the immensity of scale. Urbanized development characteristically extends for one
hundred miles around our largest cities. The built-up region contains a mix of cities,
suburbs, vacant space, industrial parks, intensely farmed agricultural land, shopping
malls, and recreational areas—all of which are interconnected and bridged by com-
munication and commuter networks including highways, rail, telecommunications,
and satellite or cellular-based links. The satellite image of the United States at night
shown in Figure 1.1 shows the extensive regional development of urban areas across
the country. Along the eastern seacoast, the Boston-New York-Washington mega-
lopolis described by Jean Gottman is clearly visible. Similar urban agglomerations
can be seen at the southern end of Lake Michigan (the Milwaukee-Chicago-Gary re-
gion), and the coastal urban developments in Florida (Miami to Orlando along the
east coast, Naples to St. Petersburg on the west coast). The population of these ur-
banized areas numbers in the millions. Interestingly, most of the people residing in
metropolitan regions live in suburban communities outside the large central cities.
The dominant position of the suburbs relative to the central cities has existed since
at least the 1970s, when census figures brought this change to our attention. At pres-
ent, some 90 percent of all Americans live in metropolitan regions. But this pattern
of urban growth, and the dominance of the suburban region, was not characteristic
of cities in the past.
At one time, cities were highly compact spatial forms with a distinct center (the
central business district) that dominated, in both an emotional and economic sense,
the urbanized area surrounding it. Once inhabitants went outside the city, they
would be traveling in the countryside. As the famous urban historian Lewis Mum-
ford observed in The City in History, cities served as both huge magnets and contain-
ers that concentrated people and economic activities or wealth within well-defined,
URBAN REGIONS 3
F I G U R E 1.1 Satellite Image of the United States at Night Showing Metropolitan Areas.
SOURCE: NASA.
bounded spaces. Table 1.1 lists the fifteen most populated cities in the United States.
Many of the figures are impressive, such as a total of more than 8.2 million persons
for New York City and 3.8 million for Los Angeles.
The numbers demonstrate the great variability in urban growth, with cities like
Houston and Phoenix each growing by more than 230,000 persons in less than a de-
cade, while Philadelphia lost nearly 70,000 and Detroit more than 30,000 persons.
But these numbers alone do not fully illustrate the massive growth of metropolitan ar-
eas and urban regions in the United States. Compare Table 1.1 with Table 1.2 (page 9),
which shows the metropolitan regions associated with these large cities. The New York
metro region, for example, contains 18 million people, while the area around Los An-
geles is home to 16.4 million residents. Even cities that have lost population—such as
Philadelphia and Detroit—are in fact part of expanding metropolitan regions, which
allows these areas to continue to rank among the top population centers in the country.
Today the city has exploded. No longer is there any one focus or “downtown,” as
there was in the past. People live and work in widely separated realms. Most of the U.S.
population is urban, so most people live in or near some city. But fewer people each
year live within the large central cities that were the population foci of the past. In-
stead, what we now call home is the expanding regions of urbanization that are
4
TA B L E 1. 1 Most Populated Cities in the United States, 1980–2007.

1980 1990 2000 2007 1990–2000 % change 2000-2007 % change
New York City 7,077,000 7,323,000 8,008,000 8,275,000 686,000 9.4 267,000 3.3
Los Angeles 2,967,000 3,485,000 3,695,000 3,834,000 209,000 6.0 139,000 3.8
Chicago 3,005,000 2,784,000 2,896,000 2,837,000 112,000 4.0 –59,000 –2.1
Houston 1,595,000 1,631,000 1,954,000 2,208,000 256,000 15.1 254,000 11.8
Philadelphia 1,688,000 1,586,000 1,518,000 1,450,000 –68,000 –4.3 –68,000 –4.5
Phoenix 790,000 989,000 1,321,000 1,552,000 332,000 33.6 231,000 17.4
San Diego 876,000 1,111,000 1,223,000 1,267,000 112,000 10.1 44,000 3.5
Dallas 904,000 1,007,000 1,189,000 1,240,000 182,000 18.1 51,000 4.4
San Antonio 786,000 997,000 1,145,000 1,329,000 147,000 14.8 184,000 14.7
Detroit 1,203,000 1,028,000 951,000 917,000 –77,000 –7.5 –34,000 –3.6

San Jose 629,000 783,000 895,000 940,000 112,000 14.2 45,000 4.9
Indianapolis 701,000 732,000 782,000 795,000 50,000 6.9 13,000 1.7
San Francisco 679,000 724,000 777,000 765,000 53,000 7.3 –12,000 –1.5
Jacksonville 541,000 635,000 736,000 806,000 101,000 15.8 70,000 9.5
Columbus 565,000 636,000 712,000 748,000 75,000 11.8 36,000 4.9
SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States.
URBAN REGIONS 5
associated with an ever-changing array of cities, towns, suburbs, and exurban areas.
This new form of settlement space is called the multicentered metropolitan region
(MCMR), and it is the first really new way people have organized their living and
working arrangements since the beginning of the industrial age. In contrast to the
characteristics of the bounded city, this new form of urban space can be typified by two
features: It extends over a large region, and it contains many separate manufacturing
areas, retail centers, and residential areas, each with its own abilities to draw workers,
shoppers, and residents. The urban region can best be understood as composed of dif-
ferent realms. Realms are differentiated according to four factors: physical terrain, phys-
ical size, the level and kinds of physical activity within the realm (most particularly the
kinds of minicenters), and the character of the regional transportation network. Com-
muting flows are particularly critical both for the creation of metropolitan regions with
many different centers and for the connection and interaction of people within the re-
gions (Muller, 1981). In addition to the physical features of the region, it is important
that people living within each realm have a shared sense that they occupy an urban
space that is different from other areas within the metropolitan region.
For example, Los Angeles contains six distinct realms within a region of approxi-
mately fifty square miles and a metropolitan population in 2003 of more than 16
million persons. The six urban realms that comprise the Los Angeles region, shown
F I G U R E 1.2 The Urban Realms of Los Angeles. SOURCE: Courtesy of the authors.
in Figure 1.2, are central Los Angeles (the old city center), the San Fernando Valley
(the “valley”), the Pacific foothills (Santa Monica to Pasadena), the Pacific lowlands
(Hermosa, Redondo Beach), eastern Orange County (a separate metropolitan region
that is exclusively suburban), and the San Gabriel and Pomona valleys (extending
eastward and including Pomona, Ontario, and San Bernardino).
DEFINING THE METROPOLITAN REGION

For much of U.S. history, it was sufficient to report information about the popula-
tion of the central city. Most economic and commercial activity was focused in and
around the central business district. By the early 1900s, suburban and regional
growth, including planned suburban communities, satellite cities, and other devel-
opments, began to challenge the dominant role of the city as employers sought to es-
cape crowded conditions. And the increasing numbers of immigrants, confronted
with housing shortages in the cities, began spilling over into the suburban communi-
ties. As early as 1920, the U.S. Bureau of the Census sought to capture regional and
multicentered growth within metropolitan areas by using the term metropolitan dis-
trict (McKelvey, 1968). For the 1940 census, a new category was created: the stan-
dard metropolitan area (SMA), which included a city with a population of at least
50,000 persons and the surrounding suburbs and towns. In 1959 this definition was
expanded to better reflect the regional growth patterns that included population in
centers in two or more counties. The standard metropolitan statistical area (SMSA)
was defined as a county or counties with a central city of 50,000 or more (or twin
cities with a combined population of 50,000 or more) as well as adjacent counties
linked economically and socially with the central city.
Box 1.1
Defining the Metropolitan Region
The term metropolitan region was first used by the U.S. Census in 1920 to describe
the growing cities and suburban areas; since that time, there have been many mod-
ifications to capture the dynamic forces at work within metropolitan regions.
Standard metropolitan area (SMA) was the first term used for official metro-
politan areas, as defined by the then Bureau of the Budget in 1949 for the 1950 de-
cennial census. It was replaced in 1959 with the term SMSA.
Standard metropolitan statistical area (SMSA) replaced SMA for the official
metropolitan areas defined by the then Bureau of the Budget, and was used until
MSAs, CMSAs, and PMSAs were introduced in 1983.
continues
DEFINING THE METROPOLITAN REGION 7
Standard consolidated statistical area (SCSA) was a forerunner of the CMSA.

An SCSA was a combination of two or more SMSAs that had substantial commut-
ing between them and where at least one of the SMSAs had a population of 1 mil-
lion or greater. SCSAs were first defined in 1975 and used until June 1983.
Consolidated metropolitan statistical area (CMSA) is a geographic entity de-
fined by the Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for use by federal
statistical agencies. An area becomes a CMSA if it meets the requirements to qualify
as a metropolitan statistical area (MSA), has a population of 1 million or more, if
component parts are recognized as primary metropolitan statistical areas (PMSAs),
and if local opinion favors the designation.
Metropolitan statistical area (MSA) is a geographic entity, defined by the
OMB for use by federal statistical agencies, based on the concept of a core area with
a large population nucleus, plus adjacent communities having a high degree of eco-
nomic and social integration with that core. Qualification of an MSA requires the
presence of a city with 50,000 or more inhabitants, or the presence of an MA (see
below) and a total population of at least 100,000 (75,000 in New England). The
county or counties containing the largest city and surrounding densely settled terri-
tory are central counties of the MSA. Additional outlying counties qualify to be in-
cluded in the MSA by meeting certain other criteria of metropolitan character, such
as a specified minimum population density or percentage of the population that is
urban. MSAs in New England are defined in terms of cities and towns, following
rules concerning commuting and population density.
Primary metropolitan statistical area (PMSA) is a geographic entity defined
by the OMB for use by federal statistical agencies. Metropolitan statistical areas
(MSA) with a population of 1 million or more may contain one or more PMSAs if
“statistical criteria are met and local opinion is in favor.” A PMSA consists of a large
urbanized county, or a cluster of such counties (cities and towns in New England)
that have substantial commuting interchange.
Metropolitan area (MA) is a collective term, established by the OMB and used
for the first time in 1990, to refer to metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), consoli-
dated metropolitan statistical areas (CMSAs), and primary metropolitan statistical
areas (PMSAs).
SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of the Census.
This is determined by measuring the extent to which people in outlying counties

travel to work to the designated SMSA. If enough people commute to work from
outside city boundaries, the county they reside in becomes part of the SMSA. In
1983 the SMSA was relabeled metropolitan statistical area (MSA). While the number
of MSAs in the United States continues to grow (the number increased from 254 to
258 between the 1990 and 2000 censuses), two states, Wyoming and Vermont, do
not contain any. The seventy-three largest MSAs were designated primary metropoli-
tan statistical areas (PMSAs). Because county boundaries vary widely across the
United States (except in New England where there are no counties), the usefulness of
the MSA classification is somewhat questionable. In the 2000 census, for example,
New Jersey is the most urbanized state, with 100 percent of its population living in
MSAs. But it is followed by Arizona (88 percent) and Nevada (86 percent), states
with just one or two large population centers and where most of the state is rural.
But the regional growth and the sociospatial integration of cities proved to be even
more extensive than the social, economic, and political links suggested by the MSA
concept. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget created yet another term, the
standard metropolitan consolidated area (SMCA) to better capture the expansion of the
multinucleated urban regions. The SMCA was used for the first time in the 1980 cen-
sus. It is defined as having a population of at least 1 million persons in two or more
PMSAs and represents a higher order of integration for metropolitan areas that con-
tain several adjacent metropolitan areas, such as the Los Angeles/Orange County/
Riverside/San Bernardino complex in Southern California or the New York/New Jersey/
Connecticut complex on the East Coast. Each of these regions contains more people
than the entire country of Canada. In the 2000 census, there were eighteen consoli-
dated metropolitan statistical areas in the United States. They are prime illustrations
of the concept of the multinucleated metropolitan region that is so important for the
new urban sociology.
Table 1.2 reveals important aspects of metropolitan growth in the United States.
First, the urban system includes a significant number of metropolitan areas that have
large populations rather than only one or two as is often found in developing nations.
Second, the population living in the suburban region is often much greater than that of
the older central city. Philadelphia had a population of 1.5 million persons in 2007, but
its metropolitan region contained some 5.8 million persons, nearly four times as large.
The city-suburban population disparity is not simply an artifact of population decline
in older industrial cities, however, as we see a similar pattern in the relatively newer Sun
Belt cities as well. For example, Phoenix had a population of 1.6 million in 2007, but
the total metropolitan area included a population of more than 4.2 million, and Dallas
had a population of 1.2 million, but its total metropolitan area included 6.1 million
persons—more than five times that of the central city. (Atlanta, one of the most rapidly
growing metropolitan areas in the country, had a metropolitan population of 5.3 mil-
lion persons, but the central city does not rank in the top fifteen in the country.) Third,
while metropolitan areas across the Northeast and Midwest have grown slowly or even
lost population since the 1970s, the multinucleated metropolitan regions of the South
and Southwest grew rapidly during this period (although they have suffered substan-
tially from the recent housing crisis). This illustrates the Sun Belt shift, discussed in
Chapter 6. For example, the Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, San Diego, and Phoenix
MEGACITIES AROUND THE WORLD 9
TA B L E 1.2 Most Populated Metropolitan Regions in the United States, 1980–2007.

2000–2007
1980 2000 2007 Est. % Change
New York-NJ-Long Island 17,412,203 18,356,506 18,815,988 10.3
Los Angeles-Anaheim-Riverside 11,497,549 16,374,000 12,875,587 7.9
Chicago-Gary-Hammond 7,973,290 9,158,000 9,522,879 10.4
Dallas-Fort Worth 2,930,568 5,222,000 6,144,489 11.8
Philadelphia-Trenton 5,680,509 6,188,000 5,827,962 9.4
Houston-Galveston-Barzoria 3,099,942 4,670,000 5,629,127 12.1
Miami-Ft. Lauderdale 2,643,766 3,443,501 5,413,212 15.7
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria 3,250,921 4,923,000 5,306,125 10.8
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta 2,138,136 3,431,983 5,271,550 15.4
Detroit-Warren-Livonia-Ann Arbor 4,762,764 5,456,000 4,817,595 8.8
Boston-Cambridge-Quincy 3,662,888 5,819,000 4,482,857 7.7
San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose 5,367,900 7,039,000 4,203,898 6.0
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale 1,509,175 2,563,582 4,179,427 16.3
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue 2,093,285 3,265,139 3,309,347 10.1
Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington 2,137,133 2,723,137 3,208,212 11.8
San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos 1,861,846 2,644,132 2,974,859 11.3
St. Louis 2,376,968 2,547,686 2,802,282 11.0
Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor-Akron 2,834,062 2,903,808 2,795,827 9.6
Baltimore-Towson 2,199,497 2,553,000 2,668,056 10.5
Pittsburgh-Beaver Valley 2,423,311 2,394,702 2,355,712 9.8
SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States. Note: MSAs are metropolitan
statistical areas; CMSAs are consolidated metropolitan statistical areas; NECMAs are New England
county metropolitan areas, which are based on townships and require a separate way of aggregating areas
in the metropolitan region.
metropolitan regions have all seen double-digit population increases in each decade
since 1970.
MEGACITIES AROUND THE WORLD

The world’s urban population was estimated at 1 billion in 1960, 2 billion in 1985,
and more than 3 billion in 2007. It is expected to increase to 5 billion by 2030—a
60 percent increase in just 25 years. The United Nations estimates that more than 50
percent of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, and this number is ex-
pected to increase to more than 60 percent by 2030. For the first time in human his-
tory, a majority of the world’s population lives in urban areas. At the current rate of
growth, the urban population will double every 38 years, with almost all of the
growth occurring in cities and metropolitan regions in the developing world. Migra-
tion from rural areas and the transformation of rural settlements into urban places
will account for much of the increase (United Nations, 2009).
Not every country in the world is experiencing the same mix of cities, suburbs,
and multinucleated centers that is characteristic of regional metropolitan growth in
the United States, but all countries are subject to a process of urban development
that produces gigantic cities and regional urbanization. Only 78 cities across the
globe had populations of 1 million or more in 1950. In 1975 there were 65 metro-
politan areas with 10 million or more persons, and by 2000 this number had in-
creased to 251. The growth of large metropolitan regions is also expected to
accelerate. In 2015 it is anticipated that there will be 358 urban agglomerations with
populations of at least 10 million persons and that more than a third of the world’s
urban population will live in slums (United Nations, 2003).
Box 1.2
What Does It Mean to Be Urban?
Countries define their urban populations in many ways, which makes comparisons
across countries and regions very difficult. Here is a sampling of the definitions for
“urban” used in Africa, North America, Europe, and Asia:
Africa
Botswana: Agglomeration of 5,000 or more inhabitants where 75 percent of
the economic activity is nonagricultural
Equatorial Guinea: District centers and localities with 300 dwellings and/or
1,500 or more inhabitants
Ethiopia: Localities of 2,000 or more inhabitants
Malawi: All townships and town planning areas and all district centers
Sudan: Localities of administrative and/or commercial importance or with pop-
ulation of 5,000 or more inhabitants
Zambia: Localities of 5,000 or more inhabitants, the majority of whom all de-
pend on nonagricultural activities
North America
Canada: Places of 1,000 or more inhabitants, having a population density of
400 or more per square kilometer
Costa Rica: Administrative centers of cantons
Cuba: Population living in a nucleus of 2,000 or more inhabitants
Greenland: Localities of 200 or more inhabitants
Honduras: Localities of 2,000 or more inhabitants, having essentially urban
characteristics
Mexico: Localities of 2,500 or more inhabitants
continues
MEGACITIES AROUND THE WORLD 11
Europe
France: Communes containing an agglomeration of more than 2,000 inhabi-
tants living in contiguous houses or with not more than 200 meters between
houses
Iceland: Localities of 200 or more inhabitants
Poland: Towns and settlements of an urban type, e.g., workers’ settlements,
fishermen’s settlements, health resorts
Portugal: Agglomeration of 10,000 or more inhabitants
Spain: Localities of 2,000 or more inhabitants
Switzerland: Communes of 10,000 or more inhabitants, including suburbs
Asia
Cambodia: Towns
China: Cities only refer to those designated by the state council. In the case of cities
with district establishment, the city proper refers to the whole administrative
area of the district if its population density is 1,500 persons per kilometer
Indonesia: Places with urban characteristics
Israel: All settlements of more than 2,000 inhabitants, except those where at
least one-third of the households, participating in the civilian labor force,
earn their living from agriculture
Japan: City (shi) having 50,000 or more inhabitants with 60 percent or more of
the houses located in the main built-up areas and 60 percent or more of the
population engaged in manufacturing, trade, or other urban type of business
Turkey: Population of settlement places, 20,000 and over
SOURCE: United Nations, Demographic Yearbook 2005, Table 6.
Our projection of population growth in megacities and urban regions is based

upon information from the United Nations. To compile this information, the UN uses
information about urban populations provided by countries around the world. But
what does it mean to be urban? As we can see from the information in Box 1.2, coun-
tries have very different definitions of their “urban” population. In some cases, the def-
inition of urban place is based upon a population threshold, such as agglomerations or
localities of 2,500 or more inhabitants (Mexico and the United States), although some
countries have higher thresholds (10,000 or more inhabitants in Portugal, 20,000 in
Turkey), while others have lower thresholds (just 200 or more inhabitants in Iceland
and Greenland). In other cases, the definition of urban place is based upon economic
activity (agglomerations of 5,000 or more inhabitants where 75 percent are engaged in
nonagricultural work in Botswana), political definition (administrative centers in
Costa Rica, townships and town planning areas in Malawi), or combinations of politi-
cal and population factors (communes of 10,000 or more inhabitants in Switzerland).
The wide range of definitions presents some problems, as living in a town of 10,000
persons in Portugal may be very different from a community of 2,500 in Mexico. This
is one of the topics we study in Chapter 3.
Urban growth is distributed very unequally across the globe. According to census
estimates from the UN, the largest urban agglomerations in the developed nations
will grow slowly, whereas those in other areas of the world will experience explosive
growth. Thus, estimates of population growth for the period 2010–2025 for Tokyo,
Osaka, New York, Los Angeles, Moscow, and Paris suggest that these urban agglomer-
ations will experience relatively slow growth. In contrast, Mumbai (Bombay), Cal-
cutta, Dhaka, and Delhi (all in India) and Karachi (in Pakistan) are expected to grow
by some 4 to 8 million persons each, and São Paolo, Mexico City, and Manila by 2 to
3 million persons. Table 1.3 shows the fifteen largest megacities in the world and their
projected populations to the year 2025.
TA B L E 1.3 World’s Largest Urban Agglomerations, 1975–2025.

Average
Annual Rate Population Residing
of Change in Agglomeration,
Urban Agglomeration Population (Millions) (percent) 2007, as percentage of
Total Urban
1975 2007 2025 2005–2010 Population Population
Tokyo, Japan 26.6 35.7 36.4 0.4 27.9 42.1
New York, United States 15.9 19.0 20.6 0.7 6.2 7.6
Mexico City, Mexico 10.7 19.0 21.0 0.8 17.9 23.2
Mumbai (Bombay), India 7.1 18.9 26.4 2.0 1.5 5.6
São Paulo, Brazil 9.6 18.8 21.4 1.3 9.8 11.5
Delhi, India 4.4 15.9 22.5 2.5 1.4 4.7
Shanghai, China 7.3 15.0 19.4 1.7 1.1 2.7
Calcutta, India 7.9 14.8 20.6 1.7 1.3 4.3
Dhaka, Bangladesh 2.2 13.5 22.0 3.3 8.5 32.0
Buenos Aires, Argentina 8.7 12.8 13.8 0.8 32.4 35.2
Los Angeles, United States 8.9 12.5 13.7 0.7 4.1 5.0
Karachi, Pakistan 4.0 12.1 19.1 2.4 7.4 20.7
Cairo, Egypt 6.4 11.9 15.6 1.7 15.8 36.9
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 7.6 11.7 13.4 1.2 6.1 7.2
Osaka-Kobe, Japan 9.8 11.3 11.4 0.1 8.8 13.3
Beijing, China 6.0 11.1 14.5 1.8 0.8 2.0
Manila, Philippines 5.0 11.1 14.8 1.6 12.6 19.6
Moscow, Russia 7.6 10.5 10.5 0.2 7.3 10.1
Istanbul, Turkey 3.6 10.1 12.1 1.6 13.4 19.7
Paris, France 8.6 9.9 10.0 0.2 16.1 20.8
SOURCE: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Urban Aggomerations 2007.
GLOBAL C APITALISM AND THE METROPOLIS 13
Although the potential benefits from urbanization cannot be overlooked, the

speed and scale of what some have called the third urban revolution presents many
challenges. The rapid growth and overwhelming sprawl of cities in the developing
nations has been given a new term—hyperurbanization (see Chapter 12). New
groups of policymakers and organizations are emerging to take up responsibilities of
urban governance in developing nations around the globe. As national governments
in many developing countries have decentralized their functions and reduced sup-
port for social programs, responsibility for poverty, health, education, and public ser-
vices is increasingly being placed in the hands of untested municipal and regional
governments. While the acceleration of urban growth in developing countries sug-
gests staggering social costs for many persons around the world, the continuing
growth of multinucleated metropolitan regions in the United States and other devel-
oped nations also presents serious challenges for policymakers, governments, and
those of us who live in the urban world.
A NEW APPROACH TO URBAN SOCIOLOGY

How did these changes come about? What is daily life like in a multinucleated metro-
politan region? How do everyday activities there differ from those in the past? How has
the city construction process, or urbanization, given way to the regional process of con-
centrated central city development, dispersed minicentered districts, and sprawling
suburbanization? What is metropolitan culture like in the new regional spaces, and
how does it differ from city life of the past? The answers to these and other questions
are the subject of this book. Our discussion is about urban sociology, but it is not
about the city alone, as is often the case in the urban sociology literature. In the pages
that follow, we take an integrated perspective that complements the regional focus of
the multinucleated metropolitan region.
We consider everyday life in the suburbs (suburban settlement space as well as in
the city or urban settlement space). But there is much more. The new urban sociol-
ogy has three additional dimensions: the shift to a global perspective, attention to
the political economy of pull factors (government policies including mortgage guar-
antees for lenders, tax deductions for homeowners, and the like) in urban and subur-
ban development, and an appreciation for the role of culture in metropolitan life and
in the construction of the built environment.
GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND THE METROPOLIS

The patterns of everyday life that we observe in the contemporary metropolis are the
consequence of the complicated and continuing interaction of economic, political,
and cultural forces that have not always been studied in urban sociology. In recent
years, urbanists have come to appreciate just how important the link is between cities
or suburbs and changes in the economy. Prior to the 1970s, discussions about urban
political economy assumed that the most critical influence on urban growth and de-
velopment was the behavior of local business people. A resident of a town might open
up a store or factory. The owner would be known by others in the area. Jobs would be
created, and local residents would apply for and fill them. Products of factories might
be sold nationally, but locals would take pride in homegrown commodities and sup-
port the businesses of neighbors with their patronage, often because there was no
place else to go. This was the way of life described in Middletown, the classic study of
the American industrial town in the 1930s (Lynd and Lynd, 1929). But times have
changed and seem to be changing even more quickly in the twenty-first century.
Robert and Helen Lynd documented important changes in Middletown as local busi-
nesses came under the control of national companies—and their book Middletown
Revisited was published more than seventy years ago (Lynd and Lynd, 1937)!
Now economic activity in metropolitan communities is increasingly controlled
by decisions made at the global level. Businesses are owned and managed by people
from distant locations. The local television repair shop, for example, may represent a
manufacturer, such as Sony, whose headquarters are in another country, say Japan.
The television sets themselves may be assembled in Korea or Malaysia. Finally, the
selling and repair of the company’s product may be supervised by foreign representa-
tives of the manufacturer living in the United States. Reversing this example, many
U.S. companies, such as Motorola and Proctor & Gamble, engage in manufacturing,
marketing, and administrative activities overseas; corporate profits for U.S. compa-
nies in China were reported at more than $2 billion for the first half of 2006. In
short, economies today are linked across the globe, and the small, family-run busi-
ness with connections to the local community has given way to the multinational
corporation and the global flow of investment as the dominant economic forces.
The global perspective has important implications for the study of metropolitan re-
gions. Prior to the 1970s, urban sociologists saw changes in the city as emerging from
the interaction of many local interests in a shared and common space. The ecological
approach, as it is called, meant that the organization of the city was not caused by “the
planned or artificial contrivance of anyone” but emerged full-grown out of the “many
independent personal decisions based on moral, political, ecological, and economic
considerations” (Suttles, 1972:8). Today we possess a different understanding of urban
organization as being caused by the actions of powerful interests, many of which have
their home bases in places far removed from local communities. Their decisions, for
example, to open a plant in one location, close one down in another, buy up farms to
build houses, or tear down existing housing to create mini-malls or apartment build-
ings are all so important that they affect the well-being of the entire community.
The perspective adopted in this text, however, does not suggest that all important
influences on metropolitan development derive from the global level. Important eco-
nomic and political forces also arise from within local communities that can account
S U P P LY  S I D E FAC T O R S I N U R B A N D E V E LO P M E N T 15
for change. In the following chapters, therefore, we will consider the contribution to
metropolitan development of all sociospatial levels: the global, the national, and the
local. It is the interplay of the forces from the different levels within the local space
that is the most interesting.
Since the 1970s, urban scholars have paid increasing attention to the relationship
between capitalism and the metropolis (see Chapter 4). Competition among busi-
nesses that may not have a direct effect on urban space has been overshadowed by
the competition among different places for their share of global investment (see
Chapters 5, 12, and 13). Local populations and community well-being are also af-
fected by changes in employment, the level of economic activity, and growing
lifestyle disparities between low-skilled or semiskilled workers and professionals liv-
ing in the metropolis (see Chapter 10). All of these aspects constitute a new dimen-
sion to the study of urban sociology.
S U P P LY  S I D E FAC TO R S I N U R B A N D E V E LO P M E N T
Prior to the 1970s, urban scholars looked at city and suburban growth as an expres-
sion of individual desires. For example, people moved from the city to the suburbs, it
was believed, because they preferred the lifestyle in the suburbs. Or investors picked
a particular plot of land to develop because they liked its size and location. Individ-
ual actions based on individually held beliefs or needs might be termed the demand
side of market activity because they express the ways in which people and business
act on their own desires. Urban sociology prior to the 1970s viewed growth almost
exclusively in this manner.
At present, we are aware of several factors that operate to promote development
in specific ways and thereby mold individual desires through incentives. These fac-
tors represent the supply side of market activity resulting from individual choice.
Powerful social forces can create opportunities that persuade people to follow courses
of action that they otherwise might not. Two important supply-side sources of in-
centives in the development of metropolitan regions are government and the real es-
tate industry.
The Role of Government in Urban Development

The abstract model of capitalism represents economic systems as involving limited
government intervention. This is not the case for modern economies. The United
States, like other industrialized nations, has an economy that is influenced not only by
government regulations but also by the direct spending of government tax dollars on
particular public projects. The combined action of laws or regulations and direct in-
vestment provides incentives for both businesses and individual consumers to behave
in certain ways.
When city dwellers who are renters decide that they want to move to the suburbs,
they are expressing their personal preference. This decision may be occasioned by
demand-side factors such as problems with the public schools and high rents that in
effect push them out of the city. Our suburban movers likely have chosen a suburb
with single-family homes that are affordable within their household budget. Because
of government tax incentives on mortgage payments, it pays to own your home rather
than rent. Government programs provide an enticement that pulls people in the di-
rection of homeownership in the suburbs.
In every case the decision to move to the suburbs is a complex one that is prompted
by both demand- and supply-side factors. For years urban sociologists focused on indi-
vidual decisions and neglected the supply-side factors. The housing crisis of the past
decade has focused attention on the way government at the local, state, and federal lev-
els has operated to create opportunities and incentives that channel behavior in specific
ways. In subsequent chapters we will see how this “political economy,” the linked ac-
tions of business and government in urban development, promotes the growth of the
multinucleated metropolitan region.
Another major and recent change in the population distribution of the United
States has been the rise of the Sun Belt. By the time of the 2000 population census,
the majority of Americans lived in the Sun Belt and western states. This transforma-
tion represents a phenomenal shift of residential location. Historically, the Midwest
and the East Coast contained the majority of the U.S. population, and this remained
true until the post–World War II period.
According to the old urban sociology, the shift to the Sun Belt would have been
explained by technological factors, such as inexpensive airline travel and demand-side
preferences for a mild climate. To be sure, these factors are part of the equation. How-
ever, the pull factors created by the political economy of the United States and its gov-
ernment spending cannot be ignored. They are, in fact, the major reasons for Sun Belt
growth because this federal outlay created millions of jobs that provided the base for
Sun Belt growth and expansion. One aspect alone tells a good part of the story. Begin-
ning with World War II, the United States spent billions of dollars on military installa-
tions in locations in the West and in the Sun Belt. California, Florida, Georgia, and
New Mexico, among others, were recipients of vast sums of spending. Even Las Vegas,
which had been growing as the country’s gambling mecca after the war, benefited from
large-scale government spending that created jobs—first, with the construction of
Boulder Dam, and then with the placement of the gigantic Nellis Air Force base in the
region. Later, the Korean and Vietnam wars reinforced this pattern. The states of Texas
and Florida benefited greatly from the NASA space program, as we know from the fa-
miliar names of “Houston Control” and “Cape Kennedy.” The old urban sociology
simply ignored the effects of government spending and tax incentives, that is, the polit-
ical economy of urban development in the United States. But the sociospatial perspec-
tive considers this factor to be of central importance.
T H E I M P O R TA N C E O F C U LT U R E I N M E T R O P O L I TA N L I F E 17
The Role of the Real Estate Industry in Development

With some notable exceptions (Hoyt, 1933; Hughes, 1928; Form, 1954), early urban
sociologists neglected the critical role the real estate industry plays in metropolitan de-
velopment. Recall from the discussion above that at one time, urban organization was
viewed not as the product of any particular interest but as the interplay of many sepa-
rate interests (the ecological approach). Presently, we understand that the opposite is
often the case. Special interests such as global corporations or even investment firms
can make or break a town depending on where they decide to invest new capital. But
the single most important source of special interests in the development of the me-
tropolis is the real estate industry.
The real estate sector includes corporations and banks, as well as land developers
and construction companies, that invest in the development of land use and housing,
including the land and the built environment themselves. The construction of new
spaces proceeds through the actions of all those individuals, financial conduits, and cor-
porations that make money from the change (or turnover) in land use. Because a great
deal of money can be made through this type of activity, real estate interests are powerful
special actors in the development of the metropolis, and their influence is greatly felt.
At any given time and on any piece of land, real estate forces can converge to turn
over the existing use and engage in development that changes the utilization of local
space. All of this is done in the pursuit of profit that comes as a consequence of devel-
opment. In recent decades, mortgages have been bought and sold as investments on
national and even international markets as speculative investments, and the resulting
collapse of the derivative markets has led to the collapse of funding mechanisms for
the auto industry, of international banking institutions, and the investment funds of
many towns and cities across the United States. Thus, in addition to understanding
the political economy of production, it is important to understand the political econ-
omy of real estate.
T H E I M P O R TA N C E O F C U LT U R E
IN METROPOLITAN LIFE
The discussion of urban issues often involves economic and political concerns. As we
have seen, some of the more important aspects of the new urban sociology emphasize
a greater attention to political economy. But this is not all there is to the new ap-
proach. People live in a symbolic world that is meaningful to them. They possess sen-
timents and ideas and attempt to communicate with others using common concepts.
Social interaction in human societies is organized through the direct use of spoken
or written language. A significant part, however, employs expressive symbols that are
used to convey meanings. One of the principal sources of symbolic life involves aspects
of the built environment. Cities and suburbs are the sites of many subcultures—ethnic,
religious, racial, gender specific, and age related. Neighborhoods within the metropolis
can readily be identified by objects that are signs of subcultural status. For example,
ethnic areas of the city advertise themselves by the signs in front of restaurants, bak-
eries, specialty shops, and religious institutions (see Chapter 8). Architecture is often
used to convey images of power and wealth, and in the United States, government
buildings using classical architecture are intended to display democratic ideals (see Fig-
ure 1.3). People use such signs to orient themselves as they engage in metropolitan life.
The study of culture and the role of objects as signs constitute a significant part
of the new urban sociology. Sociologists have studied metropolitan life as culturally
meaningful for some time. What is new and different is the way such meanings are
associated with objects in addition to words. For example, cities often try to develop
an image that boosts attention in order to attract investment and tourists. A variety
of images have been used, such as signs of industry (“Motor City”), signs of regional
F I G U R E 1.3 Urban Semiotics and the Built Environment. Many government buildings in the
United States make use of architectural elements from classical Greek architecture and are
meant to recall ideas of Athenian democracy. Learning how to read the urban environment is
an example of urban semiotics. As shown in the photograph above, the U.S. Supreme Court
building, situated on a hill with an entry reminiscent of the Parthenon, is meant to convey an
image of power and democracy (although the supreme court judges are not, in fact, elected of-
ficials). SOURCE: Photo courtesy of Heather Hutchison.
T H E S O C I O S PAT I A L A P P R OAC H 19
growth (“the Twin Cities”), signs of vision (“the city of tomorrow”), and signs of
prosperity and enjoyment (“the city of leisure”). Slogans such as these are often
linked to images or objects, such as a skyline or a graphic logo of some kind. In this
way, a particular symbolic identity is created for a place that gives the impression
that it is special. The study of culture that links symbols to objects is called semiotics,
and the special subfield that studies the built environment in this manner is called
spatial semiotics. Chapter 4 discusses this approach in more detail.
In the past, approaches to urban sociology have neglected the symbolic aspect of
space, although some interesting early exceptions exist (see Wohl and Strauss, 1958).
The perspective we will follow integrates the symbolic nature of environments with
more traditional factors that make up social behavior, such as class, race, gender, age,
and social status. Space, then, is another compositional factor in human behavior.
We call this new perspective on metropolitan life the sociospatial approach.
THE SOCIOSPATIAL APPROACH

Typical urban sociology textbooks present several alternative ways of understanding
sociospatial phenomena, or they present none at all and simply describe a succession
of topics. Our text, while reviewing alternatives, takes a definite conceptual stand.
We subscribe to the Lefebvrian turn in urban studies—including geography, urban
planning, political economy, and sociology—which we have developed as the “so-
ciospatial approach” to urban sociology.
In the past, urbanists have regarded space as only a container of social activities.
But this view is limited. Space not only contains actions but also constitutes a part of
social relations and is intimately involved in our daily lives. It affects the way we feel
about what we do. In turn, people alter space and construct new environments to bet-
ter fit their needs. Hence, a dual relationship exists between people and space. On the
one hand, human beings act according to social factors such as gender, class, race, age,
and status within and in reaction to a given space. When a city converts a vacant lot
into a basketball court, the type of activity and interaction of groups of persons
within that space will change. On the other hand, people create and alter spaces to ex-
press their own needs and desires.
The sociospatial perspective is developed around the study of everyday life in
contemporary urban society. It recognizes that the urban and suburban settlement
spaces that make up the built environment are situated within a larger metropolitan
region. We adopt a regional perspective to study the older central cities, suburban
communities, and new growth poles that make up the metropolitan region of the
twenty-first century. We call this new form of social space the multicentered metropol-
itan region. We ask how and why multicentered metropolitan regions in the United
States and across the globe came to be structured the way they are. The characteris-
tics of our perspective are summarized in Box 1.3.
Box 1.3
The Sociospatial Perspective
The sociospatial perspective focuses our attention on how everyday life in the mult-
inucleated metropolitan region is affected by the political economy of urban life—
the interplay of cultural, political, economic, and social forces both within and
outside of urban communities:
1. The urban and suburban settlement spaces that comprise the built environ-
ment are part of a larger metropolitan region. It is necessary to adopt a re-
gional perspective to understand the multinucleated metropolitan regions of
the twenty-first century.
2. The multinucleated metropolitan region is linked to the global system of
capitalism where decisions influence the well-being of local areas made from
the metropolitan, the national, or even the international level.
3. Metropolitan development is affected by government policy and by devel-
opers, financiers, and other institutions in the real estate industry that create
incentives and opportunities that mold the behaviors, preferences, and
choices of individual consumers.
4. Everyday life is organized according to cultural symbols and material objects
that are part of the built environment; these symbols and objects are likely
to have different meanings to different individuals or groups. We call the
study of these symbols and objects urban semiotics.
5. The spatial arrangements found in urban and suburban settlement space
have both manifest and latent consequences. They influence human behavior
and interaction in predictable ways but also in ways the original planner or
developer may not have anticipated. But individuals, through their behaviors
and interactions with others, constantly alter existing spatial arrangements
and construct new spaces to express their needs and desires.
The sociospatial perspective emphasizes the interaction between society and space.
Within the multicentered metropolitan region, groups differ from one another with
respect to lifestyle, attitudes, beliefs, and access to political power and influence, and
consequently they have more or less influence on decisions about how social space is
allocated and structured within and across the metropolitan region. To class, gender,
race, and other social characteristics that define difference among groups in contem-
porary society we add the element of space itself. The spatial arrangements found in
urban and suburban settlement space have both manifest and latent consequences:
They influence human behavior and interaction in predictable ways but also in ways
KEY CONCEPTS AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 21
the original planner or developer may not have anticipated. Individuals and groups,
through their behaviors and interactions with others, constantly alter existing spatial
arrangements and construct new spaces to express their needs and desires.
The sociospatial perspective connects the dual relationship between people and
space with the social factors that are the bases of individual behavior. The most fun-
damental concept of this approach is settlement space, which refers to the built envi-
ronment in which people live. Settlement space is both constructed and organized. It
is built by people who have followed some meaningful plan for the purpose of con-
taining economic, political, and cultural activities. Within it, people organize their
daily actions according to the meaningful aspects of the constructed space. In subse-
quent chapters we will discuss how sociospatial factors determine the construction
and use of settlement space. Over time we will also see how change has occurred and
how the built environment is in turn molded by sociospatial factors.
KEY CONCEPTS
multinucleated metropolitan region
standard metropolitan statistical area
standard metropolitan consolidated area
megacity
global capitalism
demand-side factors
supply-side factors
political economy
built environment
urban semiotics
sociospatial perspective
settlement space
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What is meant by the concept of the “multinucleated metropolitan region”?
How is the multinucleated metropolitan region different from urban development
of the past? Why is the metropolitan regional perspective important for understand-
ing urban growth around the globe?
2. The authors suggest that most of the time we do not consciously think about or
identify the metropolitan region from which we come. What are some of the charac-
teristics of the metropolitan region in which you grew up?
3. The authors believe that other approaches to urban sociology, which focus upon
urban neighborhoods and urban ethnic groups, are no longer useful for understand-
ing metropolitan life in the United States. Why do they hold this point of view?
4. The sociospatial approach to urban sociology emphasizes the links with the
global system of capitalism, the actions of the real estate industry, government poli-
cies, pull factors of development, the social organization of urban and suburban set-
tlement space, and the importance of culture. Pick two of these factors and explain
how they have influenced the development of the multinucleated metropolitan re-
gion in which you live.
5. The concept of “space” is important in our understanding of metropolitan life.
List two important characteristics of this concept and discuss their significance for our
understanding of daily life in urban and suburban settlement spaces of the multi-
nucleated metropolitan region.
CHAPTER
2
THE ORIGINS OF URBAN LIFE
Five thousand years of urban history and perhaps as many of proto-urban his-
tory are spread over a few score of only partly exposed sites. The great urban
landmarks Ur, Nippur, Uruk, Thebes, Helopolis, Assur, Ninevah, Babylon, cover
a span of three thousand years whose vast emptiness we cannot hope to fill
with a handful of monuments and a few hundred pages of written records.
LEWIS MUMFORD, THE CIT Y IN HISTORY
T he origins of urban life—the period when humankind was transformed from

hunters and gatherers to city dwellers—is shrouded in the distant past. Yet we know
that cities and urban civilizations appeared in many different areas of the world inde-
pendent of one another in the relatively recent past. Urbanization, or the building of
and living in compact, densely populated places, appeared as early as 10,000 years
ago. Continuously used, densely populated settlements can be found in the Middle
East dating back over 6,000 years and in the Indus Valley in India dating back over
4,000 years. Other centers of ancient urban life include the Minoan civilization of
Crete (1800 BC) and the cities of China (circa 2000 BC). The origins of the earliest
urban settlements are shown in Table 2.1.
The population of ancient cities tended to be small by present-day standards.
The great city of Ur, home of Abraham, likely had a population of 65,000 in 2000
BC, when it was the largest city in the world. At its peak in the fifth century BC, clas-
sical Athens, the birthplace of Western art, architecture, and philosophy, had no
more than 150,000 inhabitants. Until the late Middle Ages, no European city could
compare with ancient Rome, which housed more than 1 million people in the first
century AD.
Lewis Mumford, the great scholar of urban history and culture, has suggested
that the first human settlements were cities of the dead—the Thanatopolis. The dead
were the first to have a permanent dwelling (the caverns and mounds where Pale-
olithic hunters buried their dead). Men and women would return to these ritual
23
24 2: THE ORIGINS OF URBAN LIFE
TA B L E 2.1 World’s Earliest Cities.

Region Location Approximate Date
Mesopotamia Tigris and Euphrates rivers 3900 bc
Egypt Nile River valley 3200 bc
India Indus River valley 2400 bc
Eastern Mediterranean Crete 1600 bc
China Yellow River valley 1600 bc
Mexico Yucatan Peninsula 200 bc
SOURCE: Ivan Light, Cities in World Perspective (New York: Macmillan, 1983), 13. Population estimates
rounded to nearest 10,000.
spaces to worship ancestors, and it is here that humankind first drew pictographs
and paintings of not only animals for the hunt but also formalized figures of men
and women. Mumford writes (1961:10): “The first germ of the city, then, is in the
ceremonial meeting place that serves as the goal for pilgrimage: a site to which family
or clan groups are drawn back, at seasonable intervals, because it concentrates, in ad-
dition to any natural advantages that it may have, certain ‘spiritual’ or supernatural
powers, powers of higher potency and duration, of wider cosmic significance, than
the ordinary processes of life.”
Several ancient cities possessed remarkable structural features that made urban
living not only possible but also quite comfortable. The residential space of Mo-
henjo-Daro in ancient India was built on a grid street system that made maximum
use of space and included an open sewer system for the elimination of waste and
rainwater. Baked clay sewer pipes and roofing tiles have been unearthed at the site of
this early city that are identical to the materials used in modern construction. Two-
story houses were constructed around a central courtyard with balconies on the sec-
ond floor. The courtyard provided private space for families but also allowed for the
circulation of air through the building—important for the hot climate of the region.
Jericho, in ancient Israel, possessed a system of canals that facilitated the irrigation of
fields outside the city. However, it is easy to overemphasize these special cases. Many,
if not most, ancient cities were plagued by unsanitary housing conditions and
streets, and these problems would increase as cities grew in size.
The citizens of the early towns lived an urban life that was fragile. Precariousness
was, perhaps, an inevitable consequence of the growth of cities. According to Gideon
Sjoberg, cities were the sites of power. In order to be secure, it was necessary for early
cities to exercise their strength and dominate the hinterland (the relatively less devel-
oped area outside the boundaries of the large city). Then, in order to prosper, it was
necessary to expand the hinterland sphere of domination. As sites of wealth, ancient
cities were protected by fortifications, and warfare between cities was quite common
(Sjoberg, 1960). Average town citizens lived under the constant threat of attack by rov-
THE ORIGINS OF URBAN LIFE 25
ing bands of warriors or armies from other towns. Often victors simply killed off or en-
slaved defeated city populations and then burned the city to the ground. In the book of
Judges in the Old Testament, we read, “And he took the city, and slew the people that
was therein, and he beat down the city, and sowed it with salt” (Judges 9:45). Once salt
has been spread on farm fields, the land can never again be used to grow crops.
We have many accounts of the destruction of early cities in the writings that have
come down to us from the earliest urban civilizations. The section of the Old Testament
called Lamentations was written by the prophet Jeremiah, who was a court official in
Box 2.1
Lamentations of Jeremiah (Old Testament)
How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a
widow! She that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces,
how is she become tributary!
She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; she hath none to
comfort her among all her lovers; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
they are become her enemies.
Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude:
she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook
her between the straits.
The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her
gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.
Her adversaries are become the head, her enemies are at ease; for the Lord hath
afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions; her young children are gone
into captivity before the adversary.
And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed: her princes are become
like harts that find no pasture, and they are gone without strength before the pursuer.
Jerusalem remembereth in the days of her affliction and of her anguish all her
treasures that she had from the days of old; now that her people fall by the hand of
the adversary, and none doth help her, the adversaries have seen her, they have
mocked at her desolations.
Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow
like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted
me in the day of his fierce anger.
For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water; because
the comforter is far from me, even he that should refresh my soul; my children are
desolate, because the enemy hath prevailed.
SOURCE: Lamentations 1:1–7, 1:12, 1:16 (Old Testament, King James version).
Jerusalem when the city was conquered by the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar in
587 BC. In Lamentations, the ancient Hebrews lament the loss of their city from their
exile in Babylonia (see Box 2.1). In The Trojan Women, the Greek author Euripides
wrote about the destruction of the ancient city of Troy. The actual destruction of Troy is
not included in Homer’s great epic The Iliad but instead comes to us from the
Posthomericus (The Fall of Troy) by Quintus Smyrnaeus, a fourth-century AD poet in the
city of Smyrna. After their defeat by the Greeks, the Trojan men were killed or taken
into slavery, and the women were parceled out to the victors. The scene is described by
Quintus Smyrnaeus:
Troy’s daughters therewithal in scattered bands

They haled down seaward—virgins yet unwed,
And new-made brides, and matrons silver-haired,
And mothers from whose bosoms foes had torn
Babes for the last time closing lips on breasts.
Each hero led a wailing Trojan woman to his ship.
Here, there, uprose from these the wild lament,
The woeful-mingling cries of mother and babe.
In The Trojan Women, Hecuba, the former queen of Troy, speaks to the audience
and describes the events in Troy shortly after the capture of the city (see Box 2.2).
These two stories illustrate the unhappy fate of the inhabitants of the early cities in
the face of war among competing city-states.
The domination of urban settlements by successful rulers in search of increased
wealth and treasure led, in turn, not only to increased trade and commerce, but also
to continued conflict as the new city-states sought to exercise power over the coun-
tryside. Early urban existence constituted a drama involving such interwoven spheres
of everyday life as agricultural production, regional and foreign trade, military con-
quest and rule, and the pursuit of arts and sciences based on the relative success of
economic and political activities. In his great work The City in History, Lewis Mum-
ford asks us to consider the implications of this history when he notes that the civi-
lizations that survived this period of human history were those that were the most
warlike and able to destroy their competitors (Mumford, 1961).
Most discussions of early cities focus on the division of labor and economic activ-
ities around which the concentrated population was organized. In this way, city life is
presented as a progression from limited to complex specialization of work and func-
tional organization. Not only were cities the locus of agriculture, trade, and manufac-
turing; they created social spaces that had religious meaning and significance. Cities
did not simply appear because certain fundamental economic activities had matured.
Cities had to be produced, or constructed, by humans through the conscious intent
of individuals and groups. In ancient societies, urban settlements were built using a
THE ORIGINS OF URBAN LIFE 27
Box 2.2
The Fate of the Trojan Women
Lift thy head, unhappy lady, from the ground; thy neck upraise; this is Troy no
more, no longer am I queen in Ilium. Though fortune change, endure thy lot; sail
with the stream, and follow fortune’s tack, steer not thy barque of life against the
tide, since chance must guide thy course.
Ah me! ah me! What else but tears is now my hapless lot, whose country, chil-
dren, husband, all are lost? Ah! the high-blown pride of ancestors! How cabined
now, how brought to nothing after all. What woe must I suppress, or what declare?
What plaintive dirge shall I awake?
Ah, woe is me! The anguish I suffer lying here stretched upon this pallet hard! O
my head, my temples, my side! Ah! could I but turn over, and he now on this, now
on that, to rest my back and spine, while ceaselessly my tearful wail ascends. For ‘en
this is music to the wretched, to chant their cheerless dirge of sorrow.
Ah! hapless wives of those mail-clad sons of Troy! Ah! poor maidens, luckless
brides, come weep, for Ilium is now but a ruin; and I, like some mother-bird that
o’er her fledglings screams, will begin the strain; how different from that song I
sang to the gods in days long past, as I leaned on Priam’s staff, and beat with my
foot in Phrygian time to lead the dance!
Oh! do not bid the wild Cassandra leave her chamber, the frantic prophetess, for
Argives to insult, nor to my griefs add yet another. Woe to thee, ill-fated Troy, thy
sun is set; and woe to thy unhappy children, quick and dead alike, who are leaving
thee behind!
Ah me! ah me! Whose slave shall I become in my old age? in what far clime? a
poor old drone, the wretched copy of a corpse, set to keep the gate or tend their
children, I who once held royal rank in Troy.
O my country, O unhappy land, I weep for thee now left behind; now dost thou
behold thy piteous end; and thee, my house, I weep, wherein I suffered travail. O
my children! reft of her city as your mother is, she now is losing you. Oh, what
mourning and what sorrow! oh, what endless streams of tears in our houses! The
dead alone forget their griefs and never shed a tear.
SOURCE: Euripides, The Trojan Women (Oxford University Press, 2009).
shared set of symbols and a model of space that was inherently meaningful to each
group (Lagopoulos, 1986). Early cities, such as Ur in ancient Sumer, were produced
using cosmological codes that mandated geometrical relations between the city and
the heavens, such as an east-west axis, and within the city through geometrical
arrangements of the buildings. In this way, the built environment of even the earliest
urban settlements had important social, political, and religious connections that cre-
ated a sense of shared history and identity among the urban inhabitants.
Religious codes distinguished between sacred and profane spaces and endowed
particular structures and spaces with the protection of the gods. Around 500 BC, the
Etruscans, ancestors of the Romans, built cities by first plowing a “sacred furrow” as
a large enclosure in a religious ceremony. The city could be built only within this
space, signifying the sacred domain, separated from the profane space of the rest of
the world. Only later, in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe, did cities first ap-
pear without religious or cosmological codes guiding the construction of space. At
this time, and continuing to the present day in Europe (and the United States), the
meaning of a building (such as a bank) corresponded to the function it performed in
the society with no necessary connection to any particular social or religious mean-
ing. In contrast, in the earliest human settlements, and through at least the time of
the medieval city, there was a strong connection between buildings and the way indi-
viduals living within the city conceived of the meanings of those buildings (such as
the sacred treasuries at Delphi and Olympus in ancient Greece; Pedley, 2005).
As the sociospatial perspective suggests, the ancient city was the combined prod-
uct of political power, economic functions, and overarching symbolic meanings that
expressed deeply held beliefs of the inhabitants.
ANCIENT URBANIZ ATION

Social scientists are interested in the origin of cities because the process of early ur-
banization holds insights into the origins of social structure. In particular, the origin
of the first urban communities provides clues for understanding how complex social
relations arose and how strong bonds were maintained among residents who were of-
ten unrelated. The best-known theory of the rise of cities was proposed by V. Gor-
don Childe (1950, 1954). According to Childe, the first cities developed a form of
social organization that differed from rural society in many respects and provided the
social basis for modern life.
Childe viewed the development of society in terms of distinct stages and consid-
ered the emergence of urban life as a critical evolutionary phase in the rise of modern
civilization. City building was part of an “urban revolution” that also brought a set
of special social relations that are characteristic of modern life. The first step toward
an urban society occurred when hunting and gathering societies shifted to food pro-
duction in relatively stable and sedentary groups. Once the urban revolution began,
civilization progressed and evolved to more complex forms of social life sustained by
an urban economy based on trade and craft production. It is principally from Childe
that we have derived the idea that urbanization develops through specialization of
work and the separation of different functions through increasing interdependence
of societal tasks. These social relations were considered different from those found in
rural society, and they provided the basis for modern civilization.
A N C I E N T U R B A N I Z AT I O N 29
Childe’s theory of early urbanization was quite influential and may be accurate as
a descriptive interpretation of ancient city life based on evidence from cities in Mes-
opotamia. But it is important to recognize that what Childe has done is to describe
Box 2.3
The Urban Revolution
In his essay, “The Urban Revolution,” V. Gordon Childe noted that the develop-
ment of the first cities was marked by a number of important innovations, includ-
ing the following:
Increased population size and density: By 3000 BC, Ninevah, Ur, Uruk, and
other Sumerian cities each had as many as 20,000 persons, larger than other hu-
man settlements up to that time.
Concentration of agricultural surplus: Farmers living within the region con-
trolled by the city paid a tithe, or tax, to an “imaginary deity or a divine king” to
support soldiers, priests, and other officials.
Public works and monuments: Irrigation projects built by the state (through la-
bor required of all citizens) allowed farmers to produce an agricultural surplus; the
cities were dominated by temples (ziggurats) rising from a stepped brick platform.
Specialization of labor: The production of an agricultural surplus freed indi-
viduals to perform the specialized tasks required of artists, craftspeople, mer-
chants, soldiers, and priests.
Invention of writing: Systems of writing and numerical notation were necessary
for record-keeping to keep track of commercial accounts and tax payments.
Social stratification: Priests, military leaders, and other officials formed a rul-
ing class and were exempt from manual labor; workers and craftspeople were
“relieved from intellectual tasks” but were guaranteed safety within the city.
Development of the arts: Artists and craftspeople developed sophisticated
styles and traditions in the decorative and fine arts with the depiction of persons
and animals.
Development of sciences: Sciences were developed to predict, measure, and
standardize to assist in the production of agriculture and the keeping of tax
records (arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy).
Membership: Participation in the community was based on residence and was
no longer dependent on kinship.
Long-distance trade: Raw materials not available in the local area were im-
ported for craft production and religious ceremonies.
SOURCE: V. Gordon Childe, “The Urban Revolution,” 1950.
the findings of contemporary discoveries in early cities: It is not a theory of the ori-
gins of urban life. Note that it is not possible to find any one feature of the early city
(described in Box 2.3) as an essential prerequisite for the development of any other
feature. Like other models of its day, it asserted an evolutionary view of development
according to which civilization passes first through the stage of hunting and gather-
ing, then to agriculture, and finally to urban-based economies, with an ever more
complex and interdependent form of social organization leading to a contemporary
“modern” stage.
Other evidence, however, suggests a discontinuous process of development.
Archeologists have known for some time that signs of civilization, such as the produc-
tion of pottery in quantity or the use of writing, coexisted with the development of
agriculture rather than appearing at the later stages of agriculturally based societies as
evolutionary theories maintain. Because of the need to create a livelihood on marginal
agricultural lands, early residents of towns innovated alternative economic activities,
including trade, full-time craft work, and even religion, yielding products that could
be exchanged for essential goods, thereby providing the basis for a city-based econ-
omy that could survive on trade. And many early cities disappeared because of the de-
pletion of natural resources required to support concentrated populations.
While the social division of labor and its growing complexity certainly contributed
to urban development, economic factors alone did not produce the first cities. The
market by itself can never provide adequate control or guidance—that is, regulation—
for social organization. In fact, the classical sociologists Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx,
and Max Weber all showed that everyday actions in a market society generate problems
and conflict that call for regulation by political and cultural means. “The most impor-
tant of such problems were the construction of trust or solidarity (stressed by Durk-
heim), the regulation of power (Marx and Weber), and the provision of both meaning
and legitimation for social activities so prized by Weber” (Eisenstadt and Shachar,
1987:50).
CLASSICAL CITIES
The earliest cities in Mesopotamia and in China were built according to complex be-
lief systems and symbolic codes, as shown by city gates devoted to specific deities
that were oriented to the cardinal points of the compass (north, east, south, and
west), and a street layout that would prevent spirits from moving directly to the cen-
ter of the city. In ancient Greece, cities were constructed according to a cosmological
code that incorporated sacred spaces and religious symbols linked to the pantheon of
Greek gods. The city of Athens was built to honor the goddess Athena, and all build-
ings followed geometrical design principles in accordance with the “golden mean.”
In the center of the circle that encompassed the city was the agora, which was not
simply the marketplace but the public hearth or hestia koine, the center of the com-
CLASSICAL CITIES 31
munity. Over a period of two hundred years, the agora at the base of the acropolis
took form as public buildings—courts, libraries, temples, gymnasium—gradually
closed in the open area, creating an enclosed space where the public life of the city
was focused. The public hearth was considered to be the omphalos, the center of the
world.
Visitors would pass through the agora along the Pan-Athenaic Way, walk past the
stoa (public marketplace), and then ascend the propylaea, the gateway to the sacred
temples at the top of the acropolis, designed and built by the architect Mnesicles
from 430 to 420 BC. Robin Rhodes (1995:53) describes the ascent of the acropolis:
“Its architecture, in concert with the Panathenaic procession, progressed step by step
from the west, from the realm of the secular, the human, the realm of stories, of hu-
man explanation, to the elemental religious experience of divine epiphany at the east
side of the tenemos, at the front of the major temples to Athena.”
Most striking of all, as visitors walked up the great stairway on the Acropolis,
they would pass the columns of the first temples, destroyed by the Persian armies in
480 BC, which were built into the walls of the new stairway as a reminder of this ear-
lier history.
F I G U R E 2.1 Restoration of the Acropolis at Athens. Following the destruction of Athens by

the Persian army in 480 bc, the temples on the Acropolis were rebuilt, and a ceremonial en-
trance (the propylae) was added. Pieces of the earlier temples were used in reconstructing the
north wall, visible to Athenians from the city below. The entire structure became a monument
to the city’s history. SOURCE: P.V.N. Meyes, A General History for Colleges and High Schools, Rev. Ed.
(New York: Ginn & Co., 1906).
Active participation in all parts of public life was the central organizing concept
for Athenians, and urban space within Athens was overlaid by a political code that
supplanted the earlier cosmological/religious one. The radial street network emanat-
ing from the center of the omphalos would connect all citizens to the central public
space. This development is very different from both the early grid network found
in cities in the Indus Valley and the haphazard organic growth of urban settlements
in Mesopotamia. Radial development was dictated not by the economic concern of
easy access to the market but by the political principle that all homes should be equi-
distant from the center because all Athenian citizens were equal. Within the center
were placed the citizen assembly hall, the city council hall, and the council chamber,
all structures linked to the institution of city politics.
Classical Rome was constructed using a different model, one that developed
from an imperial code that stressed grandeur, domination, and (eventually) excess.
The construction of urban space in Rome was based not on the political equality of
its citizens but on the military power of the state and, later, the ambitions of the em-
perors. Functional space within the Roman forum was embedded in a larger, mean-
ingful space governed by political and cultural symbols.
Initially, the buildings of the Republican Forum at the center of Rome were built
on a human scale and formed the focal point for social interaction, public ceremony,
and political activity within the city. As the empire expanded and the republic was
replaced first by a dictatorship and then by a monarchy, Rome was refashioned by
the imperial code to a gargantuan scale. The city of Rome became a physical repre-
sentation of the empire itself. Monuments and public buildings were constructed to
honor the personal accomplishments of each emperor. At its height in the third cen-
tury, imperial Rome contained a population of more than 600,000 people, many of
them slaves (including secretaries, clerks, accountants, and foremen in addition to la-
borers). It encompassed a total area of 8 square miles, much of which was given over
to public space. The majority of the population lived in the 46,000 insulae (apart-
ment buildings) within the city; these buildings were typically three stories tall and
contained five apartments, housing five to six people each. There were only 4,000
private homes within the city. Eight aqueducts brought the more than 200 million
gallons of water needed to service 1,200 public fountains, 926 public baths, and the
public latrines. The streets were narrow, twisting, and dark, averaging 6 to 15 feet
wide; the largest street was just 20 feet wide. The city fire department consisted of
some 7,000 men. The circus maximus, where chariot races took place, seated more
than 100,000 people and was surrounded by taverns, shops, and eating places. The
famous Colosseum rose more than 180 feet above the city and seated more than
80,000 people.
Rome was very different from Athens and other Greek city-states in that it was
the capital of the first urban civilization, with roads linking the city to administrative
centers across Europe and the Middle East. These cities served as centers of political
U R B A N I Z AT I O N A F T E R AD 1000 33
power, economic control, and cultural diffusion. By AD 200, more than 5 million
people lived in Roman cities. As the empire prospered, the 1 million or more resi-
dents of Rome lived off the great wealth that poured into the city. Eventually the
center became known for its decadence and idleness. At one time, a full 159 days out
of the Roman year were declared public holidays! Of these, ninety-three days, or
one-fourth of the entire year, were devoted to games at the emperor’s expense.
Alongside this parasitic existence emerged immense urban problems that we com-
monly associate with the modern city: the deterioration of housing, widespread
poverty, public corruption, and a dangerous lack of proper sanitation facilities and
other services for the residents.
With the expansion of the empire, Rome increasingly became a city of contrasts,
with vast differences between the rich and the poor, a society wedded to spectacle
and consumption rather than commerce and trade. By AD 300 the emperor Con-
stantine moved the capital of the empire to Constantinople, and Rome began a long
period of decline. The ebb and flow of human civilization, and of the urban centers
that serve as the symbolic markers of those civilizations, is both remarkable and
sobering. In many cases we have only the briefest of archeological evidence and writ-
ten information about the earliest urban civilizations. Babylon, perhaps the best
known of the Old Testament cities, lay buried for centuries beneath the sands of
Iraq. Baghdad, the largest and wealthiest city of the early Middle Ages, was destroyed
in the 1300s and has never achieved the dominance and influence of the earlier era.
As shown in Table 2.2, the history of urban civilizations represents an ongoing cycle
of growth and decline and, in many cases, permanent end due to the ecological dam-
age that urban civilization has brought to many areas of the globe.
URBANIZ ATION AFTER AD 1000

After the decline of centralized control from the Roman Empire beginning in AD
500, urban space in Europe was reclaimed by the countryside and a new form of feu-
dal relations developed. Towns needed to defend themselves in the absence of a cen-
tral authority. Many became small, fortified settlements—like the walled hill towns
of central Italy—while in northern Europe, small towns survived only in the shadow
of the medieval castle. The level of urbanization was low in Europe during the Mid-
dle Ages, and few places exceeded 10,000 in population. In contrast, the cities of
Asia, the Near East, and what is now Latin America prospered during this same
period.
Most historians contend that the cities that emerged after AD 1000 were the prod-
ucts of powerful national rulers and the success of regional trade rather than the result
of social relations that were uniquely urban in nature, as Childe’s theory might sug-
gest. City life remained precarious and dependent on social relations that emanated
from state power. It was not until the seventeenth century, with the rise of capitalism
TA B L E 2.2 Population History of Selected Cities.

Location Population Notes
Rome
ad 100 650,000 World’s largest city
600–800 50,000 Invasion by Germanic tribes
1000 35,000
1300 15,000 Exile of Popes to Avignon
1500 35,000
1600 120,000 Pope Sixtus and the Rebirth of Rome
Mexico City
1500 80,000 Capital of Aztec Empire
1524 30,000 Destruction by Spanish conquistadors
1600 75,000 Colonial center of Spanish Empire
Baghdad
765 480,000 Following establishment of Caliphate in 750
900 1,100,000 Largest city in the world; first city of 1,000,000
1400 125,000 Sacked by Tamerlane in 1401
1650 30,000
Peking
1200 150,000
1300 400,000 Capital of China
1500 670,000 World’s largest city
1800 1,100,000 World’s largest city
London
1700 350,000
1800 1,000,000 Second largest city in the world
1900 6,480,000 Largest city in the world
New York
1800 80,000
1900 4,240,000 Largest city in United States
1950 19,800,000 World’s largest city
SOURCE: Ivan Light, Cities in World Perspective (New York: Macmillan, 1983). Population estimates
rounded to nearest 10,000.
in Western Europe, that urban life appeared to be propelled by forces emerging from
within cities themselves. In China, for example, towns were organized by the state un-
der the infallible rule of the emperor and for the principal purpose of administration.
These were secular kingdoms united under a political hierarchy to harness the eco-
nomic wealth of the countryside. Under the imperial capital, the provincial capitals
were dispersed throughout the kingdom, and under these were clustered the still
smaller county capitals of the Chinese empire. Commerce and trade combined with
the power of the state to produce the great towns of the Orient.
Much the same story characterized the Middle East, which also contained places
with populations that eclipsed those in Europe after AD 1000. With the coming of Is-
lamic hegemony, cities appeared that solidified the control of territory under the Mus-
lim rulers, or caliphs. Islam also took over older cities built by the Romans, such as
Constantinople. To these it added two types of “new” towns across North Africa and
the Near East: Villes crées were fortress cities constructed by Islamic rulers as administra-
tion centers, and villes spontanées arose as trading centers constructed without precon-
ceived plans but sanctioned by the caliph. Ibu Batutah, the famous Arab traveler of the
fourteenth century who journeyed from his home in Morocco to India and China and
back, noted the presence of numerous caravanseries along the route from Bagdad to
Mecca, dating from the eighth century. The Seljik sultan ‘Alä al-Dïn Kayqubäd (1220–
1237), renowned for the rich architectural legacy and court culture that flourished un-
der his reign, constructed many caravanseries along roads linking the Anatolian capital
to important trade routes. At the peak advance of the Ottoman Empire under Süley-
man the Magnificent (1520–1566), a number of subcapitals emerged, including Bursa
in Asia and Edirne in Europe. Both cities had remarkable vaqufs with mosques, bazaars,
medresas, imarets, and the caravanseries to accommodate traders, pilgrims, and an in-
creasing number of visitors (Hutchison and Prodanovic, 2009). Thus, Islamic society
possessed a robust system of cities and communication, but these were all products of
state-directed territorial expansion and administration. As in the Chinese case, the
rulers needed cities to control the territory and commerce of the hinterland.
The experience of India during this same period (from 1000 to 1700) demon-
strates the combined role of royal administration on the one hand, and the impor-
tance of local trade on the other, in the sustenance of Oriental cities. As elsewhere in
Asia and the Middle East, the size and well-being of Indian cities were a consequence
of the power of central state authority rather than of social relations emanating from
the urban community itself. Fernand Braudel (1973:413) provides an interesting il-
lustration of the dependency of the city on the power of the state in his examination
of India during the seventeenth century: “The example of India shows how much
these official towns were bound up with the prince—to the point of absurdity. Polit-
ical difficulties, even the prince’s whim, uprooted and transplanted the capitals sev-
eral times. . . . As soon as its prince abandoned it, the town was jeopardized,
deteriorated and occasionally died.”
When a Mogul prince left Delhi on a journey to Kashmir in 1663, the whole town
followed him because they could not live without his favors. An improbable crowd
formed, estimated at several hundred thousand people by a French doctor who took
part in the expedition. Can we imagine Paris following Louis XV during his journey
to Metz in 1744?
Finally, in Latin America, the Aztec and Inca civilizations achieved impressive
heights during this same period. Indeed, the first Spanish conquistadors to enter the
city of Tenochtitlan were overwhelmed: Although many undoubtedly had visited
Cordoba and Granada, among the largest cities in Europe, none had ever seen a city
as vast as the capital of the Aztec Empire. Hernán Cortés (1485–1547), the leader of
the Spanish forces, described the city in a letter to Charles II (see Box 2.4).
Box 2.4
Hernán Cortés’s Letter to Charles V (1520)
This great city of Temixtitlan [Mexico] is situated in this salt lake, and from the
main land to the denser parts of it, by whichever route one chooses to enter, the
distance is two leagues. There are four avenues or entrances to the city, all of which
are formed by artificial causeways, two spears’ length in width. The city is as large
as Seville or Cordova; its streets, I speak of the principal ones, are very wide and
straight; some of these, and all the inferior ones, are half land and half water, and
are navigated by canoes. All the streets at intervals have openings, through which
the water flows, crossing from one street to another; and at these openings, some of
which are very wide, there are also very wide bridges, composed of large pieces of
timber, of great strength and well put together; on many of these bridges ten horses
can go abreast.
This city has many public squares, in which are situated the markets and other
places for buying and selling. There is one square twice as large as that of the city of
Salamanca, surrounded by porticoes, where are daily assembled more than sixty
thousand souls, engaged in buying and selling; and where are found all kinds of
merchandise that the world affords, embracing the necessaries of life, as for instance
articles of food, as well as jewels of gold and silver, lead, brass, copper, tin, precious
stones, bones, shells, snails, and feathers. There are also exposed for sale wrought
and unwrought stone, bricks burnt and unburnt, timber hewn and unhewn, of dif-
ferent sorts. There is a street for game, where every variety of birds in the country
are sold, as fowls, partridges, quails, wild ducks, fly-catchers, widgeons, turtledoves,
pigeons, reed-birds, parrots, sparrows, eagles, hawks, owls, and kestrels; they sell
likewise the skins of some birds of prey, with their feathers, head, beak, and claws.
There is also an herb street, where may be obtained all sorts of roots and medicinal
herbs that the country affords. There are apothecaries’ shops, where prepared med-
icines, liquids, ointments, and plasters are sold; barbers’ shops, where they wash
and shave the head; and restaurateurs that furnish food and drink at a certain price.
Every kind of merchandise is sold in a particular street or quarter assigned to it
exclusively, and thus the best order is preserved. They sell everything by number or
measure; at least so far we have not observed them to sell anything by weight. There
is a building in the great square that is used as an audience house, where ten or
twelve persons, who are magistrates, sit and decide all controversies that arise in the
continues
market, and order delinquents to be punished. In the same square there are other
persons who go constantly about among the people observing what is sold, and the
measures used in selling; and they have been seen to break measures that were not
true.
Among these temples there is one which far surpasses all the rest, whose gran-
deur of architectural details no human tongue is able to describe; for within its
precincts, surrounded by a lofty wall, there is room enough for a town of five hun-
dred families. Around the interior of the enclosure there are handsome edifices,
containing large halls and corridors, in which the religious persons attached to the
temple reside. There are fully forty towers, which are lofty and well built, the largest
of which has fifty steps leading to its main body, and is higher than the tower of the
principal tower of the church at Seville.
SOURCE: Hernán Cortés, Second Letter to Charles V, 1520.
Yet, as the example of the Aztec civilization in Mexico shows, these places were
closely connected to the agricultural relations of the hinterland and could not be
considered modern cities. According to Murray Bookchin (1974:7–8):
An illustration of the earliest cities can be drawn from descriptions of the Aztec
“capital” of Tenochtitlán, encountered by Spanish conquistadores only three cen-
turies ago. At first glance, the community is deceptively similar in appearance to a
modern city. . . . The city’s resemblance . . . rests on its lofty religious structures,
its spacious plazas for ceremonies, its palaces and administrative buildings. Look-
ing beyond these structures, the city in many respects was likely a grossly over-
sized pueblo community.
As Bookchin points out, the horticulturally based activities of the family clans
organized social relations within the city. These clan-based social orders reached into
the very heart of city life. Integration around the agricultural economy was so com-
plete that Aztec cities did not develop money but retained a barter system. Just as in
the Orient, commercial and craft activities carried on within Tenochtitlán could not
explain either its immense physical space or the size of its population. The principal
role of the city was to serve as the center for the Aztec rulers and their administrative
functions.
It was not until the late Middle Ages in Europe that towns acquired political inde-
pendence from the state. For Max Weber, the key to city life was the creation of an in-
dependent urban government that was elected by the citizens of the city itself. Classical
Athens and early Rome were two examples. Weber believed that in the late Middle
Ages, Europe also developed cities of this type. The urban community consisted of
three elements: a fusion of the fortress and the marketplace where trade and commer-
cial relations predominated; a legal court of its own that had the authority to settle lo-
cal disputes; and partial political autonomy that allowed residents to elect authorities
who could administer daily affairs (Weber, 1966).
If European cities of the later Middle Ages enjoyed autonomy, it was relatively
short lived. By the eighteenth century, nation-states had acquired control of terri-
tory, and the commercial-trading economy was global in scale, thereby making indi-
vidual places dependent on one another. Weber’s remarks about the city were meant
to suggest that there may once have been uniquely urban social relations that charac-
terized city life and helped to transform society from a rural, agriculturally based sys-
tem of social organization to one that is considered “modern.” For example, urban
life was sustained by a mode of social organization that, when compared to rural ar-
eas, consisted of greater emphasis on specialized jobs, the decline of family authority
and the rise of contractual and political relations, and a replacement of the strong
ties binding people together based on kinship with those based on the interdepen-
dence of sharing the same fate as the city. In addition to Weber, other classical sociol-
ogists developed ways of studying the contrast between premodern and modern
societies. Ferdinand Tönnies, for example, called this the shift from gemeinschaft to
gesellschaft, or the change from a traditional society based on trust and mutual aid to
a modern one in which self-interest predominates. Emile Durkheim considered
modernization to be a change from a society based on mechanical solidarity, or a low
degree of specialization, to one based on organic solidarity, or a high degree of spe-
cialization and interdependence. We will return to these ideas in Chapter 3.
THE MEDIEVAL ORDER

AND THE RENAISSANCE CITY
Just as classical cities developed around the agora and the forum, the medieval city
also included an important symbolic space in the center of the city. Buildings on each
side of the central square represented the dominant social, economic, and political in-
terests in medieval society: the cathedral, the town hall, and the merchants’ hall and
trade guilds. Medieval cities often competed with one another for economic and po-
litical dominance, and many were protected by city walls. Because the walls prevented
the cities from expanding outward, the cities built upward, and by the late Middle
Ages, four- and even five-story buildings overhanging crowded streets were not un-
common. As trade prospered, cities grew more crowded—and so did the problems of
poverty, crime, poor sanitation, and ultimately disease. Daniel Defoe, in A Journal of
the Plague Year (1722), described the ravages of the great plague that devastated Lon-
don in the seventeenth century, when houses containing persons suffering from the
Black Death were boarded up by city authorities with the victims still inside!
THE MEDIEVAL ORDER AND THE RENAISSANCE CIT Y 39
By the mid-1500s, Rome had been restored to its position as the capital city of
the Catholic world, and it grew in size and significance as trade and commerce in
cities across Europe produced a new merchant class with the wealth and leisure time
necessary to support pilgrimages to this most holy of sites. But continued growth
and an aging infrastructure produced a medieval city of narrow streets, overcrowded
housing, and massive traffic problems; in the last decades of the sixteenth century,
nearly 450,000 pilgrims traveled to Rome each year. Pope Sixtus V (1585–1590) be-
gan an ambitious plan of urban redevelopment. Edmund Bacon (1967:117) de-
scribed the plan that would create Renaissance Rome:
Sixtus V, in his effort to recreate the city of Rome into a city worthy of the
church, clearly saw the need to establish a basic overall design structure in the
form of a movement system as an idea, and at the same time the need to tie down
its critical parts in positive physical forms which could not easily be removed. He
hit upon the happy solution of using Egyptian obelisks, of which Rome had a
substantial number, and erected these at important points within the structure of
his design.
The seven holy pilgrimage sites within the city were linked by broad boulevards,
providing for a new sense of movement and spatial ordering within the city. This
FI GU R E 2.2 Creating Renaissance Rome.

Pope Sixtus V’s plan for the redesign of
Rome involved linking the four major
basilicas (St. Peter, St. Mary Major, St.
John Lateran, and S. Maria del Popolo)
with new roads and installing obelisks to
guide pilgrims from one site to another;
the plan is based upon a semiotic ap-
proach to the city and to urban design.
SOURCE: Print by Giovanni Francesco
Bordini (1588).
plan for urban redevelopment was celebrated in engravings by the leading artists of
the day. Implementing this plan would take more than sixty years and result in the
destruction of neighborhoods of crowded medieval housing, but it produced a new
city that would attract pilgrims from across Europe. New squares were built and
monuments erected to symbolize the power of the church.
The redevelopment of Rome served as a model for urban planning during the
Renaissance. New squares would be constructed with monuments to historical events
and public figures; boulevards would connect these urban spaces with one another
and direct traffic through the city. Older housing, now a crowded eyesore, would be
demolished to make way for urban development. The design of the new metropolis
would be replicated in Renaissance cities across Europe in the 1700s and would serve
as a model for urban planning in many other areas of the world, including Detroit
and Washington, D.C. (Girouard, 1985).
The change in urban fortunes is clearly shown in Table 2.3, which shows the largest
city in the world in each century from 1200 BC to 1850—a documentary history of
the development of urban civilization across the globe. In the first half of the table, the
cities and civilizations correspond to what we have learned in high school and college
courses on Western history: Babylon was the largest city in Mesopotamia in biblical
times, Memphis the largest city in ancient Egypt, and Rome the largest city of the Ro-
man Empire. But urban life during the Middle Ages shifted to the great Muslim em-
pires of the Middle East (Baghdad and Damascus in 900 and 1100) and then to North
TA B L E 2.3 World’s Largest Cities, 1200 bc to ad 1900.

City Present Location Estimated Population
1200 Memphis Egypt 50,000
600 Ninevah Iraq 120,000
450 Babylon Iraq 200,000
200 Patna India 400,000
100 Rome Italy 650,000
350 Constantinople Turkey 300,000
600 Constantinople Turkey 500,000
800 Changan China 700,000
900 Baghdad Iraq 1,100,000
1000 Córdoba Spain 450,000
1100 Kaifeng China 440,000
1200 Hangchow China 250,000
1300 Hangchow China 430,000
1400 Nanking China 490,000
1500 Peking China 670,000
1600 Peking China 710,000
1800 Peking China 1,100,000
1850 London Great Britain 2,320,000
SOURCE: Adapted from Ivan Light, Cities in World Perspective (New York: Macmillan, 1983).
C APITALISM AND THE RISE OF THE INDUSTRIAL CIT Y 41
Africa and Spain (Córdoba in the 1200s and 1300s) and then to the great Chinese
civilizations of the 1500s through 1700s. The rise of first European and later American
cities did not occur until the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s.
In retrospect, it seems clear that the force that propelled the development of
cities in Europe after the late Middle Ages did not involve the same process of urban
growth that led to the urban civilizations of earlier centuries. When we examine the
historical record put forward in Table 2.3, we realize that the expansion of urban
civilization in Europe was a direct consequence of the rise of capitalism and industri-
alization. It is this change that defines the development from the relatively autono-
mous urban community in Europe of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to
the large industrial and postindustrial cities that we know today.
CAPITALISM AND THE

RISE OF THE INDUSTRIAL CITY
Throughout the world, especially in North Africa, Asia, and the Near East, cities
were the sites of vigorous trade and the economic activities associated with com-
merce. However, trade by itself did not sustain the rise of cities in Western Europe.
Distinguishing the developing towns of the late Middle Ages from other such places
was the emergence of capitalism based on a money economy.
The economy of the feudal manor, for example, was characterized by simple com-
modity production; that is, craft products were produced for exchange, and the owners
were the producers of the products. Exchange took place among owners/producers and
could be facilitated using any object or service that was equivalent according to the cul-
tural judgment of the society. This barter system prevailed for several hundred years in
Europe after the fall of Rome and existed elsewhere in the Middle East and Asia.
In the later Middle Ages, beginning in the twelfth century, the general and ac-
cepted use of money and a fully developed commodity market within the city that was
regulated by local government allowed the people with capital to hire both labor and
resources to produce goods. The classical sociologist Karl Marx was the foremost stu-
dent of the rise of capitalism. He called the type of economy made possible by capital
and city regulation of markets extended commodity production. That is, unlike simple
commodity production, which ended in the exchange of goods or services, extended
production began with money, or capital and, after production and exchange, ended
with still more money, which was then invested in a new cycle of accumulation.
In this manner, commercial relations supported the accumulation of capital, and
cities with such economies began to prosper beyond anything experienced up to that
time. In addition, social and cultural relations changed in the cities to sanction the
pursuit of wealth through the accumulation of money. For example, the early Cath-
olic church prohibited the loaning of money, except within restricted guidelines, and
limited the role of banks (see Vance, 1990). In the sixteenth century, the Protestant
9780813344256-text_Layout 1 5/19/10 1:40 PM Page 42
Reformation swept away these cultural and social restrictions on the free flow of in-
vestment, providing a cultural basis for capitalist development (Weber, 1958). Once
that point had been reached, the accumulation process spilled out into the surround-
ing area as the new money-based capitalist economy penetrated relations in the
countryside. The history of the Occidental city, as Braudel, Weber, and Marx all
agreed, became the history of capitalism.
The full impact of the changes described by these three authors may be best un-
derstood by looking at the location and size of the largest cities in Europe from 1050
to 1800 (roughly the period from the onset of the Middle Ages to the start of the In-
dustrial Revolution). The population figures presented in Table 2.4 illustrate the
shift of economic activity and urban life from southern Europe to the north. In the
early Middle Ages, the largest urban areas were found in the Moorish empire in
Spain and in the early Italian city-states. By the 1500s the influence of the Moorish
empire was declining, and the early textile manufacturing cities of the north were as-
cending. Soon thereafter, the port cities of the Hanseatic League made their appear-
ance. By 1800, the metropolitan centers of the new European powers and the cities
of the industrial north predominated.
TA B L E 2.4 Largest Cities in Europe, 1050 to 1800.

1050 1200 1330 1500 1650 1800
Córdoba 150 Palermo 150 Granada 150 Paris 225 Paris 400 London 948
Palermo 120 Paris 110 Paris 150 Naples 125 London 350 Paris 550
Seville 90 Seville 80 Venice 110 Milan 100 Naples 300 Naples 430
Salerno 50 Venice 70 Genoa 100 Venice 100 Lisbon 150 Vienna 247
Venice 45 Florence 60 Milan 100 Granada 70 Venice 140 Amsterdam 217
Regensburg 40 Granada 60 Florence 95 Prague 70 Milan 120 Dublin 200
Toledo 37 Córdoba 60 Seville 90 Lisbon 65 Amsterdam 120 Lisbon 195
Rome 35 Cologne 50 Córdoba 60 Tours 60 Rome 110 Berlin 172
Barbastro 35 Leon 40 Naples 60 Genoa 58 Madrid 100 Madrid 168
Cartagena 33 Ypres 40 Cologne 54 Ghent 55 Palermo 100 Rome 153
Naples 30 Rome 35 Palermo 51 Florence 55 Seville 80 Palermo 140
Mainz 30 Bologna 35 Siena 50 Palermo 55 Florence 74 Venice 138
Merida 30 Toledo 35 Barcelona 48 Rome 55 Vienna 70 Milan 135
Almeria 17 Verona 33 Valencia 44 Bordeaux 50 Granada 70 Hamburg 130
Grenada 26 Narbonne 31 Toledo 42 Lyon 50 Marseille 70 Lyon 109
Speyer 25 Salerno 30 Bruges 40 Orleans 50 Copenhagen 65 Copenhagen 101
Palma 25 Pavia 30 Malaga 40 London 50 Genoa 64 Marseille 101
Leon 25 Messina 30 Aquila 40 Bologna 50 Bologna 63 Barcelona 100
London 25 Naples 30 Bologna 40 Verona 50 Antwerp 60 Seville 96
Elvira 22 Genoa 30 Cremona 40 Brescia 49 Brussels 60 Bordeaux 96
Population in thousands.
SOURCE: Adapted from DeLong and Shleifer (1993) and based on the work of Bairoch, Batou, and Chèvre (1988)
and Russell and Cox (1972).
As Adam Smith and Karl Marx noted in their complementary works, The Wealth of
Nations and Das Kapital, industrial capitalism would forever change the nature of so-
cial relations and set in motion the powerful economic forces that resulted in global
capitalism and the emerging world city. Occupations became specialized, and the divi-
sion of labor grew ever more complex as mercantile capitalism was replaced by indus-
trial capitalism. Aided by emergent nation-states, the political and legal relations of
capitalism began to dominate the countryside in Europe. To be successful, the emerg-
ing forms of capitalism required the legal justification of private property, and this
would result in the “commodification” not just of urban space but of many other as-
pects of society. All this buying and selling meant that many new markets were formed
and existing ones expanded, providing people with even more ways to make money.
Land, for example, that was once held only by the nobility and the church, be-
came a commodity that could be purchased by anyone with money. A real estate
market developed that divided up and parceled out land for sale. A second market,
this one for labor, emerged as the serfs, who had been bound to their masters by feu-
dal traditions, were freed only to become commodities in the new system of wage la-
bor. As feudal relations of dependence and reciprocity were broken down by
capitalism and the pursuit of monetary accumulation, immense numbers of people
were forced out of rural farming areas and into cities, where they looked for work by
selling their labor for a wage on the labor market. They would become the urban
proletariat, as Marx defined them: Persons who possessed only their labor to sell.
With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, this “urban implosion,” or shift of
population from rural to urban places, reached truly astounding proportions. Accord-
ing to Lewis Mumford (1961), the cities of the late eighteenth century contained rela-
tively few people, numbering less than 600,000. By the middle of the nineteenth
century, capitalist industrialization had created cities of a million or more across West-
ern Europe. The most dramatic changes were experienced in England and Wales be-
cause it was there that the scale of industrialization and capitalist development was
most advanced. According to Geruson and McGrath (1977:25), urban counties in
Britain grew by 30 percent between 1780 and 1800 and again by approximately 300
percent between 1801 and 1831. Commercial and industrial counties experienced a
net population increase of 378,000 between 1781 and 1800 and an additional 720,000
between 1801 and 1831. At the same time, agricultural counties lost 252,000 people
during the first period and lost 379,000 between 1801 and 1831.
Census figures at the time of the nineteenth century were not always accurate.
Nevertheless, Braudel (1973:376) suggests that around the turn of the century, several
regions in Europe tipped their population balance from rural to urban, especially in
England and the Netherlands, a truly momentous occurrence. In short, for the first
time in history, several nations changed from populations that were predominantly
rural to ones dominated by urban location, and this is why the urbanization process
in Western Europe after the 1700s was so significant.
By the seventeenth century, destitution had been accepted as the normal lot in
life for a considerable part of the population. Without the spur of poverty and fam-
ine, people could not be expected to work for starvation wages. Misery at the bottom
was the foundation for luxury at the time. As much as a quarter of the urban popu-
lation in the bigger cities, it has been estimated, consisted of casuals and beggars; it
was this surplus that made for what was considered, by classic capitalism, to be a
healthy labor market, in which the capitalist hired labor on his own terms or dis-
missed workers at will, without notice and without concern for what happened to
the worker or the city under such inhuman conditions. In a memorandum dated
1684, the chief of police of Paris referred to the “frightful misery that afflicts the
greater part of the population of this great city.” Between 40,000 and 65,000 were
reduced to outright beggary. There was nothing exceptional about Paris.
By the middle 1800s, Western Europe possessed many industrialized cities. What
was life like there? The cities that emerged in the nineteenth century, unlike the an-
cient places, were not conceived according to some overarching symbolic meaning,
such as religious or cosmological codes. Development was a haphazard affair. Individ-
ual capitalists did what they willed, and real estate interests operated unchecked by
either legal code or cultural prescription. Land was traded like other goods. About the
only clear pattern that emerged involved the spatial separation of rich and poor. The
industrial city of Western Europe became the site of a clash of classes: the workers
against the capitalists. Observing the excesses of the time and the utter devastation
visited on working-class life by the factory regime of capitalism, Karl Marx (1967)
recognized that class struggle would become the driving force of history. It was left for
Friedrich Engels, Marx’s close friend, to document in graphic terms the pathological
nature of uneven development characterizing urban growth under capitalism in The
Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (Engels, 1845).
In a chapter titled “The Great Towns,” Engels describes the typical slum found in
the industrial city:
Every great city has one or more slums, where the working class is crowded to-
gether. True, poverty often dwells in hidden alleys close to the palaces of the rich;
but, in general, a separate territory has been assigned to it, where, removed from
the sight of the happier classes, it may struggle along as it can. These slums are
pretty equally arranged in all the great towns of England, the worst houses in the
worst quarters of the towns; usually one- or two-storied cottages in long rows, per-
haps with cellars used as dwellings, almost always irregularly built. These houses of
three or four rooms and a kitchens form, throughout England, some parts of Lon-
don excepted, the general dwellings of the working class. The streets are generally
unpaved, rough, dirty, filled with vegetable and animal refuse, without sewers or
gutters, but supplied with foul, stagnant pools instead. Moreover, ventilation is
impeded by the bad, confused method of building of the whole quarter, and since
many human beings here live crowded into a small space, the atmosphere that pre-
vails in these working-men’s quarters may readily be imagined.
Engels’s description of Manchester is more graphic: “The people of Manchester

emphasize the fact whenever anyone mentions to them the frightful condition of this
Hell upon Earth; but what does that prove? Everything which here arouses horror
and indignation is of recent origin, belongs to the industrial epoch.” Engels’s account
includes rivers polluted with the intestines of slaughtered cattle and other manufac-
turing waste, which came from the giant factories that settled over residential areas of
the city, as described in Box 2.5.
Box 2.5
Manchester During the Industrial Age
Friedrich Engels included a description of Manchester in his study of the English work-
ing class in 1884:
The south bank of the Irk is here very steep and between fifteen and thirty feet
high. On this declivitous hillside there are planted three rows of houses, of which
the lowest rise directly out of the river, while the front walls of the highest stand on
the crest of the hill in Long Millgate. Among them are mills on the river, in short, the
method of construction is as crowded and disorderly here as in the lower part of
Long Millgate. Right and left a multitude of covered passages lead from the main
street into numerous courts, and he who turns in thither gets into a filth and dis-
gusting grime, the equal of which is not to be found—especially in the courts which
lead down to the Irk, and which contain unqualifiedly the most horrible dwellings
which I have yet beheld. In one of these courts there stands directly at the entrance,
at the end of the covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the inhabi-
tants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul pools of stag-
nant urine and excrement. This is the first court on the Irk above Ducie Bridge—in
case anyone should care to look into it. Below it on the river there are several tanner-
ies which fill the whole neighbourhood with the stench of animal putrefaction. Be-
low Ducie Bridge the only entrance to most of the houses is by means of narrow,
dirty stairs and over heaps of refuse and filth. The first court below Ducie Bridge,
known as Allen’s Court, was in such a state at the time of the cholera that the sani-
tary police ordered it evacuated, swept, and disinfected with chloride of lime.
The view from this bridge, mercifully concealed from mortals of small stature by
a parapet as high as a man, is characteristic for the whole district. At the bottom
flows, or rather stagnates, the Irk, a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, full of
debris and refuse, which it deposits on the shallower right bank. In dry weather, a
continues
Box 2.5 continued
long string of the most disgusting, blackish-green slime pools are left standing on
this bank, from the depths of which bubbles of miasmatic gas constantly arise and
give forth a stench unendurable even on the bridge forty or fifty feet above the sur-
face of the stream. But besides this, the stream itself is checked every few paces by
high weirs, behind which slime and refuse accumulate and rot in thick masses.
Above the bridge are tanneries, bonemills, and gasworks, from which all drains and
refuse find their way into the Irk, which receives further the contents of all the
neighbouring sewers and privies. It may be easily imagined, therefore, what sort of
residue the stream deposits. Below the bridge you look upon the piles of débris, the
refuse, filth, and offal from the courts on the steep left bank; here each house is
packed close behind its neighbour and a piece of each is visible, all black, smoky,
crumbling, ancient, with broken panes and window-frames.
The newly built extension of the Leeds railway, which crosses the Irk here, has swept
away some of these courts and lanes, laying others completely open to view. Passing
along a rough bank, among stakes and washing-lines, one penetrates into this chaos of
small one-storied, one-roomed huts, in most of which there is no artificial floor;
kitchen, living and sleeping-room all in one. In such a hole, scarcely five feet long by
six broad, I found two beds—and such bedsteads and beds!—which, with a staircase
and chimney-place, exactly filled the room. In several others I found absolutely noth-
ing, while the door stood open, and the inhabitants leaned against it. Everywhere be-
fore the doors refuse and offal; that any sort of pavement lay underneath could not be
seen but only felt, here and there, with the feet. This whole collection of cattle-sheds
for human beings was surrounded on two sides by houses and a factory, and on the
third by the river, and besides the narrow stair up the bank, a narrow doorway alone
led out into another almost equally ill-built, ill-kept labyrinth of dwellings.
Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I am
forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough to
convey a true impression of the filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of
all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which characterise the con-
struction of this single district, containing at least twenty to thirty thousand inhab-
itants. And such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England, the first
manufacturing city of the world. If any one wishes to see in how little space a hu-
man being can move, how little air—and such air!—he can breathe, how little of
civilisation he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither. True, this
is the Old Town, and the people of Manchester emphasise the fact whenever any
one mentions to them the frightful condition of this Hell upon Earth; but what
does that prove? Everything which here arouses horror and indignation is of recent
origin, belongs to the industrial epoch.
SOURCE: Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.
KE Y CONCEPTS, IMPORTANT NAMES, AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 47
Engels was not alone. Many books were written in the nineteenth century cata-
loging the hardships caused by industrialization, including Henry Mayhew’s London
Labour and the London Poor and Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People in
London. These works, and many more, described what Booth called “the problem of
poverty in the midst of wealth.”
In the chapters to follow, we will see that many of the ideas associated with mod-
ern life have their origins in observations made about industrial cities. The problem of
uneven development—the graphic contrast between the wealthy and the poor, for ex-
ample, and the contradictions between progress and misery—remains very much at
the center of the urban dynamic in cities around the globe. On the one hand, the city
represented hope to all those laboring under meager conditions in the countryside. It
was the site of industrialization and the great dream of modernization and progress.
On the other hand, the powerful forces of urbanism dwarfed the individual and
crushed the masses into dense, environmentally strained spaces. In time, the built en-
vironment of the industrial city would replace that of the feudal town. The city
rhythm, so unlike that of the country, would replace earlier cycles of life dominated
by nature. Life was worth only as much as the daily wage for which it could be ex-
changed. The processes of urbanization and capitalism that created large cities in Eu-
rope during the nineteenth century also thrived in the United States at the same time,
and in many ways, U.S. cities were governed by the same dynamic.
KEY CONCEPTS
Thanatopolis
agora
Childe hypothesis
rise of capitalism
simple commodity production
extended commodity production
urban implosion
forum
industrialization
IMPORTANT NAMES
V. Gordon Childe
Lewis Mumford
Gideon Sjoberg
Max Weber
Karl Marx
Friedrich Engels
Henry Mayhew
Charles Booth
1. V. Gordon Childe’s description of the urban revolution is often said to be an
evolutionary theory. What does this mean? What factors did Childe believe were
necessary for the urban revolution to take place? What evidence have other scholars
used to critique his theory?
2. The roles of culture and political power were important for the development of
both Athens and Rome, yet these forces produced two very different patterns of ur-
ban settlement. What might account for the differences between Athens and Rome,
and for the changes that took place in the development of republican and imperial
Rome?
3. Early cities were built by groups using a distinctive set of symbols and a model
of space meaningful to the group. Explain how the redevelopment of Renaissance
Rome by Pope Sixtus V followed these same ideas.
4. The well-known saying that “city air makes one free” dates from the develop-
ment of European cities in the medieval period. What does this saying represent?
Why was it important for European cities to develop political autonomy from the
surrounding economic and political system?
5. The rise of the industrial city in Europe is linked to the development of capital-
ism. Discuss two characteristics of early capitalism and show how this influenced the
growth of the industrial city.
6. Urban historians have long debated whether capitalism resulted in better living
conditions for the average worker. What evidence do we have from the development
of the industrial city to answer this question?
CHAPTER
3
THE RISE OF URBAN SOCIOLOGY
A special inquiry devoted to urban phenomena was the premier achievement of early
U.S. sociology. The first sociology department in the country was founded by Albion
Small at the University of Chicago in 1893. Robert Park joined the department in
1914 and quickly took on a prominent role. Albion Small and Robert Park had
something in common. They had both traveled to Germany as graduate students to
take courses with Georg Simmel. In the 1890s only France and Germany had profes-
sional sociologists. Emile Durkheim, a sociologist at the Sorbonne in Paris, had de-
veloped a growing reputation in France. Max Weber, the German scholar who wrote
on law, politics, religion, society, and much more, was acknowledged as the leading
social thinker of his day. And another important sociologist, Georg Simmel, had a
growing reputation as the most innovative social philosopher on the continent.
The first generation of sociologists shared a special concern with the impact of ur-
banization on European society. The political revolutions of the 1800s brought an
end to earlier ideas that the social and political order reflected a divine plan. What ex-
actly would the new social order, created by widespread changes in the economic and
social structure, look like? In the wake of the social and political changes brought
about by the French Revolution, questions about how social order itself could be
maintained were not simply a matter of idle speculation. These questions were essen-
tial to understanding the very nature of the new industrial society that was transform-
ing European cities.
Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936) is one of the early German social philosophers
who addressed these questions. In Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (published in 1887 and
often translated as “Community and Society,” although “Community and Association”
more accurately reflects the original meaning), Tönnies sketched out an evolutionary
view of the development of human society. The great period of industrialization that
transformed European societies beginning in the late 1700s signified a change from
community to association. Tönnies saw that the transition from community (where in-
dividual families have long histories, individuals interact with one another on a per-
sonal basis because they often work together or are related to one another, and all jobs
are interdependent on one another) to society (where individuals often interact with
49
50 3: THE RISE OF URBAN SOCIOLOGY
others whom they do not personally know and work at jobs that are seemingly unre-
lated to one another) resulted in a weakening of social ties and the loss of a shared sense
of belonging to a meaningful community. His ideas (summarized in Box 3.1) are often
used to highlight differences between village life of the preindustrial period and urban
life of the industrial period, and between small-town life and that of the large city more
generally.
Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), who was the first chair of sociology at the Sor-
bonne in Paris in 1883, also wrote about the changes brought about by industrializa-
tion. In The Division of Labor in Society, Durkheim discussed many of the same issues
presented in Töennies’s earlier essay, this time under the labels of mechanical solidarity
and organic solidarity. In the preindustrial village, individuals were held together by the
Box 3.1
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
In his seminal work analyzing the social changes that accompany the transition from the
traditional community to the modern urban society, Ferdinand Töennies described the
forms of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft in the following terms:
The very existence of Gemeinschaft rests in the consciousness of belonging to-

gether and the affirmation of the condition of mutual dependence which is posed
by that affirmation. Living together may be called the animal soul of Gemeinschaft,
for it is the condition of its active life, of a shared feeling of pleasure and pain, of a
shared enjoyment of the commonly possessed goods, by which one is surrounded,
and by the cooperation in teamwork as well as in divided labor. Working together
may be conceived of as the rational or human soul of Gemeinschaft. It is higher,
more conscious cooperation in the unity of spirit and purpose, including, therefore,
a striving for common or shared ideals, as invisible goods that are knowable only to
thought. Regarding being together it is descent (blood), regarding living together it
is soil (land), regarding working together it is occupation (Beruf ) that is substance
as it were, by which the wills of men, which otherwise are far apart from and even
antagonistic to each other, are essentially united.
The city is typical of Gesellschaft in general. It is essentially a commercial town
and, in so far as commerce dominates its productive labor, a factory town. Its wealth
is capital wealth which, in the form of trade, usury, or industrial capital, is used and
multiplies. Capital is the means for the appropriation of products of labor or for the
exploitation of workers. The city is also the center of science and culture, which al-
ways goes hand in hand with commerce and industry. Here the arts must make a liv-
ing; they are exploited in a capitalist way. Thoughts spread with astonishing rapidity.
SOURCE: Ferdinand Töennies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, 1957 [1887].

THE RISE OF URBAN SOCIOLOGY 51
mechanical bonds of kinship and social interdependence—mechanical because they

were predetermined and could not be changed as long as the individual remained
within the local village. In the industrial city, individuals were no longer bound by the
mechanical bonds of kinship; instead they could work at new types of jobs and have
greater opportunities for interaction with a wider range of people. These were organic
bonds that flowed naturally from the increased social differentiation brought about by
the division of labor. If these terms seem to be counterintuitive (we often think of
work in factories as being mechanical), it is important to realize that Durkheim was
convinced that the new industrial economy was an improvement over the limited op-
portunities of feudal society, and he may have deliberately chosen words with a posi-
tive connotation to represent the modern city. Durkheim was certain that the new
industrial order would replace the earlier ways of life: “With the coming of the indus-
trial economy, village society has disappeared, never to come again.”
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), the German scholar, saw things very differently.
Engels’s father was a wealthy industrialist, and he sent his son to Manchester, England,
to manage the family’s business interests in the new industrial city. Engels’s observa-
tions on everyday life under industrial capitalism are found in The Condition of the
Working Class in England in 1844. This seminal work in urban sociology devoted a
chapter to “The Great Towns” (see also Box 2.5). According to Engels, the evils of in-
dustrialization and capitalism were intensified by the space of the city. This is a per-
spective to which we will return in the next chapter.
The most influential European thinker influencing urban sociologists in the
United States during this early period was Georg Simmel (1858–1918). Simmel
viewed the city in cultural terms and wrote about how urban life transformed individ-
ual consciousness: Everyday existence within the city altered the way people thought
and acted compared to traditional society. Robert Park and Albion Small were famil-
iar with Simmel’s work and brought this “interactive” perspective back to the Univer-
sity of Chicago. In the United States, the work of the early Chicago School was less
concerned with historical and comparative studies in the manner of Weber and more
focused on social behavior and interaction within the urban milieu in the manner of
Simmel.
Any thorough discussion of the development of urban sociology in the United
States must begin by explaining the important difference between the two organizing
topics in the field: urbanization and urbanism. Urbanization refers to the origins of
cities and the process of city building. It studies the way social activities locate them-
selves in space and according to interdependent processes of societal development and
change. The analyses are often historical and comparative. When we study the process
of urbanization, we are interested in charting the rise and fall of great cities and urban
civilizations. Our discussion of the emergence of cities, the largest cities in the world,
and the changing location of large cities in Europe presented in Chapter 2 was about
urbanization. Urbanism, in contrast, studies the ways of life that may be found within
the urban community. It deals with culture, with meanings, symbols, patterns of daily
life, and processes of adjustment to the environment of the city, but also with social
conflict and political organization at the street, neighborhood, and city levels.
While both Max Weber and Friedrich Engels emphasized the relation between the
historical development of the city and its ways of life, Georg Simmel was more con-
cerned with patterns of activity and ways of thinking that were found in the city. The
work of the early Chicago School followed Simmel closely and focused on patterns of
activity within cities rather than addressing the topic of city formation or U.S. urban-
ization. Yet for Simmel, the study of life within the city was not meant as an “urban
sociology.” Simmel was instead concerned with modernity, or the transition from a tra-
ditional society characterized by social relations based on intimacy or kinship (known
as “primary” relations) and by a feudal economy based on barter to an industrial soci-
ety situated within cities and dominated by impersonal, specialized social relations
based on compartmentalized roles (known as “secondary” relations) and by a money
economy based on rational calculations of profit and loss. For Simmel, the subtle as-
pects of modernity were displayed most clearly within the large city or metropolis and
through consciously directed behaviors. Simmel gives us a social psychology of moder-
nity that Robert Park took to be the sociology of urbanism, or “urban sociology.”
GEORG SIMMEL ON THE CITY

What was it like to confront modernity and why was Simmel so impressed with the
city as the vehicle for change? Consider, if you will, a German farmer from Bavaria.
His life was tuned to the daily rhythms of agriculture. Nature and his own physical
labor provided the boundaries within which the farming endeavor was framed. The
regime of labor on the land was early to bed because darkness meant little work
could be done, and early to rise because it was necessary to use every second of day-
light for work—even dawn and twilight. This farmer was immersed in a social world
of primary kinship relations. His principal contacts were members of his family,
both immediate and extended. Perhaps several generations and families lived to-
gether in the same location and worked the land. Beyond this primary network, the
farmer would interact with individuals who aided his enterprise. Most typically he
visited a local service center, perhaps a small town. There he was surely involved in a
network of people who knew him well. In this kind of traditional society, it was en-
tirely possible that no money changed hands while farm produce and needed com-
modities were exchanged. Barter, credit, and informal agreements among known
persons characterized the social relations of this world.
As Simmel might suggest, suppose this individual—call him Hans—lost the
farm and his family in some personal tragedy. With a small amount of money, he
now traveled to Berlin to begin a new life. He went to this modern city precisely be-
cause it offered him an alternative to the traditional rural existence of farming. Karl
GEORG SIMMEL ON THE CITY 53
Box 3.2
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel was born on March 1, 1858, in the very heart of Berlin, at the inter-
section of Leipzigerstrasse and Friedrichstrasse. This was a curious birthplace—it
would correspond to Times Square in New York—but it seems symbolically fitting
for a man who throughout his life lived at the intersection of many movements, in-
tensely affected by the crosscurrents of intellectual traffic and by a multiplicity of
moral directions. Like “the stranger” he described in his brilliant essay of the same
name, he was near and far at the same time, a potential wanderer who had not
quite overcome the freedom of coming and going. Simmel was a modern urban
man, without roots in traditional folk culture.
After graduating from Gymnasium, Simmel studied history and philosophy at the
University of Berlin with some of the most important academic figures of the day.
By the time he received his doctorate in 1881, Simmel was familiar with a vast field
of knowledge extending from history to philosophy and from psychology to the so-
cial sciences. Deeply tied to the intellectual milieu of Berlin, he played an active part
in the intellectual and cultural life of the capital, frequenting many fashionable sa-
lons and participating in various cultural circles. He attended the meetings of phi-
losophers and sociologists and was a cofounder, with Weber and Töennies, of the
German Society for Sociology.
Simmel taught at the University of Berlin, where he became a Privatdozent (an un-
paid lecturer dependent on student fees) in 1885. His courses ranged from logic and
the history of philosophy to ethics, social psychology, and sociology. He was a very
popular lecturer and his lectures soon became leading intellectual events, not only for
students but for the cultural elite of Berlin. Simmel was somewhat of a showman,
punctuating the air with abrupt gestures and stabs, dramatically halting, and then re-
leasing a torrent of dazzling ideas. In spite of the fascination he called forth, however,
his academic career turned out to be unfortunate, even tragic. Many of Simmel’s peers
and elders, especially those of secondary rank, felt threatened and unsettled by his er-
ratic brilliance. Whenever Simmel sought an academic promotion, he was rebuffed.
Simmel was a prolific writer. More than two hundred of his articles appeared in a
great variety of journals, newspapers, and magazines during his lifetime, and several
more were published posthumously. He published fifteen major works in the fields
of philosophy, ethics, sociology, and cultural criticism, including his seminal work,
The Philosophy of Money, in 1900. His influence on the further development of
both philosophy and sociology, whether acknowledged or not, has been diffuse yet
pervasive, even during those periods when his fame seemed to have been eclipsed.
Among Americans who sat at his feet was Robert Park. No one who reads Park’s
work can overlook Simmel’s profound impact.
SOURCE: Lewis A. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought, 1971.

Marx, writing in the nineteenth century, would have focused on Hans’s conversion
to an industrial worker. He would have taken us into the factory with Hans and de-
scribed his encounter with abstract capital (the machine), with the relations of pro-
duction (the factory building, the assembly line, and the daily schedule of work),
and with class relations (interaction with the workers and the boss). Simmel, writing
in the early twentieth century, virtually ignored this entire domain of the factory,
which could be termed the immediate environment of capitalism, and focused in-
stead on the larger context of daily life, the extended environment—namely, the city.
Hans stands on the corner of a large boulevard in Berlin teeming with daytime
auto traffic. He has to dodge the steady stream of pedestrians just to stand still and
watch, since everything else is in constant motion. At first shock, Hans would be par-
alyzed by the “excess of nervous stimulation,” according to Simmel. Haven’t we all
had a similar experience upon visiting a large city? Loud noises from traffic, people in
the crowds calling after one another, strangers bumping us as they pass without an ac-
knowledgment, and more—noise, noise, and noise. Hans would find himself in a to-
tally new environment that demanded an adjustment and a response.
According to Simmel, small-town life required Hans to develop strong, intimate
ties to those with whom he interacted. In the city, the excess of stimulation requires a
defensive response. These are the characteristics of urbanism noted by Simmel. Hans
would (1) develop what Simmel called a “blasé” attitude—a blurring of the senses, a
filtering out of all that was loud and impinging but also irrelevant to Hans’s own
personal needs. Emotional reserve and indifference replace acute attention to the de-
tails of the environment.
Hans would require the satisfaction of his needs. Yes, he would encounter capi-
talism and, no doubt, sell his labor for a wage, as Marx had observed. Simmel agreed
with Marx about the necessity of that transaction, which would (2) reduce the qual-
ity of Hans’s capabilities simply to the quantity of his labor time—the time he spent
at work for a wage. It would make his work equivalent to a sum of money, no more,
no less. That sum of money exchanged for Hans’s labor time would be all the em-
ploying capitalist would provide. Hans would quickly see that absolutely no concern
for his health-related, spiritual, communal, sexual, or any other type of human need
would be involved in his relationship with his employer. In short, the world of capi-
talism was (3) an impersonal world of pure monetary exchange.
Simmel, unlike Marx, showed how the impersonal money economy extended
outside the factory to characterize all other transactions in the city. Hans would use
his paycheck to buy the necessities of life, but in these transactions, too, impersonal or
secondary social relations prevailed. Unless he went to a small store and frequented it
every day, he would simply be viewed as (4) an anonymous customer being provided
with mass-produced items for purchase. As a city dweller, he might find himself more
frequently going to a department store where (5) a mass spectacle of consumption
would be on display.
LOUIS WIRTH AND URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 55
In all these transactions, Hans would have to be very careful. His weekly paycheck
could go only so far. He would have to count how much each item cost and then
budget accordingly. This (6) rational calculation would be at the heart of his daily life.
Everything would be measured by him, just as costs were carefully measured at the
factory. Rational calculation of money would require knowledge and technique. If
Hans mastered it successfully along with gaining mastery over the consumer world of
the city, he could look down at his country-bumpkin cousins. City life, for Simmel,
was a life of the intellect, and everywhere, it was the relation between the money
economy and the rational calculation needed to survive in the world of capitalism
that prevailed. Those in the city who could not master the technique of money man-
agement would surely be lost.
We are not finished with the example of Hans. In the traditional society of the
country, the rhythm of life was provided by nature. The city environment required
(7) adjustment to a second nature—the orchestration of daily activities as governed
by clock time and as played out within a constructed space. All life in the city fol-
lowed the schedule of capitalist industrialization or modernity. If Hans didn’t own a
watch before coming to the city, he now needed one. Time and money constituted
the two types of calculation necessary for survival in the second nature of the urban
milieu—the built environment of concrete, steel, and glass that is the city.
Finally, Simmel also commented on the qualitative value of an experience like
Hans’s. He did not see the transformation as something that was necessarily bad. Hans
would be cast in a calculating and impersonal world, but he would also be (8) freed
from the restrictions of traditional society and its time-bound dictates. He would be
free to discriminate about the types of friends he chose, about the job he took (within
strong constraints, of course), and about where he lived. To Simmel, modernity meant
the possibility of immense individual freedom in addition to constraint.
For Simmel, the freedom of the city meant, above all else, that Hans would be
free to pursue and even create his own individuality. Provided he had the money, of
course—an actuality that Marx would doubt—Hans could cultivate himself. He
could dress according to some distinct fashion, develop hobbies he could share with
others, perhaps take up the violin and join a neighborhood string quartet; he could
enjoy a certain brand of cigar or shoes or attend night classes at the university—even
Simmel’s own lectures. Could Hans and Simmel eventually have met? The city al-
lowed for the possibility of attaining such cultural freedom, and the signs of individ-
ual cultivation—the clothes, cigars, friends, lovers, discussion groups, opera, art,
novels—were collectively the signs of modernity that we may also call urbanism.
LOUIS WIRTH AND URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE

As we have seen, Georg Simmel had an important impact on the development of ur-
ban sociology in the United States. Albion Small and Robert Park attended lectures
by Simmel while they were studying in Germany, and Park included some of the first
English translations of Simmel’s work in the sociology textbook (titled The Science of
Society) used at the University of Chicago. Louis Wirth was born in Germany but
was sent to live with relatives in Omaha, Nebraska, where he attended high school
before coming to the University of Chicago. Wirth’s doctoral research reflected his
knowledge of the development of Chicago’s Jewish community. Published in 1926
with the title The Ghetto, Wirth’s work describes the Maxwell Street neighborhood
where recently arrived Russian immigrants had settled (the ghetto) and the area of
second settlement where the older German immigrants had moved (Deutschland).
Wirth became a faculty member in the sociology department at the University of
Chicago and was one of the important figures in the later development of the
Chicago School.
Louis Wirth was inspired by the work of Simmel. The Chicago sociologists came
to view spatial patterns in the city as the result of powerful social factors, such as
competition and the struggle for survival among individuals and groups within the
city. Thus, Robert Park and his associates viewed urban space as a container, a built
environment that encloses the action. Wirth’s idea was different. He emphasized the
way the city, as a spatial environment, influenced individual behavior. Wirth wanted
to know what it was about the city itself that produced unique behaviors that might
be called an “urban way of life.” Given his study emphasis, Wirth naturally returned
to Simmel. However, while Simmel (along with Weber and Marx) attributed much
of the city way of life to the influence of larger systemic forces, especially capitalism
and its money economy, Wirth aimed for a general theory that ignored forces having
origins outside the city. He studied the characteristics of people in the city and how
life there might produce a distinct “urban” culture. Hence, “urbanism,” or an urban
way of life, became the dependent variable to be explained.
In his important essay “Urbanism as a Way of Life” (1948), Wirth focused on
three factors. Urbanism was produced in relatively large and densely populated set-
tlements containing groups of persons of different backgrounds; that is, urbanism
was a product of large population size, density, and heterogeneity. Wirth’s approach
was an important advance because he provided a set of factors that could be analyzed
statistically according to their effects. It was a theory with true predictive power.
Given a sample of cities, the higher each one scored on the three factors of size, den-
sity, and heterogeneity, the more one could expect it to house a true urban culture.
Wirth’s theory was impressive for the time because of its predictive potential.
Problems arose when he tried to define what precisely an urban culture would be like.
Recall the example of Hans. Simmel gave us a detailed picture that contained both
negative and positive aspects. Essentially, Simmel viewed the city as simply different.
In his formulation, Wirth stressed the dark side of Simmel’s vision: Urbanism as a
culture would be characterized by aspects of social disorganization. Most central to
Wirth’s view was the shift from primary to secondary social relations. Wirth tended
LOUIS WIRTH AND URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE 57
Box 3.3
Urbanism as a Way of Life
Louis Wirth did not believe that there was a specific number that magically created
an urban space (compare this idea with the definitions of urban from Chapter 1).
Instead, he believed that cities differ from rural areas because of three factors—the
size, density, and heterogeneity of the population—that interact with one another
to produce a specific urban way of life. Here are some of the effects of the variables
as Worth described them:
The effect of size: The greater the size of the population, the greater the special-
ization and diversity of social roles we find within the city—and so too the di-
versity of the population itself. Because the population lacks a common identity,
competition and formal mechanisms of social control would replace primary re-
lations of kinship as a means of organizing society. Because human relationships
are highly segmented, there is increased anonymity and fragmentation of social
interaction. These effects can be liberating (one has greater anonymity and can
do as one likes) but may also lead to anomie and social disorganization.
The effect of density: The increased density of the urban population intensifies
the effects of large population size, increases competition among individuals and
groups, and thereby creates a need for specialization. Greater density produces
greater tolerance for living closely with strangers but also creates greater stress as
groups that do not share a common identity come into contact with one an-
other. Increased competition leads to mutual exploitation, while greater density
leads to the need to tune out excessive stimulation.
The effect of heterogeneity: Individuals in the city have regular contact with
persons and groups that differ from them in many ways: ethnicity, race, and so-
cial status, as described above. Increased heterogeneity leads to greater tolerance
among groups as ethnic and class barriers are broken down. But the effect also is
to compartmentalize individual roles and contacts, and, as a result, anonymity
and depersonalization in public life increase.
The increased size, density, and heterogeneity of urban areas leaves us with an ur-
ban environment where individuals are alienated and alone, where primary groups
have been splintered. The individual is now subject to the influence of the mass
media and mass social movements where the individual must “subordinate some of
this individuality to the demands of the larger community.”
to see urban anonymity as debilitating. More specifically, the effects of the three fac-
tors on social life can be expressed as a series of propositions, as indicated in Box 3.3.
Wirth’s work has been exhaustively tested, mainly because it was so clearly stated
(Fischer, 1975). The core assertion that size, density, and heterogeneity cause a spe-
cific set of behaviors considered urban has not been borne out. If we look at the
propositions presented in Box 3.3, many of the assertions appear to be accurate de-
scriptions of social interaction in the large city, and they help to provide a more
detailed picture of what urbanism as a culture is like. However, while the theory con-
tains some truth, we cannot be certain that these factors produce specific results.
Cities merely concentrate the effects of societal forces producing urban culture.
Surely we know that small towns are affected by many of the same social forces as the
central city, although the types of behaviors that we observe in these environments
may differ in type and intensity.
Finally, Louis Wirth held strongly to the view that the true effects of urbanism
would occur as a matter of evolution as cities operated on immigrant groups to break
down traditional ways of interacting over time. He did not see the larger city acting as
an environment to bring about immediately the change he predicted. These things
would take time, perhaps a generation. “Urbanism as a Way of Life” would inspire
other urban sociologists to analyze the development of new suburban lifestyles (“Sub-
urbanism as a Way of Life”; see Fava, 1980) and to compare urban and suburban
lifestyles (“Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of Life”; Gans, 1968). We will return
to the topic of urbanism and continue discussing the refinement of Wirth’s ideas up
to the present in Chapter 8. Wirth’s work also inspired a subsequent generation to
plow through census data and derive the statistical regularities of urban living. Much
urban research is similarly conducted today.
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL OF URBAN SOCIOLOGY

While it is common to date the origin of urban sociology at Chicago to Robert
Park’s arrival in 1914 and his subsequent work with Ernest Burgess, the idea of the
city as a laboratory for social research came much earlier (Hutchison, 2009). Charles
Henderson, one of the founding members of the department, applied for funds for a
systematic study of the city in the 1890s, and W. I. Thomas began his research on
The Polish Peasant in Europe and the United States in 1908. An early (1902) descrip-
tion of the graduate program in the American Journal of Sociology stated:
The city of Chicago is one of the most complete social laboratories in the world.
While the elements of sociology may be studied in smaller communities . . . the
most serious problems of modern society are presented by the great cities, and
must be studied as they are encountered in concrete form in large populations. No
city in the world presents a wider variety of typical social problems than Chicago.
THE CHIC AGO SCHOOL OF URBAN SOCIOLOGY 59
Robert Park and Human Ecology

Robert Park (1865–1944) attended the University of Michigan and began his career
as a newspaper reporter, first for the Minneapolis Journal and later for the New York
Journal. Because he was assigned to the police beat at the newspapers he would have
to pound the streets to develop leads and check facts for his news articles. He re-
turned to graduate school at Harvard University and traveled to Germany, where he
took courses with Georg Simmel and received a degree from the University of Hei-
delberg. In 1912 Park organized a conference on race relations at Tuskegee Institute.
He was approached by W. I. Thomas, who taught at the University of Chicago.
Thomas wanted to know if Park would come to the university and join other schol-
ars in the newly formed department of sociology (Blumer, 1984; Mathews, 1977).
Box 3.4
Robert Park’s Fascinating Career
Robert Park was born in Redwing, Minnesota, in 1864. His father did not want to
send him to college, insisting that he was not “the studious type,” but Park saved
money from a summer job working with a railroad crew to pay for his college tu-
ition. He graduated from the University of Michigan, where he took courses with
John Dewey, and began his career as a newspaper reporter, first in Minneapolis and
later in Denver, New York, and Chicago. Despite a successful career in the news-
paper business, including serving as city editor for two Detroit newspapers, Park
decided to return to graduate school.
He received his MA in philosophy from Harvard University in 1899 and then
moved his family to Berlin, where he attended lectures by Georg Simmel, and later
received his PhD from Heidelberg University. Returning to the United States in
1903, he became secretary of the Congo Reform Association and wrote a series of
articles that exposed the atrocities of the Belgian government in its African colony.
While working with the Congo Reform Association, Park met Booker T. Wash-
ington, the most influential black American leader of the day and the founder of
the Tuskegee Institute, and decided that he was sick and tired of the academic
world and wanted to “get back into the world of men.” Washington invited Park to
become the publicist for the Institute, and for the next decade Park served as Wash-
ington’s personal secretary, revising papers and speeches. Park used his spare time
to investigate lynching in the American South and to write about race relations in
the United States.
In 1912 Park organized the International Conference on the Negro at Tuskegee.
One of the scholars he invited was W. I. Thomas from the University of Chicago.
continues
Box 3.4 continued

The two became friends, and Thomas invited Park to come to Chicago to teach.
Park arrived in Chicago in 1914 and began the work that we are familiar with from
the Chicago School of Urban Sociology. Because of Park’s connections with Wash-
ington and Tuskegee, the University of Chicago attracted a number of black stu-
dents and produced the first generation of African American sociologists in the
United States, including E. Franklin Frazer, Horace Cayton, and St. Clair Drake
(this at a time when black students were not allowed to attend many universities).
Another of Park’s students, Charles Johnson, wrote the final commission report on
the Chicago Race Riots of 1919.
Charles Johnson moved to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he
would serve as president of the historically all-black school. When it came time to re-
tire from the University of Chicago (in 1936 at the age of 72), Johnson invited Park
to come to Fisk, and together they established an urban laboratory to conduct studies
of race relations in American cities. Park died in Nashville in 1944, and in 1955, Fisk
University named a new dormitory Park-Johnson Hall in honor of his work.
Robert Park’s contributions before and after his years at the University of Chi-
cago have largely been overlooked, as if he discovered urban sociology there and left
it behind when he retired. But in reality he spent his long and exciting career en-
gaged with the city, with sociological study, and with the African American com-
munity before and after his years in Chicago.
In 1914, at age forty-nine, Park joined the faculty of the University of Chicago
on a part-time basis. Park’s approach to the sociological study of the urban environ-
ment was clear: He urged his students to “get the seat of their pants dirty” by getting
out into the neighborhoods of the city, studying the many different groups of people
who had come there. While Park worked with W. I. Thomas on a study of immi-
grant adaptation to the urban environment and on his own study of the develop-
ment of the immigrant press in the United States, he and Ernest Burgess conducted
undergraduate classes and graduate seminars that required students to go into the
community, collect data from businesspeople, interview area residents, and report
back with their information.
From the very first, the Chicago School sociologists adopted a conceptual posi-
tion that we know as human ecology—the study of the process of human group ad-
justment to the environment. Whereas European thinkers such as Weber, Marx, and
Simmel viewed the city as an environment where larger social and economic forces
of capitalism played themselves out in a human drama, Chicago School sociologists
avoided the study of capitalism per se, preferring instead a biologically based way of
conceptualizing urban life. For them urban analysis was a branch of human ecology.
Their ideas brought them closest to the work of the philosopher Herbert Spencer,
who also viewed society as dominated by biological rather than economic laws of de-
velopment. Economic competition, in this view, was a special case of the Darwinian
struggle for survival. All individuals in the city were caught up in this struggle and
adjusted to it in various ways.
According to Park, the social organization of the city resulted from the struggle
for survival that then produced a distinct and highly complex division of labor, be-
cause people tried to do what they were best at in order to compete. Urban life was
organized on two distinct levels: the biotic and the cultural. The biotic level refers to
the forms of organization produced by species’ competition over scarce environmen-
tal resources. The cultural level refers to the symbolic and psychological adjustment
processes and to the organization of urban life according to shared sentiments, much
like the qualities Simmel studied.
In Park’s work, the biotic level stressed the importance of biological factors for un-
derstanding social organization and the urban effects of economic competition. In
contrast, the cultural component of urban life operated in neighborhoods that were
held together by cooperative ties involving shared cultural values among people with
similar backgrounds. Hence, local community life was organized around what Park
called a “moral order” of cooperative, symbolic ties, whereas the larger city composed
of separate communities was organized through competition and functional differen-
tiation. In his later work, however, the complex notion of urbanism as combining
competition and cooperation, or the biotic and the cultural levels, was dropped in fa-
vor of an emphasis on the biotic level alone as the basic premise of urban ecology.
This led to some of the earliest critiques of the ecological perspective, faulting it for
ignoring the role of culture in the city, or what Simmel would call the important in-
fluence of modernity, and for neglecting the basis of community (Alihan, 1938),
which was social and not biological.
Other members of the early Chicago School translated the Social Darwinism im-
plicit in this model into a spatially attuned analysis. In 1924, Roderick McKenzie
(one of Park’s students) published an article titled “The Ecological Approach to the
Study of the Human Community” that gives the definitive statement of this ap-
proach: The fundamental quality of the struggle for existence was position, or loca-
tion, for the individual, the group, or institutions such as business firms. Spatial
position would be determined by economic competition and the struggle for sur-
vival. Groups or individuals that were successful took over the better positions in the
city, such as the choicest business locations, or the preferred neighborhoods. The less
successful would have to make do with less desirable positions. In this way the urban
population, under pressure of economic competition, sorted itself out within the
city space. McKenzie explained land-use patterns as the product of competition and
an economic division of labor, which deployed objects and activities in space accord-
ing to the roles they played in society. Thus, if a firm needed a particular location to
perform its function, it competed with others for that location. The study of urban
patterns resulting from that process would be studied by a new group of sociologists
known as ecologists.
Burgess’s Model of Urban Growth

Ernest Burgess developed a theory of city growth and differentiation based on the so-
cial Darwinist or biologically derived principles common in the work of Park and
McKenzie. According to Burgess, the city constantly grew because of population
pressure. This, in turn, triggered a dual process of central agglomeration and com-
mercial decentralization; that is, spatial competition attracted new business and
commercial activities to the center of the city but also repelled other activities to the
fringe area. This process forced other activities out and away from the core, and so
the fringe itself was pushed farther out from the city, and so on.
The city continually grew outward as activities that have lost out in the competi-
tion for space in the central city relocate to peripheral areas. This sorting and survival
of the fittest led, in turn, to further spatial and functional differentiation as activities
were deployed according to competitive advantages. In Burgess’s theory, the city
would eventually take on the form of a highly concentrated central business district
that would dominate the region and be the site for the highest competitive land
prices, while the surrounding area would comprise four distinct concentric rings. A
copy of Burgess’s map for the city of Chicago is shown in Figure 3.1 (the original map
is displayed in the office of the sociology department at the University of Chicago).
The importance of Burgess’s model cannot be overemphasized. First, he explained
the pattern of homes, neighborhoods, and industrial and commercial location in
terms of the ecological theory of competition over “position,” or location. Competi-
tion produced a certain ordering of space as well as a certain social organization in
space. Both of these dimensions were pictured in the concentric zone model. Those
who could afford it lived near the center; those who could not arranged themselves in
concentric zones around the city center.
Second, Burgess’s model explained the shifting of population and activities within
the space of the city according to two distinct but related processes: centralization and
decentralization. His theory explicitly related social processes to spatial patterns—a
most important link for all theorizing about the city that was to follow and a view
that is quite compatible with the aims of the new urban sociology.
Finally, Burgess revealed that the characteristics of the social organization of the
urban population were spatially deployed. A gradient running from the center to the
periphery characterized the attributes of the urban population. Individual traits such
as mental illness, gang membership, criminal behavior, and racial background were
found to be clustered along the center/periphery gradient of the city. Cutting across
the urban form from the central business district (known as the CBD) to the out-
F I G U R E 3.1 Burgess’s Model of Concentric Zones. Ernest Burgess’s model of the growth of the
city shows concentric zones moving away from the central area; it also takes into account natural
features (the lakefront) as well as areas of concentrated activities (such as the “Bright Light Area”
on the north) and the location of ethnic communities (such as Little Sicily on the north and the
Black Belt on the south). SOURCE: Reprinted courtesy of University of Chicago Press.
skirts, Chicago School researchers, using census data, found that the incidence of
social pathology decreased, while homeownership and the number of nuclear families
increased. The inner zones, therefore, were discovered to be the sites of crime, illness,
gang warfare, broken homes, and many other indicators of social disorganization or
problems.
In practice, however, research on the internal structure of cities would contradict

Burgess’s view of concentric zones. The first critique of Burgess’s model was proposed
by Homer Hoyt (1933) and was called “sector theory.” Hoyt argued that cities were
carved up not by concentric zones but by unevenly shaped sectors within which dif-
ferent economic activities tended to congregate together, that is, agglomerate. Hoyt
suggested that all activities, but especially manufacturing and retailing, had the ten-
dency to spin off away from the center and agglomerate in sectors that expanded out-
ward. Thus, the city grew in irregular blobs rather than in Burgess’s neat circles.
Other models argued that cities had multiple centers rather than a single urban
core. Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman (1945) suggested that within any city, sepa-
rate functions and their particular needs require concentration within specific and spe-
cialized districts. Thus, within cities, similar activities often locate in the same area,
forming agglomerations, or minicenters. Cities often grow asymmetrically around
these multiple nuclei. The idea of multiple nuclei as the shape of the city further devel-
oped Hoyt’s break from Burgess and is similar to the current multicentered approach
used in this book (see Chapter 1).
A common assumption of all of these models is that the city remains the central
place that dominates all other areas. In recent years this way of thinking about urban-
ized areas has been replaced by the regional perspective, which stresses the relative in-
dependence of multiple centers within the larger metropolitan region. While
ecologists were concerned with location and with thinking of social activities as lo-
cated in space, their biologically based explanation for perceived activities and spatial
patterns has been rejected in favor of the new urban sociology (see Gottdiener and
Feagin [1988] for an earlier analysis of this change in theoretical paradigms).
The Chicago School Studies

The work of the early Chicago School dominated urban sociology in the prewar years.
For about a decade, beginning in the early 1920s, a veritable flood of work poured out
of the sociology department. Surveying the books alone (that is, not including MA
and PhD theses produced at that time), the following list gives some idea of the range
of studies and accomplishments of the Chicago School. Many of these works are clas-
sics in our field of study:
Roderick D. McKenzie, The Neighborhood: A Study of Columbus, Ohio (1923)

Frederick Thrasher, The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago (1927)
Louis Wirth, The Ghetto (1928)
Ruth S. Cavan, Suicide (1928)
Harvey W. Zorbaugh, The Gold Coast and the Slum (1929)
Clifford R. Shaw, The Jackroller (1930)
Paul G. Cressey, The Taxi-Dance Hall (1932)
Walter C. Reckless, Vice in Chicago (1933)

Norman Hayner, Hotel Life (1936)
This marvelous output was produced with a similar stamp. It took an important
social phenomenon, such as suicide, and located the distribution of its incidence in
the space of the city. Chicago researchers then analyzed it in terms of the relation be-
tween the individual and the larger social forces of integration/disintegration. Most
often this meant that social phenomena were explained as products of social disorgan-
ization, particularly the breaking up of primary social relations through city living, as
Wirth’s theory suggested. As a result, the Chicago School would later be criticized for
reinforcing a negative view of city life.
Despite their limitations, we can appreciate the importance of these early efforts.
First, Chicago School researchers explicitly connected social phenomena with spatial
patterns; that is, they thought in sociospatial terms. Second, they took an interaction-
ist perspective. Individuals were studied in interaction with others, and the emergent
forms of sociation coming out of that interaction were observed closely. Finally, they
tried to show the patterns of adjustment to sociospatial location and developed a
rudimentary way of speaking about the role of individual attributes in explaining ur-
ban phenomena. It was true that they focused almost exclusively on social disorgani-
zation and pathology; the breakup of family relationships, for example, was given
much more attention than questions of race or class.
One early project of the Chicago School was the creation of mappings of the city
of Chicago that divided the city into seventy distinct community areas. The impor-
tance of spatial analysis in the Chicago School studies can be seen in the map shown
in Figure 3.2, which shows the location of taxi dance halls in Chicago in the period
1927–1930. Most of the Chicago School studies made use of a common base map of
Chicago or Ernest Burgess’s map of concentric zones; some, the early Delinquency
Areas (Shaw, Zorbaugh, McKay, and Cottrell, 1929) would overlay the concentric
zones on the base map. Paul Cressey’s The Taxi-Dance Hall: A Sociological Study in
Commercialized Recreation and City Life examined a particular social institution—the
taxi dance hall—that developed to provide entertainment for single men in the indus-
trial cities. It included not just the mapping of the location of the taxi dance halls
(shown in Figure 3.2) but also maps that showed where the customers who fre-
quented the dance halls lived, and where the young women who worked in the dance
halls lived. The taxi dance halls were located in rooming-house areas of the city, as
were the patrons of the dance halls, while the taxi dancers (the young women) lived in
immigrant neighborhoods on the north side of the city. Cressey’s own ethnographic
work in the dance halls further explains that the patrons were recent immigrants who
lived in the single-room apartments of the rooming house districts.
Other studies took a similar spatial approach to the study of urban phenomena.
Harvey Zorbaugh’s study, The Gold Coast and the Slum, made extensive use of maps
66
F I G U R E 3.2 Location of Taxi Dance Halls in Chicago, 1927–1930. Many of the

Chicago School studies used the base map of Chicago to locate the groups and in-
stitutions that were discussed in the research; in this example, Paul Cressey
mapped the location of taxi dance halls in Chicago. SOURCE: Reprinted courtesy of
University of Chicago Press.
to show where wealthy households (measured by persons listed in the social register in
one case) lived along the Chicago lakefront (known as the Gold Coast), and areas
where there were high delinquency rates and criminal activity (in the Slum). Interest-
ingly, one of Zorbaugh’s maps shows a street intersection labeled Death Corner—the
same location where the Cabrini-Green public housing project would be constructed
over a twenty-year period beginning in the 1940s (Francis Cabrini Rowhouses in
1942, the Cabrini Extension in 1958, and the William Green Houses in 1962).
Box 3.5
Street Gangs in Chicago, 1927
In the 1920s most street gangs were composed principally of recent immigrants to
this country. Thrasher’s census of street gangs in Chicago (included some 25,000
members in a city of 2 million) showed that roughly 17 percent were known as Pol-
ish gangs, 11 percent were Italian, 8.5 percent were Irish, 7 percent were black, and
so on, with the largest percentage of all gangs composed of “mixed nationalities.”
While roughly 87 percent of all gang members were of foreign extraction, they were
organized by territory, not by ethnicity. According to Thrasher, the gang phenome-
non was explained in part by the lack of adjustment opportunities for immigrants,
in part by the carryover of Old World antagonisms, and also by the need to defend
territory against “outsiders.”
Thrasher’s study demonstrates sociospatial thinking. As Robert Park comments
in his introduction, “The title of this book does not describe it. It is a study of the
gang, to be sure, but it is at the same time a study of ‘gangland,’ that is to say, a
study of the gang and its habitat, and in this case the habitat is a city slum.”
Park grounded Thrasher’s study in a biological metaphor by his use of the word
habitat. Today we would adopt the sociospatial perspective and say territory or space.
Gangland is the city space where gangs lived. Their influence was felt all over. What
Thrasher did was locate gangs in their space. In fact, he found “three great domains”
of gangdom—the “northside jungles,” the “southside badlands,” and the “westside
wilderness.” Using Ernest Burgess’s map of Chicago (see Figure 3.1), Thrasher pro-
vided details for each of these areas and the gangs they contained. Within gangland,
“The street educates with fatal precision” (1927:101). The northside covered an area
directly north of the Chicago Loop on the Burgess map and behind the wealthy
neighborhoods that lined the shore of Lake Michigan. It was home to the “Glorian-
nas,” the location of “Death Corner” and “Bughouse Square,” and a gang so threat-
ening that Thrasher disguised its real name.
The westside was the most extensive slum area producing gangs, and it encom-
passed the area west of downtown, spreading out both northward and southward.
continues
Box 3.5 continued

The westside was home to the “Blackspots,” the “Sparkplugs,” the “Beaners,” and the
“hard-boiled ‘Buckets-of-Blood’” (1927:9). The South Side of Chicago, with its
stockyards and miles of railroad yards, was dominated by Poles and Italians, and
gangs were known as the “Torpedoes” and the “So-So’s.” Also on the South Side,
black gangs of the time were the “Wailing Shebas” and the “Wolves.”
In a city divided by neighborhoods, Chicago pulsed with the give-and-take con-
frontations among the various gangs. Only the relative scarcity of killing weapons
such as handguns kept the constant confrontations from erupting into the type of
carnage characteristic of many cities today. For students of contemporary urban so-
ciology, there can be no better example of spatially sensitive research than Thrasher’s
original study. Moreover, it is doubtful, in today’s urban environment, that anyone
could carry out the kind of exhaustive census on street gangs that Thrasher was able
to accomplish. Certain parts of his study are now outdated, but like the pyramids, it
remains an inspiration across time.
Another way to appreciate the achievements of the Chicago School is by return-

ing to the original case studies. A particularly vivid ethnography is Frederick M.
Thrasher’s 1927 study called The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago. Thrasher
spent eight years tracking down the youth gangs of Chicago and identified more
than a thousand groups that he called gangs. Today media coverage tends to associate
street gangs with black or Hispanic teenagers in the inner city and lament their vio-
lent ways, as exemplified by such films as Boyz N The Hood and Locas. Thrasher’s
work takes us back to the city of some seventy years ago when gangs were as much of
a problem, but their members were almost all white. Thrasher’s study is described in
more detail in Box 3.5.
Roderick McKenzie and the Metropolitan Community

Roderick McKenzie was principal investigator on urban trends for President Herbert
Hoover’s Committee on Recent Social Trends, and author of the chapter titled “The
Rise of Metropolitan Regions” in Recent Social Trends (1933). McKenzie used this
opportunity to apply the principles of urban ecology to a regional metropolitan
approach. He viewed the development of the metropolitan region as a function of
changes in transportation and communication that produced new forms of social orga-
nization. These stages of development were the pre-railway era (before 1850), the rail-
way era (1850–1900), and the motor transportation area (1900 to present). McKenzie
considered technological change to be the key variable in producing spatial patterns in
urban society, as he states in his introduction to The Metropolitan Community:
FROM HUMAN ECOLOGY TO URBAN ECOLOGY 69
Formerly independent towns and villages and also rural territory have become part
of this enlargened city complex. This new type of super community, organized
around a dominant focal point and comprising a multitude of differentiated cen-
ters of activity, differs from the metropolitanism established by rail transportation
in the complexity of its institutional division of labor and the mobility of its popu-
lation. Its territorial scope is defined in terms of motor transportation and compe-
tition with other regions. (1933:6–7)
McKenzie’s ideas were recognized as a significant contribution to the field at the

time. In some respects, his approach may be viewed as a precursor to the general con-
cept of the multicentered metropolitan region emphasized by the sociospatial ap-
proach. McKenzie spent the last seven years of his life working on a manuscript that
set forth a more systematic statement of the principles of urban ecology. Perhaps be-
cause this work was left unfinished, he is sometimes overlooked even by contemporary
urban ecologists. It is interesting to speculate on the reasons for this oversight. In the
1950s, a new field of study, regional science, began investigating metropolitan regions
from the perspective of economic geography, an approach with less appeal to urban
sociologists. McKenzie’s focus on the metropolitan region conflicted with the more
general tendency of urban sociologists to focus their research and writing, as well as
fieldwork, on the central city. A serious consideration of his regional perspective would
have led urban sociology out of the city and into the suburban region, something that
would not happen for several decades but is a central focus of this text.
FROM HUMAN ECOLOGY TO URBAN ECOLOGY

In 1945, Walter Firey published a study of land use in Boston titled “Sentiment and
Symbolism as Ecological Variables.” He noted that large areas of land in downtown
Boston were reserved for noneconomic uses. Parks and cemeteries, as well as a forty-
eight-acre area in the center of the city that had formed the original “commons” of the
community, had never been developed. In addition, an upper-class residential neigh-
borhood known as Beacon Hill retained its privileged position as a home to wealthy
and established Boston families despite its location near the downtown area. Each of
these observations ran counter to Burgess’s concentric zone model. Firey suggested that
“sentiment” and “symbolism” were important ecological factors that influenced spatial
patterns of development in urban space (Firey, 1945). Although other sociologists have
offered little systematic elaboration of the ideas Firey presented in this important piece
of research, his work is often referred to as the “sociocultural school” of urban ecology.
After World War II, the ecological approach enjoyed something of a renaissance
as ecologists examined how demographic patterns had changed in American cities. By
1950, it was found that the U.S. population had matured and spread across metropol-
itan regions. In addition to altering population dispersal, the war years had changed
the locational patterns of U.S. industry. Many industrial plants dispersed to the coun-
tryside during the 1940s. As a result of the war effort against Japan, heavy industry was
also decentralized and relocated to the West. Los Angeles in particular became both a
focal point for the burgeoning aerospace industry and an important port for trade with
the Pacific Rim markets. All of this restructuring and change called for new research
that would chart the emergent patterns of metropolitan development.
Social Area Analysis

Social area analysis is associated with the work of Eshrev Shevky and Wendell Bell
(1955). This method of urban analysis ranked areas within a city or metropolitan area
on the basis of the social characteristics of the population, including social status (ed-
ucation, occupation, and income) and family status (number of children, whether the
F I G U R E 3.3 Social Area Analysis. Shevky and Bell’s social area analysis of the San Francisco Bay
Area shows the spatial location of social class and ethnic groups by contrasting regions of high
social status (light areas) with regions of high urbanization (darker areas). SOURCE: Reprinted
courtesy of Greenwood Press.
FROM HUMAN ECOLOGY TO URBAN ECOLOGY 71
mother worked, and type of dwelling unit). Areas that scored high on social status
and family status (typically suburban communities) could be compared with areas
that scored low on the same measures. Social area analysis produced detailed maps
showing the location of class and ethnic groups in the San Francisco Bay Area, as
shown in Figure 3.3; especially noticeable in this mapping are the minority neighbor-
hoods in Richmond, Oakland, and San Francisco, as well as the upper-class suburban
neighborhoods in the foothills of the East Bay. But as a more general contribution to
urban ecology and urban sociology, social area analysis was found to be lacking. It was
a descriptive methodology, this time with a visual application, but it did not provide
an analytical model that could explain why particular groupings of sociological vari-
ables (ethnicity, social class, and family status) might be mapped in one area of the
metropolitan region and not in another.
Factorial Ecology
The development of new computer technologies brought sweeping changes to the
field of urban ecology. Urban sociologists no longer had to limit their research to field
studies of urban communities; now they could assemble data for entire cities and look
for associations among, for example, the educational levels, incomes, and employ-
ment status of urban and suburban residents. Factorial ecology made use of these
techniques and, through the 1950s and 1960s, produced a large number of studies
that greatly increased our knowledge of the structure of cities, not just in the United
States but around the world.
In the usual model, data concerning the social, economic, and family status of ur-
ban residents is examined for commonalities among households living in different ar-
eas of the city. Each census tract or community area has specific information as to the
educational levels, incomes, and employment status of area residents (economic sta-
tus); the age, marital status, and presence of children (family status); and racial and
ethnic characteristics (urbanism). A computer-generated analysis of this information
then reveals the structure of urban areas. The factorial analysis of data for American
cities and their suburbs indicated that economic status is the most important determi-
nant of residential location, followed by family status and then social status. Because
of their increasing focus on these variables and an associated decrease in the field re-
search and community studies, which employed a very different sort of research
methodology, urban sociologists working in this tradition became known as urban
ecologists rather than human ecologists.
Having examined the ecological structure of urban areas in the United States, it was
only a matter of time before urban ecologists turned their attention to the structure of
cities in other areas of the world (see Schwirian, 1974). In a sense, they were out to
prove a very important point: Urban ecology was in fact a research paradigm that could
be applied to human settlement spaces across time and across space. They believed this
model could explain not only the structure of cities in Europe (which had evolved out of
a feudal mode of production and with a physical structure very different from that of
American cities) but also that of cities in developing nations. According to this theory,
residential dissimilarity and segregation among groups (based on religion, ethnicity,
caste, or occupation) is universal, and modernization or industrialization will have no
effect on this pattern (Mehta, 1969).
Although the evidence from studies of cities in India, Finland, and Egypt was
sometimes inconsistent, urban ecologists still believed they had discovered a univer-
sal model of urban structure. In “The Factorial Ecology of Calcutta,” Brian Berry
and Albert Rees (1969) presented an “integrated model of land use” that combined
the concentric zone, sector, and multinuclei models of the past and stated their belief
that once the additional effects of local geography or history had been taken into ac-
count, their model could be applied to any city to explain where any group or busi-
ness activity is located.
CONCLUSION
All theoretical paradigms are beset with potential problems and contradictions. Theo-
retical models borrow concepts from other fields of study; they are creatures of the con-
cerns and beliefs of scholars at a particular historical moment. Robert Park wanted to
create a new “science of society” and borrowed the model of plant ecology to formulate
his model of human ecology. He incorporated the idea of conflict among competing
land uses and competition among population groups, although it is unlikely that he
envisioned the particular forms of conflict among class, ethnic, and racial groups that
beset American society in the twenty-first century. Later ecologists would incorporate
new methods of data analysis to answer new and even more challenging questions con-
cerning urban life than the early Chicago sociologists could have imagined. But human
ecology and its offspring, social ecology and urban ecology, confront numerous obsta-
cles when studying the complexities of the multicentered metropolitan regions that
now characterize urban society in the United States and across the globe.
The human ecology paradigm gives undue prominence to just one factor—
technological innovation—to explain urban growth and change. Roderick McKenzie
viewed changes in the metropolitan region as the product of shifts in transportation
technology. This approach created problems for other human ecologists who followed
McKenzie. Amos Hawley, who was McKenzie’s student and perhaps the best-known
human ecologist, wanted to explain two aspects of change in the postwar period: the
massive growth of suburbanization and the restructuring of central city areas away from
manufacturing and toward administration. In explaining these changes, he dropped the
early ecologists’ concern for space itself. He viewed social organization as fundamentally
produced by the technologies of communication and transportation. As the technology
of these means of interaction changed, so did the patterns of social organization.
The ecological perspective remains active in urban sociology. The core biological
metaphor has been retained, as well as the central view that social organization
should be understood as a process of adaptation to the environment. Human ecolo-
gists avoid any mention of social groupings such as classes or along ethnic, racial,
and gender lines. Ecologists see urban life as a process of adaptation to pre-existing
conditions, rather than competition over scarce resources that often brings conflict.
They have a limited conception of the economy, which is still viewed as simply the
social organization of functions and division of labor—a conception that neglects
the dynamics of capitalism and the global system. Although they emphasize ecologi-
cal location, they ignore the real estate industry and its role in developing space,
something that the housing crisis of the first decade of the twenty-first century tells
us is very important. Finally, urban ecologists have overlooked the important politi-
cal institutions that administer and regulate society and affect everyday life through
the institutional channeling of resources, another very important part of the current
housing crisis. Their emphasis on push factors (or demand-side view) neglects the
powerful supply-side causes of growth and change in the metropolis. We will exam-
ine the factors responsible for the development of the multicentered metropolitan re-
gion in the next chapter as we explore the new urban sociology.
KEY CONCEPTS
gemeinschaft / gesellschaft
mechanical solidarity / organic solidarity
modernity
urbanism
rational calculation
blasé attitude
human ecology
concentric zones
sector theory
multiple nuclei
size / density / heterogeneity
Chicago School of urban sociology
social area analysis
factorial ecology
urban ecology
IMPORTANT NAMES
Emile Durkheim
Ernest Burgess
Amos Hawley
Homer Hoyt
Roderick McKenzie
Robert Park
Georg Simmel
Frederick Thrasher
Ferdinand Töennies
Max Weber
Louis Wirth
1. Early sociologists shared a common vision of the consequences of industrializa-
tion and urbanization for social organization. What did Georg Simmel, Ferdinand
Tönnies, Emile Durkheim, and others see as the consequences of the shift from vil-
lage life to the modern city?
2. Georg Simmel ultimately felt that urban life would result in greater individual
freedom. Why is this likely to be the case?
3. In the text you have examined several competing models of urban structure:
concentric zones, sector theory, and multiple nuclei. Explain how each of these mod-
els could be used to explain the development of the city that you live in. Which of
these models gives the best explanation for the development of your city?
4. Roderick McKenzie wrote about the development and importance of metropol-
itan regions. Why was this important work overlooked by other human ecologists?
How is McKenzie’s work similar to the discussion of the multinucleated metropolitan
region emphasized in this textbook?
5. In the 1960s and 1970s, human ecologists sought to apply new computer tech-
nologies to the study of urbanization. What are some of the results of this research?
What did human ecologists see as the limitations of their theoretical model and of its
application for studying urbanization in other parts of the world?
CHAPTER
4
CONTEMPORARY
URBAN SOCIOLOGY
A t the beginning of this text, we discussed several conceptual changes that are the
hallmark of the new urban sociology. These include a shift to a global perspective on
capitalism and the metropolis; the inclusion of factors such as class exploitation,
racism, gender, and space in the analysis of metropolitan development; an attempt,
when possible, to integrate economic, political, and cultural factors of analysis; special
attention to the pull factors of real estate investment and government intervention;
and the shift to a multicentered, regional approach to cities and suburbs. In the pre-
ceding chapters we have used these concepts, which we call the sociospatial approach.
In addition to a change in perspective, the new urban sociology involves important
theoretical changes in the way human environments are analyzed. The previous chap-
ter discussed classical and current urban sociology of a traditional kind. This chapter
considers the new theoretical ideas that have recently invigorated the urban field.
Since the 1970s, a great deal of creative work has been accomplished by numerous
writers who have challenged orthodox ideas of city development. One of the most in-
teresting observations about this effort is that much of it has been carried out by
people in other fields and even in other countries. Only recently has U.S. urban soci-
ology been affected by new theories. Second, regardless of the international scope and
intellectual diversity, most of the new approaches have their origin in the application
to city environments of Max Weber’s, Karl Marx’s, and Friedrich Engels’s writings re-
garding the analysis of capitalism. This chapter concerns this “political economy” ap-
proach. While this perspective represents a considerable advance over those discussed
in the previous chapter, mainly because the ecological perspective simply ignores the
important role of economic and political interests, it has its own limitations. Sociolo-
gists have tried to tailor the approach of political economy to the needs of their disci-
pline. In the concluding sections of this chapter, we will discuss such attempts,
especially the sociospatial approach of this text.
75
76 4: CONTEMPORARY URBAN SOCIOLOGY
POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE CIT Y:

CLASSIC APPROACHES
Marx, Weber, and Engels

The classical sociologists Karl Marx and Max Weber turned to historical analysis to
explore their ideas regarding the general laws of social development. Both under-
stood that societies were organized around integrated systems of economics, politics,
and culture. Marx emphasized the dominance of economic considerations in analy-
sis, while Weber sought to show how cultural and political factors also affected indi-
vidual behavior and social history along with economic activity. The two approaches
served to complement each other.
While Marx wrote extensively about the new social classes (proletariat and bour-
geoisie) created by industrial capitalism, he did not believe there were only two social
class groups, as is commonly thought. In his analysis of the failure of the 1848 revolu-
tion in France, Marx identified seven social class groups and discussed why each group
supported (or opposed) a new government. Industrial workers and small shopkeepers
in the cities might support the revolution, for example, because their economic and
political interests would benefit from a change in the government, whereas farmers in
the countryside and large merchants in the cities might oppose it because their eco-
nomic and social interests were dependent on maintaining the current government
(Marx, n.d.). In this sense, Marx’s view of social classes may be seen as a precursor to
modern-day thinking about interest groups competing within the political arena.
Marx also recognized that the interests of capital and labor are not one and the
same—a radical departure from the economic theory of his time, and the idea that “a
rising tide lifts all boats.” Because profit results from the difference between the costs
of production (raw material, machinery, and labor) and the price for which a com-
modity can be sold in the market, capitalist producers will look for any way possible
to reduce the costs of production (Marx, 1967). Marx’s analysis is as relevant for the
monopoly capitalism of the present day as it was for the industrial capitalism of his
time; in just the last several decades, we have seen the displacement of workers by au-
tomation, a dramatic increase in immigration, and the movement of manufacturing
to countries in the developing world—all of these the consequence of corporations
seeking to lower their labor costs, and all having a tremendous impact on the people
and the built environment of urban and suburban settlement space across the world.
Marx wrote very little about the city in his classic Capital (1967; originally pub-
lished in 1867), while Weber included some passages about the nature of the city in a
much larger text, Economy and Society (1968; originally published in separate pieces
beginning in the 1880s). For Marx, the early history of capitalism was a struggle be-
tween social relations located within urban areas and those situated in the countryside
within feudal manors. For Weber, the city developed because of its political powers—
POLITIC AL ECONOMY AND THE CIT Y: CL ASSIC APPROACHES 77
in particular, the independence of city residents and their local government from feu-
dal relations of authority. In both cases, Marx and Weber showed how modes of social
organization, such as feudalism or capitalism, work through a form of space—the
city—and social relations situated within that spatial form. It is this perspective that
informs the approach of political economy to settlement space.
For example, Weber argued that during the feudal period in the European Middle
Ages, traders and craftspeople set up towns and bargained for protection from the
king against the activities of local feudal lords. In these towns, capitalism began to
thrive through trade in goods and eventually overtook the feudal economy. Thus, as
capitalism became a dominating force in Europe, it also created the modern city. The
political economy perspective studies social processes within urban space and links
them to processes occurring at the general level of society.
While Marx and Weber had comparatively little to say about the industrial city of
capitalism, Friedrich Engels devoted some time to the topic. We already mentioned his
study of the working-class situation in nineteenth-century England and his field obser-
vations of the “great towns,” Manchester in particular. For Engels, the large industrial
city was the best place to study the general aspects of capitalism as a social system, just
as the factory was the best place to study the specific details of the relationship between
capital and labor. Engels picked the city of Manchester because it was built up as capi-
talism developed in England, as opposed to other cities, such as London, which had a
longer history.
Engels observed several aspects of capitalism at work within the urban space. First,
he noted that capitalism had a “double tendency” of concentration: It concentrated
capital investment, or money, and also workers. This centralizing process made indus-
trial production easier because of the large scale and close proximity of money and
people. Second, Engels noticed that as Manchester developed, investment moved
away from the old center and extended farther out to the periphery. Unlike Burgess,
but very much like Harris and Ullman and the sociospatial approach, Engels pictured
growth as a multiplication of centers. For him this followed no particular plan, and he
observed that capitalism unregulated by government planning produced a spatial
chaos of multiplying minicenters.
Third, among other important observations, Engels focused on the social prob-
lems created by the breakdown of traditional society and the operation of capitalism.
In Manchester, he noticed examples of extreme poverty and deprivation: homeless-
ness, orphan beggars, prostitution, alcoholism, and violence. For him this misery was
the result of exploitation at the place of work, which went largely unseen in the fac-
tory itself, along with the failure of capitalism to provide adequate housing for every-
one. He thus connected conditions in the workplace with those in the living space, or
what Marxists call the extended conditions of capital accumulation, which involve the
reproduction of social relations that ensure the continued use of the working class
across the generations. For example, if problems such as poverty and homelessness
become too severe, they can threaten the ability of working-class families to produce
new generations of workers. This would then threaten the future of the capitalist sys-
tem. Hence, neighborhood or living-space relations and the quality of daily life are
just as important to the survival of capitalism as are relations at the place of work.
In addition to the problems of poverty, Engels observed that the city of Man-
chester was a segregated space. Rich and poor lived in segregated neighborhoods.
Engels concluded that capitalism produces this spatial isolation of the classes. The
sum total of all these social problems is described by the term uneven development,
which conveys both the disparity between rich and poor and their segregation in
space by capitalism. We will use this concept frequently in subsequent chapters.
Uneven Development
Urban and suburban settlement spaces grow and develop because of capital invest-
ment. The ebb and flow of money determines community well-being. Not only are
jobs created, but economic activity also generates tax revenue. The latter is used partly
by local government to fund public projects that improve the quality of community
life. But spending, both public and private, is not uniformly distributed across metro-
politan space. Some places receive much more investment than others. Even within
cities there are great differences between those sections that are beehives of economic
activity and those that seem scarcely touched by commerce and industry.
Within any given business, there are also great disparities between workers who
are well paid and those who receive the minimum salary. Wages are carried home to
neighborhoods, and a significant portion is spent in the local area. Hence, the well-
being of a place depends not only on the amount of investment it can attract but
also on the wealth of its residents.
In the metropolitan region, the variation in the affluence of particular places is
called uneven development. It is a characteristic of our type of society with its eco-
nomic system of capitalism, but, as we will see in Chapters 12 and 13, it is also char-
acteristic of other societies, some of which have communist rather than capitalist
economies. People with money seek to invest in places and enterprises that will bring
them the highest rate of return. Profit drives the capitalist system. But this profit mak-
ing is usually expected to occur in a short time period and with the largest return pos-
sible. Consequently, investors look carefully at opportunities and always try to switch
to places where money will achieve its greatest return. This process also causes uneven
development. As capital becomes increasingly mobile, it can shift money around
more easily with corresponding effects on the quality of life. At present, capital is
more mobile than ever before and has the ability to move operations from one coun-
try or region to another in search of the lowest costs or highest profit margins. This
process, of course, can have immense consequences for individual places.
The changes since the late 1960s in Silicon Valley, the high-tech showcase of Cal-
ifornia, illustrate this pattern. In the 1960s, when the printed circuit industry was first
POLITIC AL ECONOMY AND THE CIT Y: CL ASSIC APPROACHES 79
expanding, all operations, including manufacturing, research and development, and

marketing, were located within Silicon Valley. By the late 1960s, one of the leading
manufacturers, Fairchild, transferred its manufacturing operations to plants in Mex-
ico, leaving thousands of U.S. workers jobless. Soon after, other electronic assembly
plants followed Fairchild’s lead, and by the 1970s most of the manufacturing opera-
tions of Silicon Valley had been transferred to other countries with cheaper labor. By
that time, too, owners of corporations had discovered that operating in Mexico was
not as cheap as production in the Orient. Hence, many plants were shut down and
work was transferred to Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore, then to Malaysia
and Indonesia, and more recently to Sri Lanka. In Chapter 5, we will see that at pres-
ent, Silicon Valley residents lament the rapidity with which the boom-and-bust cycle
played itself out in their region. But other areas of the world are caught in a similar
process because of the increased mobility of capital.
Silicon Valley residents are well-educated, and they hope that eventually a new
round of investment will occur in their space from companies seeking their skills. At
that time, their area of the country may once again prosper. When a place is poor,
however, such as an urban ghetto, and its people have limited educations, it is highly
unlikely that capital will come there and invest, especially when cheaper labor is avail-
able in other countries. This remains so even for “small” capital ventures, such as gro-
cery stores. Ghetto areas, such as the Watts section of Los Angeles, have comparatively
few places where residents can provide for their needs. Most often, they must travel out
of their community to shop because local convenience stores charge excessive prices.
As a result of the inherent desire not to invest in places that are already depressed
and offer little incentive for profit, uneven development usually becomes more acute
over time. This pattern increases the polarization between those places that are poor
and those that are thriving. But places are made of people, so the spatial disparities re-
sult in different life chances for metropolitan residents. As Engels observed in Man-
chester, inequities create a problem of social justice as the less affluent members of the
working class find it difficult to raise families that will acquire a reasonable, produc-
tive status in society.
Because of uneven development, the society would degenerate into a two-tiered
structure, with a select group of people and places that are thriving amid a sea of
poverty, except that the U.S. government has stepped in with a safety net of programs
that tries to prop up the bottom stratum. Unemployment insurance, welfare, and job
training are but a few of the ways government agencies use tax revenues to fight the
inherent tendency of capitalist activities to produce uneven development. Over the
years, however, despite periods of prosperity, the problems of the poor have been little
affected by government programs (Jencks, 1992). New techniques of public policy
therefore are sorely needed.
Metropolitan areas today are besieged by the uneven nature of capitalist develop-
ment. Job security and planning for the future are jeopardized for people in commu-
nities across the nation. Extremes of poverty and wealth characterize metropolitan
life. This clash between rich and poor in the city was also observed over a hundred
years ago by writers in the industrial towns of England. What is new and different
today is the global reach of such uneven development and the way in which the
cyclical nature of growth affects people and places across the world.
THE REVIVAL OF URBAN POLITICAL ECONOMY:

HENRI LEFEBVRE
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Marxian tradition was revived in social sci-
ence. Urban analysis was affected minimally at first in this country but greatly af-
fected in France by the philosopher Henri Lefebvre. Lefebvre is without question the
seminal source of new thinking on the city from a critical and Marxian perspective
(Lefebvre, 1991). His accomplishments can be broken down into four areas:
1. He went back to the work of Marx and Engels on the city and extracted from
their writing an urban political economy. That is, Lefebvre showed how it was
possible to use economic categories such as capital investment, profit, rent,
wages, class exploitation, and uneven development in the analysis of cities. In
effect, he argued that the city development process was as much a product of
the capitalist system as anything else—the production of shoes, for example.
The same operation of the economy applies in both cases.
2. Lefebvre showed how Karl Marx’s work on the city was limited. He intro-
duced the idea of the circuits of capital, particularly the notion that real estate
is a separate circuit of capital. For example, we often think of economic activ-
ity as involving the use of money by an investor of capital, the hiring of work-
ers, their production of products in a factory, and the selling of the goods in a
market for a profit, which can then be used for more investment. Automobile
production would be a good example of this circuit. Lefebvre called all such
industrial activity the “primary circuit of capital.”
Much of the wealth created in a capitalist society is of this type. But for
Lefebvre there was a “second circuit of capital,” real estate investment. For ex-
ample, the investor in land chooses a piece of property and buys it; the land is
either held on to or developed for some other use; it is then sold in a special
market for land, the real estate market, or developed as housing for a profit.
The circuit is completed when the investor takes that profit and reinvests it in
more land-based projects. Lefebvre argued that the second circuit of capital is
almost always attractive as investment because there is usually money to be
made in real estate, although at present a recession is occurring in all economic
sectors. As we have seen in the development of the United States, investment in
land was an important means for the acquisition of wealth. But in addition, it
was investment in real estate that pushed the growth of cities in specific ways.
THE REVIVAL OF URBAN POLITIC AL ECONOMY: HENRI LEFEBVRE 81
3. Lefebvre also introduced the idea that real estate is a special case of the dynam-
ics of settlement space. For Lefebvre, all social activities are not only about in-
teraction among individuals but about space as well. Social activities take place
in space. They also produce a space by creating objects. The city-building pro-
cess, for example, creates a certain space. When we visit a city, we experience
particular attributes of the space that was created in that area. Other city
spaces may be different, although places produced by similar social systems
tend to resemble each other, such as the close resemblance of suburbias in Cal-
ifornia and Virginia or between the United States and Australia.
Lefebvre therefore introduced the idea of space as a component of social
organization, as we discussed in Chapter 1. When people discuss social inter-
action, they are implicitly talking about behavior in space as well. Space is in-
volved in a dual sense (see Chapter 1): as an influence on behavior and, in
turn, as the end result of construction behavior because people alter space to
suit their own needs.
4. Finally, Lefebvre discussed the role of government in space. The state uses
space for social control. Government places fire stations and police depart-
ments in separate locations across the metropolis in order to respond to dis-
tress relatively quickly. The state controls a large amount of land and utilizes
it in its administration of government. It dispenses resources and collects
taxes according to spatial units such as cities, counties, individual states, and
regions. Government also makes decisions and relays them to individuals
across the network of administrative units, that is, from the national level
down to the separate regions, individual states, counties, cities, and ultimately
neighborhoods.
Lefebvre argued that the way capital investors or businesspeople and the state
think about space is according to its abstract qualities of dimension—size, width,
area, location—and profit. This he called “abstract space.” In addition, however, in-
dividuals use the space of their environment as a place to live. Lefebvre called this in-
teractively used space of everyday life “social space.” For him the uses proposed by
government and business for abstract space, such as in the planning of a large city or
suburban development of new houses, may conflict with the existing social space,
the way residents currently use space. Lefebvre said that the conflict between abstract
and social space is a basic one in society and ranks with the separate conflict among
classes, but is often different. With this view, he also departed from Marxian analysis
because the latter stresses class conflict as the basic force in the history of capitalism.
In sum, Lefebvre is responsible for a large number of the ideas that inform the
sociospatial perspective used in this text. He also heavily influenced a number of crit-
ical and Marxian urbanists to develop ideas of their own. In the following sections,
we will discuss some of the most contemporary urban approaches and indicate how
the ideas of Lefebvre in some cases or those of the classical thinkers Marx, Engels,
and Weber in other cases have influenced new theories of urban development.
CLASS CONFLICT THEORIES:

GORDON, STORPER, AND WALKER
A class conflict approach to urban development was introduced by the economist
David Gordon (1977, 1984). He suggested that the locations chosen by capitalists
for factories were affected not only by economic needs but also by the desire to re-
move their workers from areas of union organizing. According to Gordon, owners of
businesses prefer to locate in places where workers are not as militant as they are in
cities with a long labor tradition.
To prove his point, he studied a period in U.S. history when workers were espe-
cially militant: the latter part of the 1800s to the 1900s. He calculated the number
of workers engaged in strikes during those years and matched it with the number of
times owners of factories decided to relocate to the suburbs or to more isolated cities.
The matchup was significant for the years between 1880 and 1910. Hence, the need
to control labor conflict by relocating to the outlying areas of large cities was a very
early reason that urban development assumed a regional, multicentered form be-
cause it led to the suburbanization of factories (see Chapter 6).
Two geographers, Michael Storper and David Walker, have expanded Gordon’s
approach (Storper, 1984; Storper and Walker, 1983). They view labor force consider-
ations as the principal locational variable. By doing so they argue against the received
wisdom of traditional location theory, asserting that businesses choose to locate in a
specific place because of marketing and production costs (including transportation),
a view that is similar to that of urban ecologists (see Chapter 3). Walker and Storper’s
“labor theory of location” argues that the commodity, labor, is unique. Its quality de-
pends not only on the physical attributes of the worker but on his or her training and
interest in being a part of a union, that is, in organizing against capital for rights and
benefits.
For example, studies of the shift in manufacturing to Asia note that it is caused
predominantly by labor force considerations (Peet, 1987). These include not only
the presence of cheap labor but also the particular qualities of the workers. In the
case of the electronics and garment industries in Asia, the workforce is overwhelm-
ingly female, young, and unmarried. These laborers are advertised by development
officials as providing a docile, easily controlled workforce (Fuentes and Ehrenreich,
1987). According to one Malaysian government brochure, “The manual dexterity of
the Oriental female is famous the world over. Her hands are small, and she works
fast with extreme care” (Fuentes and Ehrenreich, 1987:205). Reports on the condi-
tion of these women describe a world where they are kept bound by the conditions
of work from living productive family and social lives.
CLASS CONFLICT THEORIES: GORDON, STORPER, AND WALKER 83
According to the class conflict approach, then, any given nation has regions that
vary with regard to the quality of labor. In part, the quality of schools and training
facilities is responsible for this. However, the presence of a union tradition in the lo-
cal area is also considered. Finally, particular cultural conditions, such as extreme pa-
triarchy that subjugates women workers, are also important for creating a docile
labor force. Storper and Walker use these ideas to explain the shift of industry to the
Sun Belt in the United States, which occurred because the southern and western re-
gions of the country have weak or nonexistent unions. They also suggest that their
approach is applicable to the entire globe and that location decisions of multi-
national companies follow what has been called the “international division of labor”
(Frobel, Heinrichs, and Krege, 1980); that is, multinational corporations decide
where to locate their activities by choosing places around the globe that have cheap
and compliant labor. In short, for these theorists, the qualities of labor are the deter-
mining factors in industrial location.
For example, although the garment industry was a staple of employment for many
decades in New York City, during the 1960s many factories closed down and moved
to the southern states because there were no unions and labor was much cheaper. In
another case, the assembly of electronic devices beginning with solid-state TVs van-
ished quickly from the United States in the 1960s and became a basic industry, as it is
today, in Southeast Asia where, among other factors, cheap labor is supplied by young
women who are controlled by a patriarchal society. Today, purchasers of low-priced
electronics from such chain stores as Walmart or Target, in particular, have no con-
cept of the working conditions in far-flung Asian factories where these products are
produced, mainly by young women.
In broadest terms, the contentions of class conflict theorists have merit, especially
for the case of shifts in the location of manufacturing in recent years. Since the 1970s,
the advanced industrial societies have lost over 8 million manufacturing jobs. At the
same time, Latin American and Asian countries have experienced a 6-million job
growth (Peet, 1987). During this period, the average hourly earnings for the United
States was $8.83; for Mexico, $1.59; for South Korea, $1.35; and for India, 40 cents.
These wage differences provide considerable incentive to invest global capital in less
advanced countries. Regions with low class struggle and a docile labor force are also
attractive.
Class conflict theorists make a mistake common in traditional Marxian analysis:
They try to explain everything by economic factors alone. In the previous chapter we
saw that some traditional ecologists, such as Amos Hawley, commit the fallacy of
technological reductionism; that is, they explain everything in terms of changes in
technology. Similarly, traditional Marxists such as Storper and Walker are economic
reductionists. Thus, while class conflict and the global search for low-wage labor pools
may indeed explain many of the moves owners have made to outlying areas of the
world since the 1960s, it cannot explain relocations during other periods, and there
are certainly additional reasons for such moves, such as the pull factors we discussed
in the case of suburbanization: cheap land, distribution considerations that often
override the need for cheap labor, low taxes, and other government incentives that
subsidize capital.
There is no doubt that labor-force considerations are a major reason for the trans-
fer of manufacturing activity to less developed countries such as Mexico or Malaysia.
This approach, however, cannot explain why many multinationals continue to build
plants and offices in the United States, Germany, and Japan, which have comparatively
high wages. Factors including relative government stability and the desire to remain
close to markets are also important considerations. For example, Japanese companies
such as Honda, Toyota, and Mazda have recently opened plants in the United States.
Most of the popular models from these two companies are made in Ohio, Tennessee,
and even Michigan, the traditional stomping grounds for the United Auto Workers
and General Motors, where they are close to the important U.S. markets. These factors
also play a role in the well-being of places within a global economy. Thus, while the
cost and quality of labor count for much in location decisions, other factors, such as
government subsidies and distribution considerations, are also relevant.
C APITAL ACCUMUL ATION THEORY

When sociologists discuss economics, they usually think in general terms and focus
on individuals such as wealthy businesspeople who own companies. Class conflict
theories go beyond individuals to discuss group behavior—particularly, the clash be-
tween the capitalist class of owners or investors and the class of workers who sell
their labor for a wage. In this section we consider other urbanists who use economi-
cally based ideas to explain city development, but with a great deal more detail than
traditional sociologists.
David Harvey, a well-known geographer from England, started out as a main-
stream member of his field, concerned with mathematical modeling techniques. Dur-
ing the late 1960s, however, he was greatly influenced by events in the United States,
such as the ghetto riots, and by the writings of Henri Lefebvre. In the 1970s, he wrote
a book and a series of articles that applied Marxian economic analysis to the condi-
tion of the cities. He was especially influenced by the earlier writings of Lefebvre on
the urban analysis of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Harvey, like Lefebvre, systematically applied the categories of Marxian economic
analysis to the study of urban development. He asserted four things. First, he stated
that the city is defined in the manner of Engels as a spatial node that concentrates and
circulates capital. Second, he applied a conflict perspective to discuss the way the capi-
talist and the working classes confronted each other in the city (1973, 1976). Accord-
ing to Harvey, and unlike the general way sociologists usually speak about classes, this
basic conflict takes many forms as both the capitalist and working classes split up
C A P I TA L AC C U M U L AT I O N T H E O R Y 85
among themselves into various groups or factions as a consequence of protracted strug-

gles for advantage. The capitalist class, for example, can be divided among financial in-
vestors (finance capital), owners of department stores and other marketing assets
(commercial capital), and owners of factories (manufacturing or industrial capital).
Workers can also be split—for example, among factory laborers, white-collar sales-
people, and professional financial analysts, all of whom still work for a wage. Each of
these factions may want different things from urban development, so that conflict and
coalition building are always a part of urban life. However, the basic struggle is still be-
tween capital and labor, as Gordon, Storper, and Walker also suggest (see pp. 134–137).
As Harvey suggests, “Labor, in seeking to protect and enhance its standard of living, en-
gages in a series of running battles in the living place over a variety of issues that relate
to the creation, management, and use of the built environment” (1976:268).
Third, Harvey discusses how the volatile urban mix of economic interests brings
about government intervention as a means of quieting things down so that planning
can take place and capitalists can get back to their principal task of profit making
(1975, 1976). As Harvey suggests, “Capital, in general, cannot afford the outcome
of struggles around the built environment to be determined simply by the relative
powers of labor, the appropriators of rent and the construction fraction” (1976:272).
Therefore, the capitalist class requires government to intervene and aid the profit-
making process within cities.
Sometimes, however, investment simply will not flow into districts of the city be-
cause they are so run-down or unattractive economically. In such cases, Harvey ar-
gues, government must step in to make the areas profitable again. Usually this form
of state intervention involves the tearing down or destruction of existing buildings to
make way for new construction, such as in the example of government-supported
urban renewal programs (see Chapter 13). According to Harvey, “Under capitalism
there is, then, a perpetual struggle in which capital builds a physical landscape ap-
propriate to its own condition at a particular moment in time, only to have to de-
stroy it, usually in the course of a crisis, at a subsequent point in time” (1982:14).
For Harvey this process of boom and bust, or new construction and urban decay, is
basic to urban change in a capitalist system.
Finally, Harvey took a detailed look at the capitalist class and how it made money
within the space of the city. He borrowed the concept of circuits of capital from Lefebvre
and elaborated on the latter’s ideas. In particular, Harvey argued that capitalists involved
in the first industrial circuit are principally interested in location within the urban envi-
ronment and in reducing their costs of manufacturing. Capitalists in the second circuit
hold a different set of priorities relating to the flow of investment and the realization of
interest on money loaned or rent on property owned. These differences are reflected in
the different ways capital investment circulates within the two circuits.
While investment in factories is often located in places with cheap housing, capi-
talists in the second circuit often refuse to invest in poorer areas and seek out only the
higher-rent districts of the city. As a consequence, areas of the city can become run-
down and abandoned not because of the actions of industrial capital, the faction that
we usually think of as determining city fortunes, but because of actions taken by in-
vestors in real estate, as the sociospatial perspective suggests. In the Baltimore study,
both suburbanization of the population and central city decay were linked to the pri-
orities of the second circuit of capital as assisted by government programs. Harvey’s
work bears out the importance of Lefebvre’s ideas on the real estate industry and of
Engels’s central insight into the production of uneven development under capitalism.
In sum, both the class conflict and capital accumulation approaches of the new
urban sociology provide impressive improvements over more traditional perspec-
tives. The world today is a volatile one where the predictable accommodations of
work, shopping, and residential living characteristic of the industrial city have been
shattered. Economic factors such as the ebb and flow of real estate investment and
the changing structure of manufacturing in a global system affect the sociospatial
features of daily life. So do the activities of workers involved in the struggle lying at
the heart of the capital/labor relationship, and the residents of communities who are
concerned about maintaining their quality of life. Each of these aspects helps deter-
mine the pattern of sociospatial organization.
Until the development of the new urban sociology, the effects of special, powerful
interests (such as transnational corporations) on the pattern of growth were ignored by
the traditional approach that emphasized biological factors of species competition over
territory. But the work of geographers and Marxian analysts places greater importance
on economic than on social factors in sociospatial arrangements. As we have discussed,
there are several limitations to both the class conflict and capital accumulation ap-
proaches. In recent years, therefore, sociologists have added to the new perspective on
the city by showing how social factors are also important in the production of settle-
ment space.
APPROACHES BY URBAN SOCIOLOGISTS:

THE GROWTH MACHINE VS.
THE SOCIOSPATIAL PERSPEC TIVE
The Growth Machine

This approach is most closely associated with the work of Harvey Molotch and his re-
cent collaboration with John Logan (Logan and Molotch, 1987). Molotch was dissatis-
fied with the traditional ecological approach to urban development and highly
influenced by new work carried out among French urbanists inspired by Lefebvre and
Castells (Pickvance, 1976). Molotch was especially taken with the studies by the
Frenchman Lamarche (1976) on the role of property development in the city, although
since then this analyst has not been considered important. The focus of urban change
APPROACHES BY URBAN SOCIOLOGISTS 87
involves the activities of a select group of real estate developers who represent a separate
class that Marx once called the “rentiers.” According to Lamarch, who wrote from an
historical, European perspective, it is this class that both prepares land for new devel-
opment and pushes the public agenda to pursue growth.
For Molotch, the intentions of the rentier class mesh well with the needs of local
government. This is so because government is in constant need of new tax revenue
sources. As increasing numbers of people enter an urban area, their demand for services
strains fiscal budgets. Without new sources of revenue, city governments cannot main-
tain the quality of life, and the region is threatened with a decrease in prosperity. Prop-
erty development is a major source of taxes. New people also bring in new demands for
city goods and services, which aids the business community and, in turn, increases rev-
enues to local government. In short, according to Molotch, cities are “growth ma-
chines” because they have to be. Pushed from behind by demands for community
quality and pulled from the front by the aggressive activities of the rentiers, city gov-
ernments respond by making growth and development their principal concerns.
The growth machine approach is wrong for three reasons: (1) Theoretically it de-
pends totally on hypothesizing the existence of a separate rentier class, which is the
source of action and behavior in leading urban development. However, in the United
States, no such class has ever existed. Logan and Molotch borrowed this term from
Lamarche, as we noted, an analyst who has not been influential since writing in the
1960s. In the United States, a free market in land allows all people with money to in-
vest and even speculate in real estate development. The latter quality is an important
contention of Lefebvre’s theory that sees the boom-and-bust cycles of growth coming
from this feature of capitalism. Therefore, and unlike the ideas of Logan and Molotch,
the pursuit of growth is as much a danger to the well-being of place as it is a blessing.
(2) Logan and Molotch borrowed a simplistic version of Lefebvre’s theory of space.
They argue that the urban environment can be dichotomized into a social space vs. an
“abstract space,” with the former category encapsulating all behaviors of residents who
live in an urbanized environment. This is a simplistic reduction of a more complex
Lefebvrian idea concerning a threefold distinction about environments. They contain
lived spaces, spaces of representations, and, third, representations of space (see below).
(3) Logan and Molotch’s approach is obsessively concerned with growth and fails to
explain periods of decline, deindustrialization, and the boom-and-bust cycles of capi-
talism. They simply assumed that growth would proceed when pushed by the rentier
class or growth machine elites in a smooth fashion. They initially ignored the obvious
possibility of conflicts produced by growth and change, not to mention the all too real
aspect of urban decline and the overreaching, speculative structure of the real estate in-
dustry that always leads to boom-and-bust cycles. Later on they attempted to add the
possibility of growth conflict to their approach, but they are not convincing, nor is
their modified theory useful. Conflicts exist not only between proponents of growth
and citizen opponents, as they claim, but also within coalitions that push for it, as
Harvey shows. These internal conflicts point out clearly why a separate rentier class
does not exist and why their so-called growth machine is a temporary phenomenon
that conceptually misses the deeper understanding that Lefebvre’s theory of the second
circuit of capital—real estate investment—provides.
In the United States, real estate development is often a contentious matter and
there are many factions that conflict when it is proposed. Often these warring parties
are mixed and include developers and speculators who are in competition with those
who have proposed growth as well as different classes that have joined together to ar-
gue for or against development. In short, much of the important political conflicts
associated with a changing urban environment cannot be grasped by the growth ma-
chine perspective.
The Sociospatial Perspective

How can we make sense of the various ideas offered by new urban theories? This text
adopts the sociospatial perspective (SSP), which takes what is best from the new
ideas while avoiding the endemic reductionism characteristic of both traditional
ecology and recent Marxian political economy. It does not seek an explanation by
emphasizing a principal cause such as transportation technology (Hawley), capital
circulation (Harvey), or special “rentier classes” that control growth. Rather, it takes
an integrated view of development as the linked outcome of economic, political, and
cultural factors. At one time, it might have been suggested that such an integrated
view derives from the tradition of Weber. However, since the 1950s, even Marxists
have looked for ways to advance an integrated perspective (see Althusser, 1971), and
this is especially important for the understanding of space (see Lefebvre, 1991).
The sociospatial perspective is inspired by the work of Lefebvre and can be distin-
guished from other approaches by the following characteristics. First, it considers real
estate development as the leading edge of changes in the metropolitan region. While
other approaches tend to focus only on economic changes in industry, commerce,
and services, the SSP adds to these important dimensions an interest in the way real
estate molds metropolitan growth, including how real estate declines. Growth and
decline are the seesaw operations of Lefebvre’s second circuit of capital, and they af-
fect the general business and economic well-being of their surroundings in periods of
bust as well as boom but in different directions. Second, the SSP considers govern-
ment intervention and the interests of politicians in growth as a principal factor in
metropolitan change. Traditional urban ecology and the newer approaches of urban
political economy either ignore completely the role of government in channeling
growth or treat the state as simply derivative of economic interests. The SSP consid-
ers the state as relatively autonomous—that is, with officials having interests of their
own—and, more specifically, considers politics as being strongly linked to the con-
cerns of property development (Gottdiener, 1986).
R E A L E S TAT E A N D G O V E R N M E N T I N T E R V E N T I O N 89
Third, the sociospatial perspective considers the role of cultural orientations as

critical for an understanding of metropolitan life. Because of the importance of this
subject, culture will be considered in more detail in Chapter 7.
Finally, the SSP takes a global view of metropolitan development. The most local
areas today are tied to the activities of multinational corporations and banks. Changes
in the way they invest affect each of us. By emphasizing global economic changes,
however, the sociospatial perspective also seeks to understand how local and national
factors interrelate with international links. All spatial levels of organization are impor-
tant in understanding metropolitan development. In the following section, let us re-
view some of these features while keeping in mind the differences between the SSP
and other sociological perspectives discussed in the previous two chapters. In particu-
lar, we will see how the sociospatial perspective is a much more sophisticated and use-
ful approach than either the growth machine or traditional ecology.
According to Kleniewski (2002:43–44):
The sociospatial perspective is similar to political economy in some ways, but it

emphasizes visible space and how space can be manipulated to affect urban life.
In contrast with the growth machine perspective, for example, the sociospatial
perspective holds that real estate developers and local government officials are
much more influential in changing the form and function of cities than are the
many other businesses that might be included in a pro-growth elite. Further, in
contrast with Harvey’s emphasis on the mode of production as affecting city
change, the sociospatial perspective emphasizes people’s understanding of space,
including the ways in which local cultures differ in the symbolic meanings at-
tached to different spaces. Thus, rather than confining the analysis to political
and economic factors causing urban change, the sociospatial perspective adds cul-
tural factors such as symbols of meanings to the analysis of urban life.
REAL ESTATE AND GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION
Real Estate Investment as the Leading Edge of Growth

From the earlier chapters on urbanization in the United States, we have seen that in-
terest in real estate profits played a central part in urban development. George Wash-
ington was not only the first president of the country but he also participated in the
innovative scheme to develop the swampland that became the site of the nation’s cap-
ital. During the 1800s, great profits were made by businesses as the country industri-
alized, but they were also made through investment in land. Cyrus McCormick
earned millions from the manufacture of his famous reaper, but millions more from
his activities in real estate. Railroad tycoons competed with one another by building
the infrastructure that opened up the great landmass of the United States to develop-
ment, but they also established towns and developed real estate as they went along. Fi-
nally, over the last few decades, we have seen that the shifts to suburbia and the Sun
Belt were fueled in part by the phenomenal expansion of the single-family home in-
dustry and the development of lands outside the large central cities of the Northeast
and Midwest.
The sociospatial perspective argues that other perspectives have neglected the im-
portant role played by investment in real estate in the process of regional develop-
ment. Traditional urban sociology or ecology, for example, overemphasizes the push
factor of technology as an agent of change. Marxian political economy pays special
attention to the activities of capitalists and the way changes in industrial investment
patterns affect local spaces. The SSP acknowledges push factors such as changes in
economic production and transportation innovations, but it also highlights the role
of pull factors such as government intervention and the action of real estate—the
second circuit of capital—as crucial to explanations of metropolitan growth. Both
demand-side and supply-side dynamics are studied in their details.
The sociospatial perspective stresses the human dimension along with structural
arrangements. It wants to know who the actors are and how they behave, not just the
facts or figures about aggregate levels of growth and change. Activities involve people
acting as part of social classes and class factions, or of gender, racial, and ethnic inter-
ests. How people come together to struggle over the patterns of development is an
important question for the SSP, but this is not viewed as a growth machine.
Joe R. Feagin (1983), for example, discusses the variety of ways real estate devel-
opers and speculators create development projects and channel money to real estate
investment. Agents of growth include financial conduits such as commercial banks
and trust or pension funds, savings and loan associations, insurance companies, mort-
gage companies, and real estate investment trusts; real estate brokers and chamber of
commerce members; and public utilities and other relatively immobile public service
agencies that must work to maintain the attractiveness of specific places. Real estate,
therefore, is composed of both individual actors and a structure of financial conduits
that channel investment into land.
Gottdiener (1977) also demonstrates how both structure and agency are impor-
tant for an understanding of real estate activities. A case study of suburban Long Is-
land, New York, identifies the following types of social roles assumed by investors in
the built environment:
1. Land speculators who purchase land or buildings simply to be sold at a later

date for a profit.
2. Land developers who purchase land with or without housing and then develop
it by constructing housing or other built structures such as factories or malls.
To this type can be added developers who restructure the uses of land and
R E A L E S TAT E A N D G O V E R N M E N T I N T E R V E N T I O N 91
buildings, such as those who convert rental into condominium units, single-
family into multifamily dwellings, and residential housing into office space.
3. Homeowners and individuals who invest in property as part of an overall
scheme for the protection of income and not just to acquire shelter.
4. Local politicians who are dependent on campaign funds from the real estate
industry, and lawyers or other professionals who make money from govern-
ment-mandated requirements that necessitate legal services.
5. Individual companies or corporations that do not specialize in real estate but
develop choice locations for their respective businesses, such as office towers
or industrial plants, and a host of financial institutions, such as savings and
loans, that channel investment into land.
The preceding list of institutional and private interests involved in the develop-
ment of the metropolitan region reveals that growth is not simply determined by
economic push factors of production, as both the class conflict and capital accumu-
lation perspectives maintain, or by a special class of people called rentiers, as the
growth machine approach emphasizes. Development is caused by the pull factor of
people’s activities involved in the second circuit of capital, real estate. This sector is
not simply a select group of investors, as the growth machine believes, but is com-
posed of both actors interested in acquiring wealth from real estate and a structure
that channels money into the built environment. The latter consists of a host of fi-
nancial intermediaries such as banks, mortgage companies, and real estate invest-
ment trusts, which allow a large variety of people to put their money in land.
Because the second circuit of capital enables anyone, even individual homeowners,
to invest money in real estate for profit, it is wrong to separate the people in society
into a select few who seek to make money in real estate (exploiting its exchange value)
and a majority who seek only to enjoy the built environment as a staging ground for
everyday life (the exploitation of space’s use value). Instead, space can be enjoyed for
its uses and for its investment potential by both business and local residents. In fact,
that’s what makes the relationship of society to space so complicated. The latter is
simultaneously a medium of use and a source of wealth under capitalist commodity
arrangements.
Because developing the built environment involves so many different interests,
growth or change is always a contentious affair. This criticism has vital theoretical
and empirical implications for the study of urban sociology, especially the role of the
state, as we will see next.
Government Intervention and Political Agency

The sociospatial perspective suggests that metropolitan growth is the outcome of nego-
tiations and contending interests, rather than the product of some well-oiled machine
without conflict. Developers, for example, must negotiate with government planners
and politicians, citizen groups voice their concerns in public forums, and special in-
terests such as utility companies or religious organizations interject their stakes and
culturally defined symbolic visions in metropolitan growth. The end result of these ne-
gotiations is a built environment that is socially constructed, involving many interests
and controlled by the quest for profit.
The absence of a separate class of growth mongers means that the conceptualiza-
tion of local politics by the growth machine perspective is limited. Feagin (1988)
shows how powerful economic interests use the state to subsidize growth; hence de-
velopment often reflects the direct interests of industrial and financial capital rather
than some select, separate class of rentiers. Gottdiener (1977, 1985) indicates how
local politicians are intimately involved with development interests. The purpose of
this alliance is not growth and increased public revenues per se, as it is viewed by the
growth machine, but profit. In this sense, growth interests represent both factions of
capital involved in the accumulation process and also community interests con-
cerned about growth and the quality of life. It is this melding of profit taking and en-
vironmental concerns that is most characteristic of settlement space development,
and it involves a second source of complexity in the society/space relationship.
The interests aligned around issues of change in the built environment should be
seen as growth networks rather than as the monolithic entities suggested by the con-
cept of a “machine” (Gottdiener, 1985). The idea of networks captures the way al-
liances can form around a host of issues associated with development, often splitting
classes into factions. The concept of network captures the diversity of people who
may join, often only temporarily, to pursue particular growth paths. What counts is
not necessarily the push for growth but both the way different community factions
perceive the form growth will take and how they evaluate their own environmental
needs. There is a rich complexity of people and interests involved in metropolitan
growth and change that is captured neither by ecological or political economy per-
spectives, because they ignore particular agents, nor by the growth machine approach,
which reduces conflict to a simple dichotomy of pro- and antigrowth factions.
For example, each community group may have its own interests which are mani-
fested in local politics. They often join in coalitions to push for some version of
growth while opposing other coalitions that have their own vision of the future.
Growth is not the result of single-minded efforts by some machine. Rather, develop-
ment is a contentious process involving many groups in society that push for a variety
of forms: rapid growth, managed growth, slow growth, no growth, and so on. Local
social movements arise not just because of economic needs but because of racial, reli-
gious, ethnic, and community interests concerned with the quality of life.
Development or change is a constant occurrence in the American landscape. Local
politics consists of the clashes between all these separate interests as they play them-
selves out in the second circuit of capital and within the forum of local government.
S E M I O T I C S A N D U R B A N C U LT U R E 93
S E M I OT I C S A N D U R B A N C U LT U R E
Symbols and behaviors that have meaning are an important topic of study in order to
understand life in the metropolitan region. In Chapter 7 we discuss culture in detail
including the ways that locations have used symbolic resources to acquire an attractive
image that appeals to tourists as well as real estate investors. For now, the present dis-
cussion addresses the importance of culture to our sociospatial perspective.
Since the 1970s, our lived environment in all areas of the metropolitan region and
its rural hinterland have made an increasing use of symbolic markers by locations as a
means of increasing value. Signs appealing to consumers denote places of retailing and
attract mobile residents to distinct places like malls. Municipal locations increasingly
resort to designing images that will register as attractive to developers and tourists. Ar-
eas also manufacture a sense of place for otherwise nondescript, newly built housing
tracts by bestowing distinctive names on them, such as “Heather Acres,” “Mountain-
view Estates,” “Eagles Trace,” and the like. While the names themselves have no direct
signifying connection to the places that are tagged, they do connote a certain symbolic
value that valorizes a specific location for consumers of housing or investors in real es-
tate. Research on such names that are quite familiar to suburbanites is one important
way the dynamics of regional development can be understood (see Gottdiener, 1995).
The proliferation of signs makes the urbanized, multicentered region semiotic in both
culture and character.
Henri Lefebvre, in one of his early books (1996), discusses the French style of
semiotics, which owes a great deal to the work of Roland Barthes (Gottdiener and
Lagopoulos, 1986). Characteristically, he confines his remarks to the central city, while
we argue that there is no reason to do so in the sociospatial approach.
Semiological analysis must distinguish between multiple levels and dimensions.

There is the utterance of the city, what happens and takes place in the street, in
the squares, in the roads, what is said there. There is the language of the city: Par-
ticularities specific to each city which are expressed in discourses, gestures, cloth-
ing, in the words and use of words by the inhabitants. There is urban language,
which one can consider as a language of connotations, a secondary system and
derived within the denotative system. Finally, there is the writing of the city, what
is inscribed and prescribed on its walls, in the layout of places and their images,
in brief, the use of time in the city by its inhabitants.
More signifiers are spread across the metro region by franchise consumer outlets, like
McDonalds, by the land development activities of the real estate industry and by levels
of government in planning and transportation schemes. The kinds of signs and “writ-
ing” that Lefebvre refers to above come from individuals and groups, such as gangs, who
mark territory with signifiers that reflect their own meaningful narratives about space.
For decades global media advertising, especially via television, has leveled the
kind of “utterances” that once made individual cities relatively unique. At the same
time the media has established in the minds of ordinary people an equation between
a suggested need, like the desire for food fast to satisfy an overwhelming hunger, and
a particular business that satisfies that desire which can be visited anywhere in the
nation through franchising and easily recognized by a few distinctive signs on the fa-
cade of the outlets. Branding, packaging, and media marketing are all brought to
play at the precise point of consumer choice to promote profits while people line up
within virtually the same kinds of environments to purchase food, clothing, or even
significantly expensive electronics quickly and easily. The signs of franchised chains
that have already become valorized from hours and hours of media advertising make
the purchase in these places doubly meaningful—first, the purchased product vali-
dates the advertising for it and not a rival product; second, the visit to a particular
chain store validates the choice of going there and not to another location. In short,
signs work to grease the wheels of a consumer society and to elevate spending (and,
by corollary, consumer debt) to ever higher heights.
Gottdiener has argued elsewhere (1995; 2000) that the embodiment of signs in
this cycle of marketing and selling for profit, or distribution and realization of capital,
makes symbols vehicles for organizing consumer society. Signs are also vehicles for the
valorization of specific locations in the pursuit of profit by investors in land and devel-
opers of housing and commercial buildings. Intrinsic use of symbols in this way—to
make a profit—means that meaning itself is part of the political economy of capital-
ism, as sign value (Baudrillard, 1981; 1993). Hence, the sociospatial perspective calls
attention to this semiotic dimension of the material environment within which we
live our daily lives.
From our perspective, in addition, there is another reason why signs and a semi-
otic landscape are important. The multicentered metro region, as the new form of
urban space, spreads out over an area that loses the human, pedestrian scale of the
historical, compact central city. It is the automobile rather than public transpor-
tation or walking that best characterizes how we experience and how we navigate
through this environment. Signs are important to this process. In the metro region,
which is multicentered, people are drawn to specific locations quite literally by visi-
ble signs (from the highway or commercial strip) that are acknowledged as impor-
tant just the way locations throughout the increasingly dispersed and differentiated
region attempt to draw people to them through the use of meaningful symbols. Per-
haps the giant neon landscape of Las Vegas is the extreme case of this kind of signage
that is engineered for consumers in cars. Consequently, the semiotic dimension of
daily life not only figures into the political economy of consumer-oriented capital-
ism; it is also the symbolic mechanism that makes it possible to navigate around the
metro region in order to provide for needs. In contrast, when people lived in com-
pact, pedestrian-oriented cities—that is, in the previous form of urban space—they
THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 95
went about satisfying their needs without the kind of constant aid from giant signs,
franchise cues, and themed environments that have become so necessary to the func-
tioning of the new form of urban space—the metro region—today. Yet such displays
have not totally disappeared from the central city when we consider the Ginza dis-
trict of Tokyo, the riot of neon signage that is Times Square in New York, or the sim-
ilar burst of colored lights characterizing Piccadilly Circus in London.
THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Finally, the sociospatial approach agrees with all other perspectives that acknowledge
the important role of the global economy, the new mobile or “flexible” arrangements
in production, and their effects on the restructuring of settlement space. It argues,
however, that the push factors of capital mobility and considerations regarding the
international division of labor, discussed earlier, are not the only ones determining
growth. Often perspectives identified with the “new” urban sociology simply stress
the effect of the global system as the key determinant of metropolitan change (see
Smith and Feagin, 1987; Palen, 1991). The pull factors of state policies and the sec-
ond circuit of capital are also important, particularly as manifested at the local, re-
gional, and national levels.
Hence, the sociospatial approach has a more integrated view of push and pull fac-
tors associated with growth. The influence of the global system does have a profound
effect on the fortunes of place, but unlike other approaches (see Logan and Molotch,
1987; Sassen, 1991; Smith and Feagin, 1987), the SSP does not believe that it has a
sole determining effect.
This feature was illustrated in Chapter 3 with the discussions of suburban and
Sun Belt development. At that time, it was pointed out that while the U.S. economy
had become integrated into the world system, development patterns of deconcentra-
tion to suburbs and Sun Belt regions had been going on for many years, even prior
to the 1960s when the restructuring of the global system began to be felt. The shifts
to the suburbs and the Sun Belt are the two most important sociospatial changes in
U.S. history, but neither can be said to have been produced by the power of the
global economy. They have their roots in growth trends that have been going on for
years and that involve important aspects of both government intervention and the
phenomenal draw of real estate investment.
For example, in Chapter 6 we will study the nature of suburban development af-
ter recognizing that the majority of Americans live in suburbs, not central cities. Sub-
urbanization in the United States has been going on since the turn of the century.
Development accelerated after World War II when the government initiated special
loans to veterans and consolidated the income tax subsidy to homeowners, providing
families with a cash incentive to invest in real estate. Suburbanization was also pro-
moted by a variety of federal housing acts passed since the 1930s that revitalized the
real estate industry and by the Interstate Highway Act in the 1950s, which promoted
the construction of freeways. All of these factors fell into place long before the advent
of global economic effects.
We have also seen how the Sun Belt prospered as a consequence of government
programs and real estate activity. Government military spending during World War II
and later during the Cold War propped up the Sun Belt economy by transferring bil-
lions of dollars in tax money from the Frost Belt to this region. Real estate investment
found riches in a host of Sun Belt schemes for the development of housing and indus-
try. Other factors, such as the prosperity of agribusiness, also helped growth. In short,
the most important spatial changes experienced by the United States are the conse-
quence of many factors operating at all spatial levels, as the SSP suggests, rather than
at the global level alone.
Of course, since the 1970s, changes in the global economy have had a profound
effect on the built environment. The decline of manufacturing in the United States
and the transfer of many production activities abroad have wiped out the traditional
relationship between central city working-class communities and their capitalist em-
ployers. The economy of our largest cities has restructured away from manufacturing
and toward specialization in advanced services and information processing, particu-
larly those business services required by the finance capital faction that coordinates in-
vestment activity for the global economy (Sassen, 1991). The record high of the stock
market and record low in unemployment through the 1990s have not altered this
longer-term trend of restructuring of the urban economy and increasing economic
polarization of urban space. All of these changes affect the nature of the local labor
force and alter living and working arrangements. We will discuss some of these effects
on the people of the metropolis in Chapters 8 and 9. Other effects of the restructur-
ing initiated within the context of a global economy will be considered in Chapters
10 and 11 when we look at metropolitan problems and policies, respectively. Finally,
in Chapters 10 and 11, we will discuss the effects of global restructuring on cities in
the developing world and settlement spaces in European countries and Japan.
The sociospatial changes produced by the global economy have also been impor-
tant because of the new spaces that have appeared in recent years. Prior to the 1970s,
neither Santa Clara County nor the peripheral areas around the city of Boston were
significant employment centers. During the last two decades, they proved to be world-
class economic spaces, becoming Silicon Valley and the Route 128 high-tech corridor,
respectively. These new spaces produced by high-technology industries earned dispro-
portionately large sums of money on the world market for their employment size. At
one time, these results prompted analysts to suggest that other countries follow suit
and promote their own export-oriented high-tech corridors as the key to future pros-
perity (see Chapter 11). Today Silicon Valley and Route 128, along with other such
spaces, are experiencing a severe recession. The global economy is now shaky as reces-
sion hits worldwide. According to the SSP, alterations and development of new spaces
S U M M A R Y: T H E S O C I O S PAT I A L P E R S P E C T I V E 97
of production and consumption will be produced not by investment directed at the

global level alone but also by the logic of real estate development and by other pull fac-
tors, such as the quality of government intervention, in addition to factors that oper-
ate locally, regionally, nationally, and globally—that is, at all sociospatial levels.
SUMMARY: THE SOCIOSPATIAL PERSPEC TIVE

The sociospatial perspective involves ideas that distinguish it from previous sociolog-
ical approaches.
First, it incorporates a number of different factors, instead of emphasizing just one
or two, that can account for development and change. It particularly seeks to provide
a balanced account of both push and pull factors in metropolitan and regional growth.
Second, it considers the role of real estate in development as the combined activ-
ities of both agency and structure. Investment in land is a sector of capital accumula-
tion with its own factions and cycles of boom and bust. The categories of political
economy, such as profit, rent, interest, and value, are just as applicable to metropoli-
tan development as to any other part of the economy.
Third, the sociospatial perspective strives for a detailed view of politics that em-
phasizes the activities of individuals and groups in the development process. The
SSP focuses on the activities of certain growth networks that form coalitions inter-
ested in choices that must be made over the direction and effects of change.
The sociospatial perspective considers cultural factors such as race, gender, and the
symbolic context of space to be just as important as economic and political concerns
(see the following three chapters). It also deals specifically with the special qualities of
spatial forms and their role in the organization of society. At present, metropolitan life
is played out within the context of an ever-expanding multicentered region. We have
discussed the historical significance of this form of settlement space in previous chap-
ters and will discuss its significance for daily life in chapters to come.
Finally the sociospatial perspective, along with other approaches, adopts a global
view of development but does not claim that the world economy alone is responsible
for the restructuring of settlement space. Global changes are particularly relevant for
an understanding of how cities, suburbs, and regions have been affected by the econ-
omy in recent years. New spaces of industry, commerce, and services have helped
redefine settlement patterns as multicentered regional development. Historically,
however, the pull factors of government intervention and investment in real estate
have also played an essential part in the restructuring of space.
In the chapters that follow, we examine the development of metropolitan areas in
the United States (Chapters 5 and 6) and then examine the role of culture in metro-
politan life, addressing everyday life and social problems (Chapters 7–9). We then
turn our attention to other countries to compare the U.S. experience with growth
and restructuring elsewhere (Chapters 10 and 11).
KEY CONCEPTS
political economy
international division of labor
capital accumulation
uneven development
second circuit of capital
abstract space
social space
labor theory of location
growth machine
use value / exchange value
financial conduits
growth networks
sociospatial perspective
1. The new urban sociology has developed in part from earlier theoretical work in
what is known as political economy. Who are some of the earlier sociologists identified
with this theoretical perspective? What did they write about? How were their ideas in-
corporated into urban sociology and into sociological thinking more generally?
2. What is meant by uneven development? What causes uneven development to oc-
cur within a metropolitan region? What are the effects of uneven development on
metropolitan growth? What are some examples of uneven development that you can
see within the metropolitan region where you live?
3. Henri Lefebvre stands as the major theoretical figure in the development of ur-
ban political economy. What was his contribution to recent work in the new urban
sociology? Identify three ideas that Henri Lefebvre wrote about and explain how
they are used in urban sociology.
4. There are important differences between the class conflict and capital accumu-
lation approaches of the new urban sociology. Discuss the work of one theorist from
each of these approaches and explain the differences in their approaches to studying
metropolitan regions.
5. John Logan and Harvey Molotch have suggested that urban development is
driven forward by a growth machine that emphasizes the “exchange value” of urban
property against the “use value” that local residents assign to their property. What
are some of the limitations of this approach? How is the idea of the growth machine
different from the sociospatial approach more generally?
6. What is meant by the sociospatial approach to urban sociology? Pick three fea-
tures of this perspective and discuss how these are used to study metropolitan regions.
CHAPTER
5
URBANIZATION IN
THE UNITED STATES
A mericans have a long-standing distrust of cities and of city life. Thomas Jefferson
(1977) suggested that cities were the source of evil and corruption that would
threaten the young democracy’s political system. Despite such sentiments, the growth
of urban centers in the United States has been prolific and, as we saw in Chapter 1,
has increased in recent decades. For much of our history, the everyday life of Ameri-
cans has been defined in urban terms.
In many respects, development in the United States mirrors the same trends and
effects of social forces unleashed in Western Europe. We experienced, for example,
the same industrial revolution that England did and even contributed significantly
to its technological breakthroughs. Everyone has probably heard of McCormick’s
reaper or Thomas Edison’s lightbulb. Such inventions helped the United States com-
pete with industrial giants like England in the nineteenth century.
Yet for all its close links to the Old World, the city-building process in the United
States exhibits several features that exaggerate aspects of urbanization found else-
where. These include (1) the lack of walls or fortifications around cities; (2) real estate
development as a major component in the economy of capitalism; (3) the ideology of
privatism, which limits the role of the state and emphasizes individual accomplish-
ments as the basis of community; (4) large-scale immigration and population churn-
ing within cities; and (5) the regional dispersal of the metropolis. This chapter
illustrates these features within the larger context of U.S. urban history.
THE STAGES OF URBAN GROWTH

Many different factors have contributed to urban expansion in the United States.
The role of economic forces; transportation, construction, and communication tech-
nology; political changes; immigration policy; and success at wars are but some of
the major causes for the development of city building. The best explanation for urban
patterns is found when connection is made between the production of settlement space
99
100 5: U R B A N I Z AT I O N I N T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S
and the society’s political economy. According to the sociospatial perspective, this does
not mean that the clearly defined stages of metropolitan growth are directly corre-
lated to exact stages of economic development; rather, it means only that important
features of each period in economic development are associated in certain ways with
important factors in the social and political change of metropolitan space.
Four distinct stages of urban growth in the United States have resulted in the for-
mation of the multicentered metropolitan region. These are (1) the colonial period,
1630 to 1812; (2) the industrial period, 1812 to 1920; (3) the metropolitan period,
1920 to 1960; and (4) the deconcentration and restructuring of settlement space
within the multicentered metropolitan region that has taken place since 1960.
Box 5.1
Stages of Capitalism and Urbanization
in the United States, 1630 to the Present
Stages of Capitalism Stages of Urbanization

Mercantile-colonial period Colonial period: 1630 to 1812
Industrialization period Industrial period: 1812 to 1920
Monopoly capitalism period Metropolitan period: 1920 to 1960
Global capitalism period Multicentered expansion: 1960 to today
Urban and suburban settlement space within the United States has developed
within a free-market economy based on private property and capital accumulation.
We know this type of economic system by the name of capitalism. As both Adam
Smith and Karl Marx emphasized, capitalism is a dynamic system that brings about
changes in the social relations and political systems with which it comes in contact.
The stages of urban development correspond to growth periods in the development
of U.S. capitalism. These stages of development are often referred to as (1) mercan-
tile capitalism; (2) industrial capitalism; (3) monopoly capitalism; and (4) global
capitalism. But these periods do not represent an evolutionary theory of develop-
ment such as that of V. Gordon Childe in Chapter 2. Although cities in the United
States went through these periods, there is no reason that another society has to pass
through exactly the same sequence because other countries’ economic transforma-
tions differ from ours. Furthermore, according to the sociospatial perspective, stages
in metropolitan growth and in the political economy are only loosely coupled, as
mentioned above. Nonetheless, discussion of separate phases of city building is an ef-
fective way to organize our analysis of the connection between developments in the
U.S. political economy and the forms of settlement space over time.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD: 1630 TO 1812 101
THE COLONIAL PERIOD: 1630 TO 1812

The United States was colonized by European capitalist societies operating according
to the political economy of mercantilism, an early stage of global capitalism. In this
system, the nation-states of Europe organized the expansion of their local economies
at a time when manufacturing was not industrialized and with the aid of the political
apparatus of the nation-state. The wealth of countries, it was believed, depended on
the well-being of commerce or trade, while domestic manufacture was protected from
foreign competition by government tariffs. Mercantilist theory called for the coloniza-
tion of resource-rich but undeveloped areas of the globe accomplished through the
state’s own military and naval power. Wealth would increase if raw materials could be
plundered from the undeveloped colonies, while manufactured articles would be pro-
duced exclusively in the home countries. By these arrangements, the maximum
amount of work would be given to the nation’s own laborers and excess population
could be drained off to the colonies.
In the 1700s the cities of the United States were little more than colonial out-
posts of England, France, and Spain located on the shores of a country with a fore-
boding and unsettled interior. The attention and the energies of the colonists were
directed eastward across the Atlantic Ocean toward the colonial powers and events in
Europe. The existence of these cities was guaranteed by the might of the colonial
power’s navy and military organization.
Colonial cities were port cities. The docks and warehouses and the shipping, insur-
ance, and trading companies constituted the focus of urban development. Farther back
from the port facilities, merchant and counting houses were located, while behind the
port district, the beginnings of residential quarters, principally for the colonial busi-
nessmen and their families, were located. Artisans of all kinds who engaged in handi-
craft manufacture of the simple implements required for daily life were also located in
the town. Their shops and residences were situated throughout the port district.
As mercantilism developed, it also became a way of relieving population pressures
by promoting immigration to the colonies. This, in turn, stimulated a nascent real es-
tate industry in the port cities. Many U.S. cities, in fact, were laid out to accommo-
date both mercantile economic functions and residential real estate speculation.
Often single entrepreneurs in England were granted permission by the crown to set
up their own town as just such a speculative enterprise. The case of Philadelphia,
founded in the late 1600s by the Quaker entrepreneur William Penn, illustrates the
combined mercantile and real estate venture: “Philadelphia was laid out in 1681 on a
plan that was probably the original speculator’s design for an American city, a plot
that measured one by two miles and was easily divided into lots that might be sold at
a distance” (Vance, 1990:265).
The colonial cities of the United States prospered because of the success of British
mercantilism. Each of the largest towns filled an economic function connected with
European trade. Boston was the center for colonial provisions; Newport, Rhode Is-
land, specialized in shipbuilding and slave trading; New York trading focused on flour
and furs; Philadelphia focused on meat, wheat, and lumber; and Charleston, South
Carolina, was known for the export of rice and indigo. Initially Baltimore, Maryland,
had few natural advantages, and it lagged behind the growth of these five cities, but in
the later 1700s its businesses specialized in the flour-exporting trade, and it prospered.
However, towns such as Williamsburg, Virginia, which were laid out solely as political
centers, never grew.
Table 5.1 shows the development of cities in the period 1790 to 1850, from the
colonial period through the decade just before the Civil War. The table gives us some
important information about the growth of early cities under the mercantilist system
and the later replacement of these cities by industrial towns in the years following the
Civil War. In the early colonial period, we see New York City, Boston, and Philadel-
phia but also a number of smaller port cities in the northeast. None of these cities
were very large by European standards (compare the figures here with those for Euro-
pean cities shown in Table 2.3). Some cities, such as Philadelphia and Boston, remain
important population centers today. Most of the others, however, like Newburyport,
Stephentown, or Southwark, would never develop into metropolitan centers.
By the time of the Revolutionary War, U.S. cities played a crucial role due to
their demographic and economic power. The first confrontations, such as the Boston
TA B L E 5.1 The 15 Most Populated Urban Areas in the United States, 1790–1850.
1790 1820 1850
New York 33,100 New York 123,700 New York 515,500
Philadelphia, PA 28,500 Philadelphia, PA 63,800 Baltimore, MD 169,000
Boston, MA 18,300 Baltimore, MD 62,700 Boston, MA 136,900
Charleston, SC 16,400 Boston, MA 43,300 Philadelphia, PA 121,400
Baltimore, MD 13,500 New Orleans, LA 27,200 New Orleans, LA 116,400
North Liberties, PA 9,900 Charleston, SC 24,800 Cincinnati, OH 115,400
Salem, MA 7,900 North Liberties, PA 19,700 Brooklyn, NY 96,800
Newport, RI 6,700 Southwark, PA 14,700 St. Louis, MO 77,900
Provincetown, RI 6,400 Washington, DC 13,200 Spring Garden, PA 58,900
Marblehead, MA 5,700 Salem, MA 12,700 Albany, NY 50,800
Southwark, PA 5,700 Albany, NY 12,600 North Liberties, PA 47,200
Gloucester, MA 5,300 Richmond, VA 12,100 Kensington, PA 46,800
Newburyport, MA 4,800 Providence, RI 11,800 Pittsburgh, PA 46,600
Portsmouth, NH 4,700 Cincinnati, OH 9,600 Louisville, KY 43,200
Nantucket, MA 4,600 Portland, ME 8,600 Charleston, SC 43,000
SOURCE: Campbel Gibson, Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United
States, 1790–1990. Washington: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population Division, Working Paper No. 27,
June 1997 (1998).
THE COLONIAL PERIOD: 1630 TO 1812 103
Tea Party, took place in cities. The wealth concentrated in New York, Boston, Phila-
delphia, and Newport also financed the revolt. Colonial cities became centers of
propaganda that disseminated antiloyalist views throughout the colonies. At the
time of the revolution, for example, thirty-six newspapers actively operated in the
colonies (not all of which opposed the crown). Finally, cities played a major role be-
cause they nurtured new political organizations. These organizations became part of
the colonial militia when war finally broke out. One example was the Sons of Liberty
in the New York colony:
Founded in the fall of 1765 as a secret organization, the Sons of Liberty became a
public body with meetings announced in newspapers. . . . In addition to commu-
nicating with other groups in the New York colony, the Sons of Liberty also kept
in touch with organizations in such other colonial towns as Boston, Baltimore,
and Newport. The Sons of Liberty armed themselves and became a paramilitary
group ready to resist British encroachments. The group also provided an organiz-
ing function, marshalling two thousand people in October 1765 to prevent the
landing of stamps to be used for tax purposes. (Hoover, 1971:92)
One legacy of colonial dependency was the absence of autonomous government

and the concomitant lack of political responsibility among the citizens of the cities. As
colonies they were administered by agents of the English king. Precisely this lack of
political influence may have contributed to the revolutionary fervor, because the
growing wealth and population of the colonies had no democratic recourse in the ad-
ministration of port cities. In any event, the absence of autonomy, according to the
historian Sam Bass Warner Jr. (1962), fostered a “laissez-faire” economic and social
milieu that developed into the culture of privatism that so closely characterizes U.S.
cities even today (see Chapter 13).
Privatism, a legacy of our colonial history, refers to the civic culture that eschews
social interests in favor of the private pursuit of individual goals. From the very begin-
ning of our urban experience, residents already believed their principal responsibility
lay in the pursuit of self-interest. Unlike the citizens of ancient Athens, for example,
who were obligated to pledge their indebtedness to the city that gave them birth, resi-
dents of the American colonies were not responsible to the city but only to the colo-
nial power. Over the years, this greatly restrained the development of a civic culture
that fosters community values and social responsibility. Instead, the limited vision of
privatism remains in place. According to Warner:
To describe the American tradition of privatism is not to summarize the entire

American cultural tradition. . . . The tradition of privatism is, however, the most
important element of our culture for understanding the development of cities.
The tradition of privatism has always meant that the cities of the United States
depended for their wages, employment, and general prosperity upon the aggre-
gate successes and failures of thousands of individual enterprises, not upon com-
munity action. It has also meant that the physical forms of American cities, their
lots, houses, families, and streets, have been the outcome of a real estate market of
profit-seeking builders, land speculators, and large investors. (Warner, 1968:4)
A second legacy of colonial dependency was the absence of independent city eco-
nomic rights. European cities of the late Middle Ages were powerful economic enter-
prises because they possessed independent charters of governance as well as the legal
right to mint their own currency and conduct trade in their name. Colonial America
granted no such privileges to its cities, and the cities did not possess chartered rights.
There were no city trade monopolies, no special currency, and no city property rights
beyond city borders, unlike Western Europe. Trade was organized by the large Euro-
pean conglomerates such as the Hudson’s Bay Company. Any individual or group of
entrepreneurs could break away from a U.S. city and settle in the hinterland, forming
a separate town. The varied reasons for such fragmentation could be religious, politi-
cal, or economic. What mattered was only the relative ability to split off and settle
elsewhere under the protective umbrella of the colonial powers. Laissez-faire, pri-
vatism, and the ease of settlement characterized city life during the colonial period.
Privatism’s obverse was the absence of political autonomy characteristic of the urban
community as described by Max Weber. Even after the American Revolution, cities
failed to acquire independent political rights except as far as these were granted to
them by the states. Hence, the legacy of the colonial period remains very much with
us today in the form of weak city government and limited city political power.
A third legacy of colonialism was the physical absence of city walls. Max Weber’s
ideal city of the Middle Ages possessed defensible fortifications or walls. Elsewhere,
forts usually defined the old city center. Thus, the words Kremlin in Russian and
Casbah in Moroccan both mean “fortress.” Few U.S. cities built by colonial powers
exhibited this trait (although some did have temporary stockades) because the home
country provided for the general defense of the region by sustaining a standing army
(Monkkonen, 1989). Consequently, unlike the walled cities of Europe in the late
Middle Ages, U.S cities provided for immense locational freedom. Land could al-
ways be developed at the fringe. To the clean-cut speculators’ grid of the colonial
port city was added a surrounding fringe that could always grow by accretion and
land speculation. This particular pattern remains very much with us today as growth
occurs constantly at the fringe of development in a pattern of sprawl.
A final legacy of the colonial city was the role played by land development as a sin-
gular source of wealth in the economy. For the residents of the United States—unlike
in Europe—land was plentiful and cheap. Very early in the history of this country, it
became clear to enterprising Europeans with money to invest that land development
was a principal way to acquire greater wealth. But the very nature of exploiting this
resource requires concomitant locational activities of a group of people and the ulti-
T H E E R A O F I N D U S T R I A L E X PA N S I O N: 1812 TO 1920 105
mate attraction of residential and commercial users. It does little good to stake a land
claim, no matter how large, in a wilderness with no friendly residents around, without
an attendant scheme for the eventual development of the land, including state protec-
tion for the influx of population. Hence, early in U.S. history, land developers
adopted the practice of working closely with politicians and colonial authorities to
promote the development of select places. This pattern of boosterism, involving specu-
lators, developers, politicians, and state authorities, or a growth network (Gottdiener,
1985) composed of varied individuals who are like-minded developers of land, was
repeated many times in our history and remains characteristic of development today
(see Chapter 7). The sheer quantity of undeveloped land presented by the U.S. case
represents a graphic contrast to the pattern of urbanization in Western Europe (which
has always reined in the interests of developers for the good of the larger society and
because of real estate’s scarce supply), although it may have parallels in the recent his-
tory of countries such as Australia and Brazil that also have abundant land masses.
It is often noted in elementary school lessons that George Washington, our first
president, was employed as a surveyor in his youth. In fact, he and his family were ac-
tive real estate speculators. Surveying was just one aspect of this work. As one histo-
rian put it, land was “the real wealth” of the colonies. Perhaps Washington’s crowning
achievement was his participation in the booster effort to develop Washington, D.C.,
as the nation’s capital. In the 1780s, the district was nothing more than an inhos-
pitable swamp of worthless real estate. All that was to change through the efforts of
newly achieved political power and economic investment in land. According to an ac-
count of the time: “In 1793 George Washington led a procession with two brass
bands and Masons in full costume across the Tiber to a barbecue and land auction at
which he purchased the first lots of the new capital’s undeveloped swampland. . . .
Self-promotion, boosterism, and constant attention to the economic main chance
soon came to characterize the young nation’s cities” (Monkkonen, 1989:63).
THE ERA OF INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION:

1812 TO 1920
The settlement of the vast U.S. territory following the Revolutionary War constituted
a magnificent drama involving individuals representing the very legends of our coun-
try itself. As Gary Nash (1974) has observed, this drama was colored in red, white,
and black, because it involved a three-way clash among white former colonists, Native
Americans, and black slaves. Frontiersmen such as Davy Crockett shouldered hunting
muskets and fought the Indian Wars. Native Americans such as the Apache chief
Geronimo and his people were driven from their lands, killed in vast numbers, or re-
settled to make way for the white people’s development of the interior.
Industrialists such as J. P. Morgan and Jacob Astor accumulated vast sums of money
in trade, banking, and real estate, only to lose power and wealth to other upstarts, such
as Jay Gould, with equally ambitious schemes. Politicians such as President Grover
Cleveland mingled with the active boosters of growth during a time when corruption
was a way of life in government. In the middle of it all, the fate of the nation was de-
cided in a civil war. Great spokespeople such as Frederick Douglass articulated the pain
of suppression under which black people were living as slaves. Eventually slavery was
defeated but so too was the rural way of southern life in a society that shifted from plan-
tation agriculture to industrialized farming and manufacture. Technology, industrializa-
tion, city government, and land development took over the stage of urban growth.
It is helpful to think of American capitalism as acting like a large land development
agency in addition to its role as an industrial enterprise. During the period of formative
growth, entrepreneurs singled out choice locations in the advancing path of expansion
and built cities. According to the historian Richard C. Wade (1959), city construction
took place in many cases before population influx; that is, urbanization in the United
States was often land speculation that proceeded with the aid of local governments. In
a sense, the establishment of a town as a political entity harnessed land to the control of
growth interests. As a consequence of political reforms during the presidency of An-
drew Jackson, it was comparatively easy for groups of capitalist land developers to de-
clare their projects incorporated cities. Hence, with the aid of home rule, the expansion
westward during the century between 1812 and 1920, when the majority of the U.S.
population became city residents, was an urban expansion and simultaneously an ex-
plosion in the number of governments at the local level. By founding towns, develop-
ers also used local governments to provide a civic or community structure for people
who came there to live.
The real estate projects that opened the American frontier did not proceed in iso-
lation. Entrepreneurs were also merchants or industrialists. Money was invested in
commercial enterprises as well as in land. In fact, capital often flowed back and forth
between investments in industry and investments in land. This relation will be ex-
plained more fully in Chapter 7. Thus, Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the reaper,
made millions in the 1800s from his factory, but his real wealth came from invest-
ment of those profits in real estate (Longstreet, 1973).
In addition, the technology of transport became an explicit means through which
investors of capital centered in cities competed with one another to build new cities
on the frontier. Thus, railroad entrepreneurs such as Leland Stanford were also city
builders. Let us consider the era of urban expansion according to these interrelated links
among forms of capital, government policies and politicians, and forms of technology.
Land Development and Technology

Prior to the 1820s, the U.S. urban population remained relatively stable at around 10
percent of the total. After that time, a sudden burst of urbanization took place that
did not abate until the 1930s. By the 1920 census, over half of all Americans were
already living in cities. In the hundred years after 1820, the United States had been
transformed into an urbanized nation.
After the War of 1812, urban development continued in the form of networked
cities along the Great Lakes and the Ohio River Valley. At this stage, economic interests
located within the large East Coast cities turned an about-face by ignoring the mercan-
tilist needs of trade with Europe and actively pursued the development of the interior.
In all respects, early westward expansion was highly dependent both on the develop-
ment of transportation technology and on the protection of white settlers by govern-
ment against attacks by Native American residents. Land was realized as a capital
investment only after transportation and communication infrastructure could be put
in place. Roads had to be built. Tracks had to be laid. Telegraph lines were installed. In
addition, the safety of work crews for all these efforts had to be ensured. Land was be-
ing taken from Native Americans, an effort that required organized government activ-
ity and military intervention.
Hinterland development was not simply the consequence of the application of
emerging transportation technology, as might be suggested by human ecology. Local
capital had to be organized to bring about development. Often entrepreneurs com-
peted with one another over investments in the interior of the country because at the
time, the unity of capital under corporate interests that cut across space and united ef-
forts in different cities had not yet fully matured. Consequently, westward expansion
was a characteristic of competitive capital and was often marked by the schemes of
single individuals who sought to build up business and build a city at the same time.
For example, the earliest urban rivalry involved local capitalists situated in the
important East Coast port cities. Their future fortunes depended on the ongoing
success of their respective trade routes to the interior, because the latter was the
source of goods for export and raw materials needed by local manufacturers.
Just after the War of 1812, the shortest route to the West lay across either Penn-
sylvania or Maryland. There were two roads—the “national road” out of Baltimore
and the “Pittsburgh Pike” out of Philadelphia—but these links were inadequate for
handling the heavy agricultural products of the interior (Rubin, 1970:128). Instead,
produce was shipped south on the Mississippi River to New Orleans, making that
city the most important export center.
New York entrepreneurs saw their city facing decline as the frontier expanded
west. In 1817, they began construction of a canal that linked the Hudson River at Al-
bany 364 miles westward to Buffalo on Lake Erie. In a bold stroke, they hoped to cre-
ate the most efficient link to the hinterland, with Buffalo becoming an inland port for
the Great Lakes region of the Midwest. The canal was completed in 1825 and was so
successful that it inspired a craze of canal building across the United States. From its
inception, New York City competed effectively with New Orleans as an export point
for agricultural produce.
As a result of the successful Erie Canal venture, Philadelphia and Baltimore finan-
cial interests faced decline, if not extinction. As the historian J. Rubin (1970:131)
notes, they responded with their own schemes, aided greatly by government laws and
subsidies. Initially Philadelphia interests demanded that the state proceed with a canal
to Ohio. However, construction failed in the Allegheny Mountains and a rail segment
was required. This occurred several times, and Philadelphia ended up with a mixed
canal and rail portage system that required several transshipments. The route was
hopelessly incapable of competing with New York’s Erie Canal.
Baltimore interests viewed Philadelphia’s problems with trepidation. They saw
the difficulty of crossing the Appalachian Mountains via canal. By the 1830s, the
steam locomotive had just been perfected in England and, in a venture as bold as the
New York effort, they opted for the construction of a railroad line that would con-
nect Baltimore with the Ohio Valley over the mountains. The line was eventually
called the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and it was remarkably successful. As a con-
sequence of these improvements, New York and Baltimore prospered while Boston
and Philadelphia declined. In addition, the links to the interior in the 1830s helped
found the midwestern Great Lakes cities of Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland, which
also prospered because of successful rail and canal traffic to East Coast ports.
In the period between 1830 and 1920, the most significant technological innova-
tion was the joint development of the steel rail and steam locomotive that perfected the
long haul for commerce, resources, and people. Of the 153 major U.S. cities existing
today, 75 percent had been established after 1840 when the railroad matured as an es-
tablished infrastructure, and only 9 percent of these same major cities were built after
1910 (Monkkonen, 1989:75). It would be simple to suggest that transportation tech-
nology alone caused the explosion of urbanization. This would be misleading, however.
Technology became the means of growth, but inception and execution were the result
both of the quest for wealth among entrepreneurs and of the desires of politicians in
government at all levels—local, state, and federal—that joined these ventures, aiding
them with political resources. It is precisely this conjuncture of investors, political
power mongers, and the dream of wealth that characterizes the second stage of urban-
ization in the United States. According to the historians Glaab and Brown, for example:
Earlier rivalries had been limited by nature—by the location of rivers and lakes.
But railroads were not bound by topography, by the paths of river commerce, or
by natural trade patterns. Railroads could be built anywhere, creating cities where
they chose. Since the building of railroads was dependent to a considerable extent
on subsidies from local communities, railroad leaders were willing to bargain
with competing towns to obtain the best possible deal in stock subscriptions,
bond issues, and right-of-ways. . . . The “boosterism” associated with the Mid-
west and areas further west is largely a legacy of the late nineteenth century era of
urban rivalry. (Glaab and Brown, 1967:112)
As we will see as well in our discussion of the last two stages of urban growth, this
pattern of capital investment, coupled with government subsidies and competition
among separate places, is repeated countless times and characterizes urban growth and
change in the United States and possibly elsewhere. As the sociospatial approach sug-
gests, development was a consequence of a combination of economic, political, and
cultural factors—the frontier myth and the American Dream of wealth combined
with cooperative government officials and venture capitalists to urbanize the nation.
What exactly were the proportions involved in the lure of wealth that accompa-
nied town building? Consider the Illinois Central Railroad. Its promoters were also
prolific city builders. In 1850, 10 towns existed in the vicinity of the railroad’s route.
After expansion ten years later, there were 47, and by 1870 there were 81. When the
Illinois Central entrepreneurs could not make subsidy agreements with the politi-
cians of existing towns for their right-of-way, they just built their own towns nearby.
Champaign, Illinois, for example, was constructed directly by the railroad adjacent
to the existing town of Urbana.
Another example shows us the size of the profit realized from real estate investment
alone. The town of Kankakee, Illinois, was built by this same railroad in 1855 at a cost
of $10,000, and after just one year the owners had already realized $50,000 in lot sales,
or a profit of 500 percent, with more city land remaining. As expansion moved west, a
similar pattern recurred involving a host of other promoters and their railroads. In San
Francisco, which had developed as the premier city of the West Coast during this
period, town lots that could be bought for $1,500 in 1850 were worth from $8,000 to
$27,000 just three years later in 1853 (Glaab and Brown, 1967:113, 121).
Manufacturing
So far we have fostered the impression that city building involved exclusively land de-
velopment schemes combining capital, government, and transport technology. Dur-
ing the period between 1812 and 1920, however, the United States became a world
leader in manufacturing. Forces of industrialization unleashed with such effect in En-
gland during this time had similar results here. During the period between 1850 and
1900, for example, U.S. production of textiles multiplied 7 times, iron and steel in-
creased 10 times, the processing of agricultural products expanded 14 times, and the
production of agricultural implements increased 25 times (Hoover, 1971:180).
The very heart of industrialization was the factory, which was the engine that
drove the industrial stage of capitalism. But workers and capitalists were not simply
disembodied abstractions. They were people who required places to live, raise fami-
lies, and spend whatever leisure time they had. Industrialization, therefore, produced
the factory town or community that contained workers’ families and houses, ma-
chinery, and energy sources, all within close proximity.
The first American manufacturing city was Lowell, Massachusetts, which was
located on the Merrimack River at a site where the water dropped ninety feet and
provided the original power source for its factories. Investors chose this place for a
complex of cotton mills and struck on the idea of importing a labor force of young
women from the neighboring cities, especially Boston, because they would be easy to
control as a source of nonunion labor power. The geographer James Vance gives this
account of the city:
In 1845, thirty-three of the large mill buildings ranged along the canals and
banks of the Merrimack, making Lowell the largest cotton town in America and
one of its few great industrial cities, with a population of thirty thousand. A full
third of the population was engaged as operatives in the mills or their workshops,
though female employment remained disproportionate with 6,320 females and
2,915 males. (Vance, 1990:347)
Early industrialization in the United States is associated with the names of entre-
preneurs who perfected specific products: Singer sewing machines, Yale locks, Ar-
mour hams, McCormick reapers, and Remington typewriters are but some of these
innovations. Later on, in most cases, the descendants of the originators carried on
the family name and its business. In the 1860s, the leading industries reflected early
development of manufacturing and the persisting importance of the United States as
a supplier of natural resources. Cotton goods, lumber, boots and shoes, and flour
dominated. By 1910, according to Geruson and McGrath (1977:68), the major in-
dustries reflected the maturation of manufacturing and consisted of machinery, iron
and steel, lumber, clothing, and railroad cars, among other products.
TA B L E 5.2 The 20 Most Populated Urban Areas in the United States, 1890–1950.
1890 1920 1950
New York 1,515,300 New York 5,620,000 New York 7,892,000
Chicago, IL 1,099,900 Chicago, IL 2,701,000 Chicago, IL 3,621,000
Philadelphia, PA 1,047,000 Philadelphia, PA 1,823,800 Philadelphia, PA 2,071,600
Brooklyn, NY 806,300 Detroit, MI 993,100 Los Angeles, CA 1,970,400
St. Louis, MO 451,800 Cleveland, OH 796,800 Detroit, MI 1,849,600
Boston, MA 448,500 St. Louis, MO 772,900 Baltimore, MD 949,700
Baltimore, MD 434,400 Boston, MA 748,000 Cleveland, OH 914,800
San Francisco, CA 299,000 Baltimore, MD 733,800 St. Louis, MO 856,800
Cincinnati, OH 296,900 Pittsburgh, PA 588,300 Washington, DC 802,200
Cleveland, OH 262,400 Los Angeles, CA 576,700 Boston, MA 801,400
Buffalo, NY 255,700 Buffalo, NY 506,800 San Francisco, CA 775,400
New Orleans, LA 242,000 San Francisco, CA 506,700 Pittsburgh, PA 676,800
Pittsburgh, PA 238,600 Milwaukee, WI 457,100 Milwaukee, WI 637,400
Washington, DC 230,400 Washington, DC 437,600 Houston, TX 596,200
Detroit, MI 205,900 Newark, NJ 414,500 Buffalo, NY 580,100
SOURCE: Campbel Gibson, Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United
States, 1790–1990. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population Division, Working Paper
No. 27, June 1997 (1998).
Population Churning and Immigration

We have covered several features associated with urbanization in the United States.
One of the most distinctive is the phenomenon of population turnover, or churning,
which for a time was quite exaggerated here compared to other countries. From the
mid-1800s to 1900s, American cities functioned as giant magnets that attracted immi-
grants from all over the world. Prior to the 1800s, most people came from the British
Isles or as slaves captured from Africa. After 1830, many more arrived from Germany,
Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe, and China. Between 1800 and 1925, over
40 million immigrants entered the United States. Seventeen million arrived during the
period between 1846 and 1900 alone (Vance, 1990:359).
These figures alone cannot capture the way cities functioned as entry points for
people. In effect, cities such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston pro-
cessed vast numbers of immigrants from Europe and elsewhere, orienting them to
life in America before many made their way into the hinterland. At this time the in-
ternal demographic differentiation of cities took on the characteristics commonly as-
sociated with their residential patterns, namely, mosaics of little worlds comprising
ethnic enclaves of immigrants. The robustness of cultural life found there inspired
succeeding generations of urban sociologists in their studies.
During the period of urban expansion, population churned throughout the large
cities. By one conservative estimate, half of the residents moved each decade only to be
replaced by still more immigrants (Monkkonen, 1989). A study of Boston in the year
1890, for example, revealed that with a total population of approximately 450,000
people, at least 600,000 had moved in a decade before, while somewhat more than
500,000 had moved out. In short, the population size of cities during the formative
period of expansion is a static figure that disguises the massive movement of people
into and out of those cities.
One way to appreciate population churning is to consider the economic and polit-
ical opportunities created by the phenomenon. Each new immigrant had to be
processed by federal, state, and local officials, which meant more government jobs.
School teachers were in constant demand, as were settlement house workers, religious
functionaries, and the many specialized businesses that catered to the needs of arrivals
from foreign lands. City economies thrived not only because of the influx of popula-
tion but also because it turned over so frequently, making the same services necessary
to new people with similar needs as previous arrivals. Above all, the rapid increase in
population provided U.S. industry not only with much needed labor power but also
with consumers who could use the products being turned out by the factories. Export
trade during this period of U.S. history was not as important as the growing domestic
market of consumers. In a subsequent chapter, we will take a closer look at the impor-
tance of immigration to American cities. Since the 1980s, a new round of significant
immigration, this time from Latin America and Asia, has transformed American urban
regions again, in the suburbs as well as the cities. Like the period of rapid industrializa-
tion we just discussed, the contemporary phase is also tied to economic needs, but this
time it is aimed at feeding the demands of both high-tech industries on the one hand,
and minimum wage services on the other. As we shall see, areas that received immi-
grants between 1970 and 2000 experienced economic growth while those that did not
declined.
Population influx had a dramatic effect on the internal configuration of cities.
Owners of buildings soon discovered that the voracious demand for housing could be
met by converting structures to rental units. Later, new buildings called tenements
were constructed specifically for rental use. These buildings were designed to squeeze
together as many families as possible. The increased density made public health crises
common. It also increased the risk of fire. On October 18, 1871, for example, the city
of Chicago was almost destroyed by a single fire. Other fires at the turn of the century
devastated cities such as Boston and San Francisco. Yet the escalating demand for
housing also afforded handsome profits to owners of tenements. According to one es-
timate, by 1890 as much as 77 percent of all city dwellers were renters, and the annual
returns on rentals could be as high as 40 percent (Glaab and Brown, 1967:160).
From our present vantage point, it is simply impossible to grasp the kinds of con-
ditions immigrants lived in during the late 1800s in American cities. The writer Luc
Sante published a meticulously researched and now classic book on Manhattan dur-
ing this time, Low Life (1991). Box 5.2 outlines the basic features of these tenements
and the astonishing population density and primitive living conditions that charac-
terized them.
The Role of Technology: Building Innovations and Urban Transport

During the 1800s, the spatial organization of the city changed as new forms of building
introduced a larger scale to the physical environment, aided greatly by several innova-
tions in construction. The balloon-frame house replaced heavy timber construction in
the 1830s and made it possible for building to proceed more rapidly and with greater
quantity than in the past. In 1848, James Bogardus introduced the use of cast-iron
columns and weight-bearing walls supporting the structure of nonresidential buildings,
which eliminated the need for heavy masonry construction and opened the internal
spaces of buildings so that factories and warehouses could maximize their unimpeded
use of floor space. Elisha Otis invented the elevator, and by 1880 its widespread use en-
abled taller buildings to work more efficiently. Finally, in 1884 William L. Jenny
erected the first skyscraper, the ten-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago, which
was also the “first building with a fully iron structure carrying the weight of the edifice”
(Vance, 1990:471). The city of skyscrapers was not far away.
Tall building construction, unimpeded floor space allowing for the efficient place-
ment of machinery, and the remarkable innovation of the elevator transformed the city
Box 5.2
Tenement Living in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Manhattan
“The typical tenement of the late 19th century consisted of two buildings, front
and rear, and most popularly known as the double-decker. The front structure mea-
sured 25 feet by 50, the rear was 25 feet, and they were separated by a 25 ft.
court. . . . The interior rooms of the front house got no light or air at all, and nei-
ther did the back rooms of the rear, since that structure generally abutted on its
counterpart across the block. . . . Below were two subterranean levels, both fully in-
habited: basements, thought to be comparable to the upper stories since they lay
partly above the ground, and cellers, completely submerged, airless and lightless. In
1864 there were 15,224 such populated cellers. Cellers were the lowest rung of
habitation, but this did not prevent landlords from commanding princely sums for
them, as much as $200 per month.”
Within these confines horrific unsanitary conditions prevailed leading to diseases
of all kinds and, by today’s standards anywhere, alarmingly high infant mortality
rates. Fires were also common and, due to the tinderbox nature of construction,
tenements that caught on fire burned rapidly and trapped their inhabitants within.
“The density of population is difficult to imagine by present day standards. . . .
There were no residential structures more than seven or eight stories high, and the
average was four stories, many of these floors inhabited by a single-family. In 1872,
for example, the 17th Ward, bounded by 14th street on the north, Avenue B on the
east, Rivington Street on the south, and the Bowery and Fourth Avenue on the west,
held 1/40th of Manhattan’s total area but 1/10th of its population.”
It housed a population equal to that of Richmond, Virginia, and greater than
that of Cleveland.
“The successive waves of immigrants from Europe had brought so many people,
particularly in the last 20 years of the 19th century, and had dumped them in such
dire conditions, that as many as four or five families were routinely housed in apart-
ments intended for one. Yet even these could count themselves as provisionally for-
tunate. Less so were the numbers of homeless, dispossessed, or those who had never
found one, who were legion.”
SOURCE: Excerpted from Luc Sante, Low Life (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991), 30, 32.
into an arena of concentrated industry during the last half of the nineteenth century.
Mobility of the workforce became a paramount concern at this time. The need for
mass transport was met by a series of innovations, starting with the horse-drawn om-
nibus that carried twelve to twenty passengers (Glaab and Brown, 1967:147). By the
1850s, these were replaced by the horse-drawn railway car, which not only facilitated
the movement of people into and out of the “downtown” districts but also provided the
means by which the middle class could suburbanize (Warner, 1962). In the 1870s,
the horse was finally replaced by the steam-powered locomotive. By 1881 the elevated
lines, or “Els,” of New York City were carrying 175,000 passengers a day!
Surpassing all these advances, a major breakthrough occurred in the 1870s, when
Nikola Tesla’s discoveries on alternating current were applied to the production of
electrical power. The dynamo replaced the battery, and electric trains and trolleys
were perfected. Electrification made possible the extensive, nonpolluting trolley sys-
tem and the underground subway train. This change was remarkable. As Glaab and
Brown observe, “In 1890, 69.7 percent of the total trackage in cities was operated by
horses; by 1902 this figure had declined to 1.1 percent, while electric power was used
on 97 percent of the mileage” (1967:148). The result of all these transformations
was the 24–7 city with the diurnal rhythm of city life—masses of workers converging
on business districts in the morning, only to disperse at day’s end with the same
great spurt aided by efficient and safe mass transit. By the 1920s, the United States
had successfully integrated millions of immigrants from over one hundred countries
into an industrial labor force. Its large cities were all built and humming with activ-
ity. Industrialization and urbanization had not only settled the frontier but led the
country itself to a place among the world’s powers.
THE RISE OF THE METROPOLIS: 1920 TO 1960

During the period of urban expansion, economic interests located within cities com-
peted with one another and land development in the West made people wealthy. This
stage ended as individual entrepreneurs and small businesses were gobbled up by large
corporations, often located in different cities or even states. The phase of competitive
capitalism slowly gave way to a new era, that of monopoly capitalism. In turn, cities
grew progressively larger.
City building slowed down considerably in the United States in the 1900s fol-
lowing a series of economic depressions that would culminate in the Great Depres-
sion of the late 1920s. Economic activity and urban growth picked up again in the
1930s as government reforms aided economic recovery and the United States mobi-
lized for another world war in the 1940s. During the metropolitan period, cities not
only grew larger but also spread out beyond the political boundaries of their local
governments. New areas of development became, in turn, new cities; in many cases,
urbanization simply engulfed the smaller towns adjacent to the large cities through a
region-wide process of suburbanization.
In the metropolitan period, it was becoming necessary to think about the urban
phenomenon less in terms of the large city and more in terms of a region consisting of
a mix of residential, work, recreational, and shopping places. The U.S. Department of
the Census introduced the term Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA—see
Chapter 1) to account for the regional nature of development. Large central cities
THE RISE OF THE METROPOLIS: 1920 TO 1960 115
such as New York and Detroit also assumed vast economic importance far beyond
their borders because of the businesses that were centered there—finance and cars, re-
spectively. This conjunction of spatial reach and economic might gave the city a new
name: the “metropolis” or “mother city.” Visions of the immense city outgrowing its
boundaries began to appear in many countries. The German film Metropolis is one
such example. Cities such as Tokyo, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, and
Calcutta all reached an unprecedented scale of size and population.
The metropolitan pattern of increasing size and geographical territory became
characteristic of many cities in the United States. Following the Great Depression, ur-
ban scientists became interested in the phenomenon of the metropolitan region, and
many studies were carried out to discover its social, political, spatial, and economic
characteristics (McKenzie, 1933; Schnore, 1957; Bollens and Schmandt, 1965). Re-
search revealed that two processes contributed most to regional growth: greater differ-
entiation of the system of cities, expressed as changes in spatial, functional, and
demographic differentiation; and the process of suburbanization.
Spatial, Functional, and Demographic Differentiation of the City

Metropolitan development and change do not occur because of technological factors
alone but are also dependent on political and cultural relations. Economic activities,
for example, require a workforce and certain community services, such as adequate
schooling and health care, for businesses and their labor pools to survive over time.
When there is a proper mesh between the human tissue of family and community
life and associated economic activities requiring particular skill levels, both busi-
nesses and neighborhoods prosper. The sociospatial perspective emphasizes the fact
that the relations among the economy, political structure, and culture are reciprocal.
Accommodations between the social fabric of community life and the needs of
business produced the early factory towns, such as Burlington, Vermont, and Birm-
ingham, Alabama, during the early period of family capitalism. One characteristic of
this phase was that sources of employment and the labor pool were close together and
both were tied to the general fate of the city itself. As the structure of capitalism
changed in the 1930s, this equilibrium was shattered, and upheavals in the commu-
nity paralleled those in business. Neighborhood relations changed when people were
thrown out of work after plants closed or businesses altered their skill needs. New de-
mands were placed on school systems, city budgets, and families to aid in the adjust-
ment. In many cases, the success or failure of new ways of doing business depended
on how well the community, local government, and families adapted to change. Thus,
while economic alterations affect the social fabric, the latter in turn can affect the
well-being of the local economy.
Consequently, each time new economic priorities are put in place, they affect the
composition of territory and alter community life. The social organization of a par-
ticular place—the way it is organized according to locational choices of business, the
scale of community, the flows of commuters, definitions of city service districts, the
pace and structure of family life, and so on—is affected by the reciprocal relation be-
tween the local economy and the social fabric. In this chapter, we will discuss the
changes brought about by the Depression restructuring of the 1930s. They involve a
process of horizontal integration of business activity coupled with metropolitan re-
gional expansion. In the next chapter, we will consider equally important changes
that have occurred since 1960.
Changes in Spatial Differentiation

Following the Great Depression, the economic system of the United States changed
from a comparatively competitive form of industrial capitalism with a relatively large
number of firms in each industry to a concentrated form called “monopoly capital-
ism” (Baran and Sweezy, 1966), where ownership was consolidated in a few hands.
One distinguishing characteristic of the new form was the growth of monopolistic
(one firm) or oligopolistic (a select few firms) control of major industries. For exam-
ple, automobile production prior to the 1930s involved a host of firms such as Stude-
baker, Hudson, Tucker, and De Soto, along with Ford, Pontiac, and Chrysler. These
companies were scattered across much of the United States, and their fates were often
intertwined with specific cities and communities. After the 1930s, production of auto-
mobiles was essentially in the hands of the Big Four—General Motors, Ford, Chrysler,
and American Motors (today it’s down to the first three). While these companies also
maintained branch plants across the country, their operations were national in scope
and their headquarters were no longer tied to the places where they had their major
factories. The Detroit area in particular became the headquarters for much of the auto
industry, and decisions made there affected towns across the country. This change in
the horizontal integration of large businesses to a more dispersed pattern, coupled
with greater concentration of ownership, was also repeated in other industries, includ-
ing steel, the production of consumer durables (such as electrical appliances), and even
the consolidation of retailing outlets by giant department stores following branch mar-
keting schemes (such as Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward).
The changes in the scale of economic organization had spatial effects, especially
on local community life, and several classic sociological studies documented them
(Vidich and Bensman, 1960; Lynd and Lynd, 1937). Concentration of wealth and
ownership led to greater horizontal integration of business activities and changes in
the spatial relations among community, work, and region. That is, prior to the De-
pression, most companies had all their functions located together and generally in the
same city. These firms were replaced by companies with divisions in any number of
locations, and they used dispersal in space to their advantage to cut costs, especially la-
bor costs. For example, a large company that was part of an oligopoly in one industry
might have its headquarters in a center such as New York, where it would be close to
the headquarters of the other oligopolists in the same industry. It would also be close
to banking and related services necessary to the command-and-control function of
business administration. Its specialized needs would stimulate the local community to
supply laborers with adequate training for the jobs that were created. This same firm
might have a branch plant for production located in Newark, New Jersey, a central
distribution facility in Philadelphia, and so on, each with its own impact on the local
community and labor force. Such a pattern of related functional differentiation and
spatial or horizontal integration was replicated in many industries.
Changes in Functional Differentiation

As a consequence, after 1930, a new, functionally differentiated system of urban places
had emerged in the United States; that is, different cities were the homes of different as-
pects of industry or commerce. Instead of competing with one another, as was the case
during the previous period of competitive capitalism discussed in Chapter 3, local capi-
tal was now organized and integrated by a national system of concentrated wealth. This
pattern was not a product of the city itself but was attributable to the powers of institu-
tions and social actors whose activities were deployed within the cities that were linked
to the national corporations producing most of the country’s wealth. Thus, horizontal
integration and functional differentiation were two related outcomes in the restructur-
ing of social organization after the 1930s. We call this interlinked complex of function-
ally differentiated activities located within urban places a system of cities (McKenzie,
1933; Berry, 1972; Bourne and Simmons, 1978). In studying this system, it is always
important to keep in mind that functional differentiation is a feature of the particular
complex of economic activities that are located within a city rather than a characteristic
of the city itself. Furthermore, the diverse activities across the nation are horizontally in-
tegrated by large corporations that possess “command-and-control” headquarters.
Box 5.3 illustrates the pattern of functional specialization for the largest U.S.
cities. We can see that virtually all cities had substantial sectors of service employment.
Not surprisingly, Albany, New York, is functionally specialized in government activity.
In contrast, Detroit, Michigan, retains a functional specialization in manufacturing.
Some cities, such as Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Seattle, also have significant manu-
facturing sectors despite a large service sector. A more detailed study of these differ-
ences would require exploring the kinds of businesses that comprise each sector within
each city. Thus, while Boston seems functionally specialized in services, we might also
wish to know what kinds of services are provided and their respective shares of the to-
tal. In addition, we might also ask just how many headquarters are located in that city
in order to place Boston within the hierarchy of command-and-control centers. In
short, variation in the breakdown of employment among the sectors of the economy
within cities provides a great deal of information on how local, national, and global
business activities concentrate in particular places.
Box 5.3
Functions of Selected U.S. Cities
Government Entertainment /
Education Government and Education Manufacturing Recreation
Ann Arbor, MI Albany, NY Austin, TX Birmingham, AL Atlantic City, NJ
Athens, GA Carson City, NV Baton Rouge, LA Buffalo, NY Fort Lauderdale, FL
Berkeley, CA Denver, CO Columbia, SC Cleveland, OH Las Vegas, NV
Bloomington, IN Harrisburg, PA Columbus, OH Detroit, MI Los Angeles, CA
Boulder, CO Indianapolis, IN Des Moines, IA Evansville, IN Miami Beach, FL
Champaign, IL Lansing, MI Lincoln, NB Gary, IN New Orleans, LA
Gainesville, FL Raleigh, NC Madison, WI Milwaukee, WI Las Vegas, NV
Knoxville, TN Sacremento, CA Oklahoma City, OK Newark, NJ Reno, NV
Tempe, AZ Springfield, IL Pittsburg, PA Vail, CO
Oxford, MS Jackson, MS Toledo, OH
By the 1960s the U.S. urban system consisted of a select group of large cities
with populations ranging from several hundred thousand to over 7 million. This
pattern represents balanced urbanization that is characteristic of the older industrial-
ized countries such as England (see Chapter 11 for a contrast with less developed
countries). Several studies have documented the structure of the urban system in the
United States (Pred, 1973; Chase-Dunn, 1985). It is arranged across two different
dimensions. On the one hand, cities seem to be distinguished by concentration of
business in either manufacturing or services, with the larger cities less specialized.
On the other hand, there is specialization in finances or commerce. Furthermore,
from 1950 to 1970, the functional specialization of the cities in the U.S. system re-
mained relatively stable (South and Poston, 1982). Cities such as New York, San
Francisco, Chicago, and Atlanta, for example, were diverse areas, while cities such as
Baltimore, Detroit, and Los Angeles were more concentrated in manufacturing, and
Portland, Oregon, Kansas City, and Minneapolis specialized in financial activities
and commerce. These specializations and rankings are somewhat different today, as
we will see in the next chapter. However, until at least the 1970s they characterized
an urban system that reflected the increasing functional integration of the emergent
national economy. Until the 1970s they also showed that important business activity
remained concentrated within central cities. That is no longer as true today.
The immense economic changes bringing about the concentration of capital in
large cities were only one aspect of the metropolitan era. As central cities prospered,
they attracted talented people from all over the nation. Metropolises became centers
of culture and political power as well. They were the sites of important museums,
universities, and symphony orchestras. They housed art movements and literary re-
vivals. With their immense populations, they also wielded great political power. In
many cases, such as Chicago and New York City, carrying the state in a presidential
election depended, in effect, on carrying the city. Much of this confluence of eco-
nomic, political, and cultural centrality was to change rapidly beginning with the
1960s (see next chapter). But perhaps the best example of the world-class metropolis
during the period prior to this is New York City (see Box 5.4).
Box 5.4
New York City in the Metropolitan Period
By the time of the Civil War, New York City was already the country’s most popu-
lous city and its banking capital. By the 1920s, New York had replaced London as
the financial center of the globe. Its great skyscrapers, such as the Empire State and
Chrysler buildings; its museums and cultural institutions, including Tin Pan Alley
(Twenty-eighth Street) and Broadway theaters; and its universities, made New York
the cultural and intellectual center of the United States as well. At this time, the
New York Yankees were the best team in baseball and arguably the best team ever.
Their home run hitter, Babe Ruth, was so popular that the owner, “Beer Baron” Ja-
cob Rupert, decided to build a large stadium to showcase the team (Allen, 1990).
Yankee Stadium, or “the house that Ruth built,” with over a 60,000 seating capac-
ity, was constructed in the Bronx and instantly sold out for many of its games.
By 1930 New York already had over 7 million people, a figure that is slightly less
than the population today. The Depression hit the city especially hard. Although
many people suffered and manufacturing began its unimpeded decline, the city en-
joyed a renaissance under the mayorship of Fiorello La Guardia. An outstanding pro-
gressive leader, La Guardia used government to get things done. Parks were cleaned
up and renovated, new highways were constructed, the subway system was consoli-
dated and improved, and new housing and commercial construction were promoted.
La Guardia built the first international airport for New York (now named after him).
His administration peaked with the spectacular New York World’s Fair from 1939 to
1940, which was visited by almost 45 million people (Allen, 1990:280).
During the 1950s, New York City became the center for corporate headquarters,
if not the monopoly capital center for the globe. Beginning in 1952 with the con-
struction of Lever House on Park Avenue, the new, international-style office build-
ing took over the skyline with its glass facades and square, flat roof. Midtown
became a mass of high-rise corporate towers. At this time the New York School of
Art, including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, assumed
the global standard for modern art, and the city became the culture capital of the
continues
Box 5.4 continued
world (Walloch, 1988). Arturo Toscanini, one of the greatest orchestra conductors,
came to live in the city. The NBC Symphony Orchestra was created just for him,
and he appeared on television. The new invention, by the way, had its program-
ming centered in New York City, where all the network headquarters resided. By
1960, when the metropolitan period began its decline, there was still no more dy-
namic, exciting, culturally stimulating, and prosperous place in the United States.
Changes in Demographic Differentiation

Between 1930 and 1960, the complexion of metropolitan demographics changed.
As the metropolitan corporate economy kicked in following the Depression and
large cities fought for their functional niche in the world, corporations hired a grow-
ing number of white-collar professionals. Many more trained workers found em-
ployment in the sophisticated service industries that aided the activities of business
headquarters. A growing number of these new urbanites were highly educated and
well paid relative to the times. In the 1950s and 1960s, many of these corporate em-
ployees preferred to live in the city. A study by Leo F. Schnore (1963) in 1960 re-
vealed that metropolitan regions with comparatively newer core cities (those
reaching a population of 50,000 after 1920) had higher family incomes, levels of ed-
ucation, and percentages of white-collar employees in the central city than in the
suburban ring. This breakdown is no longer the rule today, as we will see in Chapter
6 when we consider the contemporary changes.
In other respects, central cities began to assume the dimensions of ethnic and racial
concentration that we find at present; that is, beginning with the 1950s, demographic
differentiation of the metropolitan population began to take on the sharp racial distinc-
tions that are characteristic today. Writing in the 1960s, Bollens and Schmandt remark:
Within the metropolitan area itself, the ethnic colonies are concentrated largely
in the central city. . . . Chicago, an urban complex of many nationality groups,
furnishes a typical example. The latest census shows that of the approximately
600,000 foreign born living in the SMSA, 73 percent reside in the central city.
(1965:96)
Bollens and Schmandt add about black Americans at the time that:
The geographical segregation or distribution of ethnic settlements is even more

pronounced when the non-white migrants, predominantly Negroes, are consid-
ered. . . . As the non-whites have migrated to urban places, they have tended to
gravitate into the central cities of metropolitan areas. By 1960 over one-half of
the non-white population lived in such communities, a gain of 63 percent over
1950. Among the whites, on the other hand, there has been a continual shift
from the central cities to suburbs with the result that in 1960, 52 percent of the
whites in the 212 SMSAs lived outside the central cities compared to 22 percent
of the non-white. (1965:97)
The migration of blacks from the South involved a mass exodus. Millions left in
the 1950s and 1960s. By the time of the 1960 census, only half the black population
still resided in the South. Several factors were responsible, including the extensive
use of the mechanical cotton picker by the 1940s and the phasing out of the share-
cropper system in the Deep South. Many black Americans went north, west, and
east, attracted by the possibility of jobs in the newly booming military industries.
Most of these migrants settled in the central cities. Returning to the example of
Chicago, Nicholas Lemann notes:
During the 1940s, the black population of Chicago increased by 77 percent,

from 278,000 to 492,000. In the 1950s, it grew by another 65 percent, to
813,000; at one point 2,200 black people were moving to Chicago every week.
By 1960, Chicago had more than half a million more black residents than it had
had twenty years earlier, and black migrants from the South were still coming in
tremendous numbers. (1991b:70)
The extensive changes in urban form brought about during the metropolitan
period led the way to the end of this era as well. By the early 1960s the movement of
white families from the central city to the suburbs was well underway, and invest-
ment in areas outside of the central city paved the way for the creation of the multi-
centered urban region. Although the central cities would remain the focus of
economic and manufacturing activity for another decade or two, their populations
were already undergoing a remarkable transformation. Many central cities developed
extensive ethnic and minority communities and by the end of the century would be
more diverse than they had been a hundred years earlier. Increasingly the cities
would become the home of ethnic communities and the white working class, while
the white middle class would dominate the suburban areas. The crucial factor in all
of this is the process of suburbanization, which is also responsible for the creation of
the multicentered urban region.
KEY CONCEPTS
mercantile capitalism / industrial capitalism
monopoly capitalism / global capitalism
colonial cities / colonial dependency
mercantile cities
population churning
immigration
economic organization
spatial differentiation
functional specialization
1. How does urbanization in the United States differ from that of other countries
discussed in Chapter 2? Identify three specific differences and explain their signifi-
cance for urban development in the United States.
2. The legacies of colonialism were important for later urban development in the
United States. What are the legacies of colonialism, and how have these influenced
the development of American cities?
3. Industrial development led to the rapid growth of cities at the end of the nine-
teenth century. What are some of the social problems that resulted from this rapid
growth? How were these problems dealt with by local governments?
4. What are some of the technological developments that influenced the physical
structure of the industrial city at the end of the nineteenth century? How did these
technological developments alter the spatial structure of the industrial city?
5. How was metropolitan growth from 1920 to 1960 linked to changes in the na-
ture of U.S. capitalism? How did the urban system in the United States change dur-
ing this period? Why did metropolitan growth in this period result in increased
functional differentiation of cities in the U.S. urban system?
CHAPTER
6
SUBURBANIZATION, GLOBALIZATION,
AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE
MULTICENTERED REGION
A lthough the presence of suburbanization is not unusual for industrialized coun-

tries, the massive scale of this phenomenon in the United States is quite distinctive
among most societies, except for places like Australia and Canada. To be sure, many
nations have experienced growth beyond city borders, but in the United States this
has assumed the form of single-family home construction for the middle class on an
unprecedented scale. Suburbanization of the white middle class to single-family
homes accelerated its pace after the 1930s, and especially after World War II, but it
was always an important aspect of settlement patterns. As we learned in Chapter 2,
U.S. cities did not possess walls. Fringe area development occurred as the city itself
grew. In Europe, the walls were essentially torn down or overgrown so that these
countries also experienced suburbanization, but at a slower pace and with a different,
more working-class-oriented mix of population that was housed in multifamily or
apartment buildings.
Growth beyond city borders was a common feature of industrialized societies as
early as the nineteenth century. In fact, the desire to live outside the city despite com-
muting there for work seems to be as old as the city itself. Although we can point to
numerous writers who extol the virtues of city living, there has always been an ex-
pressed “anti-urban” bias in every urbanized civilization. The historian Kenneth Jack-
son offers the following excerpt from a letter written over 2,500 years ago as evidence
that suburbanization was a process coextensive with urbanization itself: “Our prop-
erty seems to me the most beautiful in the world. It is so close to Babylon that we en-
joy all the advantages of the city, and yet when we come home we are away from all
the noise and dirt” (1985:12).
But the presence of a yearning for the country among city dwellers or some anti-
urban bias cannot explain the immense scale of suburbanization that is characteristic
of the United States. There is a demand-side view of suburbanization that is instruc-
tive. By “demand side” we mean the production of a settlement space pattern through
123
124 6 : E M E R G E N C E O F T H E M U LT I C E N T E R E D R E G I O N
the desires of consumers and businesspeople acting in the marketplace. Demand-side

theories of urbanization make the assumption that settlement patterns are the result
of a large number of individuals interacting competitively in the market to satisfy de-
sires. Often they are simply aided by innovations in transportation technology. Many
geographers, such as John Borchert (1967), and urban sociologists, such as Amos
Hawley (1981), suggest this approach as an explanation of urban spatial patterns.
To an extent, the demand-side view helps us understand aspects of suburbaniza-
tion, especially the desire of U.S. residents for a home of their own. Homeownership
is a potent cultural symbol in our society. It provides people with their most impor-
tant social status. Owning a home also links with other aspects of consumerism that
express basic values in U.S. culture (Veblen, 1899).
There is also, however, a “supply-side” view to urban patterns. In this approach,
what counts in development is less the desires of individuals than the quests of spe-
cial interests, especially networks of businesspeople aided by allies in government
that promote development to acquire profits. Feagin sums up the supply-side view:
Traditionally most urban analysts and scholars have argued that everybody makes
cities, that first and foremost the choices and decisions by large groups of con-
sumers demanding housing and buildings lead to the distinctive ways cities are
built. But this is not accurate. Ordinary people often play “second fiddle.” In the
first instance, capitalist developers, bankers, industrial executives, and their busi-
ness and political allies build cities, although they often run into conflict with
rank-and-file urbanites over their actions. Cities under capitalism are structured
and built to maximize the profits of real estate capitalists and industrial corpora-
tions, not necessarily to provide decent and livable environments for all urban
residents. (1983:8)
The history of suburbanization in the United States is a protracted story of bold

quests to acquire wealth through the development of fringe area land and individual or
group pursuits of a residential vision that would solve the problems of city living. In
other words, an account of this phenomenon must consider supply-side and demand-
side factors as intertwined.
In the early 1800s, for example, industrialists who had recently acquired fortunes,
such as Leland Stanford in railroads, Andrew Carnegie in steel, and James B. Duke in
tobacco (the so-called nouveaux riches), sought symbols of their newfound wealth.
One practice was to purchase a palatial home with substantial space for manicured
lawns and at some distance from the city. According to Thorstein Veblen (1899), who
introduced the term conspicuous consumption, space in these suburban homes was
used as a symbol of “excess” and the ability to afford it. The fronts of houses were
given over to large, manicured lawns labored over by a team of hired gardeners, lawns
that were used for nothing except the growing of grass. The mansions themselves had
E M E R G E N C E O F T H E M U LT I C E N T E R E D R E G I O N 125
many more rooms than were needed to house family and servants. Guests could al-
ways be accommodated on the spot with their own individual bedroom; space was
simply held vacant. The backyards were devoted to “suburban” leisure—genteel
games such as croquet or badminton, lazing in lawn chairs, or simply walking in the
garden. Conspicuous consumption, pastoral delights, and the large, single-family
house with generous living space became for many Americans the suburban ideal.
This cultural value glorifying a particular space fed the economic aspects of demand
for homeownership outside the city. In Chapter 8, we will see that other metropolitan
lifestyles are also dependent on their own particular spaces for cultural expression.
Demand-side explanations for suburbanization often stress the importance of
transportation technology as its cause (see, for example, Jackson, 1985; Muller, 1981;
Hawley, 1981), with each innovation, such as the switch from commuter rail to auto-
mobile, signaling a new pattern of land use. Transportation modes, however, served
only as the means for residential suburban development; they were not the cause.
Transport technology was always used to further real estate developer schemes. The de-
mand-side view demonstrates that the desire for the suburban lifestyle may have been
active in the minds of urbanites because people emulated the rich and disliked the con-
fines of the large city. But dreams alone did not produce concrete spatial patterns.
Rather, suburbanization was generated by the supply-side activities of real estate entre-
preneurs and government subsidies responding to and feeding demand-side desires.
Early suburban development leapfrogged over the urban landscape. Suburban
housing was built as a separate town removed by several miles from city boundaries.
In the late 1800s, Westchester and Tuxedo Park outside New York City, Lake Forest
and Riverside outside Chicago, Hillsborough adjacent to San Francisco, Palos Verdes
near Los Angeles, Shaker Heights eight miles from Cleveland, and Roland Park out-
side Baltimore were all private developments built as towns. Most of these places ad-
vertised themselves as extolling suburban virtues, which at the time meant racial,
ethnic, and class exclusion in addition to low-density residential living. It was not
until the late 1940s that suburban development occurred on a mass scale. Hence, the
desire for racial, class, and religious exclusion also added to the complex of cultural
factors contributing to the desire to suburbanize.
But suburbanization in the United States was not just about developing housing.
The early deconcentration of industry followed the same pattern. In the 1800s, own-
ers of large businesses often moved all their operations outside the city by developing
a separate town. The classic study of such “satellite cities” was done by Graham Tay-
lor in 1915. Gary, Indiana, for example, was built on sand dunes at the base of Lake
Michigan by U.S. Steel in the 1880s. At about the same time, George Pullman
moved his railroad car business out of Chicago and built Pullman, Illinois, a few
miles away. In 1873 Singer Sewing Machine relocated from Manhattan to an exist-
ing city, Elizabeth, New Jersey, and by doing so converted it into a company town,
where the factory remained until 1982, when it closed due to foreign competition.
Taylor (1915) gives two main explanations for the creation of satellite cities,
which echo aspects of our sociospatial perspective. First, the new ventures represented
an important investment in real estate as well as an industrial relocation. More space
was needed for industrialized plants, hence the need to move out of the congested
central city. But the need for space was coupled with the acquisition of real estate.
Pullman, for example, expected to make as much money from the development of
land he owned in the new city as from the factory itself. Second, industrialists pulled
their plants out of cities because the latter were hotbeds of union activity. Workers in
any one plant were invariably in contact with workers in other plants and other in-
dustries. The city concentrated unions as well as people. During the sequential reces-
sions in the United States, beginning with the 1870s, strikes and worker activism
were especially frequent. The decentralization of industry was an important tool for
minimizing union influence, according to Taylor (see Chapter 7).
To be sure, transportation technology eventually played a profound role in subur-
banization. After the 1920s in particular, the movement of people to the suburbs was
aided greatly by the mass production and consumption of the automobile. Prior to
that time, regional metropolitan space was organized in a star-shaped form with the
greatest development situated along the fingers of rail corridors. The private automo-
bile enabled developers to work laterally and fill in the spaces between the mainline
tracks. In the 1920s, 23 million cars were registered in the United States, and that fig-
ure increased to 33 million ten years later. “By 1940, the U.S. auto registration rate ex-
ceeded 200 per 1000 population and the average number of cars per capita (which was
13 in 1920) had fallen to less than 5” (Muller, 1981:39).
Turn-of-the-century suburbanization played a great role in determining the pat-
terns of growth that followed during the years between 1920 and 1960. Trolley lines
and tract housing laid down in the previous period provided the material infrastruc-
ture, such as right-of-ways, sewers, and utility lines, for much of the urban growth
that was to follow. It is often suggested, for example, that Los Angeles looks the way it
does—spread out in a pattern of immense sprawl—because it was built during the
age of the automobile. Actually, the formative period of development for Los Angeles
took place prior to the invention of the auto. Los Angeles was a product of electrified
trolley lines and very active, aggressive real estate speculation schemes that capitalized
on the ease of home construction in the region (Crump, 1962). Today’s freeways in
Los Angeles simply follow the transit routes of the major trolley lines that once ex-
isted. The fact that the latter were pollution free should not be lost on the present
generation suffering from smog, nor should we forget Spencer Crump’s (1962) case
study showing how automobile, oil, and highway construction companies colluded to
sabotage the trolley car transit business.
The major thrust of suburbanization in the United States took place after 1920,
with a profound acceleration of growth after World War II. Truly it can be said that
present-day regional patterns of metropolitan development materialized during this
time. Prior to the 1920s, a suburban residence could be afforded only by the more
affluent; after 1940, suburbanization became a mass phenomenon. So far in this
chapter we have mentioned several supply-side factors contributing to decentraliza-
tion. On the demand side, we have indicated the profound cultural effect that the
style of life associated with affluent suburbia had on the tastes of urban individuals
and families. While many Americans may have desired to leave the city, few had the
means prior to World War II, especially because of the Great Depression. Here the
federal government became crucial in creating a mass housing market because its
policies promoted single-family homes, as the sociospatial approach suggests.
In the 1930s, the Depression ravaged the home construction industry. Because a
principal asset of banks was (and still is) home mortgages, this economic downslide
also had a devastating impact on the banking industry. In one estimate, housing val-
ues declined by 20 percent between 1926 and 1932; by 1933 at least half of all home
mortgages were in default (Jackson, 1985:191). The Great Depression altered the
nature of U.S. capitalism during this time because the federal government changed
from an indirect participant in the economy to a direct subsidizer of business. In the
1930s, Washington, D.C., attempted a rescue of the housing industry as a means of
saving the banks.
In 1934 Congress passed the National Housing Act, which established the Federal
Housing Authority (FHA). Briefly put, for qualified houses, the federal government
insured buyers’ mortgages. For banks, this took the risk out of private loans. It also
pumped needed capital into the housing industry. Foreclosures went from 250,000 in
1932 to 18,000 by 1951 (Jackson, 1985:203). The act also established the Federal
National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), which facilitated the transfer of funds
by banks across geographical and political boundaries in the United States. The Fan-
nie Mae program and later Ginnie Mae (Government National Mortgage Associa-
tion) helped restructure the banking community and subsidized mortgage lending on
a mass scale.
Subsequent housing acts were passed in 1937 and 1941. Along with earlier initia-
tives, they established the homeowner’s tax subsidy. Homeowners could now deduct the
interest paid on mortgages from their taxes. This subsidy quite literally made it cheaper
to own a home than to rent. Along with this tax subsidy, the Serviceman’s Readjust-
ment Act of 1944 had the most direct effects on housing. As the war was ending, Con-
gress pledged to support returning servicemen with a package of welfare measures
including subsidized education. One provision of this act established the Veterans Ad-
ministration (VA) guaranteed loan program. Under the plan, GIs could purchase homes
with no money down. The mass exodus to suburbia was now guaranteed.
So we see that mass demand for housing was primed by government programs.
Most new construction took place in the suburbs. More than 16 million returning
servicemen were eligible for benefits under the 1944 act, and a mass market was cre-
ated. At this time, and due expressly to the war effort, the United States had perfected
mass-production assembly-line techniques that could manufacture vast quantities of

goods. All types of consumer durables, including cars, washing machines, vacuum
cleaners, toasters, dishwashers, refrigerators, and air conditioners, were being produced
on an immense scale after the 1940s. Suburban housing developments featured the
new goods, and in the 1950s all aspects of mass production—housing, consumer
durables, automobiles—combined to create the characteristic view of suburbia as the
epitome of the consumer society. This political, economic, and cultural conjuncture
that led to a society domestically producing and consuming mass quantities of goods
with a large population engaged in assembly-line factory work and active union mem-
bership is called Fordism, and it is a characteristic of monopoly capitalism. As we will
see in the next chapter, under global capitalism the structure of Fordism broke apart as
manufacturing activity drained from the United States to other countries.
The beneficiaries of suburbanization were overwhelmingly white. From 1940 to
1960, in two decades, the majority of the white child-rearing middle class left the
central cities for the suburbs. In the previous section, we saw that this coincided with
a period of mass black migration out of the South. This population transfer of whites
and blacks is sometimes referred to as “white flight.” Experts on the topic indicate
that it is largely a product of the pull factors identified earlier (Frey, 1979). That is,
whites did not leave large cities because blacks were moving in or the quality of life
was declining; rather, they left because the quality of life was much better in the sub-
urbs and because government programs subsidized them. Racial factors, according to
the demographer William Frey (1979), affected less the decision to move than the
destination of choice; that is, whites preferred to move to exclusively white areas in
the suburbs.
Racism played a more overt role in preventing African Americans from moving
to the suburbs themselves. Few were able to make that change in status. Real estate
agents blocked black people from buying homes in white areas and banks often de-
nied them mortgages. The results were a dramatic increase in segregation for cities
and a concentration of white people in the suburbs beyond national population pro-
portions. Those blacks who did suburbanize could find housing only in other black
areas outside the city. The color barrier was strictly enforced by suburban developers.
Box 6.1, which contains a case study of Levittown in Long Island, New York, illus-
trates both the mass phenomenon of suburbanization after World War II and the
racial exclusion on which it was based.
Since 1970, population growth has been greater for metropolitan areas outside city
centers rather than inside them, which reverses the traditional urbanization process of
population concentration. This process is known as population deconcentration. Com-
menting on the 1980 census when the trend was first recognized, a demographer
noted, “For the first time in well over 100 years, there was virtually no major nation-
wide population trend in the direction of concentration” (Long, 1981:11). For a brief
time in the 1970s, even small incorporated cities lying outside the major metropolitan
Box 6.1
Profile of 1950s Levittown, Long Island
Prior to the 1940s, most homes were custom built or were renovated farmhouses,
and most of this suburban housing remained relatively expensive (Gottdiener,
1977). After the war, voracious demand supported by federal government programs
made it possible to build housing in large quantities, but construction techniques
had not quite been perfected to build single-family homes that were affordable.
Abraham Levitt and Sons was one of the nation’s largest builders in the 1940s. Work
on many military construction projects had given the company the experience nec-
essary to build inexpensive housing on a mass basis. Levitt built the first large-scale,
affordable suburban housing development on several thousand acres of converted
potato farms in the town of Hempstead on Long Island, adjacent to New York City:
After bulldozing the land and removing the trees, trucks carefully dropped off
building materials at precise 60-foot intervals. Each house was built on a concrete
slab (no cellar); the floors were of asphalt and the walls of composition rock-
board. . . . The construction process itself was divided into 27 distinct steps. . . .
Crews were trained to do one job—one day the white-paint men, then the red-
paint men, then the tile layers. Every possible part, and especially the most diffi-
cult ones, was preassembled in central shops, whereas most builders did it on site.
Thus, the Levitts reduced the skilled component to 20–40 percent. . . . More than
thirty houses went up each day at the peak of production. (Jackson, 1985:234)
Levitt was not sure that government subsidies and the GI bill would prove effective
in supporting homeownership on a mass basis, so the first houses were offered only for
rent in 1947. Soon after, in 1949 and in response to overwhelming demand, they were
sold outright. The two-bedroom Cape Cod boxes initially cost $6,990. The commu-
nity, now called Levittown, eventually numbered over 17,000 houses and contained
more than 80,000 residents. Levitt’s organization feared that if they let in blacks, they
would run the risk of failing to sell their homes to the white majority. Consequently the
developer carefully screened prospective customers for race. Hence, the blue-collar com-
munity, which became a symbol for the postwar American Dream, was not integrated.
Unlike large-scale developments of today (as we will discuss in the next chapter),
early suburban projects were marketed with a full complement of community ameni-
ties. Builders were obligated to supply a community quality of life, not just housing.
Levittown came with nine swimming pools, sixty playgrounds, ten baseball dia-
monds, and seven “village greens,” or mini-mall centers, within the development
(Jackson, 1985).
During the next few years, Levitt and Sons built communities in Pennsylvania
and New Jersey. The modular construction process they innovated was duplicated
by builders all over the United States, and the mass construction of suburbia began.
centers grew faster than the large cities, although by the 1980s that rapid growth had
already subsided.
Other demographers are just as astounded by the changes of the last several de-
cades. According to Frey and Speare (1988), most of the trends prior to the 1960s
that characterized the U.S. population were altered and, in some cases, reversed dur-
ing the last twenty years. First, there has always been a progressive drift of people from
the East, Midwest, and South to the West. After 1960 this shift accelerated, produc-
ing rapid growth in the West. The South also grew remarkably during this period.
Second, after the 1970s the South gained more than the West, for the first time, in
net population growth. By 1980, the Sun Belt region of the West and South together
contained the majority of the nation’s population—a historical shift indeed!
Third, in the past large cities expanded faster than smaller ones. Since the 1970s
this process has been reversed, with growth rates in smaller cities outstripping those
of almost all larger ones. In 1970, for example, Phoenix was ranked eighteenth in the
country with a population of just over 500,000. By 1994 it was ranked ninth, having
grown by an incredible 60 percent. In contrast, with the exception of New York, all
large Midwest and East Coast cities lost population between 1970 and 1990. In the
most extreme case, Detroit lost a staggering 31.5 percent of its people.
Finally, the shift of metropolitan residents to suburbia accelerated during this
time. By 1970, in fact, more people lived in suburbia than in central cities. If, in
1920, we could say with truth that the United States had become an urbanized na-
tion, today we can say with equal confidence that the United States is dominated by
suburbanization. Between 1960 and 1990, the United States went from a society
dominated by large central cities in the Frost Belt to a nation with the bulk of its pop-
ulation living in the Sun Belt and in suburbia!
DEINDUSTRIALIZ ATION AND GLOBALIZ ATION:

PROCESSES THAT HAVE CHANGED BOTH
CITIES AND SUBURBS SINCE THE 1960S
Beginning with the 1960s, forces other than suburbanization emerged to work both
cities and suburbs for change. These added to the phenomenon of deconcentration.
On the one hand, the United States began to lose jobs to locations outside the coun-
try as labor sourcing led corporations to set up shop in countries where wages were
considerably lower and workers were considerably more docile than in America. This
process is known as deindustrialization and it has led over the decades to a massive
decline in manufacturing within the United States. On the other hand, national cor-
porations were bought out or went into partnership with giant multinational com-
panies affecting the behavior of industries and banks, which no longer saw America
as their natural home.
In the 1950s, the typical city was an industrial city. Factories filled the air with the
smoke of manufacturing activity. Workers in plants lived nearby in so-called blue-collar
G LO B A L I Z AT I O N A N D U N E V E N D E V E LO P M E N T 131
neighborhoods. Although predominantly white, this population was made up of many

ethnic groups—Italian, Irish, Jewish, Polish, Hungarian, German, and Scandinavian.
Everyday life was circumscribed by the factory routine for both women and men. A co-
ordinated exodus of workers from their homes converged on the plants in the morning,
while children ran off to neighborhood schools at about the same time. Schools pro-
vided vocational training for most boys and homemaker or secretarial skills for girls as a
means of fitting them into a working-class world with limited aspirations that few
thought would ever change. Several generations of working-class families grew to matu-
rity within this milieu.
By the 1980s, this pattern of everyday life had changed. Cities no longer were
dominated by manufacturing, and working-class family life based on predictable em-
ployment opportunities in manufacturing had largely disappeared, producing atten-
dant changes and crises in education and job training. The city of Pittsburgh, for
example, was once synonymous with steel. In 1930, over 32 percent of its workforce
was engaged in manufacturing. By 1980, only 14 percent of the labor force was em-
ployed in manufacturing, and steel production engaged only 5.5 percent. In contrast,
service employment had risen to 38 percent, thereby dominating the economy (Jezier-
ski, 1988). Pittsburgh had been transformed from an industrial to a nodal service city.
In the process, however, it lost 24 percent of its jobs and 37 percent of its population
between 1940 and 1980. Between 1980 and 1990, it lost an additional 12.8 percent of
its people. Cities have shifted from an economy dominated by manufacturing to one
that now specializes in services and retailing, but with a smaller employed labor force
and, in many cases, a smaller population than in the past (Frey and Speare, 1988:4).
In 1950 the proportion of total employment for manufacturing was 26 percent,
with the next largest sector, retailing and construction, accounting for 22.6 percent.
By the 1980s, the latter proportion was virtually unchanged, but total employment in
manufacturing dropped to 22 percent. The largest proportion of workers, or 24 per-
cent, was employed in so-called nodal services: transportation, finance, wholesaling,
business repair, insurance, and real estate. Cities shifted in thirty years from an econ-
omy dominated by manufacturing to one that specialized in services (Frey and Speare,
1988). For the largest cities, such as New York and Chicago, there is considerable evi-
dence that the sector of capital involved in national and global processes of financial
investing has taken over the downtown (Gottdiener, 1985; Sassen, 1991). Employ-
ment in the sector of finance capital alone has increased dramatically for the categories
of investing services, management consulting, legal services, accounting services, and
the like.
GLOBALIZ ATION AND UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT

As we have already discussed, employment growth was located principally in the ser-
vice sector, especially in nodal services that were provided to corporations and banks—
legal services, printing, business consulting, financial consulting, and related services
in communication and transportation. Early observers of this trend toward specializa-

tion in nodal services suggested that they would provide the core industry for eco-
nomic revitalization of cities following the profound decline in manufacturing
(Noyelle and Stanback, 1984; Sassen-Koob, 1984). It is now clear that no real renais-
sance has taken place. What has occurred is that robust activity in advanced services
has benefited a relatively small and select group of trained professionals who earn high
salaries while leading to modest employment in low-paying service and clerical jobs in
activities that aid the work of the highly paid core. The so-called service city actually
consists of two layers: (1) a core of nodal services forming the focus of internationally
important economic growth that employs highly trained professionals; and (2) a
second segment of relatively low-paid service workers who clean the buildings and
maintain the landscaped areas around the buildings that contain the command-and-
control industries and the relatively affluent professionals they employ. When dis-
cussing the effect of globalization on the new service profile of large central cities,
Sassen (1994) predicted that this obvious kind of social polarization would result.
This contrast between affluence and poverty, between “yuppie” professionals and the
working poor or undocumented laborers, seems to characterize many cities today.
This “dual city” has been the subject of some debate (Mollenkopf and Castells, 1991).
By the 1990s, with immense wealth generated in global finance capital, cities like
New York, London, and Tokyo, in particular, possessed an extreme kind of income
polarization with the ultra-rich, all connected to investment banking or stocks, and
the minimum-wage working poor living and working side by side. The current global
meltdown of stocks and financial instruments has done little to close this extreme so-
cial gap, and the job losses that have resulted from a decline in liquid wealth have
made the conditions of the working poor in the city much worse.
In addition, immense numbers of less affluent, immigrant, and marginalized
workers have created within the city a large, informal economy. The informal econ-
omy is defined as the combination of workers who are “off the books,” goods pro-
duced in unregulated factories with nonunionized and undocumented laborers,
goods and services produced and exchanged for barter (i.e., not cash but in kind),
and goods and services sold without regulation on the streets. The informal economy
in some countries often rivals the formal sector. Everywhere, this aspect of economic
activity has emerged as an increasingly important way in which people within urban
areas make a livelihood. One example of the informal economy is the illegal drug in-
dustry, which runs into the billions of dollars in sales and is an international opera-
tion. And in cities such as New York, illegal factories manufacture “faux” designer
fashion items, such as fake Rolex watches, and then use recent or undocumented im-
migrants to sell them on Manhattan street corners for a fraction of the genuine arti-
cle’s price. Even discounting the major effect of drug dealing, the informal economy
in large cities represents a formidable source of jobs and income (see Mingione,
1988). The informal economy is usually not discussed, and its presence clashes with
H O W D E I N D U S T R I A L I Z AT I O N A N D G LO B A L I Z AT I O N A F F E C T E D S U B U R B S 133
the legitimated image of large cities as centers for multinational business leaders
(Boer, 1990).
In sum, cities have changed remarkably since the 1960s. They include a larger
minority population, due in part to a growing percentage of immigrants. Except for
this group, population growth in the cities of the 1980s has been slow. Today’s large
cities possess a transformed economy that is more specialized in nodal services and
low-wage manufacturing, with a thriving informal economy of drug dealing and ille-
gal factories that employ immigrants. All of these economic and social processes fuel
a growing social disparity between the working poor, the underclass, new immigrants,
and street vendors on the one hand and affluent professionals on the other (see
Chapter 8).
HOW DEINDUSTRIALIZ ATION AND

GLOBALIZ ATION AFFEC TED SUBURBS
In the 1950s and 1960s, suburbs were considered places where urban professionals
who worked in the city bought homes to live in and raise a family. They were called
“bedroom communities” for this reason (Jackson, 1985). We now know that this
image merely represented an early view of such places. Since the 1960s, suburbs have
matured (Schnore, 1963). In many ways they have become diverse culturally, eco-
nomically, and politically, much like medium-size urban areas (Muller, 1981). Places
such as Tysons Corner, Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C.; Costa Mesa, Califor-
nia, beyond the boundaries of Los Angeles; and Dunwoody, Georgia, outside of At-
lanta, are all important and developed suburbs.
In 1970, the U.S. census noted for the first time that more people were living in
suburbs than in other settlement spaces. At that time 37.1 percent of the population
was suburban, compared with 31.5 percent that lived in the central city or 31.4 per-
cent in rural areas. By 1990 even more rural areas had been absorbed by suburban
growth, and the plurality of that population increased further. According to the fig-
ures, 46 percent of the 1990 population lived in suburbia, 40 percent in central cities,
and 14 percent in rural areas (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990). While virtually all
cities suffered from no or slow growth over the past four decades, suburban regions re-
main the most rapidly growing areas of the country.
The change to suburban dominance in population is reflected in comprehensive
statistics on economic activity. In many cases, suburbs have outpaced their adjacent
central cities in economic importance since the 1970s. Muller cites, in particular,
Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs (1981:19). In the 1980s, the suburbs outside
Philadelphia contained 63 percent of the entire region’s employment (i.e., including
the central city itself); 67 percent of all manufacturing jobs; 68 percent and 70 percent
of all wholesaling and retailing, respectively; and over 50 percent of all regional em-
ployment in financial, insurance, and business service sectors.
Suburban Social Characteristics

There is no typical suburb and, just as understandably, no unique suburban lifestyle
exists, although there is a typical suburban everyday life associated with single-home
ownership, automobile commutation, and low-density neighborhoods that differs
from life in the central city. Through much of the postwar era, it was assumed that
people who lived in the suburbs would commute to the downtown areas to work and
even to shop. In the 1960s and 1970s, human ecologists studied the employment-to-
residence ratio, which compared the number of jobs within a suburban community
with the number of persons in the labor force. Leo Schnore (1963) was able to cate-
gorize suburban communities as bedroom suburbs (perhaps the stereotypical suburb
of the era), service suburbs, mixed residential suburbs, and suburbs with more em-
ployment than residents. But over the last two decades, the employment patterns of
suburban residents have changed greatly. The majority of people who live in the sub-
urbs are now employed at jobs within the suburban region, not in the city. The com-
mute from the suburb to a downtown office has been replaced by the commute to a
job in a suburban office complex—or manufacturing plant or shopping mall. While
there are important differences among different types of suburban communities, most
now represent the mixed residential suburb.
In the main, lower-income as well as more affluent whites have found places to
live in the suburban region. Blacks, however, have found it difficult to suburbanize,
even to this day. They represent around 5 percent of the total suburban population
despite being 12 percent of the general population. Typically, black people suburban-
ize by moving to areas outside the central city that are directly adjacent to their city
neighborhoods (Muller, 1981). As we have seen, therefore, blacks are considerably
overrepresented in the central city and underrepresented in the suburbs relative to
their total population. In other countries that also have a racially mixed society, such
as Brazil, large cities such as Rio de Janeiro have the opposite pattern. There the blacks
and the poor live in shantytown suburbs, with the affluent ensconced in the city cen-
ter (see Chapter 11).
While whites have found suburbs open to them, the uniformity of housing prices
within each subdivision has resulted in graphic income segregation within suburban
regions. Wealthier suburbs in particular have been successful in keeping blacks and
the less affluent out of their areas through the home rule device of exclusionary zoning;
that is, local control over land use and building codes enables individual communities
to prohibit the building of low- or moderately priced housing. This perpetuates the
value of higher priced homes, thereby maintaining exclusivity. Years of such practices
have made suburban housing increasingly expensive, thus creating a housing shortage
in suburbia for first-time buyers.
In sum, suburban regions have taken on diverse socioeconomic characteristics.
For the white population, there is considerable diversity of community type, although
there are increasing class differences and a housing shortage due to the decreasing af-
fordability of moderately priced units. African Americans remain relatively excluded
from suburban living except in designated places. Hence, the vast suburban regions
are increasingly segregated by class and race. In its own way, this pattern replicates the
division of race and class within the central city. Thus, city problems of residential
segregation have been duplicated in the suburbs and are now regionwide.
Economic Deconcentration
For the suburbs, economic deconcentration due to deindustrialization since the
1960s has meant a combined process of both capturing new job growth and decen-
tralizing economic activities from the large central city, as well as the process of their
recentralization in minicenters within the suburban region. Let us consider the sepa-
rate economic dimensions of deconcentration.
Retailing. The total amount of all retailing in the United States is now dominated
by malls located in suburban realms of the metropolis. By the time of the 1970 cen-
sus, the suburban share of MSA sales passed the 50 percent mark for the fifteen largest
MSAs. According to Muller:
Steadily rising real incomes, fueled by the booming aerospace-led economy of the
middle and late sixties, created a virtually insatiable suburban demand for durable
consumer goods. With almost no pre-existing retail facilities in the burgeoning
outer suburbs, huge capital investments were easily attracted from life insurance
companies and other major financial institutions. Not surprisingly, regional shop-
ping centers quickly sprang up at the most accessible highway junction locations as
their builders strived to make them the focus of all local development. (1981:123)
Suburban shopping malls were so successful that their numbers increased more
than tenfold from approximately 2,000 in 1960 to over 20,000 in 1980. Over time
this success threatened central city shopping areas and bypassed them as the important
places to consume. Sizes of suburban retailing centers increased over time to malls and
supermalls. Houston’s Galleria complex, for example, is modeled after the Galeria of
Milan, Italy. It is several stories high and is built around an Olympic-size skating rink
that is open year-round, a feat of some proportions if you consider the warm, humid
climate of Houston. The Galleria has three large department stores, more than 200
smaller shops, four office towers, two hotels, over fifteen restaurants and cinemas,
nightclubs, and even a health club. Its seven-level parking facility has room for over
10,000 cars. Lately the name Galleria has become popular for malls in many other
places in the United States, and it usually connotes a large and expansive upscale mall.
This type of spectacular, fully enclosed space for shopping has begun to replace the
downtown streets of the central city department store district. As the success of malls
has advanced, the scale of their construction has increased. Recently the phenomenon
of “megamalls” has emerged as the new suburban focus of retailing. In the summer of
1992 a new, fully enclosed complex was constructed outside the city of Minneapolis
that is so large it has room at its center for a seven-acre miniversion of a famous Cali-
fornia theme park, Knotts Berry Farm. This “Mall of America,” as it is called, contains
2 million square feet of space and enough parking for thousands of cars. Central cities
cannot compete with such family attractions in immense suburban spaces.
Manufacturing
We have noted the progressive decline of manufacturing in the United States and its
devastating impact on central cities, which has ties to globalization. Over the years
suburban areas have changed their bedroom image in part by being the recipients of
many new manufacturing industries that have remained active. By the 1980s, the
percentage share of manufacturing for the suburban rings of most metropolitan areas
nationwide was over 50 percent. Boston and Pittsburgh, for example, have over 70
percent of their manufacturing located in the suburbs; Los Angeles, Detroit, San
Francisco, St. Louis, and Baltimore have over 60 percent located in the suburbs.
Suburban developers innovated a form of space called the “industrial park” that
is zoned entirely for business, especially manufacturing. Usually local towns or
county governments provide significant tax incentives, infrastructure, and other sub-
sidies to attract manufacturing. The presence of such attractive and inexpensive loca-
tions in suburbia is one factor in the progressive deconcentration of manufacturing.
Most recently suburbs have focused on attracting high-tech companies. Many, as
a result of active land-use planning, agglomerated into growth polse or “science parks.”
These are more specialized research and development centers that are often linked
with manufacturing and are located near university facilities. The most spectacular
example is Silicon Valley, adjacent to Stanford University in California. A corridor
stretching from the city of San Jose to Palo Alto makes up the spine of Silicon Valley
and contains over 800 factories that produce state-of-the-art electronics and com-
puter products. This complex is intimately connected to the research resources of
Stanford University, where the transistor was invented and where the largest electrical
engineering department is located.
While Silicon Valley remains the best known of the new spaces created by high-
tech industries, other examples of growth are Route 128 outside of Boston, the San
Diego–La Jolla complex associated with electronic medical technology innovators, the
Research Triangle complex located near the Duke and University of North Carolina
campuses, and the Iowa-to-Minnesota corridor of high-tech medical firms anchored
at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The area around Irvine, California, is
very typical of the new spaces created by high-tech industries. It is anchored by the
University of California at Irvine campus and stretches for miles across land that was
once used for ranching and farming. This region has been the subject of a study
(Kling, Olin, and Poster, 1991) arguing that a new social order has developed there
that surpasses the stereotype of suburban life and is based on consumerism, suburbia,
professional occupations, and an economic base of knowledge- or information-pro-
cessing industries. In Chapter 10, we will discuss the emergence of similar spaces lo-
cated in advanced industrial societies around the globe.
The significance of these high-tech growth poles is that they foster industrial de-
velopment that is completely independent of the central city. Because of their eco-
nomic success, they often become the principal places in the society that earn money
on the global market, thereby leading the country’s growth (see Storper and Walker,
1991). In the past, models of industrial development have placed the city in a domi-
nant role by referring to it as “the core,” with the suburbs described as “the periph-
ery.” Development of society meant nurturing city-based industry. In this model,
which better describes urban growth in the ’60s and ’70s, manufacturing was believed
to originate in the city and then migrate out to the suburbs. All evidence now rejects
this concept. The city is no longer privileged as the incubator of most industries, al-
though some new manufacturing, such as textiles and light manufacturing, may still
start there. Development begins just as frequently in the suburbs as in the cities, and
“suburbia is quickly identified as a major zone of industrial expansion in its own
right, in which self-generated growth has been primarily responsible for its current em-
inence” (Muller, 1981:143). Hence, the new patterns challenge the way people once
thought about economic development.
In sum, then, the central city has lost its role as the dominating node of a regional
economy. In many industries, important businesses are likely to locate in the suburbs
and economic development is now a metropolitan regional affair.
Office and Administrative Headquarters

Perhaps the most significant example of the increasing importance of mature suburbs
and, conversely, the decline of the central city is the progressive relocation of corpo-
rate headquarters to fringe areas. In the past, such headquarters were almost exclu-
sively located in the central city. Today this is much less the case, although many
headquarters remain in city centers. During the 1960s, New York City, for example,
was host to more than 130 of the Fortune 500 companies. By the 1980s that number
had dropped to 73, and it is now fewer than 60, or a loss of over 70 corporate head-
quarters in 30 years.
According to some recent books, large cities have emerged as the “command-and-
control” centers for the global economy (Sassen, 1991; Noyelle and Stanback, 1984).
This overstates the case for the economy in general and ignores decentralization to ar-
eas outside the city but within the metropolitan region (see Kephart, 1991). As indi-
cated above, the largest cities have become the centers for finance capital activities,
while other aspects of capitalism, such as producer services, marketing, and manufac-
turing, have decentralized. One indicator of this more complex spatial differentiation
of functions is the phenomenal thirty-year decline in the number of corporate head-
quarters located in New York City.
We have seen that the city can no longer be regarded as the dominant location
choice for manufacturing or corporate headquarters. But the maturation of suburban
areas with regard to administrative employment is even more significant. Despite
some predictions that, as metropolitan regions grew, central cities would retain their
command-and-control functions (Hawley, 1981), this has not proven to be the case.
In a study of the twenty-one largest MSAs, Ruth Armstrong (1972, 1979) found
that, leaving the special case of New York City aside, administrative functions were
evenly distributed between large cities and their suburbs in 1960. During the de-
cades following her study, administrative and headquarter employment decentralized
in favor of the suburbs as companies such as PepsiCo and General Electric aban-
doned centers such as Manhattan for the adjacent suburban towns of Purchase, New
York, and Fairfield, Connecticut, respectively. Several other studies have verified that
this trend is continuing and that command-and-control centers are growing in the
suburbs (Quante, 1976; Pye, 1977). In short, administrative functions, like all other
economic activities, have been deconcentrating since the 1960s. When people like
Sassen (1994) and her followers talk about the “Global City” then, they are mistaken
in thinking that specialization is concentrated in “command-and-control” functions.
Unfortunately, because it has been the source of confusion for quite some time,
global-based employment is largely confined to the sector of finance capital, which is
concentrated in only a few of the larger cities of the world.
BEYOND SUBURBIA: THE EMERGENCE

O F T H E M U LT I N U C L E AT E D R E G I O N
By the 1990s, suburban regions in many areas of the United States had so matured
that development was occurring in peripheral areas independently of major urban
centers. This special and independent mode of regional, multinucleated growth was
manifested as the fully urbanized county, such as Orange County, California, which is
a net employing region with a labor force of over 1 million (Kling, Olin, and Poster,
1991). The most important characteristic of the fully urbanized county is that it
does not contain any large cities, yet it functions much like a city by providing jobs
as well as housing for its residents.
First studied by Gottdiener and Kephart (1991), the fully urbanized counties ap-
peared in number during the 1980s, although two regions, Orange County in Califor-
nia and Nassau and Suffolk Counties in New York, had already achieved independent
MSA status by 1980. Other multinucleated counties lie outside of MSAs. Oakland
County in Michigan is typical. It lies adjacent to but outside the Detroit MSA and had
B E Y O N D S U B U R B I A : T H E E M E R G E N C E O F T H E M U LT I N U C L E AT E D R E G I O N 139
a 1980 population of over 1 million people, but its largest city contained only 76,715. It
employed virtually all of the people who lived there with an employment-to-residence
ratio of .93 in 1980 and grew by 11 percent between 1970 and 1980 (a rapid rate con-
sidering that Detroit itself declined in population). Oakland County’s labor force was
composed of 26 percent in manufacturing, 30 percent in retailing and wholesaling, and
25 percent in services, as well as other industries; that is, it possessed a balanced, diver-
sified economy. Finally, in 1980 Oakland County had a median family income of
$28,407—above the national average—and was 93 percent white.
Oakland County in Michigan was very much like at least twenty other multi-
nucleated metropolitan regions located around the country that were identified as a
new form of space because of their urban character and their deconcentrated form
(Gottdiener and Kephart, 1991).
These and other aspects of regional growth testify to the distinctly new form of
urban space that has emerged in the United States and elsewhere, which we call the
multicentered metropolitan region. It contains a changing and increasingly maturing
mix of city and suburban spaces. The MMR is produced by two linked processes—
deconcentration and reconcentration, which are the result of the economic changes as
a consequence of deindustrialization and the organizational reordering of world places
according to the concentration of new functions, which we have referred to as global-
ization. As population and societal activities have moved away from historical city cen-
ters, in the process of deconcentration, and spread out in more uniform density
throughout an ever-expanding metropolitan region, they have also coalesced, or recon-
centrated in minicenters, such as malls, office parks, sports complexes, government
buildings, airports, and higher density residential developments. All these more con-
centrated aspects of the region possess their own dynamic of social, economic, cultural,
and even political activities. Hence, the new form of space remains urban but has taken
on the form of a multicentered mix that is regional in scope.
To be sure, the large, historical urban cores have not died nor lost their dominant
place within the regional array. Yet they are not nearly so dominant as in the past and,
furthermore, their once concentrated cultural, economic, political, and social func-
tions have spread out and into the regional array of multicenters. It would be a mis-
take to suggest that our concept of the MMR is meant to replace such important
cities as New York, London, or Tokyo, for example. However, according to the MMR
perspective, New York no longer refers to the Manhattan centers of finance and busi-
ness alone, London is not simply the City of London, and Tokyo is one of the most
widespread, deconcentrated urban agglomerations on the globe. Only a regional,
multicentered conception captures this new, networked, functionally differentiated
and megascaled organization of space.
Most every urban sociology text talks about how we live in an increasingly urban
world. They point to such figures as “more than half the population of the world lives
in urban areas, a figure which is expected to grow by 2% per year during 2000–2015”
(United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2001 Revision, 2002). But their
conclusion—that we live in an increasingly urban world—distorts the reality of re-
gional growth around historical city centers. Prior to the 1950s, urbanists compared
the city not to the suburbs as might be assumed today, but with rural areas. When the
comment is made that “we are living in an increasingly urban world,” it is within the
context of this old and for most countries obsolete city/rural contrast. Our argument
is much different and relies on the recognition that the urban form has evolved. To-
day people live in multicentered metro regions that include cities, suburbs, and even
rural areas. Although it’s quite true that in the developing world there are still large ar-
eas of rural development that have not been absorbed by expanding urban regions, so
that observers can say these countries are still “urbanizing,” however, in all areas of the
globe, growth around historical city centers has taken on the form of the MMR. Con-
sequently, when observers declare that there is a movement around the globe of popu-
lation to urban areas, they give people the wrong impression that this represents a
move to the inner city, rather than the minicenters and underdeveloped areas within
the larger metro region. These less informed urban sociology texts, therefore, fail to
capture the dynamics of regional growth and the way populations are absorbed by the
new form of multicentered space.
At the same time, the word city is interchangeable in these discussions with the
words urban area. For example: in a recent UN report, “The rapid increase of the
world’s urban population coupled with the slowing of world population growth has
led to a major redistribution of the population over the past 30 years. By 2007, one-
half of the world’s population will live in urban areas compared to more than one-third
in 1972, and the period 1950–2050 will see a shift from a 65% rural world population
to 65% urban. By 2002, some 70% of the world’s urban population will be living in
Africa, Asia, or Latin America.” According to this UN report, “The most striking cur-
rent changes are the levels of urbanization in less developed nations: rising from about
27% in 1975 and 40% in 2000, an increase of more than 1,200,000,000 people.”
While this statement is an accurate projection, it nevertheless was made without any
attempt to differentiate between the historical city and the multicentered urbanized re-
gion of which it is a part.
Contemporary research on regional urban spaces has uncovered considerable evi-
dence for our perspective. One example, a study of the Canadian cities of Toronto,
Montreal, and Vancouver, shows that multicenteredness for these three metro regions
is growing despite the presence of some of the very best urban planning programs in
North America (Shearmur, Coffey, Dube, Barbonne, 2007). The authors go on to
demonstrate that MMRs, even with the presence of a strong, historical city core,
function internally according to different “scales” of linkages.
Different processes—local, citywide, suburban county wide, subregion wide, re-
gion wide, other regions wide, statewide, nationwide, global subregion wide, global
wide—operate with different effects on people and space, according to this research.
RECENT TRENDS IN METROPOLITAN REGIONS 141
Functioning according to these different scales are distinct linkages within the ex-
panding MMR that produce efficient organization of activities despite the seeming
chaos. Thus, depending on the scale of analysis in the way data is considered, orga-
nized activities, unorganized dispersal, and chaos are all observed. The authors con-
clude: “There has been some debate in recent years over whether employment has
been poly-nucleating or dispersing, and over whether the development of metropoli-
tan areas is chaotic or ordered. All results seem to suggest that all of these processes are
occurring at the same time and in the same places . . . clustering and dispersal can oc-
cur simultaneously” within the region. (Note: these are the processes we have referred
to above as decentralization and recentralization.) “This does not mean, however, that
there are no regular processes at work and that no conclusions can be drawn about
what is occurring in Canada’s three largest cities. It shows . . . that different processes
occur at different scales and that by the choice of scale an object of analysis will bring
to the fore one or another of the apparently contradictory trends mentioned above.”
Canadian cities have a reputation of being well planned, but this has not pre-
vented the emergence of the new form of space, the MMR. Urbanized places in West-
ern Europe and in Latin America, among many examples, also seem to be assuming a
similar, multicentered, regional shape under pressure of the forces of globalization,
deindustrialization, and the sprouting of new ways of making money as well as new
growth poles, like airports and malls.
RECENT TRENDS IN METROPOLITAN REGIONS

A recent report from the Brookings Institution presents us with a snapshot of demo-
graphic trends in affecting metropolitan regions (Frey, Berube, Singer, and Wilson,
2009). These trends include the slowing of migration across states and metropolitan
regions, concentration of new immigrants in the suburbs, the rapid increase of racial
and ethnic minorities and diversity among younger residents, increase in older popula-
tions, increasing regional disparities in education, and the increase in poverty and its
spread to suburban locations (see Box 6.2). Several of these trends have been discussed
earlier in this chapter, and they all will reshape the multicentered urban regions of the
future. For example, over the last two decades there has been a continued increase in
immigrant populations, and a majority of the new immigrants have settled in emerg-
ing ethnic communities in the suburbs, not in the older ethnic neighborhoods of the
central city. Even in cities that have not previously been thought of as immigrant gate-
ways, such as Atlanta, Nashville, Orlando, and Raleigh, there has been a substantial in-
crease in immigrant populations, with many settling into suburban settlement space.
In many of the older immigrant gateway cities, the continued growth of racial and eth-
nic minorities has resulted in an expansion of these populations into suburban neigh-
borhoods. The first suburban Chinatown will be discussed in Chapter 7, but there are
many examples of suburban ethnic communities in many metropolitan regions across
Box 6.2
Recent Demographic Trends In Metropolitan America
According to a report by the Brookings Institution, the population trends that are
shaping and reshaping metropolitan areas—our nation’s engines of growth and
opportunity—include the following:
Migration across states and metro areas has slowed considerably due to the
housing crisis and looming recession. About 4.7 million people moved across
state lines in 2007–2008, down from a historic high of 8.4 million people at the
turn of the decade. Population growth in Sun Belt migration magnets such as Las
Vegas and Riverside and the state of Florida have experienced a net loss of domes-
tic migrants.
The sources and destinations of US immigrants continue to shift to the
southeast and to the suburbs. About 80 percent of the nation’s foreign-born
population in 2007 hailed from Latin America and Asia; the Southeast, tradi-
tionally an area that immigrants avoided, has become the fastest-growing destina-
tion for the foreign-born, with metro areas such as Raleigh, NC; Nashville;
Atlanta; and Orlando ranking among those with the highest growth rates.
Racial and ethnic minorities are driving the nation’s population growth
and increasing diversity among its younger residents. Hispanics have ac-
counted for roughly half the nation’s population growth since 2000. Racial and
ethnic minorities represent 44 percent of U.S. residents under the age of 15 and
make up a majority of that age group in 31 of the nation’s one hundred largest
metropolitan areas.
The next decade promises massive growth of the senior population, especially
in suburbs unaccustomed to housing older people. As the first wave of baby
boomers reaches age 65, the senior population is poised to grow by 36 percent
from 2010 to 2020. Because the boomers were the nation’s first fully suburban
generation, their aging in place will cause many major metropolitan suburbs, such
as those outside New York and Los Angeles, to “gray” faster than their urban
counterparts.
Amid rising educational attainment overall, there are wide regional dis-
parities. There are growing disparities across metropolitan areas; in knowledge
economy areas such as Boston more than 40 percent of adults have a bachelor’s
degree, while in metro areas that have attracted large numbers of immigrants,
such as Houston, more than 20 percent of adults have not completed high
school.
continues
RECENT TRENDS IN METROPOLITAN REGIONS 143
Box 6.2 continued
Poverty increased during the 2000s, and spread rapidly to suburban loca-
tions. The gap between central city and suburban poverty rates has narrowed as
poverty has spread across the metropolis. The suburban poor have moved well
beyond older, inner-ring suburbs, and now outnumber the number of central
city poor by some 1.5 million.
The continued demographic dynamism of our metropolitan areas raises key pol-
icy and program issues. New efforts are required to pursue immigrant integration
alongside immigration reform, close educational achievement and attainment gaps,
combine transportation and housing planning, and provide needed support for
low-income workers and families.
SOURCE: Frey, Berube, Singer, and Wilson, 2009. Getting Current: Recent Demographic Trends in
Metropolitan America, 2009.
the country, including black and Mexican suburbs in Chicago, Filipino suburbs in San
Francisco and San Diego, and the like.
The rapid increase of the elderly population in many cities across the country is an
important area of concern. In the past, it was common to draw a distinction between
cities and suburbs on the basis of age: younger families settled in the suburbs, while
older persons were concentrated in the central city (this was an important part of
Herbert Gan’s [1968] discussion of compositional factors distinguishing urban and
suburban ways of life). Yet recent trends point to the increase of older populations in
the suburbs, where the aging Baby Boomers will confront special issues because these
communities have fewer services for this population group.
The United States confronts serious and growing issues of social inequality, prob-
lems that are made all the more serious because of the decline of education in the in-
ner city and growing class disparities in educational achievement. Some metropolitan
areas have a well-educated workforce that can compete in the new global economy
(Boston is often cited as an example), while other metropolitan areas are less well
suited to compete in the global economy because their workforce has a smaller num-
bers of college graduates and increasing numbers of persons who lack a high school
degree. The increasing gap in education, both among ethnic and racial populations
and between metropolitan areas in the north and south raises important questions
concerning the future growth and quality of life not just in cities but across metropol-
itan regions more generally.
Even before the recent global economic crisis, the United States experienced an un-
comfortable increase in poverty in the last decade. While in the past it was commonplace
to assert that central cities had specific problems of poverty associated with ethnic and
racial communities that were not found in the suburbs, over the last decade poverty has
spread most rapidly across suburban regions. And while in the past suburban poverty
was often thought to be a problem confined to the inner suburbs, this now is a problem
not only for many working-class suburbs but even middle-class suburbs, as retail stores
have shut their doors, manufacturing companies have closed, and families have lost their
homes and savings. Even more important, as urban sociologists shift their focus from the
central city to the metropolitan region, the number of poor persons living in the suburbs
now far outnumber the number of poor in the cities; one important challenge will be
how to increase services available to poor households in the suburbs without cutting
back further on services for poor households in the cities.
While the Brookings Institution report was about recent trends affecting all of
metropolitan America, it is important to note that several of the trends focus directly
on metropolitan regions in the Sun Belt (the loss of population from Los Angeles,
Las Vegas, and Florida, which previously were important growth poles for Sun Belt
population growth, for example) while other trends have important but less obvious
connections to the Sun Belt (the growth of the senior population in suburban re-
gions will create special problems for planners and officials in the coming decades,
but this will be especially important for the earlier Sun Belt destinations in the
Southwest where much of the growth was fueled by the movement of retired couples
from northern cities, and where many communities were established specifically for
an older, retired population with active lifestyles that may not continue as these per-
sons age in place). The growth of the Sun Belt was the most important population
shift affecting the American urban system in the last decades of the twentieth cen-
tury, and for this reason we will take a further look at the development of this region.
And at the end of this next section, we will return to examine further some of the so-
cial, economic, and environmental trends affecting the Sun Belt.
T H E S H I F T TO T H E S U N B E LT
Without question the population and activity shift to the Sun Belt is the most impor-
tant historical event since the 1950s for the United States. The scale of change is quite
spectacular. Although variations exist, most analysts define the Sun Belt as thirteen
southern states—Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi,
New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas—plus
parts of two western states: California (southern counties below San Luis Obispo) and
southern Nevada (Las Vegas, SMSA) (see Bernard and Rice, 1983). Between 1945
and 1975, the Sun Belt region doubled its population. In the decade between 1960 and
1970, Sun Belt MSAs received 63.8 percent of the total population increase for all
MSAs (Berry and Kasarda, 1977:168). Between 1970 and 1980, the Northeast lost 1.5
percent of its population, the Midwest gained only 2.6 percent, but the South grew by
T H E S H I F T T O T H E S U N B E LT 145
21.5 percent and the West by 22.6 percent, including a natural increase for all regions
(Frey and Speare, 1988:50). By the year 2007, of the eleven largest cities in the United
States, seven—Dallas, Houston, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Antonio, San
Diego—are located in the Sun Belt. In Table 6.1 during the period between 2000 and
2007, Charlotte, North Carolina, grew by 17.1 percent, and Austin, Texas, by 16.1 per-
cent. Only Las Vegas, Nevada, which had grown an astounding 85.7 percent from 1990
to 2000, failed to grow impressively with only a 2.2 percent increase.
Table 6.2 charts this amazing rate of growth accompanying the shift to the Sun Belt
for its major cities beginning with the 1950 to 1970 period and including the years be-
tween 2000 and 2007. During the first period of twenty years, growth was explosive
with some cities, such as Phoenix and Las Vegas, each gaining over 400 percent. Between
the years 2000 and 2007, growth in population remained in double digits with the ex-
ception of Las Vegas. Texas alone contributes greatly to the overall population jump in
the Sun Belt with five of the twelve cities that were tracked. The table shows that, from
the year 2000 to 2007, the multicentered regions of Houston grew by 12.1 percent, At-
lanta by 15.4 percent, and Phoenix by 16.3 percent. Only the older metro Sun Belt re-
gions of Los Angeles, Miami, and San Jose, California, failed to reach double digits.
Rapid demographic growth was matched by rapid employment growth in the
Sun Belt. Between 1970 and 1980, manufacturing expanded by 12 percent in the
North but more than double that, or 24.4 percent, in the South. While service em-
ployment grew by 11.5 percent in the North, it increased by 44 percent in the South
and 47 percent in the West (Frey and Speare, 1988:92). According to one observer,
“Never in the history of the world has a region of such size developed at such a rate
for so long a time” (Sale, 1975:166). Massive population and employment growth
produced sprawling metro regions, as shown in Table 6.2, not confined to the
boundaries of central cities alone.
The movement west and southward has been around for some time. Sun Belt states
have been receiving a greater share of MSA population than the Frost Belt since the
1920s (Berry and Kasarda, 1977:168). Indeed, the movement of people westward has
been a trend in the United States since the 1800s. The shift to the Sun Belt, however,
displaces the economic center of gravity in the United States toward the West from the
East Coast and obliterates what was once a core-periphery relation between a formerly
agrarian South and West and an industrialized North and Midwest. Today the Sun
Belt is more formidable economically than other areas of the country. Between 1970
and 1980, almost three-fourths of all job growth took place in the Sun Belt. By the
1990s, however, the economic recession had hit Sun Belt areas especially hard. Califor-
nia, for example, suffered major job losses as did Texas. By the time of the economic
crisis of 2009, the states of California and Florida, which once led the nation in
growth, had experienced a total population decline for the first time in over 40 years.
Readjustments, due to job loss, fiscal crisis, and other factors, continue as a conse-
quence of current crisis conditions in the United States, although it does not seem
TA B L E 6.1 Population Growth for Selected Sun Belt Urban Cities, 1950–2007.
146
Rate of Growth
City 1950 1970 1980 1990 2000 2007 est. 1950–1970 1970–1980 1980–1990 1990–2000 2000–2007
Los Angeles 1,970,358 2,816,061 2,966,850 3,348,557 3,694,742 3,849,000 42.9 5.6 17.5 10.3 10.4
Houston 596,163 1,232,802 1,595,138 1,630,864 1,953,633 2,144,000 106.7 29.3 2.2 19.8 11.0
Phoenix 106,818 581,562 789,704 984,309 1,321,190 1,513,000 444.4 35.3 24.5 34.2 11.5
San Antonio 408,442 654,153 785,880 935,393 1,151,305 1,297,000 60.2 20.2 19.1 23.1 11.3
San Diego 334,387 696,769 875,538 1,110,623 1,223,429 1,257,000 108.4 25.7 26.8 10.2 10.3
Dallas 434,462 844,401 904,078 1,007,618 1,188,589 1,233,000 94.4 11.3 11.4 18.0 10.4
San Jose 95,280 445,779 629,442 782,224 895,193 930,000 367.9 36.7 24.3 14.0 10.4
Jacksonville 204,517 528,865 540,920 635,230 735,617 785,000 158.6 21.7 17.4 15.8 10.7
Austin 132,459 253,539 345,890 465,622 656,562 749,659 91.4 36.4 34.6 41.0 16.1
Charlotte 134,042 241,420 315,474 395,934 557,834 675,229 80.1 30.7 25.5 40.9 17.1
El Paso 130,485 322,261 425,259 515,342 563,657 605,410 147.0 32.0 21.2 9.3 11.7
Las Vegas 24,624 125,787 164,674 258,295 479,639 562,582 410.8 30.9 56.9 85.7 2.2
SOURCE: Population figures from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population and Housing; 2007: Statistical Abstract of the United States 2009.
TA B L E 6. 2 Population Growth for Selected Sun Belt Regions, 1980–2007.
Rate of Growth
1970 1980 1990 2000 2007 Est. 1970–1980 1980–1990 1990–2000 2000–2007
Los Angeles-Anaheim-Riverside CMSA 998,100 11,498,000 14,531,529 16,374,000 12,875,587 15.2 26.4 12.7 7.9
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington CMSA 2,352,000 2,931,000 4,037,282 5,222,000 6,144,489 24.6 16.4 12.6 11.8
Houston-Galveston-Barzonia NECMA 2,169,000 3,100,000 3,731,029 4,670,000 5,629,127 42.9 –2.0 5.2 12.1
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta MSA 1,684,000 2,138,000 2,959,500 3,431,983 5,271,550 27.0 6.5 6.7 15.4
Miami-Ft. Lauderdale CMSA 1,889,000 2,644,000 5,187,171 5,456,000 4,817,595 40.0 19.6 25.2 8.8
San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose CMSA 4,754,000 5,368,000 6,253,311 7,039,362 4,203,898 12.9 16.3 11.3 6.0
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale CMSA 971,000 1,509,175 2,238,498 2,563,582 4,179,427 55.4 –2.7 3.0 16.3
San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos MSA 1,358,000 1,861,846 2,498,016 2,644,132 2,974,859 37.4 15.4 16.9 11.3
San Antonio MSA 901,220 1,088,881 1,302,099 1,592,383 1,997,969 20.8 12.0 12.2 12.5
Las Vegas MSA 304,744 528,000 741,000 1,563,282 1,836,333 73.3 14.0 21.1 11.7
Charlotte MSA 840,346 971,447 161,546 1,499,293 1,650,667 15.6 1.7 92.8 11.0
Austin MSA 398,938 585,051 846,227 1,249,763 1,593,400 46.7 14.5 14.8 12.7
NOTE: Sun Belt Regional Classifications: CMSA, NECMA, MSA.
SOURCE: Population figures from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population and Housing; 2007: Statistical Abstract of the United States 2009.
147
likely that there will be any significant return of people from the Sun Belt to Frost Belt
regions in the North and the Midwest.
Push and Pull Factors in Sun Belt Development

As we have seen, the Sun Belt had an advantage over other parts of the United States
because of its comparative economic potential. This represents a potent pull factor.
The region has other advantages as well. Energy and tourism are exploitable indus-
tries. Cheap energy in particular and the warmth of the Sun Belt climate cut home-
maintenance costs drastically compared to the Frost Belt. Low energy costs are a
major locational incentive for business, both now and in the future. Lower home-
maintenance costs and comparatively lower homeowner tax rates also provide con-
siderable incentives for people to move to the region.
A comparison between Frost Belt and Sun Belt locations reveals advantages for
the latter regarding labor costs. Sun Belt places do not have a past history of union
organizing, and wages there are comparatively lower for manufacturing industries
(although higher for many professional services). Sun Belt cities flaunt what they call
a “good business climate.” This usually means the absence of unions, tax breaks to
business, and a general “hands-off” policy of minimal government regulation.
As in the case of suburbanization, one of the most potent supply-side forces that
has developed the Sun Belt as a place to live and work is the operation of govern-
ment intervention. To the extent that government subsidization of real estate devel-
opment aided growth, it was instrumental in the population shift to the Sun Belt,
where real estate is a major industry. But government involvement goes way beyond
this obvious observation. Most of the heavily subsidized government industries in
the United States, including agribusiness, energy, and military spending, are pillars
of the Sun Belt economy.
Over the years, for example, the heavily subsidized agriculture industry has wit-
nessed an immense shift of population out of farm residence, from over 30 percent in
1920 to around 3 percent today. At the same time, the family farm involved in agri-
culture has given way to the large land holdings of corporations engaged in agribusi-
ness. Farm production has become more specialized and part of a total conglomerate
structure involving the growing, processing, and marketing of food by giant corpora-
tions linked to the multinational system of capital (Shover, 1976; Hightower, 1975;
Berry, 1972).
An important consequence of the rise to hegemony of agribusiness has been the
shift of food production away from the Northeast and Midwest and to the Sun Belt
(Sale, 1975; Coughlin, 1979), where large open tracts of land are being used. Accord-
ing to Sale (1975), the shift to agribusiness in the Sun Belt has made the family farm
uneconomical, causing many small farmers to sell their land to suburban developers.
Finally, agribusiness remains subsidized on a grand scale by the federal government,
whose Department of Agriculture is the second largest bureaucracy after the Depart-
ment of Defense (Shover, 1976).
A second pillar of Sun Belt growth is the energy industry, which is also subsidized
by the government. The Atomic Energy Commission and its government affiliates
are among the largest employers in the state of New Mexico. In a case study of Hous-
ton, Feagin (1988) shows how state supports underpin the energy industry, while at
the same time business leaders espouse the virtues of “free enterprise.” Feagin ob-
serves that when discussing government involvement, a distinction is made between
state forms of regulation, which are opposed by business, and state promotion and
subsidization of economic activity, which is supported wholeheartedly.
In the case of the alleged “free enterprise” city of Houston, development was
aided over the years by active government promotion of projects, while regulation
was kept at a minimum. Contrary to the prevailing view of Sun Belt cities as eco-
nomically backward until recent times, Houston was already a major agricultural
center for the Texas cotton industry prior to the growth of the petroleum business.
As the latter became the new focus of the local economy, government subsidization
went hand in hand with the development of the city through private ventures. The
federal government provided funds for the dredging of the Houston ship channel
and periodically cleared the important port facility for ship traffic. In addition, oil
refining and new petrochemical industries during the 1940s were supported directly
by the feds, ranking sixth in receipt of national government plant investment (Fea-
gin, 1988:68). Local businesses were the beneficiaries of these subsidies. As a conse-
quence, Houston developed into the energy capital of the United States, only to be
hit by a downturn and restructuring in the 1980s.
The third government-subsidized pillar of Sun Belt growth is military spending.
During World War II, 60 percent of the total $74 billion spending effort went to the
fifteen states of the Sun Belt (Sale, 1975:170). Major industries in Sun Belt states were
established during this time. Los Angeles became an aircraft and shipbuilding center.
Kaiser Steel was formed in Southern California, importing many workers from the
east. Petrochemical and energy-related efforts were also subsidized, as we have already
seen. Armaments industries and arsenals were expanded in the South and West. Huge
military bases were constructed in California, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and
the Carolinas, among other Sun Belt states.
By the 1970s, the fifteen Sun Belt states were receiving 44 percent of all military
spending, including over 50 percent of the Defense Department payroll; had the ma-
jority of all military installations (60 percent); were employing more scientists and
technicians than the rest of the United States; and received 49 percent of “Pentagon
research and development funds—the seed money that creates new technologies and
industries” (Sale, 1975:171). All of this effort and money has created a new industrial
core in the Sun Belt that is supported by government spending. Because taxes are col-
lected across the United States but differentially spent on military-related activities,
the federal government has for decades transferred wealth from all other regions of the
United States to the Sun Belt.
Military spending in the Sun Belt region continued to grow throughout the 1980s
on an immense scale. In 1975 military spending was approximately $90 billion. By
1987 it had increased to $390 billion, a fourfold change taking place after the Vietnam
War (Gottdiener, 1990). Arms sales in particular became a key U.S. industry in the
1980s, prompting one observer to suggest that the nation had switched to a permanent
war economy (Mandel, 1975; see also Melman, 1983; Stubbing and Mendel, 1986).
With Sun Belt prosperity so closely linked to the well-being of arms sales, cuts in
the military budget have had profound effects, leading to a downturn in the economic
fortunes of states such as California. For example, in July 1991, the McDonnell Doug-
las Corporation announced it was laying off about 1,000 workers from its Southern
California plant and shifting another 1,600 to its facilities in St. Louis, Missouri. The
company cited “defense cutbacks and budget woes” (Press Enterprise, July 8, 1991:D-2)
for its decision, which benefited the Midwest at the expense of the Sun Belt.
The loss of such military-related jobs has turned the once recession-proof economy
of California into another case of Sun Belt boom and bust. Since 1989, California has
had economic woes so severe that they are eclipsed only by the days of the Great De-
pression. In 1991, for example, the state lost more jobs than any other, twice as many
as the second worst state, New York. And there is still no sign of an economic reversal.
In that same year and for the first time in California’s history, more people canceled
their driver’s licenses because they had moved to another state than applied for one. In
short, the population boom in California related to its economic expansion may be
over, although low-wage, illegal aliens continue to flock to the state.
Finally, it is important to note that government military spending is a key support
of many suburban regions, even in the Frost Belt, and is not simply a Sun Belt phe-
nomenon. Thus, between 1975 and 1980, for example, Suffolk County in New York
and suburban Monmouth County in New Jersey, respectively, had 20 percent and 16
percent of their labor force growth in military-related industries. By 1980, only Santa
Clara County (in Silicon Valley) had more military-related expansion—31 percent to-
tal employment growth.
Recent Sun Belt Trends

The shift to the Sun Belt is a spectacular example of regional realignment experienced
by an advanced industrial country. As we will see in Chapter 10, there are parallels to
the U.S. case in such countries as England, France, and particularly Germany, which
have also undergone regional shifts as a consequence of high-technology industrial
restructuring. Yet despite these changes, it is possible to overstate the case of Sun Belt
prominence. There are at least three reasons to temper the notion that this region is
gaining in autonomy and power at the expense of areas elsewhere: the need to place
Sun Belt economic activities within a national and global context, the boom-and-bust
cycle of development, and the enormous environmental costs of growth.
Economic Differentiation and the Global Economy. Because the U.S. economy has
become more functionally specialized, many of the rapidly growing Sun Belt indus-
tries are tied administratively and economically to Frost Belt centers. The latter still
retain the majority of corporate headquarters, for example. Banking and finance are
still controlled by Frost Belt interests (Gottdiener, 1985). In addition, since the 1970s
many U.S. firms have been either bought out or heavily invested in by multinational
corporations that have headquarters in other countries. Sun Belt factories, no matter
how stable in employment, may be only a part of some larger operation that also in-
cludes Frost Belt command-and-control centers or worldwide organizations. Hence,
splits between the regions are not autonomous. They reflect instead a growing regional
specialization in the United States and the entire world as multinational interests uti-
lize space and place to improve economic performance.
The Cycles of Growth and Decline. As we have seen, the best way to describe Sun
Belt development is in terms of boom-and-bust cycles that fluctuate relatively rapidly.
Sun Belt residents who have been attracted to the region by visions of affluence may
have to tolerate a life of feast or famine. At present, the national recession has hit
many Sun Belt areas especially hard. The powerful states of Texas and California, once
thought immune to downturns, have been in the doldrums since the late 1980s. Un-
employment was above the national average for a time. California experienced two
straight years of fiscal crises that required cuts in spending, wage freezes, and a re-
assessment of the state’s credit rating. Social services such as education are now be-
sieged due to lack of funds, and the quality of life has deteriorated accordingly.
The characteristic woes of the region are exemplified by Silicon Valley, also known
as Santa Clara County, in California. This region was once touted as the exemplary
high-tech boom area that even countries should emulate in their development plans.
In the 1990s the region was called the “Valley of Gloom” (Smith, 1992) because of the
severity of its recession. Much of its heralded job creation has shifted to other places
around the globe, and its businesses are besieged because of declining sales, while some
have fallen victim to both foreign and domestic competitors. As one newspaper report
states:
Not only has Santa Clara County lost 20,000 manufacturing jobs in the last 18
months, industry analysts estimate that tens of thousands of newly created electronic
industry jobs have gone elsewhere in the same period. . . . High-tech manufacturing
in this area is no longer competitive with other areas of the country or the world.
Even if the economy rebounds, we’re not going back to the double-digit job growth
we enjoyed the last two decades. (Smith, 1992:A-1)
It may be possible that this area has experienced a revival much like the one in
Houston (see above), and the cycle of boom and bust will start up again. But as the
newspaper report indicates, a profound sense of pessimism paints the future in more
modest growth terms. Silicon Valley is typical of other high-tech growth poles. Its pop-
ulation is both well educated and diverse—37 percent of those over eighteen years old
have at least a two-year college degree, and 12 percent of its population is foreign born.
These residents have been used to several decades of affluence and growth. At present,
they are learning to suffer with the rest of the nation during the current recession.
The Environmental Costs of Rapid Growth. Because it has been the site of rapid
and largely minimally planned growth, the Sun Belt region has also encountered
monumental environmental problems. In fact, since the 1990s, we may be poised at
a point of immense growth difficulties for many areas of the Sun Belt. The environ-
ment has long suffered the initial impact of development. Unique and pristine for-
mations, such as the Tampa and San Francisco bays, have been almost destroyed
biologically in the wake of change. Clear-cutting of virgin forests, pollution of lakes
and streams, fouling of beaches with oil or sewage, and emission of choking smog
are but some of the environmental problems already well established in the South
and West. After years of uncertainty regarding published accounts of the effects of
smog, for example, it was recently reported that constant exposure produces perma-
nent lung damage in both children and adults (Press Enterprise, May 17, 1992: AA-
1). The population of Los Angeles lives in just such an environment, yet the presence
of damaging smog has done little to date to stem the otherwise constant stream of
new arrivals to the region (see Chapter 12 for a more detailed discussion of the envi-
ronment and the sociospatial perspective).
In more recent years, other effects of population growth have appeared. Crime is a
serious problem, for example. New York is often stereotyped as an unsafe city. Its
murder rate was 26 per 100,000 persons in 1989. Houston’s rate, however, was 27 for
that year, Dallas’s was 35, and New Orleans’s was 47. Even Los Angeles had a high
rate of 25, less than New York but the same as Chicago and much more than Boston
(17). Sun Belt cities may just be the most unsafe and violent in the nation, containing
nine of our ten most dangerous metro areas (MacDonald, 1984)—see Chapter 9.
In addition to crime, overcrowding in schools and declining educational quality
are a typical Sun Belt lament. These conditions are expected to get worse as the
western and southern states encounter intractable budget crises. In 1991 California
suffered its largest budget deficit to that date. Now the state’s deficit is many times
larger, and in 2009, along with many more cuts in social services, a giant garage sale
was held by the state to raise money by selling off surplus equipment at bargain
prices.
In rapidly growing areas, traffic congestion is so bad that it is fast approaching
gridlock. It’s not uncommon for commuters in parts of California to travel four hours
KEY CONCEPTS 153
both ways by car, especially when no other alternatives to commuting are available.
Finally, housing prices have soared in the best locations, making first-home purchas-
ing increasingly out of reach. But despite these and other constraints, life in the Sun
Belt continues to attract new people, especially highly trained professionals who have
the ability to find well-paying jobs (Kephart, 1991). It is expected that the fifteen Sun
Belt states will continue to grow in the future. As Table 6.3 shows, the Sun Belt region
of the United States now possesses more than half of the nation’s population.
Since the 1960s, the relationships among people, spatial living, and working
arrangements have profoundly changed. Gone is the highly compact industrial city
with a working-class culture and labor-influenced, democratic politics. In its place,
everyday life now transpires in multinucleated metropolitan regions across the coun-
try. Development is dominated by the population shifts to the suburbs and the Sun
Belt, while the vision of unending growth and affluence has been tempered by the
experience of living through rapid cycles of boom and bust. These changes have been
explained by the sociospatial perspective, which emphasizes the pull factors of eco-
nomic and technological change (as do other approaches) but also the importance of
government intervention, real estate, and the restructuring of sociospatial arrange-
ments in business and residential activities.
KEY CONCEPTS
metropolitan region
federal subsidies for homeownership
Levittown (Long Island)
Fordism
conspicuous consumption
demand-side / supply-side explanations
deindustrialization
population deconcentration
nodal services
uneven development
dual city
informal economy
exclusionary zoning
corporate headquarters
industrial park
fully urbanized county
Sun Belt / Frost Belt
military spending
regional realignment
1. What are some of the explanations for the extensive suburban development
that occurred from 1920 to 1960? What are some of the demand-side factors that
might be responsible for this development? What are some of the supply-side factors
that might be responsible? Explain how the roles of real estate development, govern-
ment programs, and cultural factors fit into these supply-side and demand-side ex-
planations for suburban growth.
2. Describe and discuss two factors responsible for the shift in population from
the Northeast and Midwest (the Frost Belt) to the South and West (the Sun Belt).
How do these factors affect cities in both the Frost Belt and Sun Belt?
3. Discuss the changes in large central cities that have accompanied the restructur-
ing of settlement space over the past four decades. Pick two changes that you con-
sider to be representative and explain the causal factors responsible for these changes.
4. Profound changes have occurred in the populations of metropolitan regions.
Discuss these changes and explain them by focusing on two factors.
5. Suburban settlement spaces have changed greatly since the 1980s. What are
some of the most important changes that have occurred in your metropolitan re-
gion? Pick two factors responsible for those changes and discuss their significance
and their effects on suburban life.
6. Currently, the Sun Belt, like other areas of the country, is experiencing eco-
nomic problems. How has the housing crisis affected these areas? How can we mea-
sure these effects?
CHAPTER
7
PEOPLE AND LIFESTYLES

IN THE METROPOLIS
Urban and Suburban Culture
I n previous chapters, we studied the growth and development of metropolitan re-

gions in the United States. The next two chapters concern the people of the metrop-
olis and explore the relationship between everyday life and local territory. The
sociospatial approach to metropolitan life asserts that diversity in lifestyles and sub-
cultures exists not just within the city but throughout the metropolitan region. This
is especially the case since 1980 as suburban settlement spaces have matured and as a
new wave of immigrants from Asia and Latin America have entered the country
since the 1960s. In this chapter we consider the interplay between the social factors
of income, gender, age, ethnicity and race, and the spatial patterns of population
concentration or dispersal across the metropolitan region.
A basic tenet of the sociospatial approach is that social factors determining the
patterns of population dispersal are also linked to particular spaces. Class or gender
relations, for example, are conducted through spatial as well as social means. Lifestyle
differences are externalized in a specific environment: the ghetto, the street corner, the
mall, the golf course. Furthermore, these places are always meaningful. Interaction is
shaped through the signs and symbols of sociospatial context. In this chapter we will
consider the effect of class standing on lifestyles, gender differences, and everyday life;
racial and minority distinctions; and new patterns of ethnic formation and immigra-
tion. The effects of class, gender, and race are so powerful in our society that we will
also consider them in Chapter 9 when we discuss social problems. We will see how
differences in sociospatial factors affect the way people live, their interactions with
others, and their use of space.
155
156 7: PEOPLE AND LIFEST YLES IN THE METROPOLIS
CL ASS DIFFERENCES AND SPATIAL LOC ATION
Class Stratification in the United States

Max Weber believed that an individual’s class position is important because it helps
determine the life chances that could be expected in the future; in other words, the
possible opportunities or constraints for future achievement open to any individual.
Weber also suggested that economic factors of class status, such as the type of occu-
pation or monetary resources that an individual possesses, are not the only determin-
ing factors of overall social status. One’s social standing in the society’s hierarchy also
depends on particular cultural attributes, such as religion, ethnicity, or symbolic dif-
ferences, and on the possession of political power. Thus, life chances differ according
to economic, political, and cultural factors, but material wealth, as Karl Marx main-
tained, is clearly the most important of all social variables.
The United States is a stratified society. This means that individuals and house-
holds are located within a social hierarchy that determines their access to resources.
Stratification is often pictured as a pyramid of social standing. Those at the very top
control most of the society’s resources; they also enjoy the most symbolic prestige and
political influence. Those below are the most numerous and have the least power. The
United States, despite an active ideology that preaches equality, in fact has the most
unequal distribution of wealth of any industrialized nation (Philips, 1988). The top 1
percent of the population control over 70 percent of the wealth, and the top 5 percent
control over 90 percent. Status considerations such as driving an expensive car, living
in a large home, taking fabulous vacations, and wearing expensive clothing are greatly
influenced by the media images of affluence and what life is supposed to be like at the
top of the stratification diamond.
American culture and the lifestyles it supports connects the financial resources of
individuals and families, expressed in our hierarchy of social stratification, to patterns
of consumption. For this reason, sociologists often study how class differences in our
society are expressed by different styles of consumption. Consumption patterns are
also supported by credit card debt, housing loans, car loans, educational loans, buying
through financing, and other arrangements that enable people to spend more than
they earn. As we move through different local spaces within the metropolitan envi-
ronment, we encounter a tremendous diversity in lifestyles. These differences are a
function of relative class standing and, in turn, are expressed through the activity of
consumption. While many persons in our society consume at a high level by incur-
ring debt, they do so in distinct ways thereby enabling us to talk about lifestyle differ-
ences in the metropolitan region.
Research on the American class structure divides our society into a number of dif-
ferent groups based on what social scientists call SES, or socioeconomic status, which is
a particular combination of wealth, occupation, education, gender, and race, among
C L A S S D I F F E R E N C E S A N D S PAT I A L LO C AT I O N 157
other factors (see Robertson, 1987). Many studies will divide the population into five
groups: the lower class, the working class, the lower-middle class, the upper-middle
class, and the ruling class. Only the ruling class controls enough wealth to be consid-
ered independent from economic needs; many persons in the lower class do not have
access to regular sources of income because of a lack of jobs in the inner city, while
many working class households have discovered that it is necessary for both husband
and wife to work to support their families, and middle-class families find it increas-
ingly difficult to maintain their standard of living due to the stagnant wages and a de-
clining dollar in the world economy.
Socioeconomic standing also involves the ability of the household to establish res-
idence in a particular place. Thus, a significant component of socioeconomic status
will be determined by one’s address and the symbolic reputation of particular neigh-
borhoods within the metropolitan neighborhoods. It means something very different
to live in the north shore suburb or oceanfront town than it does to be from the ‘hood
or to have grown up in the projects. In our society, due to stratification differences,
the choice of residential location is not always voluntary. Restrictions of wealth, race,
and gender are particularly potent sifters of population across the metropolitan re-
gions. Socioeconomic difference and the system of social stratification therefore man-
ifest themselves both as differences in individual lifestyles and as differences in
neighborhood living or local space. Let us consider some of the distinct ways stratifi-
cation is reflected in this interaction between social relations and territorial practice,
as the sociospatial perspective suggests.
The Wealthy
The upper classes often have the advantage of owning many homes because they are
able to afford it. Former president George H. W. Bush, for example, for many years
maintained residences in Houston, Washington, D.C., and Kennebunkport, Maine.
Many wealthy people alternate among townhouse, suburban estate, and rural recre-
ational home. Obviously, at any given time the family can occupy just one of these
residences, so multiple home ownership is a symbol of wealth and power that has
some meaning and prestige in our society. In the city, the wealthy are associated with
the more fashionable districts such as Nob Hill in San Francisco, Beverly Hills in Los
Angeles, the Gold Coast near Lake Michigan in Chicago, Beacon Hill in Boston, and
Park Avenue in New York City. Their activities take place within certain spaces that
are allocated to the particular mix of restaurants, resorts, and social clubs reserved for
the upper class.
One important way the wealthy manifest their power and status is by isolating
themselves as much as possible from the rest of the population. This type of segrega-
tion is voluntary. In the city, voluntary segregation may be accomplished by living in
ultra-expensive housing with security guards and controlled entrances. Even though
public transportation and taxis are available, the wealthy often utilize private, door-
to-door limousine services. Shopping and recreation are all located in heavily policed
areas. Maintaining this level of isolation remains somewhat of a constant chore that
taxes the resources of surveillance and control, requiring private security guards,
apartment buildings with twenty-four-hour doormen, and private schools or acade-
mies for children. In the suburbs or at country homes, however, the benefits of isola-
tion are more readily enjoyed in gated communities and exclusive country clubs.
One of the best studies by a sociologist of the upper-class lifestyle is E. Digby
Baltzell’s Philadelphia Gentlemen (1958). This study indicates that while the wealthy
require their own segregated space, the areas they choose for their voluntary isolation
vary over the years, because, in an effort to remain invisible, the wealthy have had to
move as the metropolitan region itself expanded over time. Baltzell distinguishes be-
tween the elite and the upper class. The former are “those individuals who are the
most successful and stand at the top of the functional class hierarchy. These individ-
uals are leaders in their chosen occupations or professions” (1958:6). Baltzell’s book
is not about the elite but about the upper class, which he defines in contrast as the
“group of families whose members are descendants of successful individuals one,
two, three or more generations ago. . . . [Individuals in this social grouping are]
brought up together, are friends, and are intermarried one with another; and finally,
they maintain a distinctive style of life and a kind of primary group solidarity which
sets them apart from the rest of the population” (1958:7).
According to Baltzell, the upper class in Philadelphia restricted itself to a particular
location in the city and tried to remain out of sight. Over the years, however, its choice
of location varied; that is, it usually did not stay in the same neighborhood generation
after generation, but tended to be subject to the same forces of deconcentration and
regional drift as were other individuals in the metropolis. Most American cities have a
pattern similar to Philadelphia of once fashionable districts that have declined as the
wealthy shuffle around the metropolitan region in search of secure enclaves for their
lifestyle. The most characteristic area of upper-class life was the Main Line, which
stretched westward from the central city of Philadelphia on the commuter railroad to
the suburbs of Overbrook, Merion, Wynnewood, Ardmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr,
Rosemont, and other towns out to Paoli, Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia upper-class
lifestyle consisted of a withdrawal from civic affairs and the concentration on business
by the males; while females were expected to stay close to home minding the house-
hold and entertaining when necessary for the husbands’ needs. In addition, however,
women were expected to be involved in philanthropic enterprises outside the home,
such as organizing charity balls or fund-raising activities for the arts. Children were
sent to exclusive private schools, and social life meant interacting only with other
members of the upper class on the Social Register. Family time for these people was di-
vided between town and country residences. In this way, the upper class maintained its
spatial and social isolation from other segments of the society.
Box 7.1
The Upscale Urban Lifestyle
Market researchers have studied yuppies in detail because they spend so much of
their income on consumer products. They identify characteristic yuppie areas as lo-
cated in the more affluent sections of the central city (Weiss, 1988). Many live in
high-rise buildings in areas of high population concentration and in newly gentrified
housing in suddenly fashionable areas of the inner city. According to one report:
Almost two-thirds live in residences worth more than $200,000, decorating their
living rooms according to Metropolitan Home, buying their clothes at Brooks
Brothers, frequenting the same hand-starch Chinese laundries. In Urban Gold
Coast, residents have the lowest incidence of auto ownership in the nation; these
cliff-dwellers get around by taxi and rental car. (Weiss, 1988:278)
Market researchers also note the peculiar, service-dependent nature of yuppie

consumer behavior. For the sake of last-minute convenience, they will spend more
to eat out or purchase items at nearby grocery stores that charge more than large su-
permarkets. Convenience is prized by people whose high salaries often require
them to devote extra hours to their work. According to Weiss:
Residents usually eat out for lunch and dinner, and their forays to grocery stores
mostly yield breakfast items: yogurt, butter, orange juice, and English muffins—all
bought at slightly above-average rates. Compared to the general population, resi-
dents buy barely one-fifth the amount of such pedestrian treats as TV dinners,
canned stews, and powdered fruit drinks. Where these consumers do excel is at the
liquor store: They buy imported champagnes, brandy, beer, and table wine at twice
the national norm, possibly to take the edge off stress-filled urban living. (1988:281)
The upper class is not confined to city residence. One of the earliest studies of
the affluent in suburbia was Thorsten Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).
Although wealth was behind their behavior, the most important characteristics of
the lifestyle were symbolic or cultural. Veblen coined the concept conspicuous con-
sumption to refer to this particular aspect of the affluent style of suburban life. This
concept refers to an outward display of consumption that demonstrates wealth and
power through the wasting of resources and the symbols of upper-class membership.
The suburban homes of the wealthy, for example, were endowed with excess. Houses
were huge, over 5,000 square feet or more, with many more rooms than were neces-
sary to service the immediate family. Estates had large front and rear lawns that were
landscaped and attended to by a staff of gardeners. Conspicuous consumption was
symbolized by the landscaping of yards precisely because land was allowed to lie un-
cultivated as a resource—the lawn was just for show.
The suburban lifestyle of the wealthy is focused on leisure activity as a sign of con-
spicuous consumption. This is particularly significant because symbols of leisure
mean that people do not have to work. The suburban country club, costly to belong
to and restrictive in its membership, is an essential component for the exclusive set.
The fees usually run into the tens of thousands of dollars, thereby keeping out the
working class. In many parts of the country, clubs such as the Everglades Country
Club in Florida prevent African Americans and Jews from belonging even if they can
afford membership fees. The leisure activity of choice for the affluent is golf, and in
recent years this game has come to symbolize suburban wealth and leisure itself, be-
cause golf is most often played at country clubs. A second important recreational pur-
suit is tennis, which also requires outdoor maintenance when played at the country
club, although tennis is also played in the city. In a wealthy area such as Palm Desert,
California, located about a hundred miles east of Los Angeles, a considerable amount
of the town land is devoted to golf courses, which require immense amounts of water
and daily care. Because Palm Desert is located in the desert, the presence of so many
golf courses is indeed a luxury. For the most affluent families in the largest cities and
most exclusive suburbs, membership in the local Polo Club may be the most signifi-
cant indication that the family has reached the top of the stratification pyramid.
Wealthy suburbanites maintain their isolation through mechanisms similar to
those utilized in the city, such as the high price of homes, surveillance and control by
private security forces, gate-guarded and enclosed communities, and the separation
that comes from spatial dispersal itself. Whether we are dealing with the city or the
suburbs, the wealthy tend to use topography to their advantage. Their homes are lo-
cated at the greatest heights. In the suburbs, this often means that estates are built on
the high ground, on hillsides or escarpments. In the city, this “god’s eye view” is ac-
quired with apartments at the top of luxury high-rises, where there is intense compe-
tition for the condominium with the best views of the city.
In short, the wealthy possess a distinct lifestyle founded on class privilege and
symbols of high social status. Their daily life manifests itself in space through unique
molding of the environment to create isolation and exclusion. The wealthy also over-
come the limitations of space by owning several residences, each with its own loca-
tional advantages. Whether living in the city or the country, their lifestyle, like any
other, is sociospatial; that is, it is organized around expressive symbols (Fussell, 1983)
and particular spaces.
Yuppies, Buppies, Dinks, and the Suburban Middle Class

A large proportion of central city residents are not members of the upper class but do
have significant discretionary income because of monetary rewards associated with
their chosen field of work. Since the 1970s, as manufacturing has declined in the
city, there has been a phenomenal increase in service-related jobs (see Chapter 6).
Many of these are professional positions created by the information-processing econ-
omy of the city, such as the financial and legal institutions associated with corporate
headquarters. In previous chapters, we discussed how certain kinds of economic ac-
tivity create or help reinforce lifestyles, community relations, and expressive symbols.
The shift to information-processing professional services has also affected metropoli-
tan settlement space by reinforcing certain upper-middle-class patterns of behavior.
As with all other lifestyles in our society, socioeconomic standing and the financial
resources of these groups are expressed through particular consumption patterns.
The term yuppie, or young urban professional, has acquired a derogatory connota-
tion, but it is a very useful way to describe relatively young (late twenties to early for-
ties), middle-class professionals who live in the city. The same can be said for the term
dink—double income, no kids—which describes yuppie couples without children.
We should note that yuppies and dinks represent urban subpopulations characterized
by their income, occupation, and lifestyle; they are not identified by ethnicity or race.
As large numbers of African American college graduates entered the labor force in the
1980s, the term buppie was used to identify the black urban professional. Only re-
cently have such components of the middle class achieved the kind of numbers that
have attracted attention. According to Sassen (1991), yuppies were responsible for
gentrification and the upgraded housing and renovation of older loft buildings in
New York and other cities; their culinary demands spurred the opening of many new
and often exotic restaurants; and their more specialized everyday needs, such as last-
minute food shopping, health and fitness requirements, and reading and cinema
tastes, have opened up new sectors of employment for a host of immigrant groups
and working-class urban residents looking for entry-level service positions.
In the early 1980s, the leaders of many cities believed that the two-pronged explosion
of jobs and spending related to the expansion of the business service sector would replace
manufacturing as the key growth industry of urban areas. Indeed, places such as Pitts-
burgh (Jezierski, 1988) managed to change from centers of industry to focal points for
global banking and investment. Restructuring of the financial and corporate business sec-
tors with a consequent decline in the growth of jobs, however, occurred in the mid-1980s,
cutting short this expansion. Especially significant were the changes that occurred after the
October 1987 “crash” of the New York stock market, which led to greater computeriza-
tion of financial transactions, the reining in of risky ventures such as junk bonds, and the
failure of several investment firms (Minsky, 1989). Throughout the 1990s, corporate
downsizing led to the loss of tens of thousands of white-collar jobs in cities across the
country. Hence, despite what was once believed, the place of yuppies in the revitalization
of central cities may be overrated.
Most households that we would identify as part of the middle class do not live in
the city. Decades of white flight for those who could afford to move to the ever-
expanding suburbs have emptied the central city of much of the middle class. The ma-
jority of middle-class Americans have spread out and prospered across the vast expanses
of developed housing tracts located in suburban settlement space throughout the met-
ropolitan region. Middle-class suburban living might be thought of as the upper-class
lifestyle within a more modest budget. Symbols of status abound in this kind of envi-
ronment as well. The typical suburban home is a scaled-down replica of the upper-class
estate. It consists of a front yard that is strictly ornamental and a backyard reserved for
leisure. In the warmer parts of the country, the desirable backyard may contain a built-
in swimming pool, which usually is no more than thirty feet long. The 1990s may be
known as the decade of the backyard deck; most new middle-class homes have decks in
the backyard where children play and adults cook on the gas barbecue, and home im-
provement chain stores have spread across the suburban landscape. While the upper-
class estate requires a team of gardening and maintenance people to take care of the
yard, the middle-class homeowner is a “do-it-yourselfer.” Indeed, a stereotypical activ-
ity of the suburban male invariably involves fighting crabgrass on the lawn, repairing
roofs, and maintaining homeowner appliances. Women in suburbia also have a unique
lifestyle, as we will discuss more fully later when we consider the relationship between
gender and space.
For suburbanites, leisure activities are confined to the weekend, when there is some
free time from work—at least for those households where parents do not have to work
overtime or stagger their work schedules during the week so that one parent can stay
home with the kids. In many municipalities, tax monies have been used to acquire the
kind of public facilities that the affluent enjoy in private. These include public golf
courses, swimming pools, tennis courts, and parks. In areas close to the ocean or a lake,
suburban municipalities often build and service public marinas for boating and other
water sports. Suburban life is family life. Box 7.2 details everyday life in suburbia.
Box 7.2
Middle-Class Suburban Lifestyle
A picture of middle-class suburban life was drawn by the geographer Peter Muller
(1981):
The needs and preferences of the nuclear family unit shape modes of social interac-
tion in middle-income residential areas. The management of children is a central
group-level concern, and most local social contact occurs through such family-
oriented formal organizations as the school PTA, Little League, and the Scouts.
However, despite the closer spacing of homes and these integrating activities,
middle-class suburbanites . . . are not communally cohesive to any great degree.
Emphasis on family privacy and freedom to aggressively pursue its own upwardly
continues
mobile aspirations does not encourage the development of extensive local social ties.
Neighboring (mostly child-related) is limited and selective, and even socializing
with relatives is infrequent. Most social interaction revolves around a nonlocal net-
work of self-selected friends widely distributed in suburban space. (1981:72)
This relative isolation of individuals in suburbia and the exclusive auto depen-
dency of the spatial arrangements is particularly hard on teenagers. Ralph Larkin
makes these observations about suburban teenagers in a place he calls Utopia:
The most serious complaint among Utopia High School students is boredom.
They are restless. Many complain of having nothing to do. They are forced to com-
pete with each other for grades, sexual attractiveness, hipness, and all the other
minutiae that are involved in the status race. Since everyone else is struggling for
the same, somehow scarcer rewards, friendship has a hollow quality to it. It is a
gloss on a relationship in which vulnerabilities are hidden so they won’t be capital-
ized on by others. (1979:60)
In his pioneering study of the suburban shopping mall (1984), Jerry Jacobs dis-
cussed how teenagers fight the boredom of their lives by converging on a certain
space, the fully enclosed shopping mall. Jacobs took one particular teenager, Julie,
as typical and detailed her activities within this environment as follows:
First and foremost she and her friends spend “a lot of time” at the (video game) ar-
cade. They often stop in at the “Gift Horse,” a shop featuring “jewelry and design
shoelaces and calendars and mugs.” They might on these walks stop to visit “The
Old Erie Coffee House.” Ironically, this is not a place to drink coffee although
coffee, tea, and their accoutrements are sold there. However, on these jaunts, Julie
and her friends usually have a different agenda in mind, and go there to look at
“cute stuffed animals, the little animal farm, animals, mugs and stuff, cards and
pins.” From there they might move on to “Sweet Temptation” and get some “gum
or something.” By then, it would be approaching lunch-time and they would go
to the “T.J.’s” (a hamburger place not unlike McDonald’s) where they would get a
large French fries and a coke and sit and talk about a variety of topics. (1984:98)
The Working Class and the Working Poor

In the nineteenth century, life in the city was dominated by factories. Modest working-
class housing was constructed in grid-pattern rows nearby. Weekly schedules were
centered in this space, which included the few amenities available to the working
class—the pub, the association football park (soccer) or the local baseball diamond,
and the streets themselves, which served as playgrounds for children (Hareven, 1982).
In the period immediately after World War II, U.S. cities contained a prodigious den-
sity of such working-class districts. Since the 1960s, however, this pattern has been in
decline. One reason is that many factory workers attained middle-class status with the
ability to purchase single-family homes in the suburbs (Berger, 1957), often with lib-
eral government-sponsored veterans’ benefits. A second, more drastic cause was the
decline in manufacturing itself. When the factories closed, working-class life became
all the more precarious.
Although working-class families have suburbanized in large numbers since the
1960s, many still remain residents of large cities. They are often referred to as the
“working poor” because their standard of living is declining as cities themselves have
become expensive places to reside. The quality of life of the working class is dependent
on the public services provided by local government. They require mass transporta-
tion, for example, which is becoming increasingly expensive. The level of medical care
for this less affluent group is seriously deficient and dependent on city-supported hos-
pitals because they work at jobs that do not provide adequate, if any, health insurance.
In fact, the Health and Hospitals Administration of New York City, which runs that
city’s medical facilities, has a yearly budget of about $1.5 billion, as much as the entire
budget of several small countries.
Because so much of their standard of living depends on city services, the working
poor are often at odds with public administrators. City politics involves clashes be-
tween this public and the municipal administration over the quality of services. Since
the late 1970s, declining fiscal health of cities has made this political conflict worse
because of budget crises and cutbacks (as we will see in Chapter 9). The working poor
and their advocates in the city fight a running battle with the mayor over the declines
in education, fire and police protection, sanitation, highway maintenance, health
care, and recreational amenities.
The Ghettoized Poor

In Chapter 9 we will discuss the serious issue of segregation. Being isolated and poor,
living in what is commonly referred to as a ghetto, is not a lifestyle that is chosen. It
is a set of circumstances that is forced on people who do not have the economic, po-
litical, and social resources to oppose being marginalized. Yet, we must discuss this
phenomenon here in order to present a clear picture of the kind of diversity that ex-
ists in our metropolitan regions that includes not only poor people but residents
who are involuntarily ghettoized by negative attitudes towards race and poverty.
Living in the worst areas of the central city means that the ghettoized poor are
subjected to an almost unending list of pathological consequences of city living, in-
cluding public health crises such as AIDS, child abuse, and tuberculosis, dropouts
from education, juvenile crime, drug addiction and the bearing of addicted babies,
WOMEN, GENDER ROLES, AND SPACE 165
juvenile motherhood, murder, rape, and robbery. The crime and pathology associ-
ated with poverty-stricken ghettos makes city living difficult for everyone and are
largely responsible for the continuing levels of violence associated with the inner city.
One way of showing the spatial effects of extreme segregation on daily life is by
examining access to adequate food shopping facilities. In an influential UK study
(Wrigley, 2002): “Research confirmed that there was a lack of easy access to shops for
deprived households and, furthermore, places that did service the low income neigh-
borhoods had higher prices. . . . Adopting the term ‘food deserts’ first coined by the
low-income project team of the nutrition task force, the report argued that ‘some ar-
eas have become food deserts exacerbating the problems those on low incomes face
in affording a healthy diet” (Urban Studies 39, no. 11: 2030).
Through the concept of “food desert,” then, the health inequalities and spatial
exclusion of the poor became firmly linked. Most discussions of extreme isolation for
ghettoized Americans point out their segregation in distinct areas of cities, but they
fail to connect that exclusion to the everyday effect of failing to find adequate and
healthy food and a cost enjoyed by other, more advantaged Americans because they
live in a “food desert.” Research of this kind of deprivation proves how discrimina-
tion and segregation lead to physical and emotional injuries rather than simply a
“different way of life” for the poor.
WOMEN, GENDER ROLES, AND SPACE

The issue of gender and urban space is a vast topic on which urban sociologists have
largely been silent. As recently as the 1970s, one well-known geographer wrote a book
entitled This Scene of Man (Vance, 1977) and, not to be outdone, more than a decade
later an equally famous urban sociologist published a study of Chicago entitled The
Man Made City (Suttles, 1990). Feminist scholars would indeed agree that the city is
manmade because women had little to do with its planning, less to do with its con-
struction, and received few benefits from being confined within a man made environ-
ment. The built environment reflects men’s activities, men’s values, and men’s attitudes
toward settlement space. Yet the lives of women are a critical component of urban and
suburban activities. Increasingly, with the prodding of feminist observers, urban sociol-
ogy should gain greater insight into the role of women, and their needs, in everyday
metropolitan life.
Women and the Urban Political Economy

During the nineteenth century in the early stages of industrial manufacturing, it was
common for entire families to labor; ten and even twelve hours a day, six days a week,
was the norm. Home life was second to the needs of the factory, and even children
were pressed into the service of wage labor in textile mills and other industries
(Hareven, 1982). Over the years, conditions in these “Satanic mills,” as Karl Marx
(1967) called them, changed. Child labor laws were passed at the turn of the century
in the United States prohibiting school-age youth from full-time employment. Many
women continued to work, but the growing number of middle-class families during
the 1920s enabled people to copy the upper-class lifestyle with married women re-
maining at home. This effect of class, which occurred because of successful economic
growth beginning last century, resulted in the redefinition of the middle-class woman’s
role to that of housewife (Spain, 1992).
Over the years, other changes would alter the relationship of women to both the
family and the larger society. Status differences were caused by the effects of male so-
cial dominance, which dictated women’s life chances, and by the effects of the econ-
omy. For example, among the middle class during the 1920s, women were expected
to remain housewives. During World War II, however, many women returned to full-
time occupations, including manufacturing, as in the image of “Rosie the Riveter.”
After the war and especially during the suburbanization of the 1950s, middle-class
women were once again expected to remain home as housewives. But in the 1970s,
real wages in the United States began to decline, and participation in the middle-class
lifestyle has since grown increasingly expensive. Owning a home in the suburbs typi-
cally requires more than one income, and it is common for both spouses to pursue
full-time employment. A majority of all adult women now work outside the home,
whether single or married.
Recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor illustrate the phenomenal
changes in the labor force participation of women since the 1950s. In 1950 roughly
30 percent of women worked outside the home, but by 1986 the figure was 55 per-
cent. In 1950 it was relatively rare for married women with children to be employed.
Only 28 percent of women in this group with children between ages six and seven-
teen worked, but by 1986 the figure had jumped to 68 percent (see Hochschild and
Machung, 1989). At present, a majority of women return to the labor force within a
year after giving birth, and most families represent dual-income households.
Working-class and minority women have always had to secure employment out-
side the home, even if limited to part-time work. Minority women, for example, have
always worked, and many are the main sources of income for families due to employ-
ment discrimination against males. Certain industries, such as garment manufactur-
ing, depend almost exclusively on the exploitation of female labor in factories. Women
in Asia and Latin America, in particular, are exploited as the source of labor for the
electronics and garment industries in countries such as Mexico, Singapore, and South
Korea (see Chapter 11). McDowell suggests that male domination of female roles is an
integral part of the global economy and a major reason for the success of recent restruc-
turing that has shipped manufacturing jobs to developing countries (McDowell,
1991). In short, gender roles appear to be dictated in part by patriarchal social conven-
tions and, in many parts of the world, by the demands of the global economy.
Domestic labor is unpaid and has low status. Housework is usually not a family
topic of importance. Yet the well-being of the family depends on the cooking, cleaning,
nurturing, and monitoring of the household. In most societies, it has been women’s lot
to bear the responsibility for these tasks. Even when women work outside the home,
men expect them to complete a “double shift” of cleaning, cooking, and child care
when they return home. According to a classic study of this burden (Hochschild and
Machung, 1989), married women who work outside the home still do an average of
three hours a day of housework compared with seventeen minutes for their male
spouses. Indeed, women usually do not get recognition frm the family for the house-
work they do, unless the wife is working and the husband—or the husband’s family—
becomes concerned that she is not doing enough around the house. As one group of
observers note:
As women it is assumed that we will be ultimately responsible for the upkeep and
general maintenance of our homes whether we have another job or not. . . . Even
when others contribute to this work, the primary responsibility remains with the
women. We are conscious of its demands at all times; responsibilities cannot be
shut off by retreating into a “room of one’s own.” (Matrix Collective, 1984)
Domestic or unpaid labor supports child rearing and family life. While these ac-
tivities are necessary in all societies, the tasks themselves are the primary responsibility
of women, who for the most part labor alone. Urban sociologists refer to these activi-
ties as the social reproduction of the labor force, because household work along with
education and health care combine to nurture children until they themselves enter
the labor force. The socialization of women to accept the role of domestic laborer in
our society, therefore, is an essential and necessary component of the economy.
The participation of middle-class women in the formal economy has been cyclical
but increasing in recent decades. Since the 1970s, women have entered the paid labor
force in record numbers. As a result of economic restructuring—that is, with the de-
cline in manufacturing and the rise of service industries (see Chapter 6)—new oppor-
tunities have been created for women. Women have responded by returning to college
and moving into the professional service sector. One consequence of this shift has
been a change in the way both men and women view household tasks, with a greater
willingness among middle-class men to share in domestic labor, especially a growing
percentage of men who “mother” (Lamb, 1986; Grief, 1985). Another consequence
has been the multiplication of service-related jobs created by working mothers. Many
of the pressing household tasks have been farmed out to specialized service workers for
a fee. Child care, housecleaning, shopping assistance, and lawn care are but some of
the services that have taken the place of unpaid domestic labor. In addition, fast foods,
restaurants, and take-out shops have expanded their operations greatly over the last
twenty-five years. All of these new economic activities have changed the texture of
space in both cities and suburbs. Specialty shops and services spring up everywhere to
cater to those families with double incomes. Supermarket and giant merchandising
stores such as Walmart make shopping more efficient for the consumer although they
have other negative consequences for local business. Along with malls, retailers also re-
define metropolitan space through the construction of minicenters across the region.
The sociospatial relations of the modern global economy have much to do with
gender roles and patriarchy, but they also are a consequence of economic and politi-
cal factors. When women stayed at home and engaged in full-time but unpaid labor,
they were responsible for keeping up the appearance of the neighborhood. Once
middle-class women in the United States were encouraged to change their social
role, although still expected to do a “double shift,” energies and resources were trans-
ferred to service industries that catered to domestic needs. Neighborhoods changed
to accommodate fast-food and take-out places, restaurants, laundries, and dry clean-
ers, and supermarkets and malls made shopping progressively more convenient.
Houses in the suburbs required at least two-car garages because both spouses
commuted to work, and teenagers required their own vehicles for work, school, and
leisure activities. In both urban and suburban settlement spaces, day care and ex-
tended child care programs changed the place where children went to play—from
city streets supervised by mothers to indoor group play areas supervised by paid day
care specialists. Elsewhere in the global economy, young girls comprise the bulk of
the manufacturing labor force in electronics and garment industries because patriar-
chal relations make them docile and low-paid workers. The control of women’s bod-
ies is as essential to the sustenance of countries in the developing world as it is to the
“first world” patriarchal societies. Everywhere, then, the nature of gender roles has a
direct effect on sociospatial relations.
Women and the Environment

The relations between settlement space and gender extend from the home to the
community to the larger metropolitan region. The home, for example, is the one
space in the environment where people can be themselves. It is the most private and
intimate space. Due to the family division of labor, women have been assigned the
main task of decorating the home. Through this activity they express their own indi-
viduality (Matrix Collective, 1984). Of course housing has several meanings, as we
will see, and it is a signifier of class status. But for women, their control over the en-
vironmental space of the home has meant an opportunity for self-expression. For the
middle class, it also has developed into a restricted domain within which women are
allowed to influence their environment. Box 7.3 reviews some of the important as-
pects of the environment as they relate to women’s lives.
If the home space can be viewed in this way, it is partly because women have been
socialized to take on responsibility for shelter maintenance. Spatial relations therefore
play a great role in the perpetuation of female socialized roles in our society. However,
Box 7.3
Gendered Space in the Built Environment
The sociospatial approach asserts that urban and suburban settlement spaces influ-
ence individual behavior; however, this influence is mediated by gender, class, and
other individual characteristics. In this way, the meaning of space and the built envi-
ronment may differ for men and women. Consider the ways in which the structure of
settlement space in Sweden and that in the United States have very different conse-
quences for the daily activity and well-being of women.
Suburban developments in the United States usually consist of single-family homes
located some distance from the urban center. Local zoning restrictions require that
suburban settlement space be low-density (not simply single-family homes instead of
apartments but also lot sizes of between one and three acres). Land-use plans also re-
quire physical separation of residential areas from business and commercial develop-
ment. The federal government has spent billions of dollars constructing a highway
system for private automobiles, and public transportation is limited.
In Sweden, suburban developments are of moderate density, usually garden-type
apartments located in mixed-use districts where stores and businesses are located
within walking distance. Extensive public transportation connects suburban settle-
ment space to the city core, and child care and other services (provided through the
public sector) are available within the local community (Popenoe, 1977).
The effects of these two very different built environments on women’s lives could
not be more dramatic. In the United States, women who live in suburban housing
developments are comparatively isolated from friends, relatives, their place of em-
ployment, and health and other public services. A second family automobile is
needed for women to take their children to day care, go grocery shopping, or travel
to their jobs. Then there is the cost of travel time to and from each of these destina-
tions (separated from one another by zoning). In Sweden and other Scandinavian
countries with similar welfare state structures and urban planning, women in subur-
ban developments are more likely to live near friends, relatives, and their place of
employment. If they do not, public transportation is available, eliminating the need
for a second automobile. Because day care and other family services are funded by
the state and located in the new planned suburban communities, they are readily
available. And because friends and even relatives may live within walking distance, it
is easier to pool resources to arrange for other family needs (Popenoe, 1980).
The arrangement of suburban settlement space in Scandinavian countries encour-
ages women to become fully integrated into the metropolitan community and to
build strong social networks with others in the community. In contrast, the structure
of suburban settlement space in the United States—where homes, workplaces,
schools, and shopping areas are separated from one another—places a significant
burden on suburban women’s time needs and isolates them from employment op-
portunities and daily activities within the metropolitan region.
if the female gender role assigns a certain power to women through control of the
home environment, the opposite is the case for the larger physical environment of
the city and metropolis. Once out in public space, women have to beware. They are
subject to harassment and, quite often, danger. Women living in large cities must ac-
quire “street smarts” early if they are to successfully negotiate public space. As one
commentary noted: “Whether you wear a slit skirt or are covered from head to foot in
a black chador, the message is not that you are attractive enough to make a man lose
his self-control, but that the public realm belongs to him and you are there by his
permission as long as you follow his rules and as long as you remember your place”
(Benard and Schlaffer, 1993:390).
In contrast to men, women are situated in a constrained space and do not enjoy the
same freedom of movement. For example, women are cautioned not to go out alone at
night, and with good reason. If they walk or jog around the neighborhood, they usu-
ally do so only in secure places. The women’s movement has been particularly attentive
to the needs of females for safe places, such as “Take Back the Night” rallies. The con-
stricted and confined safe places for women in our society are another form of oppres-
sion. By patterning what activities are allowed, what are isolated, what are considered
safe or dangerous, and what are connected to other activities, such as the combination
of child care and shopping found in the mall or the gender segregation of children in
elementary schools (Thorne, 1993), space plays a role in gender socialization.
The secondary status of women is reinforced through spatial design. Community
planning invariably assigns the major portion of open space to traditionally male-
dominated activities, such as sports. Places for mothering are rarely considered at all
and are often restricted to playgrounds. Creating safe environments for children and
mothers requires some planning. In Columbia, Maryland, one of the totally planned
New Towns in the United States, pedestrian and automobile traffic are separated by
the segregation of space. This feature of Columbia makes it easier for mothers to pro-
tect children at play. It is not so easy to suggest ways the home and community envi-
ronments can be improved by taking the needs of women more into account, although
some progress through feminist activism has been made in sensitizing planners and ar-
chitects to the specific needs of women (see Matrix Collective, 1984). Change in the
accepted gender roles and the new demands placed upon family life may affect our en-
vironment in the years to come (see Chapter 12 for an extended discussion on envi-
ronmental and planning concerns).
Finally, there is a sharp difference between men and women regarding travel. Men
travel more than women, and most, but not all, use transportation solely for work-
related purposes. Men, more than women, are drawn away from their homes for busi-
ness trips. Married women, in contrast, most often seek out jobs close to home and,
although they commute, their everyday space is confined to family chores using a car
that is close to home as well. Shopping, being a “soccer mom,” and picking or drop-
ping off children at school are all circumscribed activities in a more restricted daily
THE CITY AS A SPECIAL PLACE 171
space than the one enjoyed by men who occasionally go on business trips many miles
from home. Men, whether single or married, are also much more likely to travel sig-
nificant distances for leisure purposes than women—for fishing or golf trips, for ex-
ample. In short, there is a large gender gap regarding differences in travel behavior
that has an impact on male/female and family relationships.
THE CITY AS A SPECIAL PLACE:

N I G H T L I F E, U R B A N C U LT U R E, A N D
REGENERATION OF DOWNTOWNS
Despite the domination of suburbia in regard to total regional population, there is no
doubt that the historical central city retains a pedestrian and consumer-oriented cul-
ture that remains relatively unique and attractive to all residents. One way of demon-
strating this aspect is by examining the important role downtowns play in nighttime
activities of a diverse group of people ranging from young adult bar hoppers, music
and theater aficionados of all ages, and tourists looking for a “good time.”
Chatterton and Hollands (2003) have written an interesting case study of night-life
in the UK. They depict an active scene of young adults who carouse through all hours
of the evening. Local bars draw large crowds almost every night and many offer live
music, although drinking and hooking up with the opposite sex, in their study, seems
to be the major attractions. The popularity of these activities brings people back into
the downtown core, which had been abandoned as a place for leisure and consumption
by most people due to the suburbanization of the population. For this reason, develop-
ment of such nighttime businesses as bars and theaters has, in the last two decades, been
viewed as a major aspect of urban regeneration that greatly benefits the city, through
amusement taxes and the like, as well as local businesses. Keeping the once abandoned
downtowns busy with people is viewed as a sign of urban renewal, although there re-
main permanent residents of these areas who complain about the increased noise and
nuisance congestion in the evenings when non-night crawlers simply want to sleep.
An important contribution of Chatterton and Hollands’s study is the way they
demonstrate how major beverage corporations have targeted locally owned pubs and
nightclubs for takeover and for outlets that sell their products. What often started as
a revival of small businesses and the welcome attraction of locally financed new ones
to downtown leisure districts has turned into a money grab by major international
corporations selling beer and alcohol under a variety of simulated names that mimic
the appearance of existing small breweries. Packaging and advertising in pubs or bars
of these mass-produced beverages exploiting consumer desires for high-quality de-
signer products captures profits. Additionally, once local businesses are progressively
bought out, or competing venues built by major developers in league with corpora-
tions move into areas, they attract enough nighttime traffic to become profitable.
Consequently, the kind of chain marketing with global beverage and product control
by transnational corporations that most often characterize suburbia is increasingly

found in revived sections of major cities as well, according to the authors’ case study.
Another aspect of revived city life exploiting nighttime consumption and leisure
has been studied recently by David Grazian (2008) in a renewed and highly popular
part of Philadelphia. His case study does not have the range of Chatterton and Hol-
lands’s, but it reports interesting findings that supplement the UK reality. The author
discovers that restaurants in the newly yuppified inner-city areas resort to various
tricks in order to get locals and tourists alike to spend much more money for food and
drink than they would otherwise. Wine snobbery by waiters is one important means
of doing this. Padding bills with drinks is a key way everyone connected with a restau-
rant makes money.
Another aspect of his book involves what he calls “the girl hunt.” College and
young adult males make their way to the so-called meat market city nightclubs in
search of pickups and one-night stands. The author writes as if he discovered a major
aspect of human life on Earth when he states that, after doing extensive “sociological”
research and interviews at these nightclubs, most women out with their friends actu-
ally resist pickups and are there only to have a good time and get men to pay for their
drinks. This research finding plays into a very depressing and cynical view of what
amounts to the major means of socializing among young adults in our society. For
Grazian, exploitation and resistance are sex typed and personal. For Chatterton and
Hollands, in contrast, the real exploitation, echoed by Grazian’s first part of his book,
is in the way corporations exploit night club consumers and promote alcohol drink-
ing for profit.
U R B A N C U LT U R E A N D C I T Y R E V I TA L I Z AT I O N
In Chapter 1 we discussed the fact that the urban form has changed from one that
historically relied on the large, compact central city, to a different spatial array of
multicenters that are regional in scale with the historical core becoming only one of
several areas of high density. This change does not mean that the old central city has
disappeared as important (see following and Chapter 14).
The relative uniqueness and attractiveness of urban culture to suburbanites and
tourists as well as people seeking an inner-city address has also been exploited by de-
velopers and city officials as a means of revitalizing areas that were abandoned or de-
teriorated during the period of deindustrialization between the 1960s and 1990s.
Research results from around Western Europe report the relative success of this kind
of revival model (see Miles and Paddison, 2005). Culture-led urban regeneration
started with the U.S. concept of “festival marketplace,” an approach to developing
once derelict waterfront sites emphasizing consumption and entertainment. One of
the most successful developments was built by the American Rouse Corporation for
the inner harbor of Barcelona, Spain. Rouse is the same corporation that built har-
U R B A N C U LT U R E A N D C I T Y R E V I TA L I Z AT I O N 173
bor revival projects in places like Baltimore and Boston. Signature aspects of their
approach involve a large shopping mall and an aquarium. Both aspects were carried
over to the Barcelona project with success.
This formula was expanded to include investment in prime global tourist-
oriented attractions. Perhaps the best example of this is the Guggenheim Museum in
Bilbao, Spain, which was so successful as a magnet for tourists that it aided the revital-
ization of the entire city.
Culture-led development in the European Union arose out of a 1983 initiative
called the ECOC, or the European Cities/Capital of Culture program: “Since its in-
ception, the program has gone through a number of transformations. However the
basic structure remains, namely that cities take turns acquiring the name of a Euro-
pean cultural capital which is tied to an investment scheme that promotes the local
area. Over time there’s been a wide variety of responses by European countries with
some pouring in a relatively large amount of investment in a particular city and other
countries doing less with the same designation.” (Garcia, 2005:843)
Although some researchers have uncovered evidence of success in a lingering out-
come of greater community involvement, pride and sense of place, Miles and Paddi-
son also note an important criticism that, for example, Glasgow’s ability to put on a
major event and gather international acclaim is now considered only a mask aimed
at hiding the enduring, embedded problems and contradictions resulting from de-
cades of poverty and related housing, health, and nutrition problems.
Despite the mixed results of the ECOC program, there are other aspects of ex-
ploiting urban culture for revitalization that have worked in Europe and Canada as
well as the United States. As a consequence of globalization and after the 1980s, cities
have been able to place an emphasis on aspects of their local culture that are relatively
unique in the quest for economic development in competition with other locations.
“What is remarkable here is not just the speed with which culture-driven strategies
have become advocated by governments and local development agencies as a means of
bolstering the urban economy, but also how their diffusion has globalized. Within the
space of little more than two decades, the initiation of culture-driven urban regenera-
tion has come to occupy a pivotal position in the new urban entrepreneurialism. . . .
The language of place marketing has become as integral to the Asian city as it has the
European or North American city—that, more specifically, the invocation of culture
has become central to the ambitions” (Miles and Paddison, 2005) of cities everywhere
in maintaining, and enhancing, their regional positions in the world system.
What is new and different about the use of culture by cities for global positioning,
such as the development of cultural tourism, is that local distinctiveness of urban
places, which have developed often over the course of centuries, has now become
commodified and transformed into an adjunct of profit making through consump-
tion of space. No longer does urban culture refer to a particular way of life. In the
context of capitalist economic development and global competition, the new way in
which culture is exploited often clashes with the old, such as in local neighborhood
resistance to grand projects of branding in attempting to acquire world attention. Op-
position, for example, to the construction projects that follow a decision to hold the
Olympics in a particular location is a perfect case.
A third aspect of investigating the role of culture in urban regeneration involves
measuring the relative success of such efforts. After the year 2000, many cities across the
globe launched their own projects with a common theme of advancing economic de-
velopment. Only now has it begun to be possible to measure whether or not culture-led
urban revival has been successful and under what conditions. The expansion of facilities
for tourists, for example, is very much a form of investment that bypasses local citizen
needs in favor of the global tourist. This is especially true for cities that have historically
been working class and industrial, no matter how hard hit by deindustrialization and
globalization. Investment in cultural resources does not usually translate into a more in-
clusive, better quality of life for the working class of such cities, and it is unlikely to
bring about a large enough increase in tourism to offset declining employment.
The important question that is raised here is whether investment in culture can
lead to the continued, sustainable development of a city, or is it tied more clearly to
one-shot events and enterprises (Miles and Paddison, 2005:838).
A fourth aspect involves a makeover of the city for tourism. Here the consumer
that is being addressed is someone from outside the region. Consumer attractions in
this case are different in some respects from the way in which central cities seek to
appeal to local white affluent shoppers who were principally from the suburbs. Thus
tourism represents a separate case of the consumption of space as well as the produc-
tion of space for that consumption. Bernadette Quinn (2005) researched the effects
of city “festivals” in this regard. The holding of festivals in cities has become a popu-
lar way to draw attention and crowds to the inner locations. Quinn argues that city
authorities “tend to disregard the social value of festivals and to construe them sim-
ply as vehicles of economic generation or as ‘quick fix’ solutions to the city image
problems. While such an approach renders certain benefits, it is ultimately quite lim-
iting.” According to her research, art festivals have not worked to include enough lo-
cal residents and have not led to an improved quality of life for them so that the
festivals do not have a lasting effect on the people who live in the city. Quinn also
notes that these festivals will continue because they are one way in which cities com-
pete with other urban places.
Another aspect of urban revitalization using culture and consumption is reported
in an interesting study of Holland by Bas Spierings (2006). He uses Lefebvre’s idea of
the “spaces of consumption” to investigate how inner-city areas restructure their busi-
nesses in order to attract the more affluent consumers from suburbia as well as tourists.
This is a kind of restructuring, much like the type of festival-led one reported by
Quinn, that ignores the needs of local, less affluent residents, in favor of profit making
from a wealthier market segment that most often commutes from outside the city.
U R B A N C U LT U R E A N D C I T Y R E V I TA L I Z AT I O N 175
Spierings’s research specifically focuses on the attempts by cities to attract a par-

ticular consumer: an upper-middle-class mobile and demanding person with money
to spend and with an interest in having an experience in shopping as well as finding
goods that might be purchased. “The belief in the accompanying mobile spending
power has made intricate—urban competition flourish” (2006:189) within multi-
centered metro regions because developing the inner city for such consumption
competes with suburban shopping malls.
“In so doing, city center actors upgraded the quality of both the functional struc-
ture and the physical features of the city center. More specifically, the consumer
services, the morphology, furnishings and architecture are changed for the visual
consumption of shoppers” (2006:189).
The attractive consumer “is assumed to perform the act of ‘shopping the city’ to
consume consumer services, as well as usually consuming ‘the shopping city’ itself—
—that is to say, the shopping environment.” Spierings’s study uncovered differences
in the development schemes according to the different cities; however, every center
aimed at its renovation in favor of attracting the contemporary and highly mobile
consumer with money to spend and in competition with other places with little re-
gard for the ability of local residents to also enjoy such spaces. Transformations of
this kind also change completely the culture of the city because they introduce new
sign systems that come from global corporations which are instantly recognizable as
chain marketing by high-end consumers and tourists alike.
Developers “created a mix of consumer services in the shopping environment. . . .
These contemporary consumers stroll and gaze around the consumption space to find
satisfaction. The aim of both the functional and physical upgrading therefore is to en-
able and encourage ‘shopping the city’” (2006:192). This implies that consumers are
browsing services such as retailing, catering, and cultural facilities. They also visually
consumed the shopping city, which consists of such things as facades, windows, and
shop interiors. Finally, developers sought to make their projects visually different from
the look of other competing city centers. Some projects have to address a lack of
pedestrian mall space; others had to make room through redevelopment and the tear-
ing down of obsolete structures for new shops. The latter examples are referred to as
structural changes. In addition, functional changes had to be made in order to attract
an appropriate mix of sources that complement high-end consumer shopping, such as
places to eat and cultural attractions.
In sum, Spierings’s study is important because it highlights three aspects of the so-
ciospatial approach of this text. First, he reinforces the research of Holland and
Chesterton by showing how global corporations invade the inner-city space and su-
perimpose their own brands and themes on products, thereby erasing historical local
culture and, in the case of consumer developments, historical local space as well. Sec-
ond, like Quinn’s results, Spierings’s show how this type of urban redevelopment ac-
tually ignores the interests and needs of local residents, which produces significant
tension between them and the affluent “invaders”—the tourists and high-end subur-
ban consumers—from outside. Cultural and political conflict emerges from this ten-
sion that constitutes an important aspect of local politics and social movements.
Third, the kind of projects that Spierings mentions helps illustrate an important dy-
namic of MMR internal processes—namely, the competition of locations throughout
the region for consumer dollars. Unlike the early and now obsolete compact model of
the city advocated by the 1930s Chicago School, the multicentered metro region
model allows for and even promotes analysis of spatial competition among separate
locations within the area that is applicable as well to the study of a similar dynamic
among individual global cities for such things as competition over tourist dollars.
ETHNICIT Y AND IMMIGRATION

Ethnic formation in modern society is the consequence of government policy and in-
tergroup competition within an ethnically diverse society (Omi and Winant, 1992).
In relatively homogeneous societies, lifestyle differences may exist, but they usually
are not expressed as ethnicity; class, gender, religious, subcultural, and age differences
may be more important. When indigenous people, such as mainland Chinese, immi-
grate to another country that contains people from many different origins, such as the
United States, subcultural differences may take on the dimensions of ethnic differ-
ences. These are almost wholly “semiotic” or symbolic in nature (see Chapter 4). In
particular, ascribed characteristics and inherited beliefs may make individuals with
foreign heritages uniquely different. What counts for the dynamics of ethnicity is the
extent to which those symbolic differences clash with those of the dominant society
or of other ethnic groups in a diverse society.
In the United States, ethnic lifestyles are closely connected to the waves of immi-
gration from abroad. Our understanding of immigration should include a spatial per-
spective that acknowledges the important role of the globalization of capital as well as
the push and pull factors that most often are used to explain why people left their
land of origin in the first place. Three distinct waves of immigration to the United
States have occurred. The first two waves are discussed in this section, and the third
wave, or “new immigration,” is discussed in the following section of this chapter.
The First Wave

Many thousands of years ago, Asians immigrated to the Western Hemisphere over a
land bridge to Alaska. Beginning with Columbus’s fateful voyage in 1492, Western
European settlers from the British Isles, Spain, Holland, and France confronted the
Native Americans. These European settlers arrived as a consequence of official state
policy. Some were convicts taking advantage of an alternative sentence to debtors’
prison in their homeland. Others signed on with the promise of free land and other
ETHNICIT Y AND IMMIGRATION 177
resources. Still others, such as the Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Col-
ony and William Penn and his Quaker community, came in search of religious free-
dom. At the time of the American Revolution, some 95 percent of immigrants to the
United States were Northern European, and nearly 70 percent came from Great
Britain (Steinberg, 1996).
During the 1840s, the potato famine in Ireland forced many people from that
country to immigrate. The Irish people were the first large group of immigrants who
were not Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and they confronted extensive discrimination be-
cause they were Catholic (Higham, 1977). By the time they arrived, the earlier groups
had entrenched themselves as the ruling class. Many of them, such as John Rocke-
feller (from Scotland), Cornelius Vanderbilt (whose family had come from Holland),
and Leland Stanford (of English origin), had made fortunes in the burgeoning indus-
trial economy of the United States. The Irish were considered less valuable than the
African slaves of the South, and they were used for dangerous tasks, such as building
railroads, or as the first proletarian factory workers in the northern cities where slavery
was not allowed.
The Second Wave

By the 1800s, industrialization was in full bloom and the cities of the United States
were expanding. At about that time a second substantial wave of new immigrants ar-
rived here from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Most second-wave im-
migrants made their homes in the city. Many had come from rural backgrounds and
had to make adjustments to the urban way of life (Handlin, 1951). As we noted in
Chapter 5, the cities of the time were overcrowded. Housing for most immigrants
lacked the basic necessities of sanitation and sewage. Public health crises and crime
waves were quite common (Monkkonen, 1986). The quality of urban life went into
decline. In addition, they found most jobs in the factories of the largest cities, and
they had to accommodate themselves to the industrial daily schedule.
It wasn’t long before antagonisms developed between immigrant groups orga-
nized as workers, and city officials and factory owners. Both the Irish who had ar-
rived somewhat earlier and the second wave of Central and Eastern Europeans were
viewed by established residents as threatening to the American way of life. Some
second-wave immigrants had already been exposed to radical labor movements in
Europe, and these groups, such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW),
started up in the United States. Because of the large majority of Catholics among the
foreigners, particularly the Irish, Italians, and Poles, a popular anti-urban sentiment
was that large cities were centers of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.”
It may be difficult for us to imagine today, but the older, first-wave immigrants,
especially those among the elite of the country, propagated racist ideas about the Irish,
Italians, Poles, and Jews in the late 1880s. Among the books published was Josiah
Strong’s (1891) racist diatribe that blamed the white foreigners for diluting the
“American Race” and for spawning the crises of the city. In another case, during the
1920s, many outspoken anti-Semites operated in the open, including Henry Ford,
who would not allow Jewish workers in his factories and financed a successful reprint-
ing of the virulently anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—a racist
book that is still circulated today.
To a great extent, such racist and anti-Semitic attacks appeared alongside others
accusing the new immigrants of harboring communist and anarchist or anticapitalist
ideas. Thus anti-immigrant racism was a strong weapon used to call immigration it-
self into question. Around the turn of the century, reaction to the second wave of ar-
rivals was so strong that it eventually led to a restriction of immigration from Eastern
and Southern Europe. This was accomplished in a succession of federal acts that es-
tablished quotas favoring first-wave, Western European and Northern European
countries. These quotas actually lasted until the immigration reform bill of 1965.
Fighting between employers and workers was not the only conflict of the time;
conflict also took on a spatial manifestation. Areas in the city were marked off by eth-
nicity, class, race, and religion. For example, most large American cities historically
have had two separate Irish neighborhoods—one for Irish Catholics, the other for
Irish Protestants. These groups competed with each other over territory and access to
public resources. Employers would also pit workers from different ethnic groups
against each other in a largely successful effort to prevent union organizing and keep
workers’ wages low. Thrasher’s study of Chicago gangs, discussed in Chapter 3, pro-
vides an excellent example of how these “defended neighborhoods” that are a so-
ciospatial phenomenon of ethnicity came into being.
The Third Wave

Earlier ideas about race and ethnicity and the immigrant experience are being chal-
lenged by the newest, third wave of immigrants that has arrived since the 1970s.
Changes to immigration laws enacted in 1965 replaced the earlier quota system
(which had been designed to keep Asians and other non-European groups out of the
country) with a preference system based on occupational characteristics. Supporters
of the immigration reform legislation could not have anticipated the unprecedented
response across the globe. Between 1968 and 1990, some 10 million people immi-
grated to the United States. Further reforms passed by the first Bush administration
limited immigration to some 540,000 persons each year. But after intense lobbying
from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, this number was
increased to 650,000 legal immigrants each year. This rate has not been observed here
since the last great wave of immigration at the beginning of the twentieth century.
And just as in the earlier period in our history, increased immigration is supported by
business as a way to increase the labor pool—and thereby keep wages from increasing.
The composition of the third wave of immigrant groups is very different from
that of earlier periods. During the first and second waves, 75 percent of the arrivals
were from Europe. Today a similar percentage of arrivals are from Latin America and
Asia. Each year since 1970, more than 55,000 Mexicans and 50,000 Filipinos have
immigrated to the United States. In California, for example, 22 percent of new im-
migrants came from Asia and 43 percent from Mexico during the 1970s (Espiritu
and Light, 1991). Also striking is the fact that the majority of new immigrants to the
United States are female—and this is true even from countries such as Mexico and
the Philippines, where women are often thought to be less independent. As a conse-
quence of this new immigration, the United States of the twenty-first century will be
more culturally diverse—and more Asian and Hispanic—than at any time in its his-
tory. To understand just how significant these changes will be, consider the fact that
Hispanics will outnumber African Americans as the largest minority group in the
United States early in the twenty-first century, and that even if immigration were
halted completely, the U.S. Hispanic population will still double within the next
twenty years, from some 14 million to more than 30 million.
A third distinct characteristic of the new immigration is that it is economically di-
verse. Many recent immigrants exhibit the classic characteristics of the past: limited
education, rural backgrounds, and limited resources. A large number, however, are the
exact opposite. These well-endowed immigrants are educated—many have college
degrees—they are former city dwellers, and they often come with enough personal
financial resources to start their own businesses. In their home countries of India, Korea,
the Philippines, and elsewhere, this loss of a young and highly educated population is
referred to as a “brain drain.” Thus, many third-wave arrivals also achieve success in the
United States in a relatively short time. According to Portes and Rumbaut (1990), in the
decade between 1980 and 1990, professionals and technicians accounted for only 18
percent of the U.S. labor force but represented 25 percent of the immigrant population.
This “bimodal” distribution—that is, having two peaks: one high income, one low
income—of immigration is a consequence of uneven development within the global
system of capitalism. In the 1960s and 1970s, many countries underwent crash mod-
ernization programs that were not entirely successful. On the one hand, large numbers
of the middle and working classes received technical and professional training. But
upon graduation, their economies had not expanded fast enough to offer them work.
On the other hand, agricultural reform programs and development of interior places
forced many impoverished and uneducated rural residents into the cities. They too
took a chance by immigrating rather than waiting around in their home countries for
work (Espiritu and Light, 1991).
Some of the recent immigrants have not only been successful; they have realized
opportunities in new ways. For example, Monterey Park, a suburb outside Los Ange-
les, became a focal point for new Chinese immigration. Between 1960 and 1988, the
population went from 85 percent white to 50 percent Chinese, with other Asians also
in residence. Consequently, the city has become known as the first “suburban China-
town” (Arax, 1987; Fong, 1991), and it provides an excellent example of why we can
no longer consider the ethnic neighborhood in large cities as the prime site for ethnic
subcultures. Recent arrivals to the United States have invested over $1 billion of their
own money in the suburb, and it is estimated that the Chinese own at least 66 percent
of all business and property there (Espiritu and Light, 1991:43). Other areas of the
country report a similar phenomenon of immigrant suburbanization, where in many
cases new arrivals bypass the large city entirely.
Current immigration to the United States (and other developed nations) reflects
changes in the global system of capitalism in another respect. Following the breakup of
colonial systems after World War II, many European countries saw an increase in im-
migration from their former colonies—Caribbean blacks and Muslim and Hindu In-
dians in England, Indonesian and other groups in the Netherlands. At the end of the
Second Indo-Chinese War, the United States admitted 300,000 Southeast Asian
refugees, and the death squads and political conflicts in Central America in the 1980s
brought another 500,000 refugees, despite efforts of the Reagan administration and
the Immigration and Naturalization Service to prevent them from entering the coun-
try. And as noted earlier, each year some 50,000 people immigrate to the United States
from the Philippines, our former colonial outpost in the South Pacific.
Audrey Singer’s analysis of immigration to metropolitan regions during the twentieth
century suggests that the combination of recent immigration and historical settlement
patterns of earlier ethnic groups has produced six types of immigrant gateway cities (see
Box 7.4). Singer’s study of the immigrant gateway cities is important for our understand-
ing of the effects of the new immigration on metropolitan regions across the country.
Box 7.4
Six Immigrant Gateway City Types
Former gateway cities: Above the national average in the percentage of immi-
grants during 1900–1930, followed by percentages below the national average
in every decade through 2000. This category includes cities such as Buffalo,
New York, and Cleveland, which were destinations for large numbers of immi-
grants in the early 1900s but no longer receive immigrants. Many of these older
industrial cities are located in the Frost Belt.
Continuous gateway cities: Above-average percentage of immigrants in every
decade of the twentieth century. Includes cities like Chicago and New York,
which are long-established destinations for immigrants that continue to attract
continues
large numbers of foreign born. Many of these cities are located in the larger New
York metropolitan region.
Post–World War II gateway cities: Low percentage of immigrants until after
1950, followed by percentages higher than the national average for the remainder
of the century. Includes cities like Los Angeles and Miami, which were relatively
small at the time of the Great Migration but have served as destinations for new
immigrants in the past fifty years. Many of these cities are located in the Sun Belt.
Emerging gateway cities: Very low percentage of immigrants until 1970, fol-
lowed by high proportions in the post-1980 period. Includes cities like Atlanta
and Washington, which are located in metropolitan areas that nearly doubled in
the 1980s and 1990s. They have experienced rapid immigrant growth in the past
twenty years, and the total number of foreign born has increased five times during
that period. With the exception of Washington, all are located in the Sun Belt.
Re-emerging gateway cities: Above-average percentage of immigrants during
1900–1930, below average until 1980, followed by rapid increases in post-1980
period. This category includes cities such as Seattle and Minneapolis-St. Paul,
which were destinations for immigrants in the early twentieth century and now
receive large numbers of immigrants. With the exception of the Twin Cities, all
are located in the Sun Belt or in the West.
Pre-emerging gateway cities: Very low percentage of immigrants for the entire
twentieth century. This category includes cities such as Salt Lake City, Utah, and
Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, which experienced rapid growth of both for-
eign-born and native-born populations between 1980 and 2000. They attracted
significant numbers of immigrants in the 1990s and appear to be emerging as
new immigrant gateway cities for the twenty-first century. With the exception of
Salt Lake City, all are Sun Belt cities, and most are located in the Southeast.
There are important differences in demographics and settlement patterns among

these six types of immigrant gateway cities. Some are located in fast-growing met-
ropolitan regions in the Sun Belt, while others are located in older and larger met-
ropolitan regions of the Midwest and East Coast that have experienced slower
overall population growth. Some of the cities have become multicultural melting
pots, while others are dominated by a relatively smaller number of ethnic groups.
Singer notes that in the fast-growing emerging gateway cities such as Atlanta and
St. Louis, immigrants are settling in communities that are greatly stressed by rapid
population growth—a situation different from that of those who have moved to
cities with a long history of immigrant settlement.
SOURCE: Singer, The Rise of New Immigrant Gateways, 2004:18.

One problem with the analysis—something that is discussed in the report—is

the focus on the gateway city, because most of the new immigrants live in suburban
towns within the metropolitan region, not in the central city. Our focus on the so-
ciospatial perspective will help us to understand the importance of moving beyond
the city and looking at the metropolitan region more broadly when we study immi-
gration and other demographic trends that affect our communities.
Although it is common to speak of ethnic neighborhoods in American cities—
and most of us are familiar with Chinatowns, Mexican neighborhoods, Greektowns,
and the like—urban sociologists are more likely to talk about the ethnic enclave, a
concept that emphasizes the ways in which work, residence, and other forms of so-
cial interaction overlap in urban space. Much of this research focuses on the paradox
of the ethnic enclave: The positive effects that social networks can provide for new
immigrants, and the negative effects of concentration and isolation within the en-
clave. Increasingly, we must think of ethnic enclaves not as simply ethnic settlements
in the central city, as a majority of new immigrants now reside in suburban commu-
nities of the metropolitan region (Gorrie, 1991).
The new immigration already has had a profound effect on settlement space within
metropolitan regions across the country (Suro and Singer, 2003). Some groups have
moved into older ethnic neighborhoods, greatly expanding their numbers and size. In
southwest Chicago, for example, the Mexican neighborhood in Eighteenth Street/Pilsen
has expanded across the Twenty-sixth Street/Little Village community into suburban
communities beyond the city limits, while the older Chinatown area near the Loop has
seen extensive redevelopment that has doubled the number of business establishments
and dwelling units. In these and other ethnic communities across the metropolitan
region, local residents have constructed new settlement spaces rich with symbolic
meanings—from Mexican storefronts identical to those found in Monterrey and Aguas-
calientes, the primary origins in Mexico for immigrants to Chicago and the Midwest,
now reproduced in suburban settlement space, to a new riverfront park in the second
Chinatown, designed by a Chinese American landscape architect, which reproduces tra-
ditional Chinese design elements in this new urban settlement space.
CONCLUSION:
E T H N I C A N D C U LT U R A L D I V E R S I T Y
ACROSS THE METROPOLIS
As this summary of settlement patterns for ethnic groups demonstrates, sociospatial re-
lations continue to play a significant role in the lives of minority groups in the United
States. Some groups have been able to move into the mainstream of American society
and have gained access to employment, housing, and the quality of life that we believe
all Americans should have. Others remain in segregated social spaces—ghettos, barrios,
or reservations—where they are isolated from opportunities in the larger society.
KEY CONCEPTS 183
In the years to come, these new sources of ethnic formation and ethnic identity
will influence U.S. culture in ways we have yet to anticipate, just as the formidable
influx of Eastern Europeans did some hundred years ago. At the beginning of the last
century, many people feared that foreign workers would take away the jobs of Amer-
ican workers and dilute or destroy American institutions; yet those foreigners are
now a permanent part of the American mosaic. In the 1990s, we had the lowest lev-
els of unemployment in nearly half a century at the same time that immigration
reached near-record levels, suggesting that immigrant workers need not take the jobs
of American workers. Immigration was not a political issue. But in the first decade of
the twenty-first century, we entered a period of prolonged economic crisis and one of
the consequences has been a reexamining of immigration policy. In fact, some areas
of the country, such as the extensive region bordering on Mexico in the Southwest,
have local authorities that have become highly mobilized to stem illegal immigra-
tion, and the same increased vigilance is now characteristic of the federal government
in managing flows of non-citizens into this country.
In a few short decades, the new immigrants of today will become part of an even
greater American mosaic, living in ethnic neighborhoods if they choose to or living
alongside other groups across the metropolitan region. Only time will tell what form
this influence will take. Years ago it was proper to speak of an “urban mosaic” (a term
used extensively by Robert Park) to capture the diversity of people and lifestyles in the
city. Today the entire metropolitan region, both cities and suburbs, must be described
this way. As we have seen, urban and suburban settlement space is stratified by class,
race, and gender. They are also differentiated according to ethnicity, race, age, and fam-
ily status. Each lifestyle manifests its own daily rhythm within the settlement spaces
each group has created within the metropolitan region. The built environment displays
the expressive symbols of this interaction between social factors and local territory. But
settlement space also directs behavior in certain ways. In contemporary societies, it is
likely that gender roles are conditioned as much by the spatial restrictions of the built
environment as by patriarchal domination. Sociospatial relations among groups and
individuals are also conditioned by class and race distinctions ranging from inclusion
in neighborhoods of shared interests to the extreme case of ghetto segregation.
In the next chapter we shall examine, in more detail, minority populations in the
United States as well as the important concepts of neighborhood and community
that are used to understand urban daily life.
KEY CONCEPTS
class stratification
socioeconomic status
yuppies, dinks, suburban middle class
working poor
ghettoized poor
gendered space
women and the environment
waves of immigration
gateways of immigration
1. What are the differences in lifestyles created principally by different access to
economic resources?
2. Is there a difference between the middle-class lifestyle in the central city and the
suburbs?
3. What are the differences between the working poor and the ghettoized poor and
what do studies show about those differences?
4. Discuss the phenomenon of urban night life and its aspects.
5. What is the relationship between urban culture and city revitalization?
6. Discuss the issue of immigration and its consequences. What is the difference be-
tween attitudes toward immigrants in the late twentieth and the twenty-first century?
CHAPTER
8
MINORITY SETTLEMENT PATTERNS,

NEIGHBORHOODS, AND
COMMUNITIES IN THE
MULTICENTERED METRO REGION
U rbanized regions in the United States exhibit a wide array of different people,
housing arrangements, and lifestyles. Cultural conditions, social constraints, and
economic realities intersect to produce shifting patterns of settlement that often in-
volve the movement of large groups. Social forces driving such change push minority
populations with little power to resist so that their settlement can be considered in-
voluntary in many cases. When it comes to creating a stable local environment for
families and daily interactions that satisfy basic needs, all residents of the metro re-
gion have to create a sense of community and neighborhood well-being. These as-
pects of the human dimension of living in multicentered metro regions are the
subject of the present chapter.
VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY

MOVEMENTS OF MINORITIES
African Americans
Africans were forcibly removed from their home countries and brought to the United
States as slaves during the 1700s. In 1990, their American descendants constituted 12.4
percent of the total population. Until the twentieth century, the overwhelming majority
of blacks, more than 90 percent, lived in the South, and most were located in rural ar-
eas. Since the turn of the last century until the 1980s, there was a steady movement of
African Americans to the North in general and to cities in particular (Lemann, 1991b).
In the 1990s, however, some of this movement was actually reversed, as black people
with the means and the education returned voluntarily to the South in significant num-
bers as part of the more general trend of Sun Belt relocation. In fact, the movement
185
186 8: M I N O R I T Y S E T T L E M E N T PAT T E R N S
south outscored net gains of black migrants from all three of the other regions of the
United States during the late 1990s, reversing a thirty-five-year trend according to re-
cent census reports. Of the ten states that suffered the greatest net loss of blacks between
1965 and 1970, five ranked among the top ten states for attracting blacks between 1995
and 2000. Southern metropolitan areas, particularly Atlanta, led the way in attracting
black migrants in the late 1990s. In contrast, the major metropolitan areas of New York,
Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco experienced the greatest out-migration of
blacks during the same period. Among all ethnic or racial groups, African Americans
with the means to do so were more likely than any other to move to the South. Further-
more, college-educated individuals led this new black migration back to the South in
the 1990s. Georgia, Texas, and Maryland attracted the most black college graduates
from 1995 to 2000, while New York suffered the largest net loss.
In the 1800s, many slaves fled the South for freedom. Using such routes as the Un-
derground Railroad, they arrived in the cities of the North, and some even made it as
far as Canada. By the end of the Civil War, several communities of African Americans
were already established in northern cities. As a result of discrimination against blacks,
however, these areas soon became segregated. A similar pattern of ghettoization oc-
curred in the making of black communities in Chicago (Drake and Cayton, 1945;
Spear, 1967), Philadelphia (W. E. B. DuBois, 1899), and New York (Osofsky, 1963).
At the turn of the last century, the mechanization of agriculture, coupled with the
immense increase in industrialization with its job opportunities, both pushed and
pulled blacks off southern farms and into northern factories. This process accelerated
as a consequence of World War I, fell off during the Great Depression, and resumed
with full intensity during World War II. As a result, by the 1950s African Americans
were almost as urbanized as were whites, with over 60 percent of their total popula-
tion living in cities. After 1950 a large percentage of whites began an exodus from the
cities to the suburbs, which at the time were almost overwhelmingly closed to black
migration. As a result, the percentage of African Americans living in central cities
rose. By the 1980s, cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, and Detroit had
black mayors, and in the 1990s the list grew to include New York and others.
As we have seen, racial discrimination is still a potent force that prevents African
Americans from integrating into society. For blacks, segregation into distinct ghetto
areas of most cities still persists despite their large urban numbers. During the last
two decades, a growing number of blacks have achieved middle-class status (Wilson,
1987) and live alongside white families in downtown high-rise apartment buildings,
upscale city neighborhoods, and a wide range of suburban communities across the
metropolitan area. However, much of the African American population remains
highly segregated; in Chapter 9, we will discuss the immense problems this segrega-
tion poses for the quality of urban life. The sights and sounds of poverty and dis-
crimination and the symbols of political struggle distinguish racial ghettos from
other urban settlement spaces.
VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS OF MINORITIES 187
Hispanics
The Hispanic population in the United States has exploded. In 2002, the census
fixed the population at 39 million Hispanics—the fifth largest concentration of His-
panics globally. It is estimated that by the year 2050, Hispanics in the United States
will be the third largest Latin American concentration in the world. Although Los
Angeles and New York contain the highest number of Hispanics in the United
States, in recent decades other cities have experienced the fastest growth of Hispanic
populations, including Atlanta; Orlando, Florida; and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Mexican Americans
The most important thing in discussing Mexican Americans is to point out the spatial
component of their historical segregation in the United States. Their ghetto is known
as “the barrio,” and we now have, thanks to the entrance of informed Hispanic ur-
banists, a subfield analyzing the dynamics of the barrio—especially in the work of
David Diaz (2005). He has studied the history of Hispanic residential life in the
United States focusing on the Southwest. Because of language barriers and racism,
Mexican Americans were confined to barrios and their needs were overlooked by gov-
ernment officials and planners. This state of affairs may finally be changing as His-
panics become the largest minority in the United States.
According to Diaz, “El Barrio—the central space, culture, conflict, and resistance of
and within—is the foundation of Chicano/a Urbanism throughout the United States.
In terms of spatial relations, it is historically a zone of segregation and repression.” Un-
even development, inflated rents, low-wage labor, lack of housing, and the worst abuses
of urban renewal best characterize barrio life. “Conversely, within the context of every-
day life, El Barrio is a reaffirmation of culture, a defensive space, and ethnically bounded
sanctuary” (2005:3) and the spiritual center of Chicano/a and Mexicano/a identity.
For Diaz and other students of Mexican American urbanization in the United
States, the social structure of the barrio was based on mutual aid. This is a character-
istic of a true community and it is a source of obvious strength. According to Diaz,
the barrio community exhibits:
Collective forms of civic administration, construction, agriculture, social welfare,

and local defense. Survival depended on the self-reliance and resources of the so-
cial network . . . in the mid-1900s, resistance and politicization, while continuing
to center on labor issues and land issues, expanded to include education, political
access and civil rights. Throughout, El Barrio served as the organizing platform to
create networks of solidarity, support, and self-determination. Concurrently,
Euro-Americans condescendingly viewed the culture of the barrio as seditious,
threatening, and rebellious. These enclaves, in the perspective of racist America,
were ‘untamed, revolutionary, conflictive and inferior,’ typical terms used in the
language of ethnic repression of internal minorities in the United States. (2005:3)
Diaz demonstrates how the neglect by municipal authorities and planners of bar-
rio spaces, while other areas of the urban regions were developed for white Americans,
created a permanent condition of uneven development where streets went unpaved,
there was a lack of infrastructure—for example, sewer systems, water or gas lines—a
lack of park facilities, and the use of barrios as places to locate industrial landfills of a
toxic nature much as was the case in poor African American communities. Further-
more, “Inattention to these problems led directly to lower property appreciation rates
among minority landowners, constant urban deterioration, private sector manipula-
tion of a limited housing supply, and weak commercial districts. The result was virtu-
ally permanent uneven development in the barrios of the Southwest” (2005:5).
Diaz notes that more recent immigration of Mexicans to the United States has by-
passed some of these barrios, especially in the largest cities of the Midwest and the
Northeast. He mentions in particular Chicago and Kansas City, which quite recently
experienced a large influx of immigrants from Mexico. In addition, the civil rights
movement had an effect on the quality of life of Mexican Americans in the Southwest.
Their greater political organization has led to increased political clout. “Challenges to
restrictive housing policies, regressive banking practices, and affirmative action has
transformed Chicano urban culture and society in the Southwest.” Segregation barri-
ers have broken down recently and an increasing number of Mexican Americans now
live throughout the regions of the Southwest metro areas. Diaz also criticizes writers
like Mike Davis and Ed Soja who have analyzed the regional development of Los An-
geles in terms of global economic restructuring and ethnic demographic trends, but
who have given insufficient attention to the ways the Mexican American population
has had a land use and labor impact on Southwest cities like Los Angeles.
In particular, Gottdiener offered an explanatory model in relation to LA urbanism

that has specific application to Chicano urbanism in Southern California. When
addressing wedges, dispersed economic and political locations of different ethnic
zones, urban cultural transitions, and political exclusion, along with a number of
concurrent themes, the [geographer] proponents of Los Angeles are fundamentally
revisiting Gottdiener’s explorations of the “poly nucleated pattern of administra-
tive decentralization.” His articulations of Henri Lefebvre’s new spatial theory in
the central construct of how actual users read—create space in their own (cultural)
image legitimates the significance of barrio culture in the context of an ethnicity
bound to everyday life. (2005:10)
Diaz is especially concerned to criticize two proponents of what has come to be

called the “Los Angeles approach to the Postmodern City”: Michael Dear and Ed Soja.
Both of these geographers argued for the view in the late 1980s that Los Angeles was
the model of a “postmodern” urban style of development. According to Diaz:
1980s Los Angeles featured increasing levels of inequality, affordable housing

crises, endemic discrimination against minorities, massive corruption (due to a
costly subway project), and police repression. Thus, when Soja proclaimed that so-
ciety had arrived at a “postmodern geography” in 1989, the critical question was
what had substantially changed in relation to urban form and social relations dur-
ing the previous decade to justify his explanation of change? Has racism against
Chicanos? Did the underground economy disappear or, rather, did wages im-
prove? Has the LAPD internally reformed its practices? Was sprawl legislated out
of existence to improve land-use relationships and sustainable environmentalism?
Was LA’s planning director fired? (2005:13)
Diaz, in response to these questions, goes on to say that the proponents of an al-
leged postmodern characteristic for Los Angeles had simply created a fiction. “Inequal-
ity and poverty remained at high levels, the affordable housing crisis had worsened,
barrios in ghettos continued to deteriorate, sprawl continued unabated, the LAPD
continued to practice extralegal violence, Asians were still enslaved in the garment dis-
trict, and environmental crises were exacerbated. . . . The question thus becomes, what
is postmodern about these 20-plus years of LA’s urban history?” (2005:13).
In short, for Diaz one of the most important aspects of urban restructuring in the
Southwest—from California to Texas—is the way Mexican American barrios have
survived to the present period when, after the 1970s, the Mexican American popula-
tion was able to spread out and inhabit all areas of the multicentered metro region
while at the same time increasing its population numbers through immigration, de-
spite the continued presence of the same old story of racism and oppression. It is this
increased population presence with its newly realized political clout that is transform-
ing the planning and the governance of southwest metro areas in the United States.
Precisely for this reason, Diaz’s concept of “barrio urbanism” represents a significant
motive explanation for contemporary urban development in the United States.
Puerto Ricans
In 1898, the United States defeated Spain in a war of “manifest destiny” and acquired
the former Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines. Since
that time, Puerto Rico has been governed as a trust, or dependent territory, of the
United States; while the island does not have statehood, Puerto Ricans are citizens of
the United States and vote for a representative in the House of Representatives. Like
other Caribbean countries, most of the population of Puerto Rico is mestizo—a racial
mixture of various European and African ethnic populations—but with large white
and black populations as well. For many years there was a small Puerto Rican presence
in the United States, largely limited to Miami and New York, but in the decades after
World War II this changed dramatically.
In the 1950s, labor shortages led the U.S. government to recruit workers from
Mexico and the Caribbean. The Puerto Rican communities in Chicago, Philadel-
phia, and other cities were formed around this earlier migration of laborers from the
island. Although Spanish Harlem in Manhattan may be the best known area of
Puerto Rican settlement in the country, in the 1960s there was a large increase in
Puerto Rican populations in many cities, especially in the Northeast. Like other eth-
nic groups, Puerto Ricans often settled into older neighborhoods in the central city.
Because most Puerto Ricans are part black, some believe they confront greater dis-
crimination in employment and housing than other Hispanic groups; in fact, Puerto
Ricans rank alongside African Americans on many measures of poverty, unemploy-
ment, and family disruption.
In the 1980s, sociologists began to study the return migration of Puerto Ricans
from the urban centers of the North to the home communities of their parents on
the island (Alicea, 1990). Although the Puerto Rican population on the mainland
has continued to grow from both natural increase and migration, many households
and individuals have chosen to return to the island (a decision prompted by both a
loss of basic employment in American cities and the discrimination that darker-
skinned Puerto Ricans may encounter). While we often read of the “problems” of
immigrant adjustment for ethnic groups arriving in the United States (as discussed
earlier in this chapter), researchers have studied the adjustment of people returning
to the island. Just as bilingual programs are required to teach immigrant children to
speak English in public schools across the country, bilingual programs in Puerto
Rico teach children coming from the United States to speak Spanish so that they can
complete their education and find employment on the island.
Native Americans
The residential settlement patterns of Native Americans are especially interesting.
Some Indian tribes continue to live in the same communities that Spanish explorers
first visited in the 1500s; indeed, the Twelve Pueblo communities outside of Albu-
querque, New Mexico, are the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the United
States. Other Indian tribes were forced from their homelands by the Indian Removal
Act of 1830. The Cherokees had by this time established permanent towns and
schools but were forcibly removed from their homes in Georgia, Alabama, and Ten-
nessee and relocated to reservation land in Oklahoma. During the 1870s, the United
States ceased to recognize these people as belonging to independent nations, and
they came under the administration of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
While we often think of Native Americans as an isolated group living on rural
reservations, they too are an urban population. It is estimated that half of the Native
American population lives in cities (with especially large concentrations in Los Ange-
les, Chicago, and Minneapolis), and in several areas of the country, Indian reserva-
tions are located adjacent to large cities (such as the Salt River and Gila Reservations
outside of Phoenix) or within the boundaries of cities (such as the Oneida Reserva-
tion in Green Bay, Wisconsin). For many years, Native Americans suffered extreme
poverty regardless of their residence in cities or rural reservations, and to some degree
this is still true. But over the last two decades, many Indian tribes have prospered
from economic development associated with casino gambling, although in many
ways the patterns of uneven development endemic in the larger economic system
have been replicated among Indian tribes across the country.
As we learned earlier, the federal government began cutting funding to states and
cities in the 1970s. Instead of raising taxes to cover the additional expense of social
programs, many states passed constitutional amendments that allowed them to run
state lotteries. As a result, Indian tribes (sovereign nations with rights comparable to
states) may run the same type of gambling enterprises (such as lotteries) as state gov-
ernments. The rise of the Native American casino industry is a direct consequence of
the fiscal crises of the federal and state governments. Many Native American reserva-
tions located close to urban centers have been able to generate substantial revenues
from casinos. The actual development strategies used vary greatly from tribe to tribe.
In Phoenix the Salt River Reservation has leased land to a development company that
built and manages the largest shopping mall in the metropolitan area, while in Green
Bay the Oneida Indian Nation has used profits from gaming to fund new health clin-
ics and elder housing, purchase land within reservation boundaries lost in previous
generations, and diversify into retail businesses and manufacturing companies. Many
of these reservations have seen a population increase as tribal members living in cities
across the country have returned to take advantage of employment opportunities that
did not exist just two decades earlier. Yet uneven development may still be the rule;
while tribes near urban areas have prospered, those in remote areas of the country
have been unable to generate revenue from gaming and remain very poor. And within
individual tribes, there still is substantial concern over high levels of poverty, family
disruption, and low rates of high school completion.
It is often said that the urban Indian population is largely invisible. Lobo notes
that “this invisibility or perceived elusiveness is tied directly to urban Indian commu-
nity characteristics, including a dispersed, rather than a residentially clustered, popu-
lation and individual mobility” (2005:1). While there are American Indian cultural
centers in most large cities that serve as focal points for community activities, these
centers serve households representing many different Indian tribes—groups that of-
ten are culturally distinct from one another. Over the last two decades, Indian popu-
lations have moved into many different areas of the city and for the most part do not
form visible ethnic neighborhoods. For many families there is frequent travel back to
Indian reservations to visit or care for relatives. Lobo concludes, “Urban Indian com-
munities may, because they are dispersed and based on a network of relations, for the
most part be invisible or misunderstood from the outside and to outsiders, but they
are anything but invisible to those who participate in them. They are viable commu-
nities, but structured on an American Indian-derived model of community or tribe
rather than a European-derived one” (2003:8).
Asian Americans
The Asian American population has increased dramatically over the past several de-
cades; it is concentrated in large metropolitan areas and includes people from India,
Pakistan, China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Thus, this group represents very diverse
ethnic populations with distinct cultural differences (language, religion, family struc-
ture, foods). Both the Chinese and the Japanese have been living in the United States
for over a hundred years. Most large cities in the United States have a Chinatown that
reflects the early immigration of Chinese laborers used by the railroads in the 1800s.
There were significant Japanese communities in the Pacific states before World War II
as well.
Filipinos are likely the most Americanized of the new Asian immigrants (the
Philippine Islands became an American colony following the Spanish American War
of 1898 and did not achieve independence until after World War II). Most of the Fil-
ipino immigrants in the United States are Catholic and speak English, which facili-
tates their integration into older urban neighborhoods as well as new suburban
communities. The same can be said for recent Asian, Indian, and Pakistani immi-
grants, many of whom are educated professionals who experience little trouble adjust-
ing to life in America.
Other recent ethnic Asians are Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, and Hmong
refugees from America’s war against Vietnam. Hmong and Laotian people have set-
tled in highly concentrated communities, such as Uptown in Chicago and the Mid-
way neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota.
One suburban Asian community that has been studied in some detail is Monterey
Park, a suburb outside Los Angeles that became a focal point for new Chinese immi-
gration. In 1960, the population was 85 percent white. By 2000, more than 234,000
Asian persons were counted in the census, and the population was 43 percent Asian,
35.3 percent Hispanic, and just 21.6 percent white. Chinese accounted for 140,000
or 25.8 percent of the total, Vietnamese for 28,000 or 5.1 percent of the total, and
Filipinos and Japanese for another 27,000 or 6.2 percent of the total. Much of the
Chinese population consisted of new immigrants from China (Logan and Mol-
lenkopf, 2003:67). By 1991, recent arrivals to the United States had invested over $1
billion in the suburb, and it was estimated that Chinese owned at least 66 percent of
all businesses and property in the suburb (Espiritu and Light, 1991:43). For a time,
the city was known as the “Chinese Beverly Hills,” and it was later referred to as the
first suburban Chinatown (Arax, 1987).
Timothy P. Fong (1994) studied the growth of the Chinese population in Mon-
terey Park during the 1980s and 1990s. He identified three prominent changes that
accompanied the development of this multicultural suburb from the early 1970s to
the early 1990s. The first involved the economic transformation of the community
that accompanied the influx of Chinese immigrants and capital. Pro-growth advo-
cates welcomed the first groups of Chinese professionals who moved to the commu-
nity, as well as overseas Chinese investors. This led to land speculation, uncontrolled
construction, and increased commercial and home property values. This in turn led
to the relocation of many longtime merchants to other communities, the develop-
ment of strip malls as commercial properties were subdivided, and the replacement
of single-family homes with multi-unit apartment complexes. The end result was
greater density, increased traffic congestion, a loss of open space, and decreased park-
ing. Fong notes that the new economic investment in Monterey Park included small-
scale, low-profit, family-run businesses such as small restaurants, curio shops, and
specialty stores owned by Chinese immigrant families with few English language
skills; professional services such as medical, legal, accounting, and real estate offices
run by college-educated Chinese Americans; and Chinese-owned and -operated fi-
nancial institutions, including banks and savings and loans. The economic transfor-
mation of the community led to a backlash in the larger community and to
comments such as, “This feels like a foreign country!”
The second stage in the development of Monterey Park involved the community’s
response to the challenge that the new Chinese immigrants presented to the dominant
cultural values and to community identity more generally. Older residents looked
back at what they recalled as the small-town lifestyle of the suburb and felt threatened
by the social changes that accompanied economic development and the influx of Chi-
nese immigrants. Other minority populations in the community, including many
Hispanic and Asian American households, also felt threatened by the new immigrants.
These sentiments were exploited by some in the community through a variety of anti-
immigrant, anti-Asian, and English-only movements that were common across the
United States in the 1970s. The economic transformation brought about by the new
immigrant community was viewed by some in negative terms as the immigrant insti-
tutions began to compete for social and political recognition within the established
culture of the older suburban community. When a group of progressive Asian, His-
panic, and white activists joined with pro-growth businessmen to promote multi-
cultural issues, many in the community viewed the group as a political cover for
developers and speculators. As Fong notes, race and ethnicity were now used as tools
for political organizing (1994:175–176).
The third stage involves continuing efforts to deal with complex controversies re-
sulting from racial, ethnic, and class conflict within the community. Older divisions
of white against black, majority against minority, and the like are no longer sufficient
to encompass the inter- and intra-ethnic differences among long-term residents (many
of them minority) and new immigrants, Chinese Americans and immigrant Chinese,
Chinese and other Asian American groups, and other divisions. Although Fong de-
scribes these as “prominent changes” that took place in the community, we refer to
these changes as “stages of development” because they describe the experience of
many other suburban communities where new immigrant communities have become
established. The process is also described by Logan and Mollenkopf (2003) in their
study of political representation in New York and Los Angeles in association with the
demographic changes brought about by new immigration. In the first stage, native
blacks and Hispanics become the majority or near majority in urban neighborhoods
and then in entire cities. In the second stage, new immigrant groups replace native-
born blacks and Hispanics to become the majority or near majority in urban neigh-
borhoods. This results in a new, multicultural city where older racial cleavages have
been “blurred and transformed” and where new multi-ethnic coalitions must be
formed around common issues that unite rather than divide ethnic groups, classes,
and immigrant generations within urban and suburban communities and across the
metropolitan region.
NEIGHBORHOODS AND COMMUNITY
The Search for Community

Early urban sociologists in the 1920s and 1930s were preoccupied with whether ur-
ban settlement space produced differences in behavior, specifically when contrasted
with the rural way of life. Hundreds of thousands of people left the farms and small
towns of America and moved to the large industrial cities looking for work. At that
time, sociologists worked with an idealized image of small-town life that was often
expressed as a community in which everyone shared personal friendships. They be-
lieved that the intimacy of small-town life was the result of primary social relation-
ships. In contrast, early researchers viewed cities as destroyers of intimacy, forcing
secondary or anonymous relations on individuals based on business considerations
rather than friendship, with a consequent loss of community feeling. In contrast to
the “friendly” rural town, city people were believed to be unfriendly, rushed, uncar-
ing, suspicious, and hard to get to know.
Louis Wirth, of the Chicago School, carried this idea forward. He believed that liv-
ing in large cities resulted in forms of social disorganization such as increased crime, di-
vorce, and mental illness because of the decline of close community ties. For Wirth it
was the city itself, operating through a loss of community and demographic factors
such as size and density of population, that produced urban behavior. When we go to a
store in a city, we do not have, nor do we seek, a close relationship with the salesperson.
We simply want service and wish to buy what we want as quickly as possible. Rural
area residents, in contrast, are likely to already have established primary relationships
NEIGHBORHOODS AND COMMUNITY 195
with the employees and even the owners of local businesses and to live in a shared com-
munity. The same contrast applies to relations with neighbors in the city and rural ar-
eas. The domination of secondary relations in the city, Wirth believed, would result in
negative effects such as crime and other problems. This assertion is known as the social
disorganization thesis of urban life.
Field Research on Community

Following World War II, a number of sociologists decided to challenge Wirth’s
theory. Studying local neighborhoods within the larger cities, these sociologists dis-
covered communities with strong primary relations among the residents (Whyte,
1955; Gans, 1962). In the 1960s and 1970s, a series of community studies contra-
dicted the social disorganization thesis of the early Chicago School. Researchers dis-
covered evidence of vital, healthy primary relations and an active community life in
urban neighborhoods. Ulf Hannerz’s (1969) remarkable study of an inner-city ghetto
area in Washington, D.C., exemplifies the case study approach to community. This
fine-grained analysis depicts ghetto residents as multidimensional human beings,
trapped in the ghetto by racism and poverty. Hannerz could not find a single “charac-
teristic” ghetto resident. Rather, he discovered a typology of behavioral patterns re-
flecting differences in individual character and family organization as each person
dealt with racial and economic adversity in his or her own way. These results have
been replicated in Elijah Anderson’s (1978) ethnographic account of a black neigh-
borhood on Chicago’s South Side.
To the outside observer, densely populated inner-city neighborhoods seem
chaotic. One sterling accomplishment of field research has been to document the or-
der created out of urban chaos by city residents. Herbert Gans’s (1962) classic field
study of Boston’s East End challenged the view that the area was a “slum” and dis-
covered that life in this working-class community was highly organized around peer
groups. Adult males spent leisure time with other males, adult females with their fe-
male friends, and so on. Once the form of social organization of the community was
understood, it became a familiar place.
Other field research carried out in the 1950s and 1960s showed that primary rela-
tions and an intimate community life could be found in suburban areas of the metro
region as well, despite a jaundiced view by urban professionals of the alleged anonym-
ity of living in cookie-cutter, massive single-family housing developments, like Levit-
town. One of the earliest studies of suburban communities was William H. Whyte’s
The Organization Man (1956). Whyte studied the development of Park Forest South,
a planned suburban community located twenty-five miles south of the Chicago Loop.
His research depicts the classic suburb of the early postwar period as a place where nu-
clear families were housed in single-family detached homes, where women did not
work but spent their time housekeeping and chatting over coffee with neighbors, and
where men commuted into the city to corporate professional jobs. For more recent
examples, see Baumgartner (1988), Jackson (1985), and Fishman (1987). These stud-
ies found that intimacy, friendship, and a sense of community of sorts, while different
than the small towns of America, could also be found among the endless tract homes
of suburbia. People want primary relations with others and they establish them no
matter where they live. Unlike the theory of Wirth, neither the city nor the suburban
environment can destroy this need through the social disorganization of mass society.
Box 8.1 describes a particular kind of community centered around a “bohemian”
lifestyle that is viewed positively today as supplying the central city with a vibrant,
creative culture. As discussed, these kinds of communities, such as Greenwich Vil-
lage in Manhattan, North Beach in San Francisco, and Wicker Park in Chicago,
have been a staple of city life for quite some time in the United States and have pro-
vided people pursuing an alternative lifestyle with a place to live and spend time.
Box 8.1
The New Bohemia
Richard Lloyd notes that while cities have always played an important role as incu-
bators of cultural innovation, new ideas about the artist and his or her relationship
to the city developed during the course of the nineteenth century, particularly in
Paris. The Romantic paradigm viewed artists and poets as “exulted and often tor-
tured geniuses” alienated from and often unappreciated by the larger society. The
Latin Quarter in Paris developed from student quarter to intellectual community,
described by Balzac in Un Prince de la Bohème, with the ideals of the bohemian
lifestyle: hedonism and self-sacrifice, rejection of bourgeois values, and the primary
of l’art pour l’art (art for art’s sake). The hillside village of Montmartre would later
displace the Latin Quarter as the center of bohemian life in Paris.
In the past, one had to look deeply to find bohemia in the United States; Green-
wich Village in New York City was the original bohemian area in the United States,
consciously drawing on the European example. After World War II, a new bo-
hemian style developed—the beatnik—along with bohemian districts in San Fran-
cisco (North Beach) and Los Angeles (Venice Beach). In the last two decades,
however, there has emerged an alternative nation, populated by struggling writers,
thrift stores, indie rockers, and the omnipresent coffee house. Richard Lloyd ex-
plains how bohemia—once an exotic land confined to the metropolis—has become
an ordinary thing in cities large and small across the country.
Bohemia has become an established district in even medium-sized cities and is
promoted as a lifestyle amenity that increases property values. Richard Lloyd’s
continues
ethnographic study is situated in Chicago’s Wicker Park, once home to Frankie Ma-
chine, a junkie, in Nelson Algren’s Walk on the Wild Side, later the site of violent
gang warfare in the 1970s and 1980s, and finally the location of Rob Gordon’s
record shop, Championship Vinyl, in the 2000 film High Fidelity. Today Wicker
Park is home to fashionable bars, art galleries, and high-tech start-up companies, as
well as the people who work in them. Lloyd locates the new bohemia at the intersec-
tion of contemporary alternative cultures and the new forces of globalization; the lo-
cals are drawn to creative industries like media, advertising, and design and have a
tolerance for other nonconformists; they are “creatures of the night” who flaunt
thrift store clothes, piercings, and tribal tattoos, and they are the perfect workforce
for the new creative industries, willing to work odd hours on a freelance basis at rel-
atively low wages. The bartenders, baristas, and computer designers of Wicker Park
have developed a lifestyle and values that are at odds with the suburban lifestyle, and
to some degree, with mainstream society as well, as they have traded high wages for
more regular jobs in the business world for the romance of bohemia.
SOURCE: Adapted from Richard Lloyd, Neo-Bohemia (2006) and Bohemia (2009).
Box 8.2 goes further and argues that people with enough energy and belief in the
liberating qualities of community can actually produce their own city along the lines
of alternative lifestyle. It describes the Burning Man festival, which takes place once
a year in the desert of Arizona, where thousands of people practicing a liberated
sense of self converge and create, at least for a few days, a complete city in a location
that is barren the rest of the year. The report contained in Box 8.2 is important. By
implication it asks the question whether people in declining areas of the United
States and in other countries can marshal the same kind of energy in order to revital-
ize their communities without the aid of government programs or plans.
Box 8.2
The Truth About Burning Man
“Really?” the guy at the Alamo Rental Car place said when I’d told him about
Burning Man. “I heard it was just a lot of naked people running around on drugs.”
Coated in gypsum dust and still high not on drugs but on the altered conscious-
ness of radical creativity and community, I had just tried to describe what Burning
Man is, somehow. I think I’d said something like, “It’s a temporary city of 50,000
continues
Box 8.2 continued

people, devoted to radical self-expression. So you’ll find anything you’d find in a
regular city—art museums, dance clubs, yoga studios—only in the middle of the
desert, with no money, and with more creativity than you’ve ever seen.”
Of the two descriptions, surely Rental Car Guy’s is the more familiar. When Adam
Lambert revealed that he’d gotten the idea to go on American Idol while on mush-
rooms at Burning Man, America groaned. The image, I assume, was of a drugged-out
weirdo coming up with a loopy idea in the middle of a wild, crazy party.
The truth, though, is that Burning Man is an ideal place for self-reflection and
self-transformation, whether substance-aided or not, and as someone who’s just
gotten back from his 8th Burn, Lambert’s revelation didn’t surprise me a bit.
Friends of mine have changed their names, their professions, and their entire lives
at Burning Man. And not because they were stoned or tripping, but because Black
Rock City—the temporary city (built and erased within a month) where the event
goes on every year, the week before Labor Day—has a tendency to expand hori-
zons, reveal possibilities, and question the assumptions most of us make about how
we’re supposed to live our lives.
Burning Man does this, I think, because of a combination of factors. One of
them is the sheer size and scope of the thing. 50,000 people. Hundreds of cars and
trucks modified to look like dragons, whales, radios, and steamboats; many breath-
ing fire; most with dozens of revelers dancing on them. It’s like Mad Max meets
Blade Runner meets The Ten Commandments, and it’s real, it’s actually happening.
And it’s happening without capitalism. There’s no vending at Burning Man—
it’s a gift economy. Entire “theme camps” exist just to give away spaghetti, to serve
people free margaritas, to make pancakes. Yes, it does cost a lot to get in (between
$150 and $350), but that mostly pays for the rental of the land from the govern-
ment, the porta-potties and other infrastructure, and grants made to large-scale art
projects. No one—not the celebrity DJs who were there this year, like Armin van
Buuren and Carl Cox, and not the people who build the solar electrical grid—gets
paid. No one is making a buck.
This is incredibly liberating. It’s not sustainable, but it is a temporary autonomous
zone of bullshit-free living. And just being there, just participating in the creation of
an entire city devoted to what we want to do, rather than what we have to do to
make money, has the tendency to invite self-reflection like Lampert’s. Who am I?
What do I really want to be doing? If people can create a twelve-ton sculpture of a
bird’s nest made entirely out of plumbing pipe, what are the limits on my own cre-
ativity? “Once you are free,” said Baudrillard, “you are forced to ask who you are.”
The temporary erasure of societal, social, and personal boundaries is, for most of
us, terrifying. Such boundaries help build the structures of society and self; they
continues
give form to human life, which is often chaotic and unpredictable. Thus they have
been the bedrock of religious and civil life for millennia, even before the Furies
were imprisoned under Athens, and Moses descended from Sinai.
But if religion creates boundaries, mysticism and spirituality efface them. In the
transcendence of ordinary distinctions, peak experiences such as those encouraged
at Burning Man give a glimpse of the ultimate, the infinite. It may seem absurd to
suggest that Burning Man is a mystical event. But then, if it’s just a big party, why
is there a temple in the middle of it?
SOURCE: Adapted from “The Truth About Burning Man” by Jay Michaelson, posted at Huffington
Post, September 8, 2009 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/the-truth-about-burning
-m_b_279464.html?view=print).
Neighboring/The Neighborhood
Neighboring studies are important because they are related to the issue of commu-
nity and territory. There is a conception of everyday life that places individuals
within a nurturing neighborhood of friends and relatives. This conjunction of a cer-
tain space with an intimate circle of primary relations became the classic image of
the community. Yet the terms neighborhood and community refer to different con-
cepts. A neighborhood can be defined as any sociospatial environment where pri-
mary relations among residents dominate. If this connection of intimacy, or primary
relations, is absent, such as the possibility of living in large city housing blocks, where
apartment dwellers have little connection with one another, we can hardly call such
an arrangement “a neighborhood.” In contrast, the concept of community is often
reserved for a spatial collectivity with an institutional component. That is, it can best
be defined as a sociospatial environment that possesses an organized social institu-
tion that deals specifically with local matters (see below).
A defining characteristic of the neighborhood is the enjoyment of friendship cir-
cles among people living in the same section through the activity of “neighboring.”
It is a phenomenon that can be found in all sectors of the metro region—city and
suburbs, small towns and large, apartment dwellers and single-family tract home de-
velopments. Neighboring and community involvement are strongly related to the
life cycle—whether individuals are single or married, childless or with children.
Most neighboring tends to be done by people raising families. The stereotypical im-
age of suburbia as a place of neighboring may be the result of the fact that families
with small children prefer to live there. However, inner cities were once the location
for the baby boom with its massive concentration of families and children. Now, as a
consequence of several decades of immigration-fueled inner-city growth and the
general, explosive arrival of Hispanic populations, neighboring once again is ubiqui-

tous in all metro region locations.
Areas of the metro region with active neighboring and a sense of community are
considered important qualities for a sustainable area, whether there is active growth
or decline. As we shall see below, when we discuss the characteristic of uneven devel-
opment, having a quality neighborhood is not enough to ensure a sustainable quality
of life.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN

NEIGHBORHOOD AND COMMUNITY
It is important to note that although these concepts are most often used interchange-
ably, they are not the same. As we have already seen, you do not have to be neighborly
to belong to a neighborhood, and a community is best described as an area of the
metro region with at least one institution that is focused on local well-being. Research
on neighborhoods can describe local residential life, but they neglect to indicate con-
nections to community organizations. In contrast, community studies provide evi-
dence of specific links to sociospatial organizations in the area, an approach very
much in keeping with the perspective of this text. For example, because of the impor-
tance of child rearing in suburban developments, most people living there belong to
neighborhoods that they themselves can identify with, and they engage in frequent
visits to neighbors. On the other hand, very few suburbanites can identify the “com-
munity” within which they live. Instead, they usually mention either their immediate
tract home development name or the section of the metropolitan area with the
county name. In contrast, people living in the inner city possess a different connec-
tion to their location. On the one hand, they may not be living in a neighborhood be-
cause they rely on a spatially dispersed network of intimates and most likely do not
know their neighbors well. On the other hand, areas of the inner city are invariably
provided with a community structure by urban planners and government officials.
Commonly they can name their “community” when asked. These parts of the city
contain block associations, local planning agencies, political districts, and strong reli-
gious institutions. All of these elements contribute to creation of a community with a
name and political influence that local residents acknowledge.
Uneven Development: How to Have a Deteriorating Community

Not all communities possess well-being and not all neighborhoods function to pro-
vide residents with basic needs and opportunities for personal growth.
Capitalist development processes privilege the affluent and, unfortunately, in a
society like our own, where social equilibrating mechanisms are weak, many inner-
city and older suburban communities deteriorate due to uneven development. The
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NEIGHBORHOOD AND COMMUNITY 201
forces that contribute to decline are important to study because they also operate in
the real estate industry to selectively channel investment to some places rather than
others, leading to boom-and-bust cycles of growth and decline.
The well-being of neighborhoods and communities in the United States remains
important because their public resources are the avenues with which individuals can
better themselves and lead a productive life. According to recent research, “Access to
decent housing, safe neighborhoods, good schools, useful contacts, and other bene-
fits is largely influenced by the community in which one is born, raised, and cur-
rently resides” (Squires and Kubrin, 2005).
Squires and Kubrin say that the opportunity structure of the United States is highly
dependent upon the place in which you were raised—in other words, where you live.
The authors also say that race matters and they examine the interaction between race
and place. They come to the conclusion that uneven development in metropolitan
America “is a direct result largely of a range of locational quality decisions made by
public officials and policy related actions” in combination with the pursuit of profits by
the private sector. They echo the sociospatial approach of this text, which claims that
capitalist forces and government programs work in tandem to benefit some people, but
not all—generally the well-off and the upper middle class. In the urban scene surveyed
by Squires and Kubrin, “The linkages among place, race, and privilege are shaped by
three dominant social forces—sprawl, concentrated poverty, and segregation—all of
which play out in large part in response to public policy decisions” and the real estate
practices of private institutional actors. “This perspective emerges from what has been
referred to as ‘the new urban sociology’ . . . which places class, race, and relations of
domination and subordination at the center of analysis” (2005:47). When these three
forces are in motion as regional growth working all parts of the urban area, they create a
pattern of uneven development that discriminates against less affluent residents by pro-
ducing deteriorating neighborhoods while other areas grow and prosper. Anyone with
the time and access to a car can travel through an American city and discover the pat-
tern of uneven development, of well-being and deterioration, often existing in proxim-
ity, that is the material evidence of capitalist investment decisions biased against the less
affluent that our society fails to counteract by social programs. Consequently, while the
notion of community is believed to benefit people who have it in their neighborhoods,
not every area blessed with intimate social relations prospers simply because of it.
For example, “Education has long been regarded as the principal vehicle for
ameliorating the chance occurrence of belonging to a low-income family. But in our
society, reliance on local property taxes to fund public education nurtures inequality in
the nation’s schools and this is a feature expressly tied to place. Although some com-
munities have introduced equalization formulas that ensure quality education in all ar-
eas regardless of family incomes and value of homes, wealthy communities still provide
substantially greater financial support for public schools, with a lesser tax effort, than
poor ones” (2005:53).
Educational quality can help individuals, regardless of family circumstances, bet-

ter themselves. And as we have seen, it is largely dependent on spatial location and the
ability of a family to purchase a home in an affluent area with good schools. More di-
rectly, “If there is one single factor that is most critical for determining access to the
good life, it might be employment. This is particularly true in the U.S. where individ-
uals and households are far more dependent on their jobs to secure basic goods and
services than is the case with virtually all other industrialized nations that provide far
more extensive social welfare” (2005:54). As of 2000, “No racial group is more physi-
cally isolated from jobs than blacks, and those metropolitan areas with higher levels of
black-white housing segregation were those that exhibited higher levels of spatial mis-
match between the residential location of blacks and the location of jobs” (2005:54).
In short, although job creation is an ongoing feature of a growing economy, the exact
location of employment openings most often occurs in areas of the multicentered
metro region that are difficult to get to for less affluent and often ghettoized residents.
Our society, compared to other industrialized nations, has shockingly poor mass
transportation. Without adequate means of commuting, the ability of job seekers to
find employment, even when openings are plentiful and can be filled by people with
limited education, remains highly problematic. Uneven development is not just a spa-
tial issue or characteristic. It is also a product of the failure of a society to overcome
the “friction of space” through the production of an adequate mass transportation in-
frastructure. All those people who wait obscenely long hours for a bus or train or
those who commute in cars stuck in traffic jams know full well the negative aspects of
American everyday life.
In short, community and neighborhood well-being have always been considered
an important even defining quality of a well-functioning society. We can measure the
outcome of failed social and private sector patterns of development that work against
that quality of everyday life by the evident patterns of uneven development visible in
the array of areas within the metro region. Disparities are not a temporary phenom-
enon where an effort of “catch-up” can solve the dilemma. As we have seen, instead,
uneven development is an active part of how our system of political economy oper-
ates. In our chapters on other societies later in the text, principally those of Europe,
we will revisit the issues of inequality and community well-being. We will see that
despite more active government policies to equalize the capitalist tendency of uneven
development, not all problems caused by it can easily be solved.
NEW FORMS OF COMMUNITY
Gated Communities
The United States has always had affluent communities that sought to seal them-
selves off from the general population. In the late 1800s, developments of this type
NEW FORMS OF COMMUNITY 203
appeared around most major cities as wealthy people used incorporation to create
their own exclusive enclaves. Tuxedo Park outside New York City, and Pasadena and
Beverly Hills in the Los Angeles area, are just three examples. During the 1980s and
1990s, when affluent seniors began to relocate to the Sun Belt, a different kind of ex-
clusive development emerged using security services and barriers. Places with these
arrangements, where visitors and residents alike must stop at a security post in order
to gain access, are known as “gated communities.” Country clubs and resorts are
some early examples but many are retirement developments where security is consid-
ered a premium. In 2004 the government estimated that over 4 million people in the
United States live in gated enclaves that were both walled and had entryway guards
or keyed gates. Exclusive developments that seal themselves off by means of very
tight security measures can be found in all parts of the metropolitan region, includ-
ing areas of the city as well as the suburbs. However, most people associate such
communities with Sun Belt suburban living. Researchers such as Sanchez, Lang, and
Dhavale (2005) note that the exclusivity of gated communities gives residents a feel-
ing of high status, a sense of community, and a sense of control over local services.
Through regular scheduled meetings, residents often have the experience of more di-
rect contact with the neighbors and more involvement in the governance of their lo-
cal area. According to their report:
For most people, the term “gated community” conjures up images of exclusive
developments with fancy homes and equally fancy lifestyles. Much of the popular
and academic literature on TV communities promotes this view. Yet the common
perception of jaded communities as privileged enclaves turns out to be only
partly correct based on our analysis of the first-ever census survey of these places.
There are gated communities composed of mostly white homeowners with high
incomes that have a secure main entry—the kind of classic gated community in
the public mind. But there are also gated communities that are inhabited by mi-
nority renters with moderate incomes. We expected that this dichotomy reflects a
distinction between communities, one based on status versus one motivated by
concern for security. (Sanchez, Lang, and Dhavale, 2005:281)
Common Interest Developments

Another kind of community that can be found in all areas of the MMR is the com-
mon interest development or CID. Basically a CID is an area of housing that requires
membership in a homeowners’ association. Examples range from condominium asso-
ciations in central city high-rises and housing quadrants to suburban developments of
single-family homes as well as organized associations that have arisen in older sections
of the central city in order to defend themselves from such things as crime, deteriorat-
ing housing, and a decline in government services. Residents of CIDs often express
greater satisfaction living in such places than residents of either cities or suburbs who
do not have local representation in a homeowners’ association. According to Evan
McKenzie in his book Privatopia (1996), billions of affluent homeowners have taken
advantage of CIDs and actually secede from urban America “with its endless flux and
permits, its spontaneity and diversity and its unpredictable awards and hazards.” Now
they live in “a privatized, artificial, utopian environment where master planning, ho-
mogeneous populations, and private governments offer the affluent a chance to es-
cape from urban reality.” The downside of such communities is that residents must
live under the rule of the homeowners’ association directors who enforce restrictions
that everybody must comply with, such as the inability to alter the outside of their
homes, size restrictions, number restrictions on pets, control of garbage collection,
and late-night noise restrictions. McKenzie is most concerned about CIDs that are
produced by large developers that concentrate people on smaller areas of land than
what area governments mandate in order to realize more profit. Residents accept this
type of zoning because the CID provides them with greater security and more com-
munal amenities than can be found in ordinary housing developments. Critics of this
kind of housing arrangement view it as drastically cutting people off from the regu-
larly governed aspects of the metropolitan region in such a way that the enclave resi-
dence no longer needs to have any responsibility for the people living in the larger
society. In this sense CIDs are considered an extreme case of privatization that works
against the public interest as a whole.
Gay and Lesbian Communities and Urban Life

Almost without exception, when the issues of neighborhood and community are dis-
cussed in urban sociology textbooks, the overriding assumption is that they are peo-
pled by heterosexual individuals and/or couples. Only recently has that perspective
been challenged by a new generation of researchers concerned about the dynamics of
“queer space.” Aside from the presence of gay, lesbian, and transgendered commu-
nity networks in urban regions, researchers have uncovered differences in the way in-
teraction among people belonging to the “queer” community is structured. “While
gay men have often produced highly visible territorial enclaves in inner-city areas,
lesbian forms of territoriality at the urban scale have been relatively ‘invisible’ since
their communities are constituted through social networks rather than commercial
sites. Contrasting the patterns produced by these two populations in the inner-city
areas of postindustrial cities during the ‘queer’ 1990s has created a gender-polarized
and historically specific interpretation of their patterns of territoriality and visibility
that may differ significantly from those of earlier periods” (Podmore, 2006:595).
A key finding of research into gay, lesbian, and transgendered communities
echoes aspects of Lefebvrian theory: such places have to be produced; they do not
appear whole cloth within urban areas. While it is true that sections of cities, such as
SOCIAL NETWORKS AS COMMUNITIES WITHOUT PROXIMITY 205
the West Village in New York and the Castro in San Francisco, are well known ho-
mosexual neighborhoods, in all urban areas, nonheterosexuals must produce the
spaces within which they can commune. As one observer notes, “Just as individual
persons do not have pre-existing sexual identities, neither do spaces. In other words,
space is not naturally authentically ‘straight’ but rather actively produced and (het-
ero) sexualized” (Binnie, 1997:223). The production of queer space, then, for these
commentators, occurs as a kind of resistance and liberation from heterosexualizing
social forces trying to claim space within urban areas for normative activities. The
production of gay communities, therefore, is a form of activism.
Keeping in mind the remarks of Podmore on lesbian life, then, we can also ob-
serve that the production of queer spaces differs between gay men and women. The
latter’s mode of liberation and activism is less tied to material neighborhoods and
more characterized by active networking, even if both genders, like heterosexual
males and females, rely on commercial establishments for socializing outside the
home. Social networks are a way of viewing lifestyles that have less need of actual ur-
ban spaces. They are sometimes referred to as “communities without propinquity,”
and they represent another kind of sociality found in urban regions.
SOCIAL NETWORKS AS
COMMUNITIES WITHOUT PROXIMITY
In the 1970s, researchers examined the way people connected with others within the
expanding metropolitan region. Suburbia provided examples of many middle class res-
idents who had no strong attachments to the places they lived. Yet they participated ac-
tively in social networks spread across space that could be considered a kind of
community. For some, the local country club provided a grounding point for weekly
interaction. But as active consumers, networked people belonging to “communities
without propinquity” meet good friends, if not neighbors, in a variety of places and
circumstances stretching across the region. The same can be said for city dwellers who
were also found to possess a list of intimates with whom they communed without liv-
ing in proximity to them. What counts in this kind of non-place social structure is not
the distance between people but their common interests and their ability to connect
with each other whenever they want through transportation, mobile phone, land lines,
and the Internet (Fischer, 1975; Wellman, 1979; Koopomaa, 1998).
Current research using network analysis of community relations suggests that while
spatial location matters, its effects are not significant. Other factors, such as class, edu-
cation, gender, and race, are most important when explaining how people choose
friends and how they socialize. However, because network researchers look at the role
of space in only a very specific way, they miss important influences of the built envi-
ronment that are derived from external factors such as physical well-being of neighbor-
hoods or the level of crime. Furthermore, research on inner-city neighborhoods reveals
that people with limited means, such as the poor and the elderly, require intimates that
are close at hand. They are not the kind of far-ranging networkers studied by that
group of academics. Thus, network research has a built-in class bias. Even in suburbia,
middle-class mothers with children tend to have friends who are in proximity to their
house. Children play with other children next door or down the street whether they
live in the inner city or the suburbs. Mothers make friends as a consequence of being
together while supervising their offspring. Consequently, when networkers talk about
the importance of their approach to the study of communities, they often hide a gen-
der bias, in addition to short-changing a focus on the effects of class, especially the way
gender and class affect the behavior of women with children.
SUMMARY
In Chapter 7, we surveyed the diversity of metropolitan life. We saw that lifestyles
are a consequence of the interaction between compositional social factors, such as
class and race, and specific territorial relations that assign particular individuals to
particular places within the metropolitan region. In this chapter, we considered how
living and working arrangements foster types of community. Many of the discus-
sions about ways of life have suggested that spatial location can influence behavior.
Thus, while the previous chapter considered how people are organized into places,
this chapter deals with the question of how places influence behavior. Such balanced
considerations are in keeping with the sociospatial perspective, which claims that
space operates in a dual way as both a product and a producer of behaviors in society.
According to the arguments of urban sociologists, spatial location per se has little
effect on lifestyles, which are better explained by compositional factors. Even a per-
son’s sense of community has much more to do with his or her network of intimate
friends and kin than with where he or she lives. Yet the degree to which a commu-
nity without place characterizes people’s lives varies according to compositional fac-
tors such as class and gender, age and race, and ethnicity and religion. Hence the
localized, territorially specific community remains important to the way people or-
ganize their daily lives. This holds equally true for single, middle-class professional
women alone in the city, for poor black men who are disadvantaged because of racial
oppression, and for aged central city dwellers, all of whom need the sustaining re-
sources of local neighborhoods and vital community relations.
Space affects behavior in other ways. We orient ourselves in particular places by
assigning meaning to space. All objects are meaningful to us. The meanings of space
and the objects of the built environment help us organize our everyday lives. This so-
ciospatial process utilizes particular mechanisms in ordering public interaction. We
recognize the cues of behavior and acquire street wisdom by repeated use of public
space. Our interpretations of behavior require an understanding of spatial context.
Spatial context, in short, is a principal component of meaning.
Finally, we have discussed how the metropolitan region is diversified not only
with regard to the individuals who live there, but also with regard to the types of
neighborhood ties and commitments to community that can be found in particular
settings. Sociologists have produced a long list of studies that document the diversity
of neighborhood types and community relations in both urban and suburban settle-
ment spaces. An understanding of such differences helps us overcome stereotypical
thinking about the people of cities and suburbs.
While the richness of social life across the multicentered metropolitan region was
examined in some detail in the last two chapters, metropolitan life also presents prob-
lems and challenges. The next chapter considers how metropolitan problems result
from the interaction of social, cultural, and spatial factors both within and beyond the
metropolis.
KEY CONCEPTS
voluntary and involuntary minority status
African Americans
Hispanic Americans
Native Americans
Asian Americans
the search for community
field research
neighborhood
uneven community development
gated communities
common interest developments
gay and lesbian communities
community without proximity
social networking
1. What is the difference between voluntary and involuntary minority movement?
2. Recently there has been diversity in the locational settlement of African Ameri-
cans. What are some of the changes?
3. The Hispanic population in the United States is quite diverse. What are some
of the differences?
4. What is the significance of the barrio for Mexican Americans?
5. Discuss the new Asian immigration and how it has led to diversity of this pop-
ulation in the United States. How does the evolution of Monterey Park relate to this
diversity?
6. What is the nature of community? How do you define “neighborhood”? What

is the difference between community and neighborhood?
7. Discuss the pros and cons of gated communities. Why do people choose to live
in these communities?
8. Why are cities often the sites of gay and lesbian communities, and why do gay
people like to live in them?
9. What have sociologists discovered about the process of social networking?
How does social networking relate to the organization of life in the metro region?
10. What is meant by “community without proximity”?
CHAPTER
9
METROPOLITAN PROBLEMS
Racism, Poverty, Crime, Housing, and Fiscal Crisis
U ntil recently, urban problems were city problems. That is no longer the case as the
issues once associated with the large, compact settlement form have spread out, like
the metropolitan population and its economic activities, to characterize the entire ur-
ban region. In the late 1960s and 1970s, especially during President Johnson’s Great
Society, urban problems were defined almost exclusively as those involving racial seg-
regation, poverty, violent crime, and drugs. Now, in the first decade of the twenty-first
century, poverty, unemployment, foreclosures, and homelessness, as well as the severe
economic recession itself, are particular issues of concern. As the attention of the fed-
eral government in Washington, D.C., focuses on the major issues of the economy
and health care, the nation’s state governments seem to be ignored. Consequently,
adding to our other urban ills, we currently face more intense fiscal crises and their
impact on local public services and infrastructure.
Was there ever a baseline in America against which the problems of today can be
measured? As in the other industrialized capitalist countries of Europe, the quality of
urban life with the advent of capitalism in the 1800s was severe for all but the
wealthy. Early photographic images of American cities at the turn of the last century
feature overcrowding: immense traffic jams of primitive Model-T automobiles mixed
in with horse-drawn carts, tenements teeming with immigrants, and crowds of chil-
dren swarming across city streets. Until after World War II, city life in the United
States was plagued by frequent public health crises such as cholera outbreaks, high in-
fant mortality rates, alcoholism, domestic violence, street gang activity, and crime. For
much of our history, then, city life has been virtually synonymous with social prob-
lems. Yet we know now that these same problems—crime, disease, family breakup—
are experienced everywhere.
The sociologists of the early Chicago School, in the 1920s and 1930s, believed that
the move to the city was accompanied by social disorganization. While subsequent re-
search showed that this perception was inaccurate, people in the United States still
rank small and middle-size cities or suburbs as providing the highest quality of life and
209
210 9: METROPOLITAN PROBLEMS
remain overwhelmingly interested in living in suburbs, especially for couples with

small children. The negative perception of the large city provides the basis for varying
mental images of place. Yet we have also seen that there are many positive aspects of ur-
ban living and that the early belief in the loss of community among migrants to the
city was unfounded.
In previous chapters, we have tried to show that problems that appear to afflict
individuals are caused in part by factors that we cannot readily see. Consequently, an
explanation for the social disorganization often viewed in an individual’s fate lies in
the particular combination of adverse life decisions, personal circumstances, and more
structural social factors, such as lack of adequate education, racism, poverty, and the
specific effects of spatial segregation and uneven development. This chapter applies
the sociospatial approach to metropolitan problems. One purpose of our discussion is
to explore whether or not large cities in particular and metropolitan regions in general
possess unique features that might propagate specifically “urban” problems.
THE SOCIOSPATIAL APPROACH

TO SOCIAL PROBLEMS
Social problems are ubiquitous across the metropolitan areas of the United States.
Cities do not have an exclusive hold on divorce or domestic violence, and suburbs are
now almost as likely as cities to be afflicted with family disorganization, deviant sub-
cultures, drug use, and gang activity (Barbanel, 1992). Many suburban areas have
crime rates comparable to those of the central city. As the suburban settlement spaces
have matured, differences in poverty levels, crime rates, and other measures of social
disorganization have become less. If it appears clear that urbanism by itself is not a
generator of social problems, it is also clear that cultural approaches can no longer
identify unique differences between city life and life in other developed places.
We know from our earlier explorations of the sociospatial approach that the spa-
tial environment plays an important role in human interaction. The social background
factors associated with population groups are also important. The variety of lifestyles
found across urban and suburban settlement spaces result from social factors such as
race, class, and gender. Social problems in particular are caused by poverty, racial ex-
clusion, gender differences, and the severe patterns of uneven development within set-
tlement space that results in differential access to resources and determines a person’s
life chances. On the other hand, spatial forms still matter. Environments intensify or
dissipate these compositional effects of uneven development. In short, ways of life re-
sult from an interaction between social factors and spatial organization.
Cities are not unique in having acute social problems, but the spatial nature of
large cities and densely populated suburbs makes the uneven development resulting
from the inequities of race, class, gender, and age particularly severe. According to the
sociospatial approach, the following factors are the most significant.
RACISM AND POVERTY 211
First, the principal effect of the city as a built environment is that it concentrates
people and resources (Lefebvre, 1991; Engels, 1973). Thus, social problems such as
drugs and poverty have a greater impact in large central cities and densely populated
suburbs than in less dense areas. In confined urban space under the jurisdiction of a
single municipal government, it is the sheer numbers, such as the frequency of mur-
ders and rapes or the number of “crack babies,” that turn social problems into grave
concerns.
Second, over the years urban populations have been disproportionately affected
by the internationalization of the capitalist economies. For example, large metropol-
itan regions such as Los Angeles or New York are the destinations of choice for most
immigrants from poorer nations who have left their countries in search of a better
life. With the flow of immigrants comes specific problems, such as the need for bilin-
gual education, that affect these areas more than other places.
Changes in the global cycles of economic investment also affect metropolitan re-
gions because of the scale of activities in the largest places. For example, after Wall
Street stocks plunged in October 1987, more than 100,000 trained professionals were
laid off from brokerage and financial service firms in Manhattan, and throughout the
1990s, staggering job losses occurred in many areas as U.S. companies sought to in-
crease their profits and earnings. Job loss on this scale presents a particularly acute
problem for cities.
Finally, social problems are caused by the allocation of resources, which may be ac-
centuated in dense, built environments. For example, large cities are major centers of
the global economy. Extreme wealth is created within their boundaries, and the signs
of that money are highly visible in the city, such as expensive restaurants, upscale de-
partment stores, luxury housing, and limousines. Close by, in the concentrated space
of the city, are people who suffer the most terrible consequences of abject poverty, such
as homelessness, malnutrition, and chronic unemployment. Because this contrast is so
visible, the issue of uneven development is particularly oppressive to inhabitants.
In summary, social problems that can be considered uniquely urban derive from
the concentrated nature of metropolitan space and the scale of changes in composi-
tional factors. In this chapter, we consider a number of problems often associated
with urban life, including racism and poverty, crime and drugs, fiscal problems such
as declines in educational quality and infrastructure problems, and, finally, housing
inequities and homelessness.
RACISM AND POVERTY
Racism
The most extreme and continuing effects of racism have been felt by African Ameri-
cans, who have been systematically discriminated against in employment and in the
housing market. As a consequence, their social mobility has been severely con-
strained. The most powerful indicator of continuing institutional racism in the
United States is population segregation. In Chapters 10 and 11, when discussing
cities around the globe, we will also encounter the phenomenon of population segre-
gation. But nowhere is the racial nature of this sociospatial effect as clear as in metro-
politan areas across the United States.
The classic study of segregation is by the Taeubers (1965). They compiled statis-
tics on American cities with regard to the relative locations of whites and blacks. To
measure segregation, they constructed a very useful concept, an “index of segrega-
tion.” If a city had a 30 percent African American population as a whole, they ex-
pected, in the absence of segregation, that the black population would be evenly
distributed across space. The index of segregation refers to the percentage of African
Americans who would have to move in order for all neighborhoods to reflect the 30
percent black composition of the entire city. If a neighborhood were 90 percent
black, 67 percent of the black population would have to move, resulting in an index
of .67.
On the basis of the Taeubers’ study, all U.S. cities were discovered to be highly
segregated, that is, with indexes above .50 for African Americans. The Taeubers
replicated their study in the 1970s and found little change in the degree of black
population clustering. Some of the most segregated cities during the 1970s were De-
troit; Chicago; Buffalo, New York; Cleveland; and Birmingham, Alabama.
Some have argued that not all of the segregation observed in American cities is the
consequence of involuntary segregation; the spatial cluster of population groups can
also be voluntary. In the case of African Americans, however, we know that the urban
ghettos were created by a form of racism and violence designed to prevent blacks from
moving into “white” settlement spaces, federal housing policies that concentrated
public housing in the inner city while subsidizing “white flight” to the suburbs
through construction of the interstate highway system and home mortgage loans, and
other factors. Bullard and Feagin (1991), for example, discuss various techniques used
by housing-related institutions to prevent blacks from locating where they prefer,
thereby fostering involuntary segregation. This is an example of institutional racism.
Rental and real estate agents also use a variety of methods to prevent blacks from
locating in white-owned areas. One mechanism is called steering. When an African
American couple comes to a rental or real estate agent, the agent will steer the couple
to areas of the city populated by blacks. Agents may also simply refuse to divulge the
existence of housing opportunities in white areas. Despite gains in family income
earnings by a growing number of middle-class blacks, racial segregation remains a
fact of life for the majority of African Americans.
The sociospatial effects of racism on African Americans are also illustrated by
comparing their position with that of other minorities. In metropolitan areas where
minorities were at least 20 percent of the population—that is, where they were pres-
ent in sufficient numbers to perhaps overcome prejudice—Hispanic Americans were

highly segregated in only two of the thirty-three metropolitan areas. In contrast,
“blacks are highly segregated in 31—two-thirds—of the 47 metro areas where they
make up at least 20 percent of residents, including Detroit, Chicago, Miami, Bir-
mingham, Ala.” (USA Today, “Segregation: Walls Between Us,” 1991:A-2).
Since the time of the Taeubers’ study, researchers of spatial segregation have devel-
oped more precise measures of population clustering. The most sophisticated of these
studies combine several different measures to arrive at overall estimates of segregation.
They found that black people not only continue to be segregated in significant num-
bers within central cities, but their exclusion is now extreme. Those that remain ghet-
toized are extremely isolated because for decades all Americans—black, white,
Hispanic—with the means and opportunity to move away from such areas have done
so. Consequently, rather than social conditions improving for poor African Ameri-
cans, their extreme segregation in our nation’s cities is now described as “hypersegre-
gation.” Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton (1993), for example, used five different
measures of population clustering in their study of the causes and consequences of
racial segregation in Chicago and other cities while discovering the deteriorating con-
ditions of hypersegregation.
1. Unevenness: African Americans may be distributed so that they are overrepre-

sented in some areas and underrepresented in other areas.
2. Isolation: African Americans may be distributed so that they have little inter-
action with other groups.
3. Clustered: Black neighborhoods may be tightly clustered to form one contigu-
ous enclave, or they may be scattered about in checkerboard fashion.
4. Concentrated: Black neighborhoods may be concentrated within a very small
area, or they may be settled sparsely throughout the urban environment.
5. Centralized: Black neighborhoods may be spatially centralized around the ur-
ban core or spread out along the periphery.
These five dimensions define geographic traits that social scientists think of when
they consider segregation. A high score on any single dimension is serious because it
removes blacks from full participation in urban society and limits their access to ben-
efits. As segregation accumulates across multiple dimensions, however, its effects in-
tensify. The indices of unevenness and isolation we have discussed so far cannot
capture this multidimensional layering of segregation and therefore understate its
severity in American society. Not only are blacks more segregated than other groups
on any single dimension of segregation, but they are also more segregated on all di-
mensions simultaneously; and in an important subset of U.S. metropolitan areas,
African Americans are highly segregated on at least four of the five dimensions at
once, an extreme isolating pattern that they call hypersegregation.
Thus one-third of all African Americans in the United States live under conditions
of intense racial segregation. They are unambiguously among the nation’s most spa-
tially isolated and geographically secluded people, suffering extreme segregation
across multiple dimensions simultaneously. Black Americans in these metropolitan
areas live within large, contiguous settlements of densely inhabited neighborhoods
that are packed tightly around the urban core. In plain terms, they live in ghettos.
Typical inhabitants of these ghettos are not only unlikely to come into contact
with whites within the particular neighborhood where they live; even if they trav-
eled to the adjacent neighborhood they would still be unlikely to see a white face;
and if they went to the next neighborhood, no whites would be there either. No
other group in the contemporary United States comes close to this level of isola-
tion within urban society. U.S. Hispanics, for example, are never highly segregated
on more than three dimensions simultaneously, and in 45 of the 60 metropolitan
areas examined, they were highly segregated on only one dimension. Moreover,
the large Hispanic community in Miami (the third largest in the country) is not
highly segregated on any dimension at all. Despite their immigrant origins, Span-
ish language, and high poverty rates, Hispanics are considerably more integrated
in American society than are blacks. (Massey and Denton, 1993:74–77)
The negative effects of hypersegregation were amply illustrated when Hurricane

Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Hundreds of thousands of poor black people were
living in that city in strict isolation. Their neighborhoods were also the site of the
lowlands and landfills that were below sea level and protected only by a series of
dikes and channels from being underwater. This area is poor land, a poor person’s
hyperghetto, and a very risky place to live. Hurricane Katrina devastated this area
when the dikes broke, leading to death and dispersal on an unprecedented scale in
this country. The total failure of the federal government under former president
George W. Bush to deal adequately with this crisis is a frightening example of how
little our society cares for poor minorities and the neighborhoods in which they live.
Box 9.1 summarizes the tragedy of Katrina and its indictment of our society.
From the information presented in these and other studies, it is clear that the
major determinant of racial segregation is not a person’s income, social class, or
length of time spent in the United States (as suggested by the assimilation model)
but rather racial background. African Americans confront the highest levels of segre-
gation while Asian Americans have the lowest levels. Racial background is also im-
portant in determining segregation for various ethnic groups within these categories:
Puerto Ricans are more segregated than Mexicans, for example. Cultural factors such
as language and religion are associated with the level of segregation for particular
ethnic groups. For example, Asian Indian and Filipino immigrants are likely to speak
English and are familiar with American schools and government and consequently
encounter much less segregation than other Asian American populations.
Box 9.1
Hurricane Katrina
Formed on August 23, 2005, and hitting New Orleans on Monday, August 29,
Hurricane Katrina was the largest natural disaster in U.S. history with estimated
damages at more than $100 billion, and one of the five deadliest. “The federal
flood protection system in New Orleans failed at more than fifty places. Nearly
every levee in metro New Orleans was breached as Hurricane Katrina passed just
east of the city limits. Eventually 80% of the city became flooded and also large
tracts of neighboring parishes, and the floodwaters lingered for weeks. At least
1,836 people lost their lives in the actual hurricane and in the subsequent floods.”
Initially, hundreds of thousands of residents were displaced, with many having to
start new lives in other cities. Four years later, thousands of former residents contin-
ued to live in makeshift trailers, some of which were discovered to be giving off
toxic fumes. Reports and several books have blasted the Bush administration’s han-
dling of this massive disaster along with the dubious choice of former president
Bush’s appointed head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA,
Michael D. Brown.
“In a September 26, 2005, hearing, former FEMA chief Michael Brown testified
before a U.S. House subcommittee about FEMA’s response. During that hearing,
Representative Steven Boyer (R-IN) inquired as to why President Bush’s declaration
of state of emergency of August 27 had not included the coastal parishes of Orleans,
Jefferson, and Plaquemines. (In fact, the declaration did not include any of Louisi-
ana’s coastal parishes, whereas the coastal counties were included in the declarations
for Mississippi and Alabama.) Brown testified that this was because Louisiana gover-
nor Blanco had not included those parishes in her initial request for aid, a decision
that he found “shocking.” After the hearing, Blanco released a copy of her letter,
which showed she had requested assistance for “all the southeastern parishes [but
not by name], including the New Orleans metropolitan area and the mid-state In-
terstate I-49 corridor and northern parishes along the I-20 corridor that are accept-
ing [evacuated citizens].” “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of job!” is now the famous
quote by an oblivious George Bush that captures the incompetence of his adminis-
tration’s response to the great human tragedy.
The disaster response to Katrina redistributed over 1 million people from the cen-
tral Gulf Coast elsewhere across the United States—the largest diaspora in the history
of the United States. Houston, Texas, had an increase of 35,000 people; Mobile, Ala-
bama, gained over 24,000; Baton Rouge, Louisiana, over 15,000; and Hammon,
Louisiana, received over 10,000, nearly doubling its size. Chicago received over
6,000 people, the most of any non-southern city. By late January 2006, about
continues
Box 9.1 continued

200,000 people were once again living in New Orleans, less than half of the pre-
storm population.
Two years after the disaster, criticism of the U.S. government’s response to the
massive destruction of mostly African-American neighborhoods with their mod-
estly priced homes still reverberates to the detriment of America’s reputation. The
clear pattern has been to keep displaced poor people from returning by failing to
rebuild low-income housing. According to the Association of City Mayors: “De-
spite Hurricane Katrina causing the worst affordable housing crisis since the Amer-
ican Civil War, HUD is spending $762 million in taxpayer funds to tear down over
4,600 public-housing subsidized apartments and replace them with 744 similarly
subsidized units—an 82 percent reduction. . . . HUD plans to build an additional
1,000 market rate and tax credit units—which will still result in a net loss of 2,700
apartments to New Orleans—the remaining new apartments will cost an average of
over $400,000 each!”
The removal of poor and black people from New Orleans by an opportunistic
government seems to have been for the benefit of real estate interests initially. Pri-
vate market entrepreneurs have been allowed to operate by constructing nonsubsi-
dized dwellings at a profit, and this past summer New Orleans was reported to be
the fastest growing city in the country.
The case study of Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing failure of the federal gov-
ernment to provide adequately for the victims can inspire extreme cynicism, espe-
cially in regard to former president George W. Bush’s administration. However, it
also has important heuristic value. It demonstrates society’s lack of commitment to
help the less affluent with low-income and affordable housing; it shows how power-
ful interests in real estate influence the actions, if not the policies of the federal gov-
ernment; and it clearly indicates that when natural disasters strike, it is the poor
whose needs are neglected and it is the poor who suffer most. All of these conclu-
sions can be derived from our sociospatial approach. It is not surprising that capital
is now flowing back into New Orleans at a substantial rate and that the poor and
the black have been replaced by more affluent Americans due to hurricane recovery
policies of housing and urban renewal.
In August 2009, the Associated Press ran an article updating the situation in
New Orleans. Among its observations, it reported:
By one estimate, 36 percent of New Orleans’ housing is empty, and . . . there is no

clear indication when or whether it will be rebuilt. While grace periods for many
mortgage holders after the storm helped New Orleans avoid the high foreclosure
rates other cities have seen, many homeowners haven’t yet decided whether to re-
continues
build or, in some cases, don’t have the money to finish the work. . . . New Orleans
has regained about 75 percent of its pre-storm population, though a recent report by
the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program and Greater New Orleans
Community Data Center said slowing of school enrollment suggests those moving
in are single or childless couples. . . . By one recent estimate, less than 20 percent of
the Lower 9th’s pre-storm population is back. A pocket of new, built-to-last houses
in another part of the neighborhood—spearheaded by Hollywood star Brad Pitt and
slated to expand—is like a hamlet surrounded by open, vivid-green land.
Overgrown lots and homes that have scarcely been touched since Katrina spill
from the cluster of Pitt homes, creating a virtual wilderness. On a recent afternoon,
feral chickens scurried across a road that attracted little notice before Katrina but
has become a landmark since.” The city is recovering but growth is clearly uneven
with large areas of the poorest sections comparatively abandoned. Overall, one in-
dicator of recovery is revealing: Prior to the hurricane in the prosperous year the
total number of residential addresses actively receiving mail was 188,251. Now, in
June of 2009, that number is 154,592 up by slightly more than 8,000 since imme-
diately after the storm. Recovery is happening but, obviously, at a slow pace.
SOURCES: “Four Years After Katrina: The State of New Orleans,” AP/Huffington Post, August 28,
2009; Dan D. Swenson and Bob Marshall, “Flash Flood: Hurricane Katrina’s Inundation of New
Orleans.” Times-Picayune, May 14, 2005; Jed Horne, Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the
Near Death of a Great American City (New York: Random House, 2008).
The relationship between racial background and segregation is brought out

clearly by research on housing discrimination in suburban communities. Govern-
ment regulations and real estate agents prevent African Americans from moving out-
side the large city even if they can afford to do so. Most often this is the result of a
kind of racism that is called “exclusionary zoning.” Such measures have been con-
firmed as the cause of segregation by a long research tradition.
According to a report published in 2004:
Much has been written in recent years on continuing high levels of racial segregation
and growing income segregation within urban areas in the U.S. Black and Hispanic
households tend to live in different neighborhoods than whites, while within these
groups high-and low-income households are also spatially separated. Among the fac-
tors that contribute to segregated housing patterns are local land-use regulations that
tend to exclude lower-income households from suburban communities. The specific
regulations that are most often criticized as exclusionary are those that specify a
minimum lot size for single-family homes. Large lots artificially inflate the cost of
owner-occupied housing within suburban communities, making it difficult for low-

and moderate-income households to buy into these communities. In addition to
large lot zoning, there are a myriad of other zoning and building regulations that
raise home prices and apartment rents within America’s suburbs. (Ihlanfeldt, 255)
As a result, there is a scarcity of affordable housing within many communities,

and region-wide racial segregation is compounded by poverty. Ihlanfeldt goes on to
say, “There are some hard facts obtained by people doing research on exclusionary
zoning. It has been found that neighborhood median income increases property
value while racial diversity reduces property value. The evidence provided demon-
strates that there is a cash payoff to suburban property owners from excluding from
their community low-income and minority households.”
Recent research on segregation shows that the forces of isolation and discrimina-
tion afflicting the black and the poor have deconcentrated just as minority popula-
tions have spread out unevenly across the metro region. As a result, an overall
locational pattern has emerged with minority communities fragmenting into irregu-
lar enclaves throughout the area rather than being confined to specific ghettos. This
is even more so for poor Hispanics who have been more successful in overcoming the
barriers of exclusionary zoning in suburbia. While affordable housing and mixed
communities are not increasingly present, strict ghettoization is giving way to a more
dispersed, regional array. Thus research shows that there is an exclusionary and dis-
criminatory dynamic operating at the multicentered metro regional scale rather than
the simple dichotomy of city vs. suburb that characterized earlier perspectives on
race and income segregation. These results confirm in a different way the emergence
of the new form of multicentered regional space than earlier arguments in this text.
In a 2008 study, the author looked at nine metro areas: Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit,
Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. He
compared segregation in these regions within suburban communities, between subur-
ban communities, between the urban poor and the suburban region, and within the
principal cities. In all the regions tested, there was significant segregation within the
core cities, between the urban core and the suburban rings in the region, and between
suburban communities in the region. Atlanta had most of its segregation within and
between suburban communities. Chicago had a large component of segregation within
its core area. Detroit possessed a large component of segregation between and within
its suburban communities but also within the central city. Segregation in Houston was
dominated by its presence in the core central city. Miami’s picture was the reverse:
Most of the segregation was between and within suburban communities. New York,
among the entire sample, had most of its segregation within the principal cities of the
region. San Francisco was equally balanced between segregation in the city and in the
suburban area of the region, while Washington, D.C., like many of the other cities,
was dominated by segregation in the suburban region (Farrell, 2008).
Most metropolitan areas became less segregated during the 1990s, but this effect
obscures the more complex and fragmented nature of segregation involving multi-
groups and differences in community segregation patterns within the larger metropol-
itan region. Another reason there is not more fragmentation of minority and poor
neighborhoods, especially in the central city, is because of gentrification. In the large
cities like New York, young adults are moving into former ghetto areas that were once
predominantly black or Hispanic. The same is true in many other large cities; how-
ever, it is probably not the case in the smaller cities where there is still room for afford-
able housing close to the city but located in suburban regions, or in the cities of the
south which still maintain racial barriers to locational mobility, such as in New Or-
leans. We shall discuss gentrification below. Farrell’s comparative analysis clearly dem-
onstrates the way discrimination operates to produce variable patterns of settlement
for the poor and minorities because of the way those populations have filtered out
from central cities according to the different limitations imposed on them by exclu-
sionary practices in the different cities.
At the end of the last century, a growing number of black people have returned to
the South, thereby reversing decades of movement north. According to a report by the
Brookings Institution (2005), the South outscored net gains of black migrants from
all three of the other regions of the United States during the late 1990s, reversing a
thirty-five-year trend. Of the ten states that suffered the greatest net loss of blacks
between 1965 and 1970, five ranked among the top ten states for attracting blacks be-
tween 1995 and 2000. Southern metropolitan areas, particularly Atlanta, led the way
in attracting black migrants in the late 1990s. In contrast, the major metropolitan
areas of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco experienced the greatest
out-migration of blacks during the same period. Among all ethnic-racial groups,
blacks were more likely than any other to move to the South. Both Atlanta and Wash-
ington, D.C., were the major recipients of black migrants. Most importantly, college-
educated individuals led the new black immigration into the South. Georgia, Texas,
and Maryland attracted the most black college graduates from 1995 to 2000, while
New York suffered the largest net loss. There was also a large out-migration of African
Americans from California. They moved to the “spillover” states of Arizona and Ne-
vada as well as back to the South. Due to the higher level of education and income
characteristic of these return southerners, inner-city hyperghettos continue to lose
their more affluent residents, assuming, as in the case of New Orleans, there are any
left at all.
One effect on U.S. culture of significant segregation is that increasingly whites
learn about blacks and blacks learn about whites only from the mass media because
they have little direct contact with each other. Styles of dress and language among
teenagers, in particular, are highly influenced by the media and the mass-marketing of
youth-related fashions in clothing, cinema, and music. In the 1990s, an urban style of
ghetto dress among black teenagers that is associated with rap music and inner-city
dance styles was marketed nationwide. Many youths in suburbia copy the style that is
marketed to them through television and films. At the same time, suburban fashions
associated with active leisure wear, especially influenced by Southern California, such
as skateboarding and beachwear, are also marketed through the media nationwide.
Teenage culture represents a battleground of these and other spatially generated
lifestyles that are diffused across the country by the mass media (Chambers, 1986),
and it is here, in popular culture, that urban African American culture has had its
greatest impact on whites.
Poverty
The issue of poverty is not confined to urban settlement space alone. People through-
out the metropolitan region suffer its effects. Poverty is caused by the uneven develop-
ment of the economy. In the 1950s, despite growing affluence, large numbers of
Americans were poor, with some living in appalling conditions (Harrington, 1962).
At the time, it was recognized that there were poor people in rural areas as well as ur-
ban places. As a result of government antipoverty programs such as the War on
Poverty, the poverty rate declined to about 12.1 percent in the 1960s. In the 1970s
and 1980s, however, the rate rose again and reached levels comparable to Depression-
era statistics; roughly 20 percent of the total population was living at or below the
poverty line in the 1980s (Wilson, 1987). Today, as a consequence of our current eco-
nomic meltdown, unemployment and poverty have hit unprecedented levels and the
problem remains our most serious domestic issue.
In 2008 the federal government issued guidelines that defined poverty for a family
of four as $21,200 in yearly income for the contiguous United States, with Alaska and
Hawaii slightly higher at $26,500 and $24,380, respectively (U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, 2009). It is difficult to figure how a family of four can
manage on this budget, particularly for those living in urban areas with high rents and
food costs. Today there are many more people living at or below this rate than in
2008; over 40 million, or about 14 percent of the population, in fact. Another indica-
tor of poverty is whether people possess health insurance. In 2007, before the eco-
nomic crisis hit, almost 16 percent of Americans had none.
Poverty can be considered an urban problem because of its concentration in large
city neighborhoods, as the sociospatial perspective suggests, although the range of
poverty rates for all cities in the United States is quite broad. Cleveland and Detroit,
for example, had rates above 30 percent in 2007, while the rates in their surrounding
suburban areas were much less. In general, the city as a spatial form concentrates the
poor in record numbers, and that is precisely the sociospatial effect that makes poverty
an urban problem. As William J. Wilson has observed, “To say that poverty has be-
come increasingly urbanized is to note a remarkable change in the concentration of
poor people in the United States in only slightly more than a decade” (1987:172).
I N C R E A S I N G I N C O M E I N E Q U A L I T Y , U N E M P L O Y M E N T , A N D P O V E R T Y 221
Furthermore, the demographic profile of the poor is cause for alarm. In 2005,
17.6 percent of all children under eighteen years old were living in poverty. This
high figure is astounding for a developed country like the United States. During that
same year, a higher proportion of black (34.5 percent) and Hispanic (28.3 percent)
children under age eighteen were poor than were their non-Hispanic white counter-
parts (10.0 percent) (http://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa07/popchar/pages/103cp.html).
Because the minority population of the United States is overwhelmingly urban,
these figures imply a concentration of poor minority group members, especially chil-
dren, in the large central cities and represents a major problem for the entire society,
not just for those living in central cities.
The spatial effects of concentrating the poor in a few neighborhoods contribute
to urban problems. For example, ghetto areas are the sites of the most violent crimi-
nal and drug-related activities, so the urban poor are the most likely to be crime vic-
tims and suffer the most from crime (Taylor, 1991). In addition, ghetto areas have
worse medical care than other parts of the city. A study of infant mortality rates in
New York found that the rate was almost twice as high in central Harlem and Bed-
ford-Stuyvesant (23.4 and 21 per 1,000, respectively), both well-known black com-
munities, compared to the city average of 13.3 per 1,000 (the national average was
10 in 1,000 in 1990).
I N C R E A S I N G I N C O M E I N E Q U A L I T Y,
U N E M P L O Y M E N T, A N D P O V E R T Y
The current economic crisis has had a number of troubling effects by increasing the
problem of poverty in the United States. Because of uneven development, however,
the burden of the crisis has fallen most heavily on the working class, not on corporate
executives or fully employed professionals. Consequently, as a recent report shows, the
income inequality gap has widened considerably. In fact, “Income inequality in the
United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great De-
pression” (Saez, “Income Inequality is at an All Time High,” New York Times, 2009).
Since 2000, the top 1 percent of American wage earners have doubled their share of
wages. The top 10 percent of employed people pulled in almost 50 percent of all
earned wages in 2007, a “level that is higher than any other year since 1917.”
As our economic crisis persists, unemployment remains high (it was close to 10
percent in July 2009). According to a federal government report in June:
Unemployment rates were higher in June than a year earlier in all 372 metropoli-
tan areas, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor re-
ported today. Eighteen areas recorded jobless rates of at least 15.0 percent, while
9 areas registered rates below 5.0 percent. The national unemployment rate in
June was 9.7 percent, not seasonally adjusted, up from 5.7 percent a year earlier.
Among the 369 metropolitan areas for which nonfarm payroll data were avail-
able, 352 areas reported over-the-year declines in employment, 16 reported in-
creases, and 1 had no change. (Hall, 2009)
Furthermore, statistics on job loss indicate that the phenomenon is greater in

many of our largest multicentered metropolitan regions (not just cities). Thus the
economic crisis concentrates the poor and the unemployed in these areas.
Of the 49 metropolitan areas with a Census 2000 population of 1 million or

more, Detroit-Warren-Livonia, Mich., reported the highest unemployment rate
in June, 17.1 percent. The large areas with the next highest rates were Riverside–
San Bernardino–Ontario, Calif., 13.7 percent; Charlotte–Gastonia–Concord,
N.C.–S.C., 12.4 percent; Las Vegas–Paradise, Nev., 12.3 percent; and Provi-
dence–Fall River–Warwick, R.I., 12.1 percent. Eighteen additional large areas
posted rates of 10.0 percent or more. . . . All 49 large areas registered over-the-
year unemployment rate increases of at least 2.0 percentage points. (U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics, 2009)
Loss of a job has negative ripple effects on the economy that bring other jobs into
jeopardy. Proposed employment creation to combat this problem so far has not ma-
terialized, giving people cause for substantial worry that the economic recovery will
take considerable time. Another negative effect of increasing poverty and unemploy-
ment is that it impacts the housing market. In fact, because the United States has
failed to provide an adequate supply of affordable housing, the banks that provided
loans to people who could ill afford them helped pave the way for the present eco-
nomic crisis. Consequently, the issues of poverty, income inequality, and unemploy-
ment are compounded and mixed in with the country’s equally large housing crisis.
THE HOUSING CRISIS AND SOCIET Y’S FAILURE

TO PROVIDE ADEQUATE AFFORDABLE HOUSING
As pointed out in our discussion of community in Chapter 8, family well-being in the
United States depends to a great extent on where one’s home is located. Differences in
wealth and the location of the family home determine the opportunities available to in-
dividuals. Where one lives determines the quality of the school one attends, as we have
already discussed, but it also determines the safety of the local streets and how much
one’s property will increase in value. Over the years, the cost of well-situated housing,
either owned or rented, has increased substantially as a percentage of income. Conse-
quently, attractive neighborhoods have become beyond the reach of many people.
Since 1965, the cost of housing has risen more rapidly than income. As a result,
millions of people either could not afford single-family homeownership or were forced
THE HOUSING CRISIS AND SOCIET Y’S FAILURE 223
to devote a major part of their income to housing. In 2008 the uneven development of
America’s market-oriented approach to real estate investment in housing and loans re-
sulted in an economic meltdown with no immediate relief in sight (see below). Yet the
present global crisis is only the inevitable outcome of decades of misguided housing
policy sacrificed for maximum profit. In the mid-1950s, an average thirty-year-old
worker could purchase a median-priced house for just 14 percent of his or her gross
earnings. Thirty years later, it would take fully 44 percent of that worker’s income to
purchase the same house (Levy, 1977). Shannon, Kleiniewski, and Cross (1991) illus-
trated the rapid increase in housing prices. In 1970, the median monthly rent in the
United States was $108; by 1985, it was three times as high ($350). The median sales
price of new homes increased by a factor of four, from $23,000 in 1970 to more than
$92,000 in 1986. Price increases were most rapid on both the East and West Coasts,
becoming almost prohibitively high in places such as Orange County, California, and
Nassau County, New York.
Today we are in the midst of a full-blown economic crisis that grew out of our
housing dilemma with its lack of affordability and its obsessive emphasis on putting
people into single-family suburban tract homes or inner-city high-end condomini-
ums. Since the 1980s, real estate and banking interests in the United States pushed
development of housing for the affluent to unprecedented levels. Although little af-
fordable housing was constructed, banks found new ways of placing people into
units when they could not afford the expensive housing that was being built. Sub-
prime and adjustable rate mortgages were the principal tools used to keep profits up
by tapping into a new market consisting of poorer people who could not afford new
housing. Eventually, a speculative and artificially inflated “bubble” of investment
and debt was created that came crashing down on the heads of Americans at the end
of 2008. However, the warning signs were already there over a decade ago, when
bank mortgage lending was deregulated by the federal government and all the
watchdogs of land and bank investing somehow went to sleep while mega-profits
and mega-bonuses were being made and paid in these industries.
As Lefebvre has argued, the second circuit of investing, namely real estate, is as
likely to go through boom-and-bust cycles as any other aspect of capitalism. For sev-
eral decades, until 2007, average citizens forgot about the dangers of the speculative
bubble and focused on the monthly and yearly gains in the value of housing and the
steady profit taking it allowed. More significantly for the current economic crisis to-
day, investment banks, which until the Clinton era deregulation, were forbidden from
investing in housing at all, cleverly engineered entirely new ways of packaging risky
home loans into “assets” that were bought and sold on the global market. The value
of these “subprime” derivatives was assured only for as long as the prices of housing
continued to rise. It seems astounding now that no one in authority, in either the
United States or other industrialized countries, exercised their power to offset such
speculation. It is even more astounding that no effective oversight was initiated when
not long ago the United States, under President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s, lost
billions of dollars in a similar real estate speculation known as the “savings and loan”
scandal. That is exactly what happened as a consequence of the deregulation of invest-
ment banking activities under President Clinton in the 1990s. In brief, then, the
United States has always had an affordable housing crisis because the country has per-
sisted in relying on the private market to supply most of its housing needs.
When the speculative bubble—the nation’s housing market—began to burst in
2007, there was ample time for a suitable correction if the government under Presi-
dent George W. Bush had paid any attention. But it didn’t. Now the American econ-
omy is in the throes of a major, long-lasting plunge. It is extremely important to note
that the crisis derives from the government’s failure to provide for affordable housing
rather than blaming a more complex, less understandable feature of global capital in-
vestment and business dynamics. For example, according to an authoritative report,
housing markets contracted for a second straight year in 2007.
Then, the national median single-family home price fell in nominal terms for the
first time in 40 years of recordkeeping, leaving several million homeowners with
properties worth less than their mortgages. With the economy softening and many
home loans resetting to higher rates, an increasing number of owners had diffi-
culty keeping current on their payments. Mortgage performance—especially on
subprime loans with adjustable rates—eroded badly. Lenders responded by tight-
ening underwriting standards and demanding a higher risk premium, accelerating
the ongoing slide in sales and starts. (Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2008)
By the end of 2008, the foreclosure rate and the drop in stock prices were both
equally astronomic and equally painful. The country was well underway into a na-
tional banking, employment, and stock depression that people were still suffering
from in late 2009.
A recent assessment concluded that a recovery remained unsure and the eco-
nomic decline was deeply troubling:
While deep construction cutbacks have begun to pare down the supply of unsold
new homes, the numbers of vacant homes for sale or held off the market remain
high. Reducing this excess will take some combination of additional declines in
prices, a slow-down in foreclosures, further cuts in mortgage interest rates, and a
pickup in job and income growth. Until the inventory of vacant homes is worked
off, the pressure on prices will persist. Further price declines will not only increase
the probability that mortgage defaults end in foreclosure, but also put a tighter
squeeze on consumer spending. (Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2008)
Compounding this problem of excess supply, current foreclosure rates are so high
that banks still retain excess liabilities (called “toxic assets”) and remain in crisis. Con-
THE HOUSING CRISIS AND SOCIET Y’S FAILURE 225
tinuing high unemployment rates are the major culprit. When people lose their jobs,
they often lose their homes as well. According to a recent report, “Economists esti-
mate that 1.8 million borrowers will lose their homes this year [2009], up from 1.4
million last year [2008] . . . and the government, which has already committed bil-
lions of dollars to foreclosure-prevention efforts, has found it far more difficult to help
people who have lost their paychecks than those whose mortgage payments become
unaffordable because of an interest-rate increase” (Merle, Washington Post, 2009).
Lack of affordable housing and the irrational way the banking industry, aided by
our culture’s attachment to the American Dream, pushed the norm of a single-
family home, contributed to the bursting of the bubble that is at the heart of the cur-
rent U.S. economic crisis. By involving such large numbers of people who could
least afford homes through subprime loans, the crisis hit African Americans and His-
panic populations particularly hard. Box 9.2 provides a report on the extent of this
involvement and the implications it has for an economic recovery.
Box 9.2
The Effect on Minority Populations of the Housing Crisis
Fastest Growing Populations Experiencing Decreasing Wealth

Washington, D.C.—The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC)
has said that the latest report from the U.S. Department of the Census Bureau casts
new light on the economic ramifications of the growing foreclosure crisis. The Cen-
sus report shows that in less than forty years, today’s minorities—the disproportion-
ate recipient of subprime loans—will be the majority population in America. This
has profound implications on the future of Americans’ economic mobility, home-
ownership attainment, and the nation’s global competitiveness.
Hispanics are expected to experience the most dramatic increase in population,
according to the report, swelling from 15 percent of the population to 30 percent.
African Americans and Asians are projected to grow to 15 percent and 10 percent
of the population, respectively.
Disturbingly, Hispanics and African Americans have experienced the greatest
rates of subprime lending in recent years, and are being particularly hard hit by the
ongoing foreclosure crisis. And African Americans and Latinos already face severe
wealth disparities relative to non-Hispanic whites. In large part because of the criti-
cal link between homeownership and wealth attainment, African Americans and
Hispanics, on average, hold only $10 and $12 of wealth for every $100 of savings of
the typical non-Hispanic white household, respectively.
A major driver of wealth disparities is the relatively lower rates of homeowner-
ship. Today less than 50 percent of African Americans own their homes, compared
continues
Box 9.2 continued

to 75 percent of whites. As minority populations grow, their level of wealth and
homeownership, as well as other economic opportunities, continue to lag behind
that of non-Hispanic whites.
The ongoing foreclosure crisis threatens to further increase this wealth gap by
wiping away billions of dollars in minority communities. According to the nonprofit
public policy organization United for a Fair Economy (UFE), the loss of home-
ownership could translate into a total loss of wealth among African American and
Latino households of between $164 billion to more than $200 billion.
Persistent and increasing wealth gaps among communities of color and the
broader population represent a problem for America. “Failing to ensure greater fi-
nancial inclusion of a significant and growing segment of the population is a prob-
lem that should not be ignored,” said Jim Carr, chief operating officer of NCRC.
“As communities of color grow, their economic vitality will be increasingly critical
to America’s overall competitiveness.”
In addition to accessing sustainable homeownership, greater engagement of mi-
nority households in the banking and financial system is critical. Nearly 10 million
U.S. households are unbanked. A recent report by the Center for Financial Services
Innovation estimates that there are 40 million households with limited and tenuous
access to the banking mainstream. A disproportionate share of these households is
minority. Yet this study showed a full 25 percent of those consumers had prime
credit, including 15 percent who had prime-plus or super-prime. These statistics
show more can and should be done to bring more consumers into the twenty-first-
century banking system.
SOURCE: National Community Reinvestment Coalition, August 20, 2008, http://www.ncrc.org/

index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=331&Itemid=75
In sum, the current and serious economic recession has many intertwined causes.
However, at its root, there are just a few and they represent fundamental contradic-
tions of our capitalist system. One factor is the country’s inability to provide an ade-
quate supply of affordable housing to all workers. Like the proverbial butterfly that
flaps its wings in the equatorial tropics and triggers a world ecological crisis through
a series of globally linked events, the scarcity of affordable housing contributed to
the economic turmoil that we see today, when unregulated banks were allowed to
step in and provide subprime loans to people who then defaulted on them. Solving
the protracted recession in the United States is obviously a priority, but attacking the
root causes should be an equally important priority.
HOMELESSNESS 227
HOMELESSNESS
One of the first things visitors to a city notice are individuals walking on the street
carrying all their possessions. A New York Times poll over a decade ago found that
roughly 54 percent of Americans see homeless people in the community or on their
way to work (Applebome, 1991). While homelessness is related to the above issue of
affordable housing, it is not directly related and has multiple causes. To be sure, how-
ever, with the current high rate of unemployment and foreclosures of housing,
homelessness as an urban phenomenon will increase.
We cannot say for sure how many homeless people there are at present. We do
know, however, that the latest numbers have not been seen since the Great Depression
of the 1930s (Blau, 1992). The homeless are not found in any single place; they are mo-
bile. Their condition also varies. Some days or nights they may be inside shelters, and
at other times they may have enough money for a room in a single-room-occupancy
(SRO) hotel. In the mid-1980s, one estimate said there were 350,000 homeless “on a
given night” (Peroff, 1987), but other estimates have run much higher, to 3 million or
more (Flanagan, 1990:320). In addition, the composition of the homeless population,
including married couples with children, is more representative of the entire cross-
section of U.S. society than during previous periods such as the Depression.
The current recession coupled with the 2009 housing crisis has produced an un-
precedented number of children belonging to families that are either homeless or in
temporary living arrangements because they have lost their homes. This terrible
plight has put an immense strain on school districts that struggle with a government
mandated requirement that all American children, whether living in a home or not,
are entitled to an education. In September 2009, 1 million American children were
left in distressed conditions due to loss of homes from the foreclosure crisis and the
attempts by school districts to comply with federal legislation requiring that young
children be given a public education (Eckholm, 2009).
Recent reports indicate that both homelessness and squatting, phenomena once
associated with cities in the developing world, have become increasingly common in
European as well as American metropolitan areas (Adams, 1986). There are several
reasons for homelessness (Flanagan, 1990; Leshner, 1992). Job loss since the 1970s
has taken a terrible toll on families. Economic restructuring, as we saw earlier in this
chapter, has caused job loss and community decline. In many cases, a loss of income
results in an inability to afford housing; for some families, even rental housing can be
hard to obtain with limited financial means. But declines in welfare funding have
been a principal cause of homelessness: Fiscal austerity and cutbacks in the federal
budget have limited the ability of local communities to support people in need.
Finally, homelessness is also caused by the housing problem and the inequities of
the second circuit of capital in the United States. Because the real estate market func-
tions both to drive up the cost of shelter and to foster speculation, units may either
be too expensive to rent or own or simply be held vacant as a tax loss. The urbanist
Carolyn Adams terms this condition one of maladjustment rather than a shortage of
housing, because in the United States many housing units remain available. As she
suggests:
The term “maladjustment” is more accurate than “shortage” because in many

places the number of existing units is theoretically large enough to house the ur-
ban population. Yet many households cannot find housing that is both affordable
and suitable for their needs. At the same time, large numbers of housing units
stand vacant, awaiting demolition or renovation. The presence of empty housing
in cities where large numbers of families and individuals need shelter is an invita-
tion to squatting, and that is precisely what has taken place. (1986:528)
But homelessness is not simply a question of social welfare; it is also a matter of

land-use issues connected with gentrification, displacement, and the cultural imaginings
of what the city should be. Talmadge Wright notes that the “problem” of homelessness
in American cities is especially challenging because the homeless, city officials, and other
groups have very different visions of how urban space should be used. For low-income
persons who cannot afford housing, vacant buildings may be seen as squatter properties.
But for most people—including public officials and developers—urban space does not
include a place for the homeless (Wright, 1998). This attitude has resulted in the “mili-
tarization” of urban space, including such things as concertina wire around dumpsters
behind grocery stores and restaurants to prevent homeless persons from obtaining left-
over food; park benches specifically designed to prevent people from sleeping; and
sprinkler systems in public parks that are turned on during evening hours to prevent
homeless persons from sleeping on the ground (Davis, 1990). In Chicago, San Jose, and
other cities, homeless populations have mobilized to resist the displacement of their
communities, including protests of urban redevelopment projects, squatting activities,
and other forms of collective action (Wright, 1998).
Homelessness combines aspects of economic crisis, poverty, and the failures of
U.S. health and housing policies. Remedies for this problem require integrated plans
that address the root causes. It is clear that with the declining economy, poor people
have fewer opportunities to improve their lot, and their relative standing in society is
deteriorating. Above all else, it must be noted, not just once but repeatedly, that the
failure of the U.S. housing industry to provide affordable housing and the efforts by
the banking and investment industry to profit from this failure have been and re-
main the root cause of the current and deep economic recession. In 2009, the U.S.
government provided trillions of dollars as a means of preventing the collapse of
these same industries, but when repeated appeals had been made to provide ade-
quate housing for all Americans over the years, the response was indifference. Can
such a contradiction in our society persist, even after the present crisis has passed?
CRIME 229
No signs so far suggest that the matter is being addressed, and the fact that more
than 1 million children have been left in distressed conditions is hard evidence of the
consequences for the most innocent victims of the situation.
CRIME
On the night of August 27, 2009, the following incident occurred in Detroit:
Betty McMahon expected her van to turn up either stripped or dumped from a
joyride after she saw someone steal it early today on Detroit’s east side. She never
expected to spot it with the body of a 22-year-old slumped over the wheel, shot a
block from her home, in front of Gleaners Community Food Bank. McMahon
heard someone start up her van at 4:20 a.m., and watched out the window as it
drove away. She was on her way home from reporting it stolen with her son and
daughter-in-law when they spotted the flashing lights of the Detroit Police . . . “I
said, ‘Go around the corner, let’s be nosey and see what all of that is,’” she said.
“When I got to the corner, I said, ‘Oh my god, that’s my van.’” Gleaners’ opera-
tions manager arriving for work at 5:30 a.m. had called police after spotting the
green 1994 Plymouth Voyager in front of one of the food pantry’s truck bays.
“He saw the van sitting in the street and he saw the window was broken and
someone was in it, slumped in it, so he immediately called 911,” Gleaners vice
president . . . said this morning. McMahon, who had a van stolen and damaged
from a joyride about eight years ago, said she’s “tore up” about the violence in-
volved with this one. (Battaglia, 2009)
Tragic stories such as this one give the impression that crime is rampant in cities
and that cities are unsafe as human environments. When people speak of crime, they
usually mean violent crime, which includes murder, assault, rape, and robbery. How-
ever, a large amount of property crime—burglary, larceny, and auto theft—occurs
every year in both cities and suburbs. White-collar criminals, for example, such as
insider traders on Wall Street and the bankers involved in the savings and loan scan-
dal, are responsible for the theft of billions of dollars. But these white-collar crimes
are not usually considered when people discuss criminal activity or describe danger-
ous criminals. White-collar criminals rarely appear in the photographs of the most
wanted criminals in post offices or on America’s Most Wanted. For the most part, the
crimes associated with metropolitan areas are of the violent variety such as rape and
murder—the stuff of CSI and other television shows and movies that continue to
fascinate the American public. These crimes affect our view of public safety and the
safety of our homes.
Tables 9.1 to 9.3 report crime statistics for metropolitan areas, comparing rates
from 2000 to 2007 for property and violent crimes as well as the aggregate city/suburb
TA B L E 9.1 Crime Rates in Central City and Suburbs, 2000–2007.

2000 2007
Central City Suburbs Metro Areas Central City Suburbs Metro Areas
Property Crime
Burglary 996.0 598.0 758.0 980.0 605.0 751.0
Auto theft 733.0 402.0 475.0 609.0 290.0 414.0
Larceny 3479.0 2053.0 2628.0 2954.0 1851.0 2280.0
Violent Crime
Murder 10.2 3.2 6.1 10.4 3.6 6.2
Rape 45.2 25.2 33.1 40.2 23.4 29.8
Robbery 313.5 78.4 173.0 302.5 92.0 174.0
Robbery with gun 118.2 32.2 67.3 129.3 38.4 71.4
Assault 519.8 237.2 351.0 438.8 214.6 301.9
Assault with gun 103.5 34.1 62.4 118.0 36.9 66.4
Cases known to police per 100,000 persons.

SOURCE: FBI, 2008 Crime in the United States, Table 2, Crime in the United States by Community Type
2008. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_02.html
contrast. According to Table 9.1, rates per 100,000 people are consistently lower in the
suburban areas than in the central city of metropolitan areas with some violent crimes,
such as murder, robbery, and assault, occurring about three times more in cities than in
suburbs. The three property crimes tracked by national data—burglary, auto theft, and
larceny—show the same pattern but only auto theft reflects the same threefold differ-
ence. In sum, when average people perceive that cities are, on the whole, more danger-
ous than suburbs, they are correct and have been so for decades despite fluctuations in
the crime rate.
Overall rates of violent crimes—murder, rape, robbery, robbery with gun, assault,
and assault with gun reported in Table 9.1—did not change much during the period
from 2000 to 2007. Simple assault (without a gun) is the most common violent
crime, and the national rate per 100,000 people was 438.8 for cities and 214.6 for
suburbs in 2007. Among the three property crimes, larceny is the most common with
a rate of 2,954 for cities and 1,851 for suburbs in 2007. Overall, as has been sug-
gested, the United States is more crime-ridden than the societies of Western Europe,
Canada, and Japan. We also devote substantially more TV and film programming to
aspects of the criminal justice system than other countries. Hence in American culture
there is a distinct relationship between the crime that occurs and our apparent hunger
for consuming media programming dealing with crime, law, prisons, and the like.
Crime patterns can be examined in more detail for individual metro areas in Tables
9.2 and 9.3. The former reports property crimes. In the case of burglary, for example,
the rate ranges from a low of 402 per 100,000 people in 2007 for the Washington,
D.C., region to a high of 1,025 for the Dallas metro area.
231
TA B L E 9.2 Property Crime Rates for Largest Metropolitan Regions, 2000–2007.
Largest Metropolitan 2000 2007

Regions Burglary Auto Larceny Burglary Auto Larceny
New York MSA 442 377 1656 291 188 1351
New York City 463 448 1744 254 161 1403
Suburbs 410 277 1548 310 172 1301
Los Angeles MSA 588 599 1686 523 531 1511
Los Angeles 661 803 2065 507 608 1506
Suburbs 555 488 1383 542 512 1447
Chicago MSA 877 857 3,301 784 528 2653
Chicago 978 1027 3665 876 659 2937
Suburbs 551 349 2498 563 274 2260
Dallas MSA 1003 651 3144 1025 462 2824
Dallas 1708 1509 4272 1814 1113 3850
Suburbs 667 309 2345 710 268 2167
Philadelphia MSA 523 491 2520 530 34 2023
Philadelphia 797 1064 3094 803 774 2728
Suburbs 387 237 1869 404 166 1751
Houston MSA 939 606 2703 1002 552 2556
Houston 1190 1017 3435 1339 897 3449
Suburbs 752 304 2076 791 337 1956
Miami MSA 1160 821 3828 997 543 3127
Miami 2015 1579 5202 1177 945 3042
Suburbs 1049 737 3452 948 503 3006
Washington, D.C., MSA 456 489 2267 402 494 1993
Washington 830 1154 3782 666 1245 2801
Suburbs 410 403 2031 380 421 1894
Atlanta MSA 8534 598 2953 990 550 2326
Atlanta 2223 1765 6550 1782 1412 4093
Suburbs 702 468 2548 906 460 2127
Detroit MSA 720 904 2262 811 729 1852
Detroit 1664 2722 3357 2063 2261 2431
Suburbs 410 355 1824 461 301 1620
Boston MSA 405 443 1595 472 217 1603
Boston 688 1234 2924 644 578 2932
Suburbs 355 330 1359 445 162 1372
San Francisco MSA 617 567 2408 688 861 2195
San Francisco 733 716 3144 692 804 3199
Suburbs 566 428 2068 609 663 1862
Phoenix MSA 1105 1005 3506 975 855 2832

Phoenix 1201 1474 3968 1246 1353 3227
Suburbs 1005 538 2615 856 536 2289
continues
TA B L E 9.2 (continued)
2000 2007
Burglary Auto Larceny Burglary Auto Larceny
Seattle MSA 889 870 3350 864 793 2787

Seattle 1093 1489 4690 1023 988 3793
Suburbs 783 594 2690 748 604 2162
Minneapolis MSA 557 344 2849 650 309 2553
Minneapolis 1180 989 3865 1660 856 3557
Suburbs 389 197 2507 480 192 2473
San Diego MSA 561 605 1701 570 832 1658
San Diego 549 774 1881 609 1049 1845
Suburbs 558 462 1554 537 675 1527
SOURCE: FBI, 2008 Crime in the United States, Table 6, Crime in the United States by Metropolitan
Statistical Area. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_06.html
In Table 9.3 we can see that the murder rate for New York City was 6 per 100,000
people in 2007, which is quite low for most cities. The rate for Los Angeles was 10.2;
Chicago, 15.7; Dallas, 16.1; and the two murder capitals of the United States in 2007
were Washington, D.C., with 30.8 and Detroit with 45.5. Rape for metro areas ranged
from a low of 9.8 for New York to a high of 36.8 for Seattle, which has significantly
lower rates for other violent crimes compared to metro areas nationwide. The most vi-
olent cities for assault with a gun in 2007 were Detroit at 486.5 per 100,000 people,
Dallas at 208.9, Philadelphia at 200.8, Atlanta at 276.7, and Minneapolis at 138.7.
To understand the nature of urban crime, it is necessary to view it as a spatial as well
as a social phenomenon. The incidence of crimes varies within any given city by neigh-
borhood. Thus, while all cities have become more dangerous since World War II, there
are still places that are as safe as any other place in the country. Conversely, certain
neighborhoods are scenes of unremitting terror. Typically, criminal incidents follow the
lines of class and racial segregation: The most dangerous places are also the places where
the poorest urban residents live. For example, “The typical New York City murder vic-
tim is a black man in his late teens or twenties, killed by an acquaintance of the same
race with a hand gun during a dispute—most likely over drug-dealing” (Greenberg,
1990:26). In all cities, racially segregated ghettos are the places where violent crimes are
committed the most. Furthermore, the majority of incarcerated felons are either black
or Hispanic, and virtually all are poor. They come from the ghetto areas of the city, and
their crimes usually were committed in those areas. And as the urban environment is
partitioned into areas of relative safety and terror, several extreme examples of violent
crimes, such as shootings in public schools, indicate that the islands of safety are shrink-
ing in size and availability.
TA B L E 9. 3 Violent Crime Rates for Largest Metropolitan Regions, 2000–2007.
2000 2007
Robbery Assault Robbery Assault
Murder Rape Robbery Gun Assault Gun Murder Rape Robbery Gun Assault Gun
New York MSA 5.2 16.4 244.5 66.3 322.7 40.3 4.5 9.8 179.6 34.2 219.6 17.4
New York City 8.4 20.4 406.6 80.6 509.9 55.0 6.0 10.6 265.0 NA 332.0 NA
Suburbs 2.3 12.8 102.6 40.6 161.8 18.4 2.3 8.9 105.9 29.8 124.6 14.2
Los Angeles MSA 8.6 26.4 252.6 99.9 509.9 102.2 7.3 21.6 237.7 84.2 287.3 82.0
Los Angeles 14.9 39.5 420.2 158.2 885.2 176.6 10.2 25.9 348.3 126.8 334.0 117.5
Suburbs 5.6 21.1 169.9 73.9 377.4 64.8 5.7 19.3 187.1 65.7 273.9 64.3
Chicago MSA 18.6 25.2 518.5 40.5 733.4 32.7 13.7 22.8 397.6 38.1 468.8 20.3
Chicago 21.8 NA 668.0 NA 916.6 NA 15.7 NA 546.1 NA 616.9 NA
Suburbs 5.1 19.5 92.5 40.5 262.2 32.7 6.0 18.3 98.6 38.1 181.0 20.3
Dallas MSA 7.5 35.8 209.7 98.9 341.6 98 5.9 31.8 202.0 100.5 264.5 84.7
Dallas 19.4 53.3 592.8 305.0 684.2 268.1 16.1 41.2 582.8 307.2 48.9 208.9
Suburbs 2.6 27.0 52.8 22.1 187.2 26.5 2.3 24.3 68.8 31.5 178.9 33.4
Philadelphia MSA 7.6 29.1 262.3 119.2 355.6 90.1 9.5 30.0 265.5 116.4 325.7 76.3
Philadelphia 21.0 67.3 687.0 298.8 727.9 227.1 27.3 66.6 714.6 319.6 666.9 200.8
Suburbs 1.8 14.0 82.1 34.7 187.2 22.4 2.5 16.3 88.7 35.4 184.9 25.4
Houston MSA 7.2 35.8 222.2 114 413.1 91.1 4.0 30.5 77.4 36.7 265.6 42.9
Houston 11.8 41.6 422.6 220.9 624.1 158.7 16.2 32.0 529.1 272.4 555 170.8
Suburbs 4.0 30.5 77.4 36.7 265.6 42.9 4.0 27.8 103.2 58.3 257.5 47.5
233
TA B L E 9. 3 (continued)
234
2000 2007
Miami MSA 6.6 41.1 288.6 87.7 582.1 87.2 7.9 29.3 294.0 134.6 472.9 98.2
Miami 18.2 32.6 848.9 N/A 1273.5 N/A 19.0 13.9 618.4 293.2 840.2 184.8
Suburbs 5.2 41.9 224.6 87.2 514.7 88.5 6.6 29.3 249.3 117.4 429.3 89.4
Washington, D.C., MSA 7.5 21.9 174.6 78.6 265.3 45.4 7.7 19.1 207 69.4 212.3 28.8
Washington 41.8 43.9 621.1 238.8 800.4 143.2 30.8 32.6 677.4 N/A 606.2 N/A
Suburbs 2.9 18.9 115.1 57.5 189.4 31.7 5.0 17.6 152.9 72.9 164.3 29.8
Atlanta, MSA 7.9 24.6 214.0 135.8 329.4 88.5 8.7 20.3 233.0 164.4 279.5 83.6
Atlanta 32.2 66.8 1037.8 582.8 1644.5 442.5 25.9 29.8 719.3 465.5 848.8 276.7
Suburbs 5.2 19.8 122.2 70.0 185.6 38.7 6.9 19.1 178.7 124.7 222.8 60.2
Detroit MSA 10.8 42.4 226.9 120.8 471.8 121.6 10.9 31.5 208.5 112.1 458.4 123.3
Detroit 41.6 85.3 827.1 476.7 1,370.50 449.3 45.5 38.9 762.7 452.4 1,439.80 486.5
Suburbs 2.3 29.3 52.9 18.5 172.9 25.6 2.0 28.3 58.5 21.5 188.3 27.2
Boston MSA 2.0 24.9 95.8 25.1 315.5 18.6 2.8 22.0 107.6 27.4 273.4 30.2
Boston 6.6 55.2 416 108.1 765 73.0 11.0 44.4 378.8 94.4 721.0 97.7
Suburbs 1.4 20.3 43.7 8.7 256.1 8.5 1.7 19.3 65.7 17.1 209.6 20.5
San Francisco MSA 5.8 29.7 215.3 60.2 313.5 29.0 8.8 25.2 310.9 117.3 298.9 65.3
San Francisco 7.6 29.5 444.9 77.0 354.7 24.3 13.6 17.0 513.9 123.3 329.5 37.9
Suburbs 3.8 22.9 118.3 38.5 261.0 26.9 5.9 19.8 180.4 70.1 214.9 50.4
continues
TA B L E 9. 3 (continued)
2000 2007
Phoenix MSA 7.1 29.4 168.7 79.6 352.3 96.7 8.2 28.4 178.5 95.3 276.9 80.3
Phoenix 11.5 31.9 284.9 137.4 410.1 152.7 13.8 33.0 320.6 173.8 356.4 131.0
Suburbs 3.8 23.8 74.9 32.7 275.6 48.4 5.3 22.5 79.7 37.2 219.6 45.6
Seattle MSA 3.4 49.1 138.5 36.7 256.9 37.4 3.1 36.8 132.0 35.1 214.0 42.5
Seattle 6.4 32.1 293.4 62.7 437.2 56.8 4.1 15.4 260.1 46.1 347.1 46.8
Suburbs 2.3 49.0 71.0 25.4 167.6 33.0 2.4 37.1 75.9 24.6 140.5 26.4
Minneapolis MSA 3.6 46.1 115.7 9.9 191.9 8.2 2.8 20.0 136.1 48.0 191.8 38.2
Minneapolis 13.1 110.3 509.1 N/A 518.5 N/A 12.7 121.8 678.8 230.0 689.9 138.7
Suburbs 1.6 31.9 32.0 10.2 101.4 8.4 1.3 0.8 42.9 13.1 91.8 10.4
San Diego MSA 3.4 28.5 118.9 29.9 337.7 39.5 3.6 24.0 149.5 35.7 288.6 42.4
San Diego 4.4 28.5 145.3 36.1 407.1 46.9 4.7 23.5 166.1 35.5 307.8 54.6
Suburbs 2.7 28.8 94.7 24.5 285.0 33.0 2.6 25.4 133.8 33.4 277.1 33.0
Crimes known to police per 100,000 persons.

N/A = Data not available because reporting by jurisdiction does not meet FBI Uniform Crime Report standard
SOURCE: FBI, 2008 Crime in the United States, Table 6, Crime in the United States by Metropolitan Statistical Area. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_06.html
235
Drugs
According to studies of arrestees, many robberies and burglaries are committed in
connection with drug trafficking. In fact, statistics show a disturbing relationship be-
tween violent crime and drug use. The National Institute of Justice surveyed arrestees
in the twenty largest American cities and found that at least half of them tested posi-
tive for the use of illegal drugs. In New York City, as many as 83 percent of males
tested positive at the time of their arrest. The range for females was slightly lower but
not by much: a low of 44 percent tested positive in St. Louis and a high of 81 percent
in Detroit (National Institute of Justice, 1990).
According to this report, the extent of drug use among arrestees varies from city to
city, but the use of drugs by people who commit violent crimes is alarming. The most
common drug for both male and female arrestees is cocaine or crack. The lack of
safety in large cities results from a high crime rate that is compounded by illegal drug
use. When city streets are not considered safe, it is difficult for urban areas to attract
new residents and businesses. Consequently, the economic life of the city deteriorates
further. In addition, when the enjoyment of public space becomes impossible due to
crime and drugs, one of the primary enjoyments of urban culture is threatened with
extinction.
The Costs of Crime

What effect does crime have on everyday urban life? Perhaps the greatest effect has to
do with the use of city space. In less crime-ridden eras, public spaces such as parks,
plazas, and streets were enjoyed by everyone. Parks in particular were used by diverse
people at all hours of the day and evening; during summer heat waves, families would
sleep on the public beaches in Chicago and other cities. Today the use of public space
is limited: People are afraid to venture into parks without friends nearby, and children
must be supervised and kept away from strangers. The evening use of public spaces
and facilities, such as streets and mass transit systems, has also been negatively af-
fected. People leaving their offices late at night now take cabs or cars rather than pub-
lic transportation. A few years ago, a young woman out for a jog in Central Park was
brutally attacked by a group of teenagers. Raped and beaten within an inch of her life,
she miraculously survived, but the story of this urban Wall Street professional became
a national news story and a symbol of crime’s toll on the enjoyment of urban space.
Crime increases the security budgets of private companies as well as public expen-
ditures for security in schools and court buildings. The national criminal justice sys-
tem supports the largest prison population in the world with its immense costs to
taxpayers. Violent crime causes billions of dollars in unnecessary medical expenses. It
can also devastate property values. In areas of the city with high crime rates, the value
of property remains low and does not rise during times of prosperity (Taylor, 1991).
CRIME 237
As a result, innocent households suffer doubly in crime-infested sections because they

are victims of crime and because the value of their housing declines. Poor areas remain
mired in poverty because high crime levels chase away prospective investment.
Finally, crime makes the city an unattractive place to live, especially for families
with small children. Crime repels families from the city, which compounds the prob-
lem of population loss and the inability of the city to increase its tax base. This very
real cost to communities can be demonstrated by a visit to the “Moving & Relocation
Page” at the MSN House and Home website. In an article titled “Best and Worst
Cities for Crime,” the following blurb rests atop a listing of high- and low-crime cities:
Feeling safe and secure is especially important to Americans these days. Recent
events remind us that the safety of our loved ones and the security of our property
can’t be taken for granted. . . . So what are America’s best and worst cities for crime?
Are there certain cities with an especially high rate of violent crime? Where do car
thieves thrive? [We] have mined the recently released FBI Uniform Crime Reports to
identify those U.S. cities with the highest and lowest rates of crime during 2002.
There are terrible costs to society from white-collar crime as well—criminologists

maintain that the monetary cost of white-collar crime is many times that of other
crime—but it is not associated with the quality of urban life. Rather, it is violent
crime that scares people away from the city. In addition to murder, which usually is
committed among people who know one another, mugging is a particularly fright-
ening crime, especially when it involves armed robbery. The frequency of this type of
crime in the cities contributes greatly to the image of danger. It is possible to get a
sense of the extensive commission of white-collar crime in metropolitan regions by
examining Table 9.2 for larceny figures because it is far and away the most common
of all property crimes.
The enormous costs of maintaining and running the vast U.S. prison system is an-
other burden of our high societal crime rate. The figure currently is more than $32 bil-
lion a year. Each year that an inmate spends in prison costs taxpayers some $22,000. An
individual sentenced to five years for a $300 theft costs the public over $100,000. Over
the last twenty years, the amount of money spent on prisons has increased by 570 per-
cent while funding for elementary and secondary education was increased by only 33
percent. In several states, more money is spent on prisons than on public universities.
The cost of criminal activity and drugs, which so often go together, can be mea-
sured in other ways. In the 2000 presidential election, thousands of voters in Florida
were purged from the list of eligible voters because they had been identified (incor-
rectly) as having a criminal record. A sidebar to the story is the fact that in the African
American community, an entire generation has been disenfranchised because of their
arrest for drug use and crimes associated with drug use. More than half of the prison-
ers in the American penal system are incarcerated for these crimes. Denial of the
franchise—the right to vote—is a particularly sensitive issue for African Americans,

and the events associated with the 2000 presidential election have resulted in a na-
tional movement to restore the voting rights of persons convicted of nonviolent
crimes. The criminalization of drugs that are legal in many other countries has re-
sulted in increased crime in metropolitan areas, in the breakup of families, and cor-
ruption of law enforcement agencies, and it has drawn billions of dollars out of public
budgets that could be used to rebuild urban infrastructure, fund public schools, and
address many other important metropolitan issues.
The number of women incarcerated for drug offenses has increased 888 times
since 1986. More than 1 million women are currently in prison, in jail, or on parole.
In many cases, these women were not guilty of committing a crime themselves, but
they were caught in the expanding web of the drug war. The expansion of liability
laws like conspiracy, accomplice liability, constructive possession, and asset forfeiture
laws unfairly punish women for the actions of boyfriends, husbands, and other fam-
ily members who may be involved with drugs. Not only are families disrupted when
women are sent to prison; these women often lose custody of their children and the
family gets destroyed.
Caught in the Web: The Impact of Drug Policies on Families and Women, a report
from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law
(2005), documents the cases of 150 women found “guilty by association” because
their husbands or boyfriends were involved in the drug trade. According to Kirsten
Livingston, director of the Criminal Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Jus-
tice, “This country can no longer ignore the devastation of families and communities
when record numbers of women and mothers are locked up for drug offenses. . . . It’s
time to promote drug policies that work, to stop wasting money, and to use our social
systems to help women, not hurt them.” Others are aware of the problem. When
Martha Stewart was released from the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in 2005, she
posted a letter on her website that encouraged American citizens “to ask for reforms,
both in sentencing guidelines, in length of incarceration for nonviolent first-time of-
fenders, and for those involved in drug-taking.”
Ultimately, the cost of crime is not borne simply by individuals, public budgets,
and private security expenditures. The cost of crime is borne by the larger society in
ways that are often hidden from view, even though they threaten the well-being of
our families and communities. Those costs are increasing with each passing decade.
Suburban Crime
Compared to crime in the large city, little research has been carried out on suburban
crime (see Stahura, Huff, and Smith, 1980; Gottdiener, 1982). Most reports on sub-
urban crimes identify the same factors that cause city crimes, that is, racism, poverty,
and class conflict. As in the case of urban areas, the rate of suburban crimes has in-
creased dramatically since the 1980s (Barbanel, 1992). However, crimes in the sub-
THE FISCAL CRISIS AND PUBLIC SERVICE PROBLEMS 239
urbs differ from those in large cities. First, the property crimes of burglary, auto theft,
fraud, and larceny dominate suburban crime, although rape is as serious a problem in
suburbs as in cities. Thus, while experiencing violent crime in increasing proportion,
suburban areas have much less of it than do large cities. In contrast to the city, prop-
erty crimes are most troublesome.
Second, there is a distinct spatial component to suburban crime that differs from
crime in the city. In cities, high-crime areas are associated with urban ghettos. While
suburbs have ghettos, they are not all high-crime areas. Instead, according to one study
of a mature suburban region outside of Los Angeles (Gottdiener, 1982), police in
Orange County, California, associate high crime rates with apartment buildings. These
stand out because most residential dwellings in suburbia are single-family homes. In
large cities, this distinction would not be effective since most residences are in apart-
ment buildings. According to this study, police in suburbs pay particular attention to
apartment dwellings and monitor the activities of their residents. Because of the lower
density of suburban areas, surveillance of populations is an easier task than in the large
city (see Davis, 1990).
Aside from the above features, however, suburban crime seems very much like
crime in large cities, although perhaps not at the same per-capita rate. But given the
diversity of suburban communities, ranging from declining industrial suburbs to
communities with spillover from adjacent urban ghettos, it is likely that many sub-
urban communities are less safe than many city neighborhoods. While overall crime
rates in the United States decreased each year from 1993 to 1998, rates of violent
crime remained high, as did the public’s perception of and fear of crime. Violent
crime, drugs, burglary, rape, and street gang activity have become a significant factor
in daily life across the metropolitan region, affecting life in both urban and suburban
settlement spaces.
THE FISCAL CRISIS AND

PUBLIC SERVICE PROBLEMS
Urban problems are difficult to solve when insufficient money is available to local
governments. A fiscal crisis starts when the revenues obtained by government fall
short of the expenses necessary to run a city. When this occurs, it is necessary to bor-
row money and incur debt. Long-term debt involves borrowing to improve resources
and finance public works such as bridges. This form of borrowing is usually consid-
ered healthy as long as the projects are well thought out. Long-term debt is viewed as
an investment in the city’s future; if it is successful, the city grows and its economy
improves, resulting in an increase in revenues.
In contrast, short-term debt involves borrowing to pay general operating expenses
that revenues and money transferred to the city from higher levels of government can-
not cover. Occasionally cities must borrow simply to cover operating expenses, such as
meeting a payroll, but this tends to happen only in an emergency. However, as a regular
practice it can ruin the health of a city by limiting the amount of money invested for fu-
ture needs.
Fiscal Crisis
The fiscal crisis of cities has two components. During the 1970s, many cities faced
budgetary shortfalls because of rising costs coupled with decreasing revenues caused
by the decline in manufacturing and the rapid deterioration of urban economies.
These cities were forced to resort to short-term borrowing to cover their costs. Com-
pounding the problem was the flight of middle-class families from the cities to the
suburbs (traveling on highways built with federal money to homes subsidized by fed-
eral housing policies), taking with them potential tax revenue that the cities des-
perately needed. The lower-income and new immigrant communities in the cities
required relatively higher levels of health care, education programs, and housing ser-
vices. When New York and other cities appealed to higher levels of government for
financial relief, they were rebuked, and this precipitated the urban fiscal crisis. Cities
responded to this situation by cutting services and systematically laying off person-
nel. New York City, for example, almost went bankrupt in 1976 and was placed in
the hands of a money management panel appointed by the state to bring expendi-
tures back in line with revenues and limit the amount of borrowing. As a result of
the changes caused by this fiscal crisis, New York is unable to offer a full range of ser-
vices to its residents. The closing of firehouses, reductions in the numbers of police
officers and the hours of policing, the shortening of library hours, and layoffs and
firings at city agencies are some of the austerity measures enacted in response to the
urban fiscal crisis.
In the 1980s, many cities, such as Cleveland, which had defaulted in 1978, and
New York, which was forced into austerity, regained their fiscal health. The banking
community renewed its faith in the obligations incurred by municipal governments.
Short-term borrowing was controlled, and many cities prospered. For a time, it ap-
peared that the urban fiscal crisis was resolved (Gottdiener, 1986). However, the prob-
lem was simply transferred to higher levels of government. At present, many states face
a fiscal crisis; New York and California have been especially hard hit. These and other
states have had to cut back on budgets for social programs in education, health, and
other areas, with perceptible effects on the quality of life. Because state governments
can no longer aid cities, local jurisdictions must increase taxes or cut back services.
Hence, the effects of the state fiscal crisis have been especially troubling for local com-
munities, and there is no end in sight for the first decades of the twenty-first century.
The federal government has not been able to help, since it has acquired serious
debt problems of its own for the first time in U.S. history. In 1980 the federal deficit
was approximately $40 million, an unprecedented but still manageable number. Dur-
ing the 1980s, it rose to more than $150 billion a year. The interest payments on this
massive debt made up 14 percent of gross national product (GNP), and the United
SUMMARY 241
States became the world’s leading debtor nation. Although President Clinton made
deficit reduction of the federal budget a priority, little or no effort has been made to
restore either programs or funding cuts during the 1980s. In places such as New York
and California, governments at all levels are suffering cutbacks of services and pro-
grams as a result of the fiscal crisis. The damaging effects of these cuts cannot be exag-
gerated. In Los Angeles, the police department and the district attorney’s office blame
California’s Proposition 13, which froze property tax revenues, for cuts in social pro-
grams that resulted in increased gang activity and led to Los Angeles becoming
known as the gang capital of the United States.
Now the national debt is beyond imagining at many trillions of dollars as a conse-
quence of President Obama’s “fiscal stimulation” policy, which aims to jump-start the
deep recession economy of 2009 through Keynesian measures of government spend-
ing. All lower levels of government have been promised stimulation dollars from this
astounding accumulation of fiscal debt. As the fiscal crisis of cities has worked its way
up to the state level, California, in particular, has been hit so hard that it would have
declared bankruptcy if the massive and damaging cuts in social programs had not
been affected in 2008. Yet despite these measures, it still requires either massive help
or more massive cuts. As of July 2009, the Obama administration spending proposals
have not materialized to any extent, and although they are said to be “in the pipeline,”
all lower levels of government anxiously await financial relief.
In sum, declines in local government spending on public services can be cata-
strophic. States as well as municipalities have been fighting fiscal crisis, and cuts—with
their damaging results—have become inevitable. One positive aspect of the current re-
sponse to our national economic crisis by the Obama administration is the promise
that critically needed money will be channeled to state and local governments. To
date, little of this deficit spending has trickled down to the local level, but there are in-
dications that it eventually will. In the meantime, large states, like California, remain
stressed and must continue to cut public resources in order to avoid the unprece-
dented fiscal failure of bankruptcy. In fact, during the week of August 24, 2009, the
state of California ran a massive “garage sale,” where anyone could purchase govern-
ment equipment that was surplus or merely available for the event. The goal of this
sale was quite serious, namely to make as much money as possible by selling unwanted
items to the public in order to alleviate in a small way California’s astronomical fiscal
crisis and its need for draconian cuts in public services, employment, and programs.
SUMMARY
It often seems that each month brings new challenges to urban areas in the United
States. Part of the problem is that our society, with its ideology of privatism (see
Chapter 13), hangs its solutions of pressing social issues, like poverty, health care, and
affordable housing, on some variation of mixed private and public interventions.
There is no universal health care in our country, as there is in other Western developed
societies. Our large demand for affordable housing, once dealt with inadequately by
public subsidization, was absorbed by profit-making capitalists in the 1990s as sub-
prime mortgage derivative investing and yielded cataclysmic results. Although some
violent crime has been reduced in our cities, the overall level remains abnormally high
compared to countries in Western Europe and Japan, and we seem to enjoy its media
representations because crime and law shows are so popular.
In this chapter we have seen that while many social problems are not typically “ur-
ban” anymore, our metro regions play a role specific to their spatial attributes. Cities
concentrate people, so as a form of space, they also concentrate their problems. City
crime rates are higher than in the suburbs. There are more poor people and more con-
centrated pockets of poverty and racial exclusion in central cities. Consequently, when
dealing with many social issues, cities remain important as places that need special
consideration from policy makers and municipal governments need resources from
higher levels of administration.
We have also seen in this chapter that when the current economic crisis hit, our
largest metro regions were affected by unemployment much more severely than
other places because of the industries located there. Yet economic downturns, like
the present housing crisis, have deep roots in our society’s inability to solve its basic
social dilemmas. Consequently, as we shall discuss in Chapter 13, public policy can
play an important role if it tackles the major issues, some of which, like health care
and adequate land-use planning, were resolved in favor of greater public power
scores of years ago by comparable countries in Western Europe.
KEY CONCEPTS
social disorganization
public vs. private intervention
racism
segregation and hypersegregation
poverty
unemployment
housing crisis
affordable housing
spatial effects of social problems
fiscal crisis
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 243
1. What is social disorganization and how can it explain urban problems?
2. How can you compare the early Chicago School and the sociospatial ap-
proaches to urban problems?
3. Why are racism and segregation problems?
4. Why is hypersegregation troubling and how does it relate to the case of Hurri-
cane Katrina?
5. What is the significance of the most recent figures on crime?
6. Why does the space of the city create more problems than the rest of the metro
region? Should this result justify an anti-urban attitude in choosing a place to live?
7. Why is unemployment especially worrisome today? How does it affect metro areas?
8. What is the link between the need for affordable housing and the current eco-
nomic crisis? Why hasn’t American society solved its affordable housing crisis?
9. What is meant by a fiscal crisis? What are the implications of a city fiscal crisis?
What happens when the fiscal crisis happens at the state level?
CHAPTER
10
URBANIZATION IN THE
DEVELOPED NATIONS
U rban development in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century
is defined by multicentered regions resulting from the deconcentration of commer-
cial, retail, and government services in the city center and the reconcentration of
these land uses in functionally specialized regional minicenters. This spatial pattern
is the product of the political economy of American late capitalism, as we show in
Chapter 6. Other societies around the world exhibit their own patterns of urban and
regional development, the result of historical circumstances, position within the
world system, cultural influences, and other factors. Many share a similar fate of in-
creasing regional sprawl characteristic of the United States. Although large cities re-
main important centers of commerce and culture, particularly in cities of the
developed nations, many have reached slow or stable population growth. Redevelop-
ment and gentrification occurs within the central city, but most new development
occurs in suburban settlement space. Land use is mixed and shared among densely
populated cities, minicenters of various kinds, and expanding suburban regions of
residential housing. Metropolitan regions confront problems that are intensified by
locational inequities. Income and racial segregation is increasing and, in many cases,
has led to serious inequalities in employment, housing, education, medical care, and
other aspects of everyday life.
For many years, the study of urbanization in Europe was a relatively predictable
affair. This is the oldest part of the globe with fully urbanized societies. In recent
years, however, profound transformations have been taking place in Western and
Eastern Europe. Shifts in industry to high technology, declines in manufacturing,
and growth in the service sector are common to both the United States and Europe.
In the past it was assumed (and presented as fact in many sources) that the pattern of
urbanization in European countries was substantially different from that found in
the United States: With a long history of urbanization, the European city center re-
mained strong, there was a preference for life in the city and correspondingly less de-
velopment in the urban fringe. But the evidence tells a different story: Since World
245
246 10: U R B A N I Z AT I O N I N T H E D E V E LO P E D N AT I O N S
TA B L E 10.1 Urbanization in Selected European Countries, 1990 and 2005.

% Total %>
Urban Population Population 1 Million % Largest City
Country 1990 2005 1990 2005 1990 2005 1990 2005
Western Europe
Belgium 9,600,000 10,200,000 96 97 10 10 10 10
France 42,000,000 46,700,000 74 77 23 22 22 21
Germany 58,300,000 62,000,000 73 75 8 8 6 5
Greece 6,000,000 6,600,000 59 59 30 29 51 49
Italy 37,800,000 39,600,000 67 68 19 17 9 8
Spain 29,300,000 33,300,000 75 77 22 24 15 17
Sweden 7,100,000 7,600,000 83 84 17 19 21 22
United Kingdom 51,100,000 54,000,000 89 90 26 26 15 16
Eastern Europe
Belarus 6,800,000 7,100,000 66 72 16 18 24 25
Bulgaria 5,800,000 5,400,000 66 70 14 14 21 20
Czech Republic 7,800,000 7,500,000 75 74 12 11 16 16
Hungary 6,400,000 6,700,000 66 66 19 17 29 25
Poland 23,400,000 23,700,000 61 62 4 4 7 7
Romania 112,600,000 11,600,000 54 54 8 9 14 17
Russian Federation 108,800,000 104,500,000 73 73 18 19 8 10
Ukraine 34,700,000 31,900,000 67 68 12 13 7 8
SOURCE: World Development Indicators 2009, Table 3.10 (New York: World Bank, 2009).
War II nearly every European city has had a decline in central city population, and
there has been a large increase in the suburban population. As we will see below, in
most cases the suburban population is several times that of the central city. Metro-
politan regions in Europe (and elsewhere) look more and more like the multicen-
tered metropolitan regions described in Chapter 6 (Clapson, 2003). European
scholars have labeled these developments as “post-suburban” (Phelps et al., 2006)
and have focused on urban sprawl (Richardson and Bae, 2004)—just as in the
United States. There are other similarities: the growing inequality among groups liv-
ing within the city that results from the division between highly paid professionals
and low-paid service workers; the growth of immigrant communities from former
colonies; and the seemingly intractable problems of poverty resulting from the com-
bination of job loss in manufacturing, segregation, and social exclusion, and more
recently, cutbacks in social welfare (Brenner and Theodore, 2003).
Table 10.1 shows four measures of urbanization for selected countries in Western
and Eastern Europe: the number of persons living in urban areas, percentage of popu-
lation living in urban areas, percentage living in regions with a population of 1 mil-
lion or more, and percentage of the population living in the largest city. Although
Europe was part of the first great urban empire under imperial Rome and is one of the
U R B A N I Z AT I O N I N T H E D E V E LO P E D N AT I O N S 247
most urbanized areas in the world, the figures show substantial differences in the level
of urbanization across the region. Two countries in Western Europe (Belgium and the
United Kingdom) have 90 percent or more of their population in urban regions,
whereas none of the Eastern European countries has more than 75 percent in urban
regions. Two countries in Western Europe (Greece and Italy) have lower levels of ur-
banization, comparable to many countries in Eastern Europe. The highest level of
urbanization among Eastern European countries is in the Czech Republic and the
Russian Federation.
There are more than 500 cities with populations of 150,000 or more, and rela-
tively few persons live in urban areas with a population of more than 1 million per-
sons (in most countries, the figure is less than 20 percent); Greece has the largest
percentage: Athens, with a population of 3.2 million, is four times greater than the
second largest city, Thessalonika, with a population of 800,000. This is an interesting
case of urban primacy, where the urban system is dominated by one city; Athens ac-
counts for more than half of the total population of Greece. After the unusual case of
Greece, the United Kingdom (26 percent) and France (22 percent) have the largest
proportion of residents living in large cities. Moscow has emerged as the largest met-
ropolitan region in Europe with a population of nearly 8.3 million persons, moving
ahead of London (7.0 million) and Paris (4.7 million). Of the twenty largest cities in
F I G U R E 10.1 City Lights of Europe. SOURCE: NASA.

Europe, ten are located in Eastern European countries, including Kiev (2.6 million),
Bucharest (2.0 million), Budapest (1.8 million), and Minsk (1.7 million).
Remember that there is substantial variation in the definitions used to determine
the urban population in these countries, ranging from a threshold of 10,000 persons
(in Switzerland) to the qualitative designation of “towns and settlements of an urban
type” (in Poland; see Box 1.2 in Chapter 1). While there is good reason to treat the
information in Table 10.1 with some caution, the extent of urbanization in Europe is
evident in the satellite photograph reproduced in Figure 10.1. Large urban agglomer-
ations can be seen in the industrial midlands of England and in the Ruhr River valley
in northern Germany. Also noticeable are the city lights of the capital cities (Madrid,
Paris, London, and Moscow) as well as Milan, Rome, and Naples in southern Italy.
These urban agglomerations are similar to those shown in Figure 1.1 when we were
looking at the large manufacturing regions along the Great Lakes and urban agglom-
erations along the East and West Coasts of North America. As noted above, fully half
of the largest urban centers in Europe are located in the former Soviet bloc, but here
a different pattern of urban development is evident. The large capital cities (Bucha-
rest; Budapest; Minsk, Ukraine) can clearly be seen, but they are distinct from one
another and not connected to other large urban agglomerations.
We begin with an overview of urbanization in Western Europe, whose recent his-
tory offers many parallels to the U.S. experience. In subsequent sections we discuss
Eastern Europe, or the former Soviet bloc countries, to examine urban conditions
there. The final section deals with the case of Japan, which exhibits certain similari-
ties to, but also differences from, the restructuring of settlement space that has char-
acterized metropolitan development in the United States.
WESTERN EUROPE
The countries of Western Europe have been urbanized for centuries. There is a well-
developed urban hierarchy across the region and within individual countries as well.
The United Nations estimated that 74.6 percent of the European population was ur-
banized at the beginning of the millennium. That number is expected to increase to
around 82 percent by 2030 and then stabilize. As we saw in Table 10.1, not all of the
urban population lives in large cities; about one-half lives in small towns of 1,000–
50,000 persons; one-quarter lives in medium-sized cities of 50,000–250,000 per-
sons; and one-quarter lives in cities of more than 250,000 persons.
In recent decades, Western Europe has experienced a restructuring of population
and economic activities similar to those occurring in the United States. The urban
population increased at a steady pace during the last decades of the century, and
there has been significant sprawl due to the declining housing stock in the urban
core, changes in household size, higher household incomes, and increased infrastruc-
ture such as public transportation and interurban railroads (the last factor very dif-
WESTERN EUROPE 249
ferent from the United States). In many countries the central cities are declining
(some have suffered population losses of 40 percent or more, similar to that of older
industrial cities in the United States), and there is a marked increase in the develop-
ment of suburban settlement space. Older towns have experienced rapid growth, and
in many European countries new towns (planned communities) have been devel-
oped in the suburban fringe. These trends interact with one another to produce mul-
ticentered metropolitan regions similar to those found in the United States.
Box 10.1
European Cities Dominate Quality of Life
Europe’s cities once more dominate the world’s top ten for quality of living. Vienna
is the city rated with the best quality of living worldwide, moving up one place in
the rankings following improvements in Austria’s political and social environment.
The rest of the top ten for Europe are dominated by German and Swiss cities, most
of them retaining last year’s ranking and scores. Zurich, in second place, is followed
by Geneva (3), Düsseldorf (6), Munich (7), Frankfurt (8), and Bern (9).
The rankings are based on a point-scoring index, which sees Vienna score 108.6,
and Baghdad 14.4. Cities are ranked against New York as the base city with an index
score of 100. Mercer’s Quality of Living ranking covers 215 cities and is conducted to
help governments and major companies place employees on international assignments.
This year’s ranking also identifies the cities with the best infrastructure based on
electricity supply, water availability, telephone and mail services, public transport pro-
vision, traffic congestion, and the range of international flights from local airports.
Singapore is at the top of this index (with a score of 109.1), followed by Munich in
second place and Copenhagen in third. Japanese cities Tsukuba (4) and Yokohama
(5) fill the next two slots, while Düsseldorf and Vancouver share sixth place.
Many Eastern European cities have seen an increase in quality of living. A num-
ber of countries, which joined the European Union back in 2004 have experienced
consistent improvement with increased stability, rising living standards and greater
availability of international consumer goods. Ljubljana in Slovenia, for example,
moves up four places to reach 78, while Bratislava moves up three places to 88. Za-
greb moves three places to 103.
In the city infrastructure index, German cities fair particularly well with Munich
(2) the highest ranked in the region, followed by Düsseldorf (6) and Frankfurt
sharing eighth place with London. “German city infrastructure is amongst the best
in the world, in part due to its first class airport facilities and connections to other
international destinations.”
SOURCE: City Mayors—City Rankings (www.citymayors.com/sections/rankings_content.html).

The pattern of urban change is not consistent. Some countries, such as the United
Kingdom, Germany, and to a lesser extent, Italy, have experienced decentralization of
the population away from the large urban centers. Between 1970 and 2000, for exam-
ple, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Belfast, and other cities in the United King-
dom all lost population. The population of Glasgow reached a peak of just over 1
million persons in 1931, remained at this level until 1961, and then began a long
period of decline; the population of Glasgow is now just 600,000, but the population
of the greater Glasgow region is more than 1,500,000. In Germany, Berlin, Essen,
Dortmund, and other central cities also declined even while the larger metropolitan
regions grew. Other countries such as Belgium, Luxembourg, and to some extent,
France, continue to experience central city growth.
As is the case in the United States, long-term changes in metropolitan regions can be
attributed to the restructuring of settlement space as a consequence of government pol-
icy and global economic shifts. Manufacturing has declined in many European coun-
tries, especially in the United Kingdom. Cities have reduced their labor forces and
converted to service economies, but with smaller employment bases than in the past.
High-technology corridors, the European equivalent of Silicon Valley, and other “new
spaces” of production have emerged (Castells and Hall, 2004). Most prominent in this
regard has been the development of “technopoles” and science parks such as the Lou-
vain University Science City in Belgium, the Parc Cientific de Barcelona in Spain, Cam-
bridge Science Park in England, the Sophia-Antipolis international business park near
Nice on the Mediterranean coast of France (with some 1,100 companies), Silicon Glen
in Livingston, Scotland, and in Russia, the Akademgorodok Science City (Brooker,
2009; Simmie, 1997; Smith, 1997). In Japan, the Tsukuba Science City dates from the
1960s, while the Kansai Science City was developed in the 1980s (Park, 1997).
These have become new sources of employment and growth based on a profes-
sional, skilled labor force along with low-wage services. Industrial restructuring has re-
sulted in declining urban cores with considerable unemployment of the working class,
while the periphery has grown and developed into an affluent, middle-class population
base. Welfare state programs have been cut back, leading to continuing problems with
poverty and related issues, just as in the United States. More recently, the global eco-
nomic crisis has intensified many of these problems, leading to threats of further cuts
to government programs, increased agitation against immigrants, and even increases in
poverty in the welfare states of northern Europe. A look at individual countries shows
the impact of the restructuring of settlement space in greater detail.
United Kingdom
As shown in Table 10.1, more than 90 percent of the population of the United King-
dom was urbanized in 2005, the highest percentage after Belgium, and 26 percent of
the population lived in urban areas with populations of 1 million or more. Additional
WESTERN EUROPE 251
information about the United Kingdom’s largest cities and their metropolitan regions
is shown in Table 10.2. The prominent role of London in this urban system is quite ap-
parent; with a population of more than 12 million persons, London is some five times
larger than the second group of urban agglomerations with populations of 2 million.
These include Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester, the older industrial cities of the
midlands and north. There are three other urban agglomerations of 1 million or more
but all include small central cities of between 470,000 and 600,000 persons.
It is important to note the extent of urban regional development in the United
Kingdom. (Because of the way census data are reported for metropolitan urban areas
in the UK, not all of the cities shown include the metropolitan population.) For all
but the two largest cities, the population of the metropolitan region is at least twice
that of the city center; even in London, with a city population of 7.1 million, the sub-
urban population adds another 4.9 million to create a metropolitan area of nearly 12
million persons. In many of the larger cities, council homes (housing for working-
class families built by local municipalities) were built in the suburbs, but the large in-
crease in suburban populations has also been fueled by a move out of the city and the
growth of smaller towns in the suburban fringe. This has been a long-term trend, as
the development of the suburbs in the UK has followed a pattern similar to that of
the United States, with the development of middle-class suburbs in the late 1800s.
The populations of the United Kingdom’s ten largest urban areas share certain
demographic characteristics typical of a country with slow population growth. About
20 percent of the population is aged 0 to 15 years (the range is 18 percent in the
Greater Glasgow Area to 22 percent in the West Midlands of Manchester). More than
15 percent is of pensionable age (65 years and above for males, 60 and above for fe-
males, with a range of 15 percent in the Greater London Area to 18 percent in Tyne-
side). These figures indicate a substantial dependent population (persons 0 to 15 and
those of pensionable age), with dependency ratios ranging from 542 in the Greater
London area to 672 in the West Midlands urban area (Pointer, 2005). In the United
States we have heard much concern about problems with social security because of
the aging population (there are relatively fewer persons working to support an increas-
ing dependent population), and the United Kingdom confronts a similar problem,
compounded by the recent declines in social welfare programs (see below).
In the United States, one of the most significant changes affecting urban areas
has been the increase in immigration and the emergence of new ethnic communities.
Immigration has increased in the United Kingdom as well, most noticeably in the
Caribbean and Indian populations. But this has been at a very different level from
the United States; of the ten largest urban areas in the UK, five are more than 90
percent white, and three others are more than 80 percent white. More than 80 per-
cent of the non-white population in the United Kingdom lives in the Greater Lon-
don Area (in 2001, Asian or Asian British accounted for 8.1 percent and black or
black British accounted for 9.5 percent of the population) where there are sizeable
TA B L E 10.2 Most Populated Metropolitan Areas in the United Kingdom, 2000.

City Metropolitan Area
London 7,074,265 11,950,000
Birmingham 1,020,589 2,600,000
Leeds 726,939 2,150,000
Glasgow 616,430 1,550,000
Sheffield 530,375 1,275,000
Bradford 483,422
Liverpool 467,995 1,350,000
Edinburgh 448,850
Manchester 430,818 2,500,000
Bristol 399,633
Kirklees 388,807
Fife 349,300
Wirral 329,179
North Lanarkshire 325,940
Wakefield 317,342
black neighborhoods (primarily in East London) and Asian neighborhoods (primar-

ily in the Heathrow area). The rich fabric of the ethnic Indian community in Lon-
don is shown in the popular film Bend It Like Beckham, written and produced by an
Indian filmmaker who grew up in the United Kingdom.
Deindustrialization, which followed World War II and has accelerated in the past
quarter of a century, has had a drastic impact on the United Kingdom. All the older
industrial centers have experienced sharp employment declines due to factory shut-
downs and wholesale job loss. Between 1978 and 1985 alone, manufacturing in Great
Britain declined by 24 percent (Sassen, 1991:131). This followed a decade of compa-
rable job loss in manufacturing. During this same period, employment in business
services increased by 44 percent. The loss of manufacturing employment has contin-
ued in the new century; between 2000 and 2003, for example, there was a loss of an-
other 2.7 manufacturing jobs (London, 2003). Like the United States, Britain has
undergone a shift from manufacturing to service industries.
Statistics for London are most revealing. Between 1960 and 1985, London lost
more than 800,000 jobs in manufacturing (Sassen, 1991:210). After 1980 it reaped a
harvest of new jobs in the expanding service sector. It was not until 1985, and for the
first time in twenty-five years, that net gains in employment finally outstripped net
losses. The shift from a manufacturing economy to a service economy can be seen in
London, where 27 percent of all jobs were in manufacturing and 69 percent were in
services in 1971. Fifteen years later, in 1986, the number of manufacturing jobs had
declined to just 15 percent, and the number of service jobs had increased to 80 per-
WESTERN EUROPE 253
F I G U R E 10.2 Urban Redevelopment Along the River Clyde in Glasgow. Glasgow’s population
declined from over 1 million in 1961 to just 600,000 in 2005, and most of the shipbuilding
industry is gone, allowing for redevelopment along the River Clyde, including housing, office
space, museums, and the new city auditorium. SOURCE: MacAteer Photograph Inc., Glasgow.
cent (Sassen, 1991:205). Almost all of the new service employment in London is a re-
sult of the city’s continued historical role as a global center of financial activities. Lon-
don, New York City, and Tokyo are today’s three global centers for finance capital,
and their companies command and coordinate the increasingly dispersed world econ-
omy of manufacturing and marketing (Sassen, 1991).
New manufacturing centers tied to high-tech development have also emerged as
part of this global restructuring in the United Kingdom. The M-4 highway corridor
between London and Reading represents a center for electronics development that is
similar to the I-128 peripheral corridor outside of Boston. In Cambridge, the govern-
ment linked up with private venture capital and with Cambridge University to build
a “science park.” It contains thirty new enterprises on fifty-five hectares and is similar
to the “research triangle” that links Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh, North Car-
olina (and includes Duke University and the University of North Carolina).
But new employment in the service sector and in high tech has been unable to fully
compensate for job loss due to deindustrialization. England has experienced a long-
term readjustment that requires retraining of the labor force along with a smaller in-
dustrial sector. The need for drastic changes provided support for the Conservative
Party in the 1980s. The Conservatives dismantled the British welfare state by increas-
ing private ownership of manufacturing and reducing publicly supported benefits
(King, 1990). Although a complete transfer from public financing to market-based ser-
vices has not occurred in Great Britain, many welfare state programs were partially
converted to a pay-for-service basis or simply eliminated during this period (Forrest,
1991). This record is comparable to the downsizing of domestic programs in the
United States. The selling off of formerly nationalized companies enabled the Conser-
vative regime in the United Kingdom to avoid massive debt financing of the economy
in the 1980s, unlike the case of the United States. Economic policies changed little
under the Labor Party with Tony Blair as prime minister (1997–2007), and social wel-
fare programs remain under attack. Chris Hamnett’s research shows how the transfor-
mation of London led an expansion of high-earning groups and a marked increase in
both earnings and income inequality. The growth of the new middle class had major
impacts on the nature of the London housing market, particularly in the growth of
homeownership, rising prices, and the expansion of middle-class gentrification across
much of inner London. This has been paralleled by the growing marginalization of the
less skilled, the unemployed, and various minority groups in other areas of the city
(Hamnett, 2003).
Privatization has brought increasing misery to many in the British working class.
The appearance of uneven development on a national scale has also brought social
changes to the entire country. Mellor (1989) notes that shifts in national attitudes in-
volve the replacement of a moral ethos that supported the welfare state and its reliance
on redistributive policies to overcome uneven development with a new ethos based on
social Darwinism, limited public programs, and a full reliance on the market econ-
omy. In current urban research, the trends described here are referred to as neo-liber-
alism (Brenner and Theodore, 2002).
One outcome of economic restructuring over the past two decades in the United
Kingdom is that the police have had to expand their role as controllers of the popula-
tion as crime and civil unrest have increased (Ball and Webster, 2003). As Mellor
notes, “U.K. towns were, in international terms, safe places. Now burglary, often
minimal in material effect, violates personal space and enforces discipline in the use of
house and effects; assaults and/or harassment limit the freedom of movement of the
elderly, children, black people, women and, increasingly, white men” (1989:591).
The UK more generally, and London in particular, has led the way in surveillance of
urban populations by the installation of cameras on public streets (Goold, 2004); it is
estimated that a person traveling through London in the course of a typical day will
appear on more than twenty security screens. The consequences of the global restruc-
turing of economic opportunity are graphically shown in Trainspotting, a film depict-
ing the lives of young men in Edinburgh, Scotland, when the city had the highest
rates of heroin use and, as a result, AIDS infection, of any European city.
There is also evidence that after years of successful redistributive policies under
the welfare state, social exclusion, a term similar to our conception of the underclass,
has greatly increased. When a family can consistently count on the resources of a sin-
gle wage earner, it has the resources to support the employment of others, even if
their positions are not in high-earning capacities. However, those families suffering
from job loss and periodic unemployment are falling behind and floundering in a sea
of chronic poverty. One consequence of economic restructuring has been the rise of
anti-immigrant and racist groups, particularly among urban youth. Opposition to
these neo-fascist groups is brilliantly portrayed in Rude Boy, the documentary film by
The Clash.
WESTERN EUROPE 255
France
The urban population in France and most other European countries has been grow-
ing steadily. In the last fifteen years, the urban population of France increased from
42 to 46.7 million persons, and the percentage of the population that is urbanized
increased from 74 to 77 percent. The growth that has occurred has not been in large
cities: In 1990 just 23 percent lived in the four urban areas with populations greater
than 1 million, and this figure decreased to 22 percent in 2005.
The population of the fifteen largest cities in France is shown in Table 10.3.
Most notable about this urban system is the large number of cities with populations
of 300,000 to 500,000 and the dominant position of the capital city. With a popula-
tion of approximately 10.6 million persons, the Paris metropolitan area has nearly
seven times the population of Lyon (1.6 million), the country’s second largest city.
Paris is by far the largest city in this urban system and is an example of how the pres-
ence of a single large city can influence the development of other urban centers (see
Chapter 11 for a full discussion of the impact of primate cities, as this is called, on
urban development). France has long had one of the more centralized systems of ur-
ban planning in Europe, reflecting the position and influence of the Paris region.
As in the United Kingdom, an extended period of industrial decline has led the re-
structuring of metropolitan regions in France. Coal mining, steel production, and tex-
tiles, located in the north and west, have been particularly hard hit by plant closings
and layoffs. In one year alone (1982–1983), more than 185,000 industrial jobs were
TA B L E 10.3 Largest Metropolitan Areas in France, 2000.

City Metropolitan Area
Paris 2,152,000 10,562,000
Lyon 422,000 1,598,000
Marseille-Aix 808,000 1,398,000
Lille 178,000 1,108,000
Toulouse 366,000 917,000
Bordeaux 213,000 882,000
Nantes 252,000 674,000
Nice 346,000 557,000
Strasbourg 256,000 557,000
Grenoble 154,000 505,000
Rennes 204,000 484,000
Toulon 170,000 478,000
Rouen 102,000 470,000
Montpellier 211,000 446,000
Nancy 105,000 396,000

lost (Body-Gendrot, 1987:244). Cities such as Metz, Dunkirk, Nancy, Lille, and
Roubaix have taken on the feel of declining Rust Belt cities in the United States. The
French government intervened and propped up failing industries to retain jobs and the
community quality of life. When these policies were not successful, however, supports
were abandoned in favor of a competitive unburdening of unproductive businesses.
Industrial decline has resulted in a social crisis for many working-class families
and for French society more broadly. According to one observer, “Austerity brought
about a deterioration of the social fabric: . . . racism, demonstrations of workers
against arbitrary decisions benefiting other workers, and petty delinquency. At the
workplace, competition rose between the working classes: . . . young vs. old, white
vs. non-white, men vs. women, all fighting as the size of the pie was shrinking”
(Body-Gendrot, 1987:244). The rise of right-wing racists can be attributed in part
to this upheaval. Today racism is a major problem in France, and hate crimes target
Jews, Arabs, and immigrants from North Africa.
Some French industries were able to respond with modernization programs, espe-
cially the French automakers Renault and Citroën. Changes in manufacturing pro-
cesses, such as flexible production, just-in-time delivery, and computer-assisted
manufacturing in the manner of the Japanese industries, were also adopted (see Le-
borgne and Lipietz, 1988). The French government has been very aggressive in sup-
porting electronics-related industries, software companies, and biotechnology. In
conjunction with universities and business venture capital, new technopoles have
sprung up in the Grenoble, Montpellier, and Toulouse regions, among others. These
resemble the Oxbridge complex in Great Britain (the region of development around
Oxford and Cambridge) and the larger university/high-tech industry regions of Sili-
con Valley and the Research Triangle in the United States.
The push to high-technology industries has affected higher education in the
country. As elsewhere, more emphasis is now placed on technologically sophisticated
degrees in engineering and science. To date, the changeover to a modernized, flexi-
ble, and high-tech economy has met with some success; for example, the French mil-
itary industries are world leaders. But the older industrialized cities and their
problems of decline, unemployment, and renewed racism remain.
In the fall of 2005, French cities experienced two weeks of civil unrest as ethnic
minority youth took to the streets to protest high levels of unemployment and dis-
crimination. The disturbances began on October 28, 2005, in the Paris suburb of
Clichy-sous-Bois following the accidental deaths of two teenagers who were running
from police and tried to hide in a power station. The protests, including the burning
of cars and public buildings, spread to other cities, notably Marseilles in the south of
France. French rappers and hip-hop artists were blamed for inciting the rioters. A
national state of emergency was declared on October 8 and was extended for a three-
month period beginning November 16. In total some 9,000 cars were burned, 2,900
persons were arrested, 126 police and firefighters were injured, and one person was
WESTERN EUROPE 257
killed. Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister who declared a “zero tolerance” policy
against the protesters, was elected president of France in 2007.
In the United States we are familiar with urban unrest in the cities; what might
seem unusual about these events is that they involved ethnic minority youth who
lived in the suburbs of French cities. This unfortunate example demonstrates an im-
portant difference in the structure of metropolitan regions in France (differences that
appear in other European countries as well). Paris and, to a lesser degree, other
French cities are surrounded by a ring of older working-class suburbs created in the
nineteenth century as the city expanded beyond the central city. In France the tradi-
tional word for suburb was faubourg, but the term banlieue is used to describe areas
of low-income apartments and social housing; in the United States we might refer to
these areas as housing projects or ghettoes (in England the term would be council
homes). These are the areas where both older and recent immigrants have settled.
The Paris riots became signature events in Europe, where the term suburb is often
equated with immigrant populations, and where problems of unemployment and
poverty have taken root. At a broader level, the riots also speak to the problems of in-
clusion for recent immigrants, who often come from former colonial territories and
have a different racial background from the French (Wacquant, 2008). In France,
there has been additional conflict because the largest number of immigrants are Mus-
lim (from Morocco, a former colony), and questions of cultural and religious differ-
ence have become important social issues. The French census does not collect data on
ethnicity, but it is estimated that 6.8 percent of the population is foreign born (some
3.8 million persons), comprising 6.1 percent of the workforce (1.7 million persons).
Much of this population lives in the Paris metropolitan region: 2,169,406 or some
19.4 percent of the total.
Germany
Table 10.4 shows the population for the fifteen largest metropolitan areas in Ger-
many; also shown is the region where each is located. Berlin, the capital city, is the
largest urban center with a population of some 3.2 million persons—twice that of
Hamburg, the second largest city and former center of the Hanseatic League on the
North Sea. München (Munich), the largest city in the southern half of the country,
is the third largest metropolitan area with a population of more than 1.9 million.
The figures in Table 10.4 demonstrate the importance of suburban growth; while the
three largest metropolitan regions have more than half of their population in the city
core, most of the other urban regions have suburban populations that are about
twice that of the city (and in several, the figure is three or even four times greater).
An important feature of the urban system in Germany concerns the Rhine-Ruhr
metropolitan area, comprised of five cities in the Northrhine-Westfalia region (Köln,
Essen, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, and Duisburg). These are the industrial cities of the
TA B L E 10.4 Most Populated Metropolitan Areas in Germany, 2000.

City Region City Metropolitan Area
Berlin Berlin 3,275,000 4,200,000
Hamburg Hamburg 1,686,100 2,550,000
München Bavaria 1,185,400 1,950,000
Köln Northrhine-Westfalia 965,300 1,850,000
Frankfurt Hessen 648,000 1,925,000
Ruhr-Rhine 5,800,000
Essen Northrhine-Westfalia 588,800
Dortmund Northrhine-Westfalia 587,600
Duisburg Northrhine-Westfalia 513,400
Stuttgart Baden-Württemberg 581,100 2,600,000
Düsseldorf Northrhine-Westfalia 568,900 1,325,000
Bremen Bremen 527,900 900,000
Hannover Lower Saxony 516,300 1,025,000
Nürnberg Bavaria 486,700 1,050,000
Leipzig Saxony 486,100 N/A
Dresden Saxony 473,300 N/A
Mannheim Baden-Württemberg 320,000 1,600,000
Ruhr River valley, forming an urban agglomeration of more than 12 million persons.
Fully half of the corporate headquarters for Germany’s top one hundred companies
are located in Düsseldorf. This urban agglomeration is described further in Box 10.2
and it also is visible in the northern part of Germany in the satellite photograph in
Figure 10.1.
Economic restructuring and uneven development has had a pronounced effect
on this region. Called the sud-nord-gefülle or the south-north cleavage in Germany,
the older, northern industrial cities such as Bremen and Hamburg have been hardest
hit by restructuring, while southern towns such as München and Frankfurt have be-
come affluent. This pattern appears to be similar to the way economic changes have
affected the United States, where the industrial manufacturing base of the midwest-
ern and northeastern Rust Belt (or Frost Belt) cities such as Buffalo, Detroit, and
Pittsburgh has declined, and the “new” Sun Belt cities such as Phoenix, San Diego,
and Los Angeles have prospered.
According to Haussermann and Siebel, the north-south split is a consequence of
Germany’s shift to an export-oriented economy, similar to the case in Italy. In Ger-
many, the southern region contains the automobile industry and also high-tech-based
manufacturing—two economic sectors that have done well in the global economy.
Steel production and the shipping industry, which are concentrated in the north, have
been unable to compete effectively in the world system; consequently, cities based on
these sectors have declined. In the 1980s the northern region containing the cities of
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Box 10.2
The Rhine-Ruhr Urbanized Region
The Ruhr River valley in northern Germany developed as an industrial area in the
1600s as rivers and canals helped transport raw materials and manufactured goods.
Rail and road networks in the 1800s led to further expansion during the Industrial
Revolution, when the main products were coal, steel production, and tanning of
leather. Heavily damaged during bombing raids in World War II, the Ruhr remains
Europe’s largest industrial zone, and along with the neighboring Rhine-Main indus-
trial area has established Germany as the world leader in mechanical engineering and
the world’s largest exporting nation at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
The largest city in the Rhine Ruhr region is Cologne (with a population of
990,000). There are four cities with populations of 500,000 or more (Dortmund,
Duisberg, Düsseldorf, and Essen) and over twenty cities of 100,000 or more. The
entire metropolitan region has a population of over 1.8 million, forming an indus-
trial landscape of unique size and with a population greater than that of the Euro-
pean capital cities. The metropolitan region is often mistaken as a single city because
of the continuous urban development that blurs the boundaries of individual cities.
Bremen, Hamburg, and Bonn experienced a decline in employment, while the south-
ern region containing the cities of München, Baden, Frankfurt, and Stuttgart enjoyed
an increase in employment (Haussermann and Siebel, 1990:377).
The reunification of West and East Germany has had important effects on Ger-
man cities. The new German government committed more than $2 billion toward
rebuilding the former East Germany, but that region still lags behind West Germany
and has been blamed for increasing budget deficits and a slowing of what had been
the strongest of the European economies. A poll conducted in 2005 reported that 24
percent of West Germans responded positively when asked, “Would it be better if
the wall between east and west still stood?” The same newspaper account noted that
stereotypes and resentments persist in both regions of the country, with some West
Germans regarding East Germans as backward, while some East Germans regard
West Germans as bossy know-it-alls (Associated Press, 2005).
Following reunification, Germany chartered an ambitious agenda to re-create
Berlin as the “capital of Europe.” The Berlin Wall, which for decades stood as a
symbol of the Cold War and divided the city, was removed and open space was rede-
veloped (particularly in East Berlin, which had suffered under the control of the So-
viet Union). There has been extensive redevelopment of areas along the River Spree
and of public spaces such as the Potsdamer Platz, which is said to represent a vision
of Berlin for the third millennium (see Figure 10.3). Particularly notable are new
buildings by world-renowned architects that make forceful statements about the
city’s renewal (often referred to as resurrection)—an example of the symbolic side of
urbanism that has been described as “hypercity” (Nas and Samuels, 2005). Berlin
once again hosts a thriving arts community and has become a major tourist city
bridging the east and west.
It is expected that populations will shift to centers of increasing employment
wherever they are located in the nation. There has been difficulty absorbing the labor
force of former East Germany, and there has been migration from other former So-
viet countries as well. Unemployment is on the rise, as is racism. Fascist skinheads
perpetrating violence and hate crimes against immigrants and Jews threatened to
destabilize the government in the 1990s. In May 2005 the celebration of the sixty-
year anniversary of the end of World War II brought more than 3,000 neo-Nazis to
Berlin’s central plaza to protest against German guilt for the war and the opening of
a new memorial to Jews killed in the Holocaust. They were opposed by an even
larger group of 6,000 protesters, and some 10,000 police were used to keep the two
groups separated. As in Italy and France, the renewal of racism in Germany has com-
plex causes, although economic uncertainties following reunification are a contribut-
ing factor. Most Germans believe their economy can absorb the population of the
former East Germany; nevertheless, the long-term effects of reunification remain un-
predictable. Urbanization and conditions of life in the former Soviet bloc countries
are examined in greater detail below.
Italy
As we saw in Chapter 2, the historical development of urban life in Europe after
1000 led to the development of a number of very important cities in Italy. By the
WESTERN EUROPE 261
F I G U R E 10.3 Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Following the reunification of Germany in 1989, the
city of Berlin began an ambitious program to make the city “the capital of Europe.” Pots-
damer Platz is the historical center of the city. SOURCE: Michael J. Zirbes.
1500s, three of the five largest cities in Europe were located in Italy (Naples, Milan,
and Venice). After this period, economic development would focus on Northern Eu-
rope, and the great Italian cities of the Renaissance have remained relatively small
through recent times. As we saw in Table 10.1, while about two-thirds (67 percent)
of the Italian population lives in urban areas, only about 10 percent lives in large
cities of 1 million or more persons. Table 10.5 shows the largest cities in Italy and
Spain. Rome is the largest city in Italy with a population of 2.6 million, and there are
two other cities with populations of about 1 million or more (Milan and Naples).
Other great cities of the Renaissance—Florence and Venice—have populations of
less than 400,000.
While cities in Italy are notable for the preservation of their historic core—much
of the city center of Florence, for example, dates to the sixteenth century and is built
around a nucleus of cathedrals dating to the 1300s—they all have experienced sig-
nificant growth in the suburban region. Table 10.5 shows that for each of the fifteen
largest cities, the metropolitan region population is at least two times that of the city,
and in several cases the metropolitan population is three or four times larger. This
pattern results from migration to the urban centers from urban areas but is also
determined by strong preservation laws that in effect prohibit new construction

within the city core. Many Italian cities do not appear to have extensive suburbaniza-
tion because much of the population is housed in apartment buildings that cluster
outside the city, but in other cases the metropolitan population has spread to adja-
cent cities, resulting in the pattern of multicentered regional development that we
have become familiar with.
Tourism is important for many local economies and for the nation as a whole,
but it has created serious problems for many Italian cities. Some have referred to Flo-
rence as an adult Disneyland because of the scale of tourism, and sustainable tourism
is an important area of discussion and study. Local residents complain of the high
cost of housing in the city center, and there is extensive residential development of
more affordable apartment housing along the Arno River valley. Following a devas-
tating series of floods in the 1960s, the population of Venice has declined by half,
and it too has been labeled an artificial city (although there are neighborhoods that
are residential, much of the workforce employed in the service industry live on the
mainland; Davis and Marvin, 2004). The concern over the impact of tourism on
Italian cities is a special case of a more general concern with tourism in the Mediter-
ranean region as a whole (Loukissas and Skayannis, 2001).
For decades Italy remained one of the underdeveloped areas of Western Europe.
The north was highly industrialized with an urbanized labor force centering on Mi-
lan and Turin. The south, in contrast, remained rural and dependent on agriculture
(Martinelli, 1985). Population in the south was unstable, as native sons often left
home to migrate to cities in the north or immigrated to other countries (including
Australia, Argentina, Canada, and the United States) in search of employment.
Since the 1960s, the same force of economic restructuring that has operated in
the rest of the industrialized West has changed the sociospatial pattern of develop-
ment in Italy as well. The middle and southern regions, known as the mezzogiorno,
developed a vibrant industrial employment base concentrated in the small-craft tra-
dition of the region. This includes apparel, textiles, footwear, wood products such as
furniture, metal working, and clay and glass products. Firms in this region have been
very successful by adopting custom design and flexible industrial methods. They en-
gage in small-batch production, which can be changed and customized for new or-
ders relatively easily. Many observers believe that these firms would serve as a model
for the new type of “flexible” manufacturing (called post-Fordism) that would pros-
per in the global economy (Scott, 1988; Piore and Sabel, 1984). Because of this, the
recent economic crisis has had an important impact on many manufacturing firms
in the north, several of which were specialty providers of engine parts for U.S. auto-
mobile companies that declared bankruptcy in 2009.
Increased foreign competition, especially in the automobile industry, threatened
the northern region, and by the 1990s the cities of Turin and Milan no longer were
the employment meccas they had been in the past. Changes were made in the indus-
WESTERN EUROPE 263
TA B L E 10.5 Most Populated Cities in Italy and Spain, 2000.

City Population Urban Region
Italy
Milano 2,321,552 5,249,727
Roma 1,635,096 4,338,854
Napoli 847,436 3,512,698
Torino 832,204 2,000,018
Firenze 513,826 1,197,190
Palermo 267,210 1,062,993
Bologna 412,102 907,764
Catania 232,456 868,150
Bari 259,753 857,646
Savona 308,393 847,241
Padova 281,440 639,425
Ravenna 267,185 603,327
Venezia 242,980 590,199
Bergamo 252,027 573,215
Taranto 160,196 566,295
Spain
Madrid 2,618,088 5,877,254
Barcelona 1,949,772 4,386,979
Valencia 713,804 1,724,732
Sevilla 477,277 1,381,084
Bilbao 421,539 1,066,170
Gijón 332,532 922,381
Zaragoza 327,307 780,883
Málaga 261,283 731,162
Las Palmas de Gran Canarias 280,974 710,510
Jerez de la Frontera 201,913 653,980
Alicante 253,810 623506
Murcia 220,970 546,483
Vigo 215,647 538,181
Granada 179,101 533,773
SOURCE: Rafael Boix and Paolo Veneri, Metropolitan Areas in Spain and Italy (2009).
trial base to regain the competitive edge of such companies as Fiat Automobiles and
Pirelli Tires, and in 1999, Fiat entered into a deal to acquire Chrysler, the U.S. auto-
mobile manufacturer. In Turin, existing plants were modernized according to the
Japanese style that has also been copied by American automakers. Automation was
introduced, and aspects of the assembly line were turned over to robotics. Wholesale
use of electronic or computer-assisted manufacturing was also incorporated into pro-
duction. Finally, the “just-in-time” system was adopted by assembly plants to reduce
operating costs by eliminating inventory problems. Under this system, assembly
plants do away with holding large inventories of items they require in production.
Instead, they work with suppliers outside the plant but within the region to provide
what they need at the time they require it in the assembly process. Coordination of
supplies is accomplished with the use of computers that monitor all aspects of the
distribution and production schedules.
The successful adaptation of Italian industries to changes in the global marketplace
stabilized migration patterns within the country. Transformations as a consequence of
restructuring have been celebrated by some observers as a new model of growth that
other advanced nations undergoing change should copy. The fate of cities depends
progressively more on their ability to attract and retain mobile capital investment.
Capital, in turn, must restructure and acquire greater flexibility in responding to the
increasing demands for small-batch, customized production. Caught by the decline in
manufacturing employment and the threat of plant closings or layoffs, workers must
settle for less job security and a growing need to work closely with business for the sake
of their mutual survival.
Much of Italian industry is oriented toward exports. In the 1990s, the slowdown
in the global economy hit Italy hard, especially in the mezzogiorno region. Once
again the specter of layoffs and recession has destabilized politics as the standard of
living for both working-class and middle-class households is threatened by economic
restructuring. Fascist skinheads emerged in the 1980s, and anti-Semitism is on the
rise despite the very small Jewish population. Not all of this activity is directly related
to the current recession, and other as yet undocumented factors may be playing a
role as Italy enters a new period of social transformation.
Spain
During the early Middle Ages, the cities of Spain were the largest in all of Europe;
Córdoba, the capital of the Moorish empire, was for several centuries the largest city
in the world (see Chapter 2). In the 1500s, Catholic Spain rose to world dominance,
and millions of dollars of wealth poured into the country from colonies in the Ameri-
cas and Asia. But the wealth generated by this mercantilist empire did not produce a
well-developed urban system, nor did it lead to industrialization in the 1700s and
1800s. The Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, which resulted in the triumph of the
fascist state that survived until the 1960s, created further divisions that made develop-
ment more difficult. As a consequence, and unlike most other European countries,
Spain is not highly industrialized, and agricultural production remains important for
a significant proportion of the population. Most of the manufacturing has been cen-
tered in the Madrid region, and the urbanization pattern in this country is not as bal-
anced as in the other European nations we have considered so far.
As we saw in Table 10.1, the proportion of Spain’s population living in urban ar-
eas increased slightly from 75 percent in 1990 to 77 percent in 2005, while the num-
EASTERN EUROPE 265
ber of persons living in large cities of 1 million or more increased from 20 percent in
1980 to just 24 percent in 2000. The populations of the largest cities in Spain are
shown in the bottom half of Table 10.5. Madrid (the capital, with a population of 2.6
million) and Barcelona (1.4 million) are the two largest cities. There are four other
cities with populations more than 500,000 and a large number of regional centers
with populations ranging from 250,000 to 350,000 persons. This urban system is
very different from what we have seen in other areas of Europe, in large measure be-
cause the level of industrialization has not led to the concentration of population in
large industrial cities. But in recent years, Spain too has been affected by the world-
wide restructuring of the global economy.
Older industrial districts, such as Villaverde, have declined and are plagued by job
loss and poverty. Small manufacturers, much like the businesses of Italy’s mezzo-
giorno, have remained successful, especially those involved in metal working, crafts,
and printing. In addition, a new high-tech corridor running from Madrid past the
airport and toward Barcelona has appeared recently and is expanding in employment.
And the city of Madrid itself has been changing from a manufacturing economy to a
service economy. A building boom of office towers along La Castellana Boulevard
caused by the growing importance of finance-related business services has produced
an increase in service-related employment.
Spain is an interesting case because of industrial development during the 1980s
under the direction of a socialist government. The 1992 Summer Olympics served
to showcase Spain’s other large metropolis, Barcelona, as well as to stimulate the na-
tion’s economy. The global recession of the 1990s, however, hit the country hard, as
it did all other export-oriented economies. Consequently, there has been a slowdown
in the sociospatial restructuring of metropolitan areas in Spain even before the recent
global financial crisis.
EASTERN EUROPE
The countries in Eastern Europe were occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of
World War II and existed under communist domination for seventy years. For the
better part of four decades, they were included under the label second world, signify-
ing the Cold War distinction between the first world (the United States and the de-
veloped Western nations) and the third world (nations in the developing world).
They now have joined the capitalist West, but questions about the future develop-
ment of this heavily urbanized area remain. A United Nations report summarized
these concerns in the following manner:
The countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are undergoing an
economic, political, and administrative transition which is reflected in shrinking
gross domestic products, high unemployment and declining fertility and life
expectancy. While some countries have shown signs of economic stabilization

(e.g., reduced rates of inflation and economic contraction), it will take time to es-
tablish new institutions and redefine the role of the public and private sectors. . . .
Wasteful consumption and productive patterns, long-term neglect, and mis-
directed policies have led to serious environmental degradation. Toxic industrial pol-
lutants affect health and agriculture. The transition to market economies calls for
new regulatory regimes to accommodate greater participation by non-governmental
organizations and the private sector. (United Nations Population Fund, 1996)
The complex history of Eastern European countries, and the important social
and political issues surrounding their reintegration into European urban history
more generally, is described in Box 10.3, which presents the program statement of a
2005 conference titled “Cities After the Fall: European Integration and Urban His-
tory Conference.”
By 2000, some 68 percent of the population in Eastern Europe lived in urban
areas—one of the highest levels of urbanization in the world. But as we saw in Table
10.1, the level of urbanization varies substantially from country to country (54 per-
cent in Romania is the lowest, 73 percent in the Russian Federation the highest).
There are seven cities with populations of more than 2 million persons, as shown in
Table 10.6. Many Eastern European countries exhibit an uneven pattern of urban
development, where one large urban center dominates the country. Only Russia
seems to have been able to develop a balanced urban hierarchy.
Table 10.6 shows the population for the largest metropolitan areas in Eastern Eu-
rope. There are several distinctive features about this regional urban system. It is
dominated by Moscow, the capital of the former Soviet Union, with a metropolitan
region population estimated at 15.2 million in 2003 (City Mayors, 2005). The sec-
ond largest metropolitan area, St. Petersburg, with a population of 6.3 million, is the
former capital built in the 1700s as Russia sought to become a world power along-
side the European monarchies. These are followed by a group of cities with popula-
tions of 1.5 to 3.0 million that for the most part represent the capital cities of older
nations in Eastern Europe (Warsaw in Poland, Budapest in Hungary) or the newly
independent countries of the former USSR (Minsk in Belarus, Kiev in Ukraine).
In 1970 only six Russian cities had more than 1 million persons. By 2000 there
were more than a dozen cities with a population of at least 1 million. The two largest
cities—Moscow and St. Petersburg—are the consequence of Russia’s long history as
a centralized state. Moscow is not only the largest city in Eastern Europe, but it also
is larger than any other European city. It accounts for half of all banking activity in
Russia, along with one-third of its retail sales and one-third of national wholesale
trade. Although there are more than a dozen Russian cities with populations of 1
million or more, the concentration of economic power and political control under
the Soviet state means that none of these cities developed as metropolitan centers for
EASTERN EUROPE 267
Box 10.3
Cities After the Fall
In his book Images of the American City, when Anselm Strauss posed a simple ques-
tion, “What time is this city?” he was asking about the character of urban temporal
orientation and about how it had a formative effect on the character of a city. One
could pose the same question in contemporary East Berlin, Riga, Lviv, Vilnius,
Minsk, or Wrocsaw, in Gdansk, Kaliningrad, Novgorod, Szczecin, Tallinn, or
Odessa; in each case, either storied pasts or supposed European futures would
probably insinuate themselves into the contemporary answer. The post-communist
projections of the past and the future engender Janus-faced imageries of era and ge-
ography in these cities, which, in turn, are strongly influencing their representation
and (planned) reconfiguration. A process of cultural reorientation and European
integration that began circa 1990 continues.
The reorientations are geopolitical as attempts are made to integrate into a
“Western” and “European” context after the fall of the Soviet Union. The transfor-
mation of these cities is helping redefine the regions and the modern borders of Eu-
rope. One could claim that a “New Europe” takes place and form in these cities,
which gravitate to Habsburg, Baltic, Imperial Russian, or Germanic past and pro-
pose their own futures in ethnic-national, European, Western, and global contexts.
The tourist industry as well as political parties, private heritage societies and gov-
ernment organizations, and other political and economic interests are all involved
in this historical and geographical repositioning. Concretely the shift in urban time
and place expresses itself in the grand and subtle changes to the urban fabric, which
is beginning to accommodate the new order and orientation.
In many cases, there is a strained discourse between the versions of an urban past
and the variously envisioned future(s), while the opposing arguments are being set
in stone or in steel and glass.
SOURCE: “Cities After the Fall: European Integration and Urban History Conference,” Minda de
Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Spring 2005.
a larger urban region. This role was reserved for the two cities with former federal
status: Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In the past, discussion about Eastern European cities among urbanists focused
on whether there is a specific difference in patterns of growth that can be attributed
to Communism—was there a particular urban form that might be identified as the
Socialist City? But according to Friedrichs, “Except for a short period in the early
1920s, there are no specific socialist types of land use, distribution of new housing,
internal organization of residential blocks, or location of companies” (1988:128).
TA B L E 10.6 Largest Cities in Eastern Europe, 1975 and 2003.

% of Urban
Population Population
City Country 1975 2003 1975 2003
Moscow Russian Federation 7,600,000 10,500,000 7.3 10.0
Saint Petersburg Russian Federation 4,300,000 5,300,000 3.7 5.0
Katowice Poland 3,000,000 3,000,000 7.7 12.4
Kiev Ukraine 1,900,000 5.4 8.0
Warsaw Poland 1,900,000 2,200,000 5.7 9.2
Bucharest Romania 1,800,000 1,900,000 8.3 15.2
Budapest Hungary 2,200,000 1,700,000 17.3 26.6
Minsk Belarus 1,100,000 1,700,000 17.2 24.3
Kharkov Ukraine 1,400,000 1,500,000 3.0 4.5
Novosibirsk Russian Federation 1,300,000 1,400,000 1.0 1.4
Nizhni Novgorod Russian Federation 1,300,000 1,300,000 0.9 1.2
Ekaterinburg Russian Federation 1,100,000 1,300,000 0.9 1.2
Prague Czech Republic 1,100,000 1,200,000 11.4 15.4
Samara Russian Federation 1,100,000 1,200,000 0.8 1.1
Omsk Russian Federation 900,000 1,100,000 0.8 1.1
Kazan Russian Federation 900,000 1,100,000 0.8 1.1
Chelyabinsk Russian Federation 1,000,000 1,100,000 0.8 1.0
Sofia Bulgaria 1,000,000 1,100,000 13.6 19.5
Rostov-on-Don Russian Federation 900,000 1,100,000 0.8 1.0
Tbilisi Georgia 1,000,000 1,100,000 20.8 40.0
Dnepropetrovsk Ukraine 1,000,000 1,100,000 2.2 3.2
Ufa Russian Federation 900,000 1,000,000 0.7 1.0
Odessa Ukraine 1,000,000 1,000,000 2.1 3.1
Volgograd Russian Federation 900,000 1,000,000 0.7 1.0
Donetsk Ukraine 1,000,000 1,000,000 2.1 3.1
SOURCE: World Urbanization Prospects: The 2003 Revision (www.un.org/esa/population/publications/

wup2003).
There was some effort to develop urban structures more friendly to the working pop-
ulation in the years following World War I, when much of Europe was governed by a
succession of socialist and left-wing political movements, before the solidification of
rightist regimes under Fascism. Consequently, Communist societies have built envi-
ronments similar to those in capitalist countries. Yet there are fundamental differences
between Communism and capitalism, especially with regard to the absence in the for-
mer of separate factions of capital and separate markets. There are some peculiarities
of land use and population distribution among such cities that differ from patterns in
the West. These involve the nature of the central city due to an absence of the finance
capital sector, the pattern of population distribution and the housing shortage, and
most important, an absence of a capitalist real estate market.
EASTERN EUROPE 269
Central City Decline

All Eastern European countries have large capital cities, the result of both historical
patterns of development as well as centralization under the Soviet system. Some, such
as Hungary and Poland, have very uneven development due to the dominance of
their main centers—Budapest and Warsaw, respectively. Others, such as the Czech
Republic and Russia, have a more balanced system of cities. In every case, the central
sections of the major cities are quite old, dating back several hundred years to their
founding. Under the Communist governments, original buildings in the city center
were not torn down. They remain standing in many cases and many are in terrible
shape. The lack of ambitious office building schemes, characteristic of many Commu-
nist cities, stands in contrast to the capitalist city, where finance capital and its associ-
ated business services, such as accounting and legal consulting, have taken over the
downtown. In most Communist countries, the state directed investment in real estate
and economic development; thus, their downtowns do not contain an active real es-
tate market of office buildings that services the needs of corporate and finance capital.
As a result, the shift to the service-oriented economy is occurring more slowly in these
countries than elsewhere in Europe.
One of the most notable changes in urbanization in the Eastern European coun-
tries has been the decline in central city population and increase in the suburbs and
urban periphery; this development is common to all countries, and of course similar
to that observed in Western Europe. Once the specific state-sponsored incentives
that concentrated housing and other development within the urban core were lifted,
the population in these countries rapidly moved out of the central cities.
The Demographic Pattern of Land Use

Family and household income differences in Eastern European cities historically
were not as disparate as in the rest of Europe or the United States (Ladanyi, 1989).
In the United States, both the wealthy and the poorest classes are highly segregated,
and in many European cities, working-class families live in the suburbs. In Eastern
European cities, such as Budapest, there is some segregation of the wealthy classes
and the poor, but the rest of the population is evenly spread out in the city despite
some differences in family income.
The reason for this contrast in the Soviet city was the operation of government
subsidies for housing, which prevented the poorest people from being concentrated
within urban spaces. Thus, a major difference between formerly Communist societies
and capitalist ones such as the United States was the active role of government in pro-
viding affordable housing for the poor (although, as we will see below, the total vol-
ume of available housing is inadequate). In the period following the collapse of the
Soviet Union, many of the public housing units were converted to private housing.
Box 10.4
Social Problems in Eastern European Cities
The contraction of state-sector employment without commensurate growth of

private-sector employment has led to a decline in real wages, pensions, and social
transfers within a general context of high inflation. The breakup of the former So-
viet Union generated severe disruptions in the old trading and monetary regimes,
which resulted in catastrophic declines in GDP of about 45 percent during the
1990–1996 period.
Over the following decade, the region saw rising income inequalities. Poverty and
unemployment also increased significantly. It has been observed that the failure of
rapid privatization in Russia, for instance, “was not an accident, but a predictable
consequence” of the absence of competition policies and the institutional and legal
infrastructure needed to support successful reform efforts. The region’s poor hous-
ing conditions are reflected in recent slum estimates, which reveal that in transition
economies, about one-tenth of the urban population live in slum conditions, with-
out adequate access to basic services, or in crowded housing units. In 2002, about 46
percent of residents of the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries
lived on less than $4 per day, compared to 10 percent in Western Europe. Fifty-three
percent of the Russian population, 23 percent in Romania, 28 percent in Latvia, 62
percent in Kazakhstan, and 88 percent in Kyrgyzstan have to survive on even less.
Trafficking and smuggling of human beings operated by organized crime net-
works in countries whose economies are in transition has become of particular con-
cern to national governments and the international community. Although Asian
countries have been the primary suppliers of women to the sex trade for decades,
the collapse of the Soviet Union has made former Soviet republics such as Ukraine,
Belarus, Latvia, and Russia major source countries of women into prostitution.
Trafficked women from this region are delivered into prostitution throughout the
world, and there are estimated to be a half million women from Central and East-
ern Europe working in prostitution in the European Union alone.
Today the dream for a better life seems to have vanished in the face of the millions
of new poor exposed to living conditions that can be similar to those living in the
least developed nations. Across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, household poverty
has increased fivefold during the last twelve years and its social by-products are dis-
cernible everywhere: sharp increases in alcoholism—especially among men—sui-
cide, and mortality, as well as a decline in marriage and a rise in divorce rates.
SOURCE: “Poverty, crime and migration are acute issues as Eastern European cities continue to
grow,” City Mayors—Urban Society (www.citymayors.com/society/easteurope_cities.html).
JAPAN 271
Paradoxically, however, under the Communist governments, the more affluent people
have also enjoyed considerable state housing subsidies (Ladanyi, 1989). Conse-
quently, it is not the market that has created uneven development in formerly Com-
munist countries, as it does under capitalism, but state intervention itself. This kind
of uneven development and privilege produced by state favors for the elite was a com-
mon complaint about Communist practice for decades; however, it is comparable to
the economic advantages of the capitalist class in the United States.
With the fall of Communism, housing subsidies are declining, and as the market
takes over, segregation is increasing. As noted above, much of the public housing has
been converted to privately owned housing. The construction of new, privately
owned housing represents efforts to alleviate the chronic shortage of housing in these
societies. The shift to an active capitalist real estate market has produced the first sig-
nificant signs of capitalist-style uneven development within urban settlement spaces,
such as a growing number of homeless people and a sharp rise in the cost of rental
housing, which hits elderly pensioners particularly hard.
The Emergence of Free Markets

Eastern Europe has been the scene of immense social change due to the transition from
Communism to a market economy. The most significant change has been the growth
of the real estate market and a new, second circuit of capital for formerly Communist
countries. It remains to be seen how this restructuring will affect settlement space
within urban areas; however, we can use the U.S. case as a guide for future projections.
Some early indications suggest that segregation has increased, deconcentration of pop-
ulation has accelerated as suburbanization occurs, and the service economy has begun
to replace manufacturing as the principal sector. Old buildings remain, and in many
countries there has been little new office construction. This situation most likely can-
not last as the capitalist urban land market takes over and the pressures to switch to a
service-based economy prevail there as they have in the capitalist West. We can even
expect drastic renovation or renewal programs, led by private investment, for the con-
struction of high-rise office towers in the Eastern European cities of the future.
JAPAN
Because of its dominant position in the Pacific Rim and early transition to an industrial
power, Japan has contained large cities for hundreds of years. Tokyo, for example, had
over 1 million people as early as the 1700s when it served as the capital (called Edo at the
time) of the shogun empire. The modernization of Tokyo following the Meiji Restora-
tion resulted in a continuous migration from rural areas to the expanding metropolitan
region surrounding the capital city (Bestor, 1985). Since World War II, Japanese cities
have developed as large regional agglomerations or multicentered metropolitan regions.
The greater Tokyo metropolitan area is estimated to contain 34 million people, a quarter
of the entire population of Japan, while the city of Tokyo alone had more than 8 million
persons in 2000. This large urban agglomeration is comparable to that of New York and
Los Angeles combined. The overall level of urbanization of the Japanese population,
some 80 percent of the total, is comparable to that of many Western countries.
The population of the largest metropolitan areas in Japan is shown in Table 10.7.
Two urban centers dominate this urban system. The Tokyo metropolitan area in-
cludes the cities of Tokyo (8.1 million), Yokohama (3.4 million), and Kawasaki (1.2
million) and another 20 million persons living in other cities and urbanized areas
linked to these cities. The greater Osaka metropolitan area (16.8 million persons) in-
cludes the cities of Osaka (2.6 million), Kobe (1.5 million), and Kyoto (1.5 million),
and another 11 million persons in the urbanized areas linked to these cities. There is
one other great metropolitan area (Nagoya, with a population of 8 million), and two
metropolitan areas of more than 2.5 million (Sapporo and Fukuoka). As shown in
Table 10.7, the Japanese urban system includes eight other metropolitan areas with
populations of more than 1 million, and there is some variation in the structure of
these regions: In Hiroshima and Kitakyushu, the city population accounts for more
than half of the metropolitan area, while the populations of the cities of Naha and
Himeji account for less than a third of their metropolitan regions.
Japanese cities developed trading and commercial centers during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. When industrialization developed in the West in the nine-
teenth century, it was embraced by Japanese business along with the aid of the monar-
chy. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Japan was already a major industrial
power, with extensive manufacturing areas producing textiles and other goods. After
the massive loss of labor and industrial production following World War II, Japan ini-
tiated ambitious industrialization schemes focusing on exports, which were remark-
ably successful in establishing Japan as a global economic power (Lee, 1982; Berry,
1989; Honjo, 1998).
Japanese cities have not experienced the deconcentration of population and em-
ployment observed in U.S. cities, nor have they undergone a shift to services on the
same scale as cities in the United States and older industrialized countries. Today
manufacturing remains important to the Japanese economy. Work is highly central-
ized within city boundaries even though the suburban population is growing. Each
day several million commuters ride into the central city by public transportation, of-
ten traveling as much as two hours each way. Japan is unlike the United States in
other respects as well. Due to a free market in real estate, a general shortage of land in
the country, and the centralization of employment within large cities, housing and
rental prices are astronomically high, and Tokyo is often rated as the world’s most ex-
pensive city in which to live. It has become increasingly difficult to own a home in a
Japanese city, and most housing space, in terms of square feet, is extremely small by
U.S. standards.
JAPAN 273
The success of Japan’s export-oriented industries in the global economy produced

important changes in settlement space patterns for the entire Pacific Rim. Japanese in-
dustries introduced a number of innovative techniques, such as “just-in-time” meth-
ods, that increased their competitiveness. They also embarked on regional schemes of
manufacturing in search of cheap labor (much like U.S. companies), which had an im-
pact on other Asian countries, in particular South Korea and Taiwan. But the real im-
pact occurred because of Japan’s success in foreign trade earnings, and by the end of
the twentieth century, it became a major repository of the world’s finance capital.
Several notable trends have characterized Japanese industrial and urban develop-
ment over the last two decades. Most significant is the profits squeeze from the in-
creasing costs of Japanese labor, coupled with a slowing of population growth that
makes labor more scarce. This has resulted in the kind of response adopted by U.S.
firms, namely, the shift of some production to other countries with cheaper and more
compliant sources of labor. While marketing and control remain located in Japan,
there has been an increase in the amount of component-part production farmed out
to Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore (Douglas, 1988; Berry, 1989:203).
Japan is experiencing another trend common to the United States and Europe. Ja-
pan has always restricted its immigration, which is why its labor force and urban pop-
ulations have remained more stable than those in countries such as the United States.
Lately, however, illegal immigration is becoming noticeable as the global flow of in-
vestment and people integrates the Pacific Rim countries. Typically, such immigration
TA B L E 10.7 Largest Metropolitan Areas in Japan, 2000.

City Population Metropolitan Area
Tokyo 8,130,000 34,000,000
Yokohama 3,426,000
Kawasaki 1,249,000
Osaka 2,598,000 16,750,000
Kobe 1,493,000
Kyoto 1,467,000
Nagoya 2,171,000 8,000,000
Sapporo 1,822,000 2,500,000
Fukuoka 1,341,000 2,250,000
Hiroshima 1,126,000 1,725,000
Kitakyushu 1,011,000 1,600,000
Okayama 627,000 1,375,000
Naha 301,000 1,125,000
Himeji 471,000 1,125,000
Kumamoto 662,123 1,100,000
Hamamatsu 582,000 1,100,000
Shizuoka 470,000 1,000,000
SOURCE: Adapted from Thomas Brinkerhoff, Japan: Major Cities (www.citypopulation.de/japan-cities

.html).
occurs because the low-wage, menial jobs that are necessary in a developed economy
are no longer being filled by the domestic population because of increases in the qual-
ity of life and training levels. Sassen (1991:308) notes that since the late 1980s, there
has been a rapid increase in the number of illegal aliens working in Japan; typically,
they enter the country with tourist visas and overstay their officially permitted time. It
is estimated that in the 1990s there were 200,000 illegal male workers in Japan doing
manual labor, from construction to restaurant jobs. Almost all of these were from
Asia. The largest groups were from Taiwan, South Korea, Bangladesh, the Philippines,
and Pakistan.
Japanese cities are not characterized by the kind of social segregation found in the
West, although the wealthy are isolated from the rest of the masses. However, they ex-
hibit uneven development with regard to the lack of services and facilities. Extreme
housing and space shortages still affect the city’s inhabitants. There are few parks,
medical facilities, and community centers in Tokyo. The city does contain an exten-
sive mass transit network, as do other Japanese cities, but all Japanese cities suffer
from pollution, smog, noise, and overcrowding (Nakamura and White, 1988). Other
areas of the country are plagued by extensive pollution resulting from industrial devel-
opment that the government has not controlled.
Population demographics will have an impact on Japanese cities and metropolitan
areas in the coming decades, but in a way very different from other Asian countries
(see Chapter 11). The fertility rate is already very low and is expected to decrease rap-
idly, as we have already seen in some Western European countries. It is estimated that
Japan’s population in 2050 may be only 100 million—a decrease of 17 percent (Fujii,
2005). Japan generally has not seen the decline of urban centers similar to that of the
United States or Europe. Fujii suggests that Osaka may be the most appropriate ur-
ban comparison. Osaka reached its peak population of 3 million in 1985 but has de-
creased since then (to 2.6 million in 1995). Observers suggest that cities in Japan are
shrinking for a number of reasons: Port cities such as Nagasaki and Kobe have de-
clined relative to other cities; manufacturing centers such as Kitakyushu are “com-
pany towns” vulnerable to the relative success of just one company or economic
sector; and in some instances companies have moved out of older industrial cities to
locate in the capital. As a consequence, the Tokyo metropolitan region prospers while
other cities may decline.
Recent urban development in Japan has involved the construction of technopoles
and other spaces that bypass the established urban agglomerations. In the 1980s new
technopoles were energetically constructed with massive government support, a fea-
ture that differs from the United States, which has yet to undertake such federally
sponsored development. Most projects are joint ventures by the state, universities,
and private capital, such as the giant Tsukuba “science city” centered on Skuba Uni-
versity outside of Tokyo. More recently, technopoles have been developed in the pe-
ripheral regions of Japan—those areas previously bypassed by development—such as
JAPAN 275
Box 10.5
Japanese Towns Are Disappearing
The world’s population may be growing fast and the number of pensioners increas-
ing faster than ever. But the irony of the greying population is not that the world is
filling up with people, but rather that huge belts of it are becoming depopulated.
At first sight, Kiyosato doesn’t look like a place fighting for its survival. Amid the
vast fields of potatoes, sweet corn and beetroot stand rows of pristine houses and a
community center. But apart from the distant hum of a tractor, the town is silent
and the streets are almost empty. Kiyosato is living on borrowed time. And so, ac-
cording to the government, are more than 60,000 Japanese towns, at risk of death
through depopulation as a result of a twin attack from a declining birthrate and a
surging life expectancy—currently 86.05 years for women and 79.29 for men.
Japan has one of the world’s biggest proportions of over-65s—22.5 percent of its
127 million people—and one of the smallest of under-15s, at 13 percent. More than
two in five people living in rural communities are over 65, and the elderly make up
more than half of the population of an estimated 8,000 towns and villages. Demog-
raphers expect the current population of 127 million to fall to 100 million over the
next 50 years.
About 200 communities have vanished in the past decade. The threat of extinc-
tion looms largest in Hokkaido, where almost 10 percent of towns are at risk, with
half of those expected to disappear over the next decade. Kiyosato has seen its popu-
lation plummet from a peak of 11,000 in the early 1960s to just 4,675 today. Al-
most a third of residents are over 65, 10 percent higher than the national average. Its
five primary schools are attended by a total of 318 pupils; the smallest has just 48.
In an attempt to boost its population, Kiyosato is targeting millions of sixty-
something salarymen and their families with promises of a post-retirement rural
idyll in return for setting up home there. It is allowing prospective residents to live
locally for up to a month at vastly reduced rents in spacious new homes. But of the
several dozen people to take up the offer since last summer, none has made the
move permanent.
Kiyosato’s salvation may lie in luring back younger urbanites to rediscover their
rustic roots. Yamashita Kengo, who moved to Kiyosato with his wife and two chil-
dren 10 years ago, says he can’t imagine returning to his old city life. “There are
plenty of people who want a change in lifestyle, even to quit their jobs and head
into the countryside to start again, but it isn’t part of Japan’s corporate culture to
just leave in mid-career. They don’t know how to go about it.”
SOURCE: J. McCurry, “Japan: Towns Face Extinction,” 2009.

Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kyushu, and the area along the Sea of Japan. One of the most
ambitious of these projects is the “silicon island” developed on Kyushu, centered in
Kumamoto City (Fujita, 1988). This region has become a leading producer of micro-
chips and boasted a population of over 1.8 million in 2008.
Japan exhibits some of the characteristics of Western industrialized countries. Its
traditional urban centers continue to grow. At the same time, new urban spaces have
been created to house the “knowledge industries.” These are similar to technopoles
found elsewhere, but Japan’s government is energetic in its support of such new de-
velopment. Japan’s urban system shows symptoms of overurbanization and is domi-
nated by Tokyo and other large agglomerations, such as Osaka and Nagoya. Due to
the high cost of land and the very high price of housing, there has been little subur-
banization or residential construction, and Japanese cities have not grown at rates
comparable to Western Europe or the United States. As a result, many Japanese must
contend with long commutes from regional towns to work in crowded facilities and
cramped living quarters at home.
SUMMARY
Cities and metropolitan regions in the developed nations have undergone significant
economic restructuring to service-based economies, with a reduced scale of govern-
ment aid similar to that in the United States. New techniques of post-Fordist manu-
facturing have been introduced in the successful industries, including automation
and Japanese-style flexible methods of production. High-technology corridors, simi-
lar to Silicon Valley in the United States, have also appeared, such as the M-4 corri-
dor in England. Finally, there is an increasing integration of large corporations and
transnational firms that, like their American counterparts, conduct business around
the globe.
Economic restructuring has also brought an increasing array of urban problems.
Crime, poverty, and the declining quality of life, almost unheard of as European con-
cerns, are now becoming serious problems. Hate crimes, anti-immigrant sentiments,
and racism are on the rise. Unemployment has increased because of related economic
changes that have hit the working class especially hard. Cutbacks in the traditional
European welfare state have made the problem of poverty more severe. Since the level
of funding for public assistance varies greatly among the countries of Western Europe,
despite recent EU programs, fears have been expressed about the migration of poor
households to areas with appreciably better social programs than another during a
time of economic hardship.
In recent decades, large numbers of workers from the developing world have en-
tered developed societies in the hope of obtaining work. Several million Turks, Kurds,
and Greeks, for example, live in Germany. Millions of North Africans have migrated
to France, and even the Danes, who have always lived in a homogeneous society, are
SUMMARY 277
now concerned about the high Muslim birthrate in their country. It is now quite com-
mon to have African, Middle Eastern, or Asian cab drivers in Paris, London, and
Berlin (not just Los Angeles and New York). Domestic servants, undocumented work-
ers, and low-skilled, labor-intensive factories or sweatshops composed of developing
world workers are increasingly common in all these cities. Even Japan, which restricts
immigration, has a growing number of illegal aliens from Asia who come there in
search of work.
Global economic restructuring therefore brings an increasingly mobile flow not
only of capital investment and goods but also of people. Immigration from develop-
ing world countries to Europe has affected the social order of these once relatively ho-
mogeneous societies in notable ways. The growing presence of foreigners is reflected
in the increasing mix of ethnic restaurants that have sprung up in city centers. This
drawing together of the first and developing worlds in a common urban experience is
increasingly characteristic of contemporary Western cities.
All of these elements have combined to produce changes in the social order of
once homogeneous European societies. Uneven development in wage levels creates a
growing disparity between well-off professionals and low-wage service workers. Mi-
gration and ethnic cultural influences have met with increasing numbers of hate
crimes, racism, and anti-Semitism in a post-Holocaust Europe.
Asian urban development is led by the modern economy of Japan and, more re-
cently, of China (see Chapter 11). It too suffers from uneven development. Japanese
housing and real estate issues are worrisome, and the shortage of affordable housing
units means that fewer and fewer workers will be able to find places to live within rea-
sonable commuting distance of their place of employment. But many negative effects
are outweighed by the success of Japanese economic growth. Industrial expansion
brings the growth of multicentered metropolitan regions outside of Japan’s traditional
manufacturing centers—Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. Financial investment flowing
from Japan fuels the economies of the Asian tigers and thereby restructures the entire
Pacific Rim (as well as the United States, Canada, and Australia, in addition to the less
developed countries of Asia and Latin America) for a new round of growth.
Common problems confront the urban future in Europe, Japan, and the United
States, including the growing lack of affordable housing; challenges from the flow of
immigrants who are often illegal aliens; declines in manufacturing employment; and
the uneven development of economic opportunities for city populations due to the
restructuring of the economy and the emphasis on high-tech skills. Despite compara-
ble declines in central city population, extensive suburbanization, and post-suburban
development on the periphery, no industrialized country has experienced the kind of
inner-city collapse and decline in the conditions of everyday life comparable to the
U.S. experience. In this respect the United States presents a unique case to the world—
although parallels may be found in cities such as Calcutta and Nairobi in the develop-
ing world, as we will see in the next chapter.
KEY CONCEPTS
global restructuring
welfare state
deindustrialization
social exclusion
sustainable tourism
banlieue
1. How is the pattern of urbanization in other industrialized countries similar to
that found in the United States? In what ways does it differ from that in the United
States? What factors are responsible for these differences?
2. Many of the changes in urban systems and metropolitan areas in other industri-
alized countries are similar to those in the United States. How have changes in the
global economy affected metropolitan areas in Western Europe? Have these changes
made these cities more similar to or more different from those in the United States?
3. What are the effects of deindustrialization and other changes in the global
economy on cities in Western Europe? What are some of the important differences
in the ways in which national governments responded to these changes?
4. How are the patterns of urbanization in Eastern Europe different from those in
Western Europe? Explain the effects of the housing shortage and central city decline.
5. How are the history and pattern of urbanization in Japan different from those
of other industrialized countries? How have changes in the global economy affected
new urban developments in Japan?
CHAPTER
11
GLOBALIZATION AND URBANIZATION

IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD
I n the first decade of the twenty-first century, the world’s urban population is estimated
to be more than 3 billion persons. That is approximately ten times the total population
of the United States. That number is expected to increase to 5 billion persons by 2030,
representing an annual growth rate of about 1.8 percent (nearly double the increase of
the world population as a whole). At this rate of growth, the number of persons living
in urban areas will double in three decades. These figures are overwhelming, and not
simply because it is difficult to think of 1 million people at anything more than a con-
ceptual level, much less 1 billion people. The figures are overwhelming because almost
all of the growth in the world’s urban population in the future will take place in the
cities and metropolitan regions of the less developed nations.
Figure 11.1 uses imagery from NASA satellite photographs to show the city lights
of Asia. There are several notable features about this mapping. Most all of Japan
shows up in bright lights, with several large urban concentrations running in a line
across the bottom half of the country. India contains many large cities, and the entire
country appears to be on an electric grid. In China, we can see the large area of urban
development around Hong Kong, and another extensive grouping of cities in the area
heading inland from the Pacific Ocean—but much of the remaining space appears
undeveloped. Toward the top of the photograph, the cities along the transcontinental
Siberian Railroad across the eastern half of Russia are visible. The images from space
suggest that many regions of the continent are heavily urbanized but also that there is
great variation within and between countries.
Table 11.1 reflects the dramatic changes that have taken place in the world’s urban
population over the last half-century as increasing numbers of large cities have ap-
peared in the developing world. In 1950 there were just two metropolitan areas with a
population of 8 million or more persons—New York and London, reflecting the con-
centration effects of urban growth under industrial capitalism in the developed na-
tions. By 1970, there were nine metropolitan areas with more than 8 million persons,
four in the developed nations (New York, London, Tokyo, and Los Angeles) and five in
279
280 11: G LO B A L I Z AT I O N A N D U R B A N I Z AT I O N I N T H E D E V E LO P I N G W O R L D
F I G U R E 11.1 City Lights of Asia. SOURCE: NASA.
the developing nations (Shanghai, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Beijing, and São Paulo).
In 2000 two new metropolitan areas in the developed nations were added to this list,
but an astonishing eighteen new metropolitan areas in the developing nations crossed
the threshold. Of the twenty-two metropolitan areas with populations of 8 million or
more persons in less developed regions, five (Mexico City, São Paulo, Buenos Aires,
Rio de Janeiro, and Lima) are located in South America, one (Lagos) is in sub-Saharan
Africa, and three (Cairo, Istanbul, Tehran) are in the Middle East. The remaining fif-
teen metropolitan areas with 8 million or more persons are located in Asia, including
six on the Indian subcontinent. Population estimates by the United Nations for 2030
show further growth—overwhelming growth—in metropolitan regions across the de-
veloping nations, particularly in Asia.
One way to think of the significance of the increase of large urban agglomerations
in the developing world is that most of us would recognize the names of the cities
shown in 1970—Mexico City, Buenos Aires (capital of Argentina), São Paulo (capital
G LO B A L I Z AT I O N A N D U R B A N I Z AT I O N I N T H E D E V E LO P I N G W O R L D 281
of Brazil). And many would recognize the cities in 1990—Manila (capital of the
Philippines), Seoul (capital of South Korea). But few of us would recognize the cities
from many other regions of the globe that by 2030 will take their place alongside
these more familiar names. The emergence of these megacities, which are defined by
their large size (in excess of 10 million persons), spread over adjacent towns, and the
economic, social, cultural, and political dominance that they exert on the regional
TA B L E 11.1 Urban Agglomerations with Populations Exceeding 8 million, 1950–2030.

1950 1970 1990 2000 2030
More Developed Regions
New York New York Tokyo Tokyo Tokyo
London London New York New York New York
Tokyo Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles
Los Angeles Moscow Moscow Osaka-Kobe
Osaka-Kobe Osaka-Kobe Moscow
Paris Paris Paris
Chicago
Less Developed Regions

Shanghai Mexico City Mexico City Bombay
Mexico City São Paulo São Paulo Delhi
Buenos Aires Shanghai Shanghai Mexico City
Beijing Calcutta Calcutta São Paulo
São Paulo Buenos Aires Buenos Aires Dhaka
Bombay Bombay Jakarta
Seoul Beijing Lagos
Beijing Jakarta Calcutta
Rio de Janeiro Delhi Karachi
Tianjin Lagos Buenos Aires
Jakarta Tianjin Cairo
Cairo Seoul Shanghai
Delhi Rio de Janeiro Manila
Manila Dhaka Rio de Janeiro
Cairo Istanbul
Manila Beijing
Karachi Tianjin
Bangkok Lima
Istanbul Seoul
Tehran Sante Fe de Bogata
Bangalore Lahore
Lima Kinshasa
Tehran
Bangalore
Chennai (Madras)
Wuhan
SOURCE: Adapted from United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2003 Revision; and United
Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Agglomerations 2003.
hinterlands, is one of the important characteristics of urbanization across the develop-

ing world. Megacities are the centers of innovation and generators of social change
that have a significant role in the development of the nation state. Central govern-
ments have created regional administrative structures to implement planning and de-
velopment needs of the new mega-urban regions. At the beginning of the twenty-first
century, they appear to have developed a distinctive pattern of organizing economic
and social space, with both a densely developed core and extended metropolitan re-
gion. Jones and Douglass (2008) note that because the most dramatic changes often
are found in areas beyond official metropolitan boundaries, the significance of the
mega-urban region has not been fully recognized.
The mega-urban regions found across Asia represent a complex mix of varied set-
tlement types, with important differences due to history, economic, cultural, and
technological factors that have influenced their development. Aprodicio Laquian
(2005) categorized the new mega-urban regions in Asia into four types:
Technologically advanced East Asian cities: Osaka, Tokyo, and Seoul. These
urban regions are characterized by low rates of population growth, homogeneous
populations, and planning and governance structures that meet demands for
basic services.
Megacities of China: Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Tanjin. The newly
developed urban regions of China are characterized by low growth rates
(resulting from migration and population control policies), high economic
growth, with strong pressures on basic services.
Primate cities of Southeast Asia: Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila. These urban regions
have moderate rates of growth. Because they are important political centers, there
has been regional planning and administrative coordination, but they confront
serious problems in housing, water, traffic, and environmental pollution.
South Asian cities: Dhaka, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Karachi. The mega-
urban regions of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan are characterized by high rates
of growth and are plagued with problems of slums and squatting, inadequate
transport, high unemployment, and environmental pollution.
The very different histories and characteristics of the mega-urban regions require
more in-depth analysis. Laquian notes that because of this complexity, strategies
used in countries in transition from centrally planned economics (such as China and
Vietnam) may not prove successful in market-dominated countries (India and the
Philippines). Interestingly, it is the mega-urban regions that have emerged from the
centrally planned economies that seem better poised for economic growth at the be-
ginning of the twenty-first century than the mega-urban regions that have emerged
from market-dominated economies of former colonial regimes, although there are
important social costs in both cases, as described later in this chapter.
C H A N G I N G P E R S P E C T I V E S O N U R B A N I Z AT I O N 283
In Chapter 10 we studied metropolitan regions in Europe and Japan. In many

ways the growth of cities in the more developed nations is similar to the postwar de-
velopment of cities in the United States: There has been extensive growth in the sub-
urban areas, resulting in urban sprawl. Infrastructure development has kept pace
with the expansion of the metropolitan area. While there are troubling social in-
equalities that often are compounded by spatial segregation, most people have ade-
quate housing, with access to basic utilities including electricity, clean water, and
sanitary facilities. In the past this pattern of development was sometimes described
as urbanization with industrialization, emphasizing the importance of economic de-
velopment to provide for the needs of a growing urban population.
Despite problems of uneven development and the recent global economic crisis,
most people living in cities in the developed nations are well housed and well fed.
The majority can find work and pursue careers that offer opportunities for advance-
ment as their communities respond to changes in the new global economy. But in
many other parts of the world, cities have a different relationship to society, and
people’s individual fortunes are plagued by dangers and disparities unheard of in
more affluent societies. In this chapter, we examine the urban condition in Asia,
Africa, and Latin America. These regions contain three-fourths of the world’s popu-
lation and most of its landmass. The societies range from democracies to totalitarian
dictatorships. What they have in common is an inability to sustain economic devel-
opment and, with some notable exceptions, a declining quality of life for most of
their urban residents. In the past, this pattern of development was described as ur-
banization without industrialization, emphasizing the problems in providing basic
needs for an ever-increasing population in cities in the developing world.
CHANGING PERSPEC TIVES ON URBANIZ ATION

In approaching the issue of urbanization in developing countries, a number of mis-
conceptions must be dispelled. First, persons living in the developed nations, and es-
pecially persons in the United States, commonly think of these regions as being
primitively developed compared to the United States. But in fact countries such as
China, Mexico, and Korea are highly industrialized, with factory workers numbering
in the millions. Some of the largest cities in the world, such as Shanghai, São Paulo,
and Bangkok, not only are located in developing countries but also are dynamic ur-
ban centers. As we will see in later sections of this chapter, many of the developing
countries are highly urbanized as well. But many of these countries share a pattern of
uneven development that is more extreme than that found in the older, developed na-
tions. The prospects for persons living in these cities are very different from those of
urban residents in New York, London, or Tokyo.
Second, the ecological theory that continues to dominate mainstream urban so-
ciology argues that developing countries are much like the developed societies, only
at an earlier stage of development, and they will “modernize” in time (Kasarda and
Crenshaw, 1991). The sociospatial perspective counters this view and considers fac-
tors such as the roles of the state, socioeconomic class, global capital investment, and
economic changes in the global economy—all of which are neglected by the ecologi-
cal approach—as critical for an understanding of urbanization in developing coun-
tries. Thus the sociospatial perspective suggests that countries having different
economic structures will develop in different ways. Close observers of growth pat-
terns in areas such as Latin America (Roberts, 1978) and Asia (Berry, 1989) seem to
agree that the explanatory variables stressed by the sociospatial approach are most
important, while not necessarily subscribing to the perspective itself. Contrary to
what the human ecology and modernization theory would predict, the process of ur-
banization in the developing nations is different in significant ways from what we
have observed in the more developed nations. The key differences involve factors
such as elite power, state policies, integration into the global economy, and the ef-
fects of class structure (Smith and Timberlake, 1993).
A third change in perspective concerns the increasing relevance of the global econ-
omy to understand urban development in both the developed and less developed na-
tions. Prior to the 1970s, there seemed to be a sharp distinction between the
economies of these regions. Less developed countries were sources for agricultural
goods such as coffee or winter fruits but were otherwise thought to be disconnected
from Western society, except perhaps as places for tourists to visit and strategic loca-
tions for military bases. Countries such as the United States were still operating under
Fordist arrangements of production during this time, meaning that most manufactur-
ing was carried out domestically, and foreign countries were viewed principally as a
source of raw materials and as markets for U.S. goods.
Developmental theories of the time proposed the concept of “peripheral urbaniza-
tion,” which emphasized the marginal nature of the developing world (Harvey, 1973;
Castells, 1977; Walton, 1982). In other words, countries were seen to be either part of
the core of the world system (the developed nations), or they were relegated to the
periphery (the developing world).
In recent decades, however, vast changes have occurred in the developed nations
as Fordist arrangements of production have been replaced by post-Fordist production
and the country underwent deindustrialization. During the 1970s and 1980s, much
U.S. manufacturing employment was shipped overseas, and countries such as Mexico,
Malaysia, Singapore, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic were used as effective sites
for labor. By the 1990s, it had become commonplace for consumers in the United
States to find that the products they purchased, whether articles of clothing, sports
equipment, or cars, were assembled in foreign places. Thus, a pattern of manufactur-
ing for world markets was established in many areas of the developing world, and
people’s lives in the United States were connected by multinational corporations to
formerly peripheral societies (Peet, 1987). Also in the 1990s, the Chinese government
C H A N G I N G P E R S P E C T I V E S O N U R B A N I Z AT I O N 285
Box 11.1
The Impact of Globalization on Third World Cities
Globalization at the national level leads to economic restructuring and global link-
ages of select regions in the nation, select cities in these regions, and select geo-
graphical segments within these cities. Thus various levels of dichotomy permeate
society. Unfortunately, the globalized population and geographical regions sponge
on the population/regions bereft of global links. In developing countries, govern-
ment policies play an integral role in bridging inequalities. But in their excitement
to push rapid global economic integration, governments strengthen the processes of
exclusion through fragmentation of employment, housing, and social services.
As nations compete, cities too begin to compete with each other under the neo-
liberal agenda. These cities differ from those of an earlier era in terms of the way ur-
ban space is utilized, governed, contested, and represented. Capital mobility, leading
to competition for investment, has forced city governments to adopt innovative and
entrepreneurial approaches to local growth. Local governments take up selective
projects to improve the urban environment, which end up either displacing or ex-
cluding segments of population or, through privatization, leads to fragmentation of
housing, infrastructure, and services as well as institutional structures. City plans
give priority to business, and scarce city resources are diverted to cater to the needs
of business. Many local economies providing employment to the poor are de-legit-
imized and face eviction from productive locations sought after by elite groups.
An increase in inequality in cities leads to issues of internal security. This pushes
the rich to live in enclaves that are well protected. The city gets segmented between
the rich and the poor. Segregation may not be total, but some segments of the city
would have a concentration of the rich and others of the poor, as observed in the case
of Mumbai. In Buenos Aires, one finds rich enclaves cropping up. In Mumbai, the
privatization of basic services could exclude poorer areas from receiving an adequate
level of services. In Buenos Aires, the rich have avoided contributing to the costs of
services at the city level. In the wake of the outbreak of suspected plague in Surat city
in 1995, some city planners came up with the idea of bifurcating the Surat Municipal
Corporation into two—a corporation consisting of residential areas where the rich
and middle classes live, and another where the poor and industrial workers live and
where the plague originated. Thus the social and spatial segmentation of the megacity
into “citadels” and “ghettos” takes place, and the city’s geography changes.
Infrastructure projects based on the principle of public-private partnership or
privatization, including those for water supply and sanitation, increase the cost of liv-
ing for the poor and may altogether exclude the poorest. Land development becomes
an intensely contested area. The new environmental agenda, under the concept of
Sustainable Cities, also ends up expelling the poor from the city space and economy.
continues
Box 11.1 continued

Low-skilled workers in industries or industrial zones, services, and the informal sec-
tor, congregate at the fringes where systems are inadequately developed, or in areas of
the mega-city that are environmentally stressed or hazardous. The development pro-
cesses that unwind are exclusionary. Large sections are first expelled from the eco-
nomic space and then excluded from various city-level social systems. Women in poor
communities suffer the most.
The influence of multilateral international development agencies such as the
World Bank and Asian Development Bank has increased. Most of these agencies
promote privatization in urban areas. The conditions for lending for urban devel-
opment often include clauses such as allowing transnational or multinational utili-
ties to enter the city. Such policies lead to exclusion in the city through the process
of privatization and also increase debt-liability, reducing the city’s capability to ad-
dress the issue of sustainable poverty reduction.
SOURCE: D. Mahadevia, “Inclusive Mega-Cities in Globalising Asia,” Info Change Urban India
(http://infochangeindia.org/india_10.jsp).
began a series of economic reforms that would lead to the country’s emergence as a
new industrial nation built upon a manufacturing export economy (Yusuf and Saich,
2009).
Studies of urbanization in the developing nations now reject previous approaches
that emphasized world system marginality or dependency (Datta, 1990). Instead, it is
argued that these countries are increasingly linked to the global economy. The cycle of
investment, manufacturing, consumption, and profit making that leads to greater
investment integrates consumers and producers in the developed nations with manu-
facturing, banking, and consumption activities in other countries, including the devel-
oping nations. This effect is often called the “internationalization of capital.” The once
meaningful “comparative” study of urbanization in developing countries and urban-
ization in the United States and other developed nations has been replaced by the
study of globalization—of the growing interconnections and interdependence be-
tween the core and periphery because of government policy, international trade agree-
ments, and other recent developments.
The sociospatial perspective acknowledges the influence of the global system of
capital on locality. The case of the Philippines is of some interest in this regard. As one
of the capital cities in the Spanish colonial empire, Manila has been part of the capital-
ist world system since the 1500s. Its position as a regional city within the global system
of capital was increased when it became an American colony following the Spanish
American War and again in the post–World War II years. Over the past two decades,
THE DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION 287
however, Manila’s importance and influence in the Southeast Asian economy has de-
clined. Capital flows and investments in the new system of global capitalism have by-
passed Manila in favor of Hong Kong and Singapore and, more recently, Shanghai.
While many countries in Southeast Asia have prospered during the past decade, the
economy of the Philippines has registered a negative growth rate, and urban develop-
ment in Manila lags behind that of other cities that have emerged as more important in
the global system of capital.
It is important to recognize that urbanization processes in both developed and de-
veloping nations often involve combinations of global, national, and local factors that
may operate independently of the global economy. The form of government at the na-
tional level has played a key role in the success—or failure—of development schemes
in many developing countries. China, South Korea, and Singapore, for example, have
aggressive national policies in pursuit of growth and governments that actively aid cap-
ital investment (Barone, 1983). Other countries, such as many Latin American soci-
eties, are plagued by “crony capitalism,” government corruption, and dictatorships that
squander national wealth.
At the most local level, there are also independent effects that are related to but
not determined by the global level. Cities in the developing world are moving rapidly
from the stage of developing economies to postindustrial relations, that is, skipping
many of the features of industrialization that inform the experience of Western devel-
oped nations (Roberts, 1991). Large cities in the developing nations, like their coun-
terparts in the West, are experiencing shifts to a service-oriented employment base
due to their increasing role as command-and-control centers of capital investment. As
a result of new employment opportunities created for professional workers, there is a
growing wage differential between well-paid and working-poor residents. How this
increasingly diverse class structure manifests itself politically varies from country to
country and involves new patterns of local political activity that are independent of,
and in some cases oppositional to, global system needs (see the section on social
movements later in this chapter).
The sociospatial perspective on urbanization in developing countries emphasizes
global linkages, differences in class structure, the effects of national state arrange-
ments, and differences in local politics as key factors for an understanding of current
trends. Urbanization processes in these countries also have many features in common
that contrast with the experiences of developed nations. These can be identified by
considering the nature of population growth and change, or demography, which we
discuss next.
THE DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION

When dealing with rapid population changes such as those that affected the United
States in the 1800s and affect developing countries today, the science of demography
can offer important insights. Demographers track the dynamics of population

growth, concentrating on rates of change, such as the frequency of births and deaths
and the average number of children per mother. Demographers are also interested in
rates of migration, especially changes in the rural and urban populations. For any
given population, the rate of increase that depends on the number of births minus
deaths is known as the natural increase. Population changes within any given settle-
ment space can arise from natural increase or from migration.
For most of human history, the high birthrate was offset by an equally high death
rate, and populations grew very slowly. Following World War II, the introduction of
modern medical techniques and preventive measures in developing nations resulted
in a population explosion that is called the demographic transition. When new tech-
niques of medical intervention lowered the death rates in these countries, the societies
experienced a permanent rise in the rate of natural increase because they maintained a
high birthrate. In the developed world, the demographic transition was eventually ad-
justed by means of a declining birthrate, as the rising standard of living associated
with industrialization led to smaller family size. Many European countries now have
low or even negative growth rates. That stage has yet to occur in developing nations,
although some countries, such as Brazil, have drastically lowered their growth rates in
recent years. But for most of the developing world, birthrates still outstrip death rates,
and overpopulation is a serious social and environmental problem.
The demographic problems of developing nations are compounded by limited
economic development in recent decades. Faced with a population explosion, rural
areas have been hard-pressed to grow enough food for domestic consumption, and
the standard of living in rural areas has declined drastically since the 1950s in many
developing countries. There are simply too many mouths to feed. The dilemma facing
families was poignantly depicted in a Mexican film by Luis Buñuel, Los Olvidados. A
farmer comes to the city with his young son. They move toward a crowd in the center
of the city. When the father is satisfied that his son is distracted, he seizes his chance
and runs away. Many cities are teeming with such abandoned children, many of
whom are exploited by a growing sex industry catering to foreign tourists. As might
be expected, many of the abandoned children have a short life span.
The failure of rural agricultural efforts to produce enough to sustain the quality of
life has led excess population to migrate to the cities. Despite the hardships of life
found there, the move holds out the promise of improvement, and this encourages
others to come. As a result, cities in developing nations suffer from a double popula-
tion explosion: a high rate of natural increase and a high rate of in-migration. In the
city, there is little room for poor people’s housing. In many cities, urban migrants find
space on the outskirts and put up makeshift shelters that lack the basic necessities of
homes, such as running water, sanitation facilities, and even adequate ventilation for
heating. These shantytowns, or squatter settlements, have many names all over the
world—favellas (Brazil), bustees (India), barriadas (Mexico), poblaciones (Chile), villas
P R I M AT E C I T Y D E V E LO P M E N T PAT T E R N S 289
miserias (Argentina), bidonvilles (Africa), and Kampongs (Southeast Asia). But they
have many features in common, including frequent public health crises, crime, crush-
ing poverty, and no future for the next generation since few countries provide them
with schools. We will discuss shantytowns in more detail later.
A third effect of demographic change in developing countries involves their com-
mon experience of social, economic, and political exploitation under European and
American colonialism. Western powers took control of underdeveloped countries in
Africa, Asia, and South America beginning in the sixteenth century. In 1898 the United
States gained control of the former Spanish colonies: the Philippines, Hawaii, Cuba,
and Puerto Rico. The principal goal was to acquire natural resources, such as gold and
spices, and later, cheaply produced manufactured goods. Because colonialism or impe-
rialism depended on trade with the conquering country, effective links to the global
world system were established early. A result of colonialism was the construction of
large cities that were usually located near the coast, such as Hong Kong, Manila, Lagos,
Singapore, Bombay, and Bangkok. Over the years these cities grew immensely, but few
other cities were founded because the colonial powers did not deem them necessary.
Over the years, many developing countries have been able to launch development
programs that have overcome the legacy of colonial control. However, the success of
these programs has been limited due to changes in geopolitics and the world economy,
as well as to national issues such as crony capitalism and civil conflict. These factors
hinder the balanced growth of cities in these countries. As a result, many countries to-
day possess a single, gigantic primate city that is overurbanized, or excessively popu-
lated, and remains the center for most investment and economic growth, while
retaining a relatively underurbanized interior with no large cities. Primate cities are
characteristic of an unbalanced pattern of urbanization that remains quite different
from that found in the developed countries of the world. Let us examine this unique
feature in more detail, as well as other characteristics of urbanization in the developing
world, including shantytown development, household coping strategies and the infor-
mal economy, and new urban social movements.
PRIMATE CIT Y DEVELOPMENT PAT TERNS

In developed countries such as the United States, there is an even distribution in the
number of cities according to size (see Chapter 4). Some, such as New York City
with more than 8 million people, are quite large; others fill in the ranks with smaller
populations of between 500,000 and 1 million, such as San Francisco, and between
100,000 and 500,000, such as Minneapolis, and so on down the hierarchy. Such a
profile constitutes “balanced” urbanization, and it provides a range of urban envi-
ronments and locational options for both businesses and people.
Primate cities dominate and distort development within their countries. Over-
urbanization, or the presence of primate cities, is measured by comparing the size of
the largest city with other large cities within a given country. In the developing world,
the disparities among urban centers may be very great. In Thailand, for example, the
population of the capital city of Bangkok was 6,685,000 in 2000, more than thirty
times larger than that of the next largest city (the population figure applies to the total
urbanized area of the capital city). Countries with primate cities lack locational flexi-
bility: If one is looking for investment opportunities within the country, there typically
is only one area that has the population and infrastructure to support development. If
one is looking for employment, there is only one area where new jobs are being cre-
ated. As a consequence, countries that have primate cities are locked in a migratory
cycle. Like a magnet, primate cities pull mobile populations from the countryside at
the expense of other locations.
The pattern of primate city development not only is inconsistent with models of
urban growth based upon location theory but also calls into question the legitimacy
of ecological theory. You may recall from Chapter 3 that urban ecologists sought to
apply the model of factorial ecology to cities in developing nations with the belief
that a single model could explain urbanization in all countries around the world.
Another part of this perspective holds that developed nations should be the model
for poorer countries, asserting that developing nations should industrialize and ur-
banize as rapidly as possible. Ecological theory suggests that when they do, those liv-
ing in industrialized cities will increase their incomes and acquire a better quality of
life. By encouraging urban growth, the entire society benefits.
The sociospatial perspective disagrees with this view. Developing countries may
grow through industrial development and as part of the new postindustrial economy,
but economic growth is likely only when it occurs in conjunction with world system
priorities and investment flows. Consequently, rapid urbanization may have negative
effects because its principal cause is the needs of global capital and not the quality of
life for local populations (Smith, 1985). As a result, countries in the developing
world can suffer from extremely uneven development despite impressive moderniza-
tion efforts, and primate cities are often the consequence. While the average income
of primate city residents may be greater than that of rural counterparts, the inequal-
ity of income and of quality of life is so severe in primate cities that the standard of
living is lower than in rural areas (Bradshaw and Fraser, 1989). Thus, the growth of
primate city economies does not help the majority of citizens who are victims of un-
even and inequitable development.
SHANT Y TOWN DEVELOPMENT

The world’s urban population increases by nearly 1 million persons each month.
Mexico City, the largest megacity in the developing world, draws more than 20,000
people from impoverished rural states looking for employment each month. The
sheer number of urban migrants is too great for either the private or public sector to
SHANT Y TOWN DEVELOPMENT 291
provide adequate housing or shelter, and thus many families end up in barriadas, or
squatter settlements. The common conception is that life in these places is totally pe-
ripheral to the urban economy of the city. But many shantytowns support robust
economies within their informal boundaries—including areas of commercial devel-
opment and even real estate investment—and many have developed into large resi-
dential districts where the working class often lives. There is much discussion about
the meaning of the peripheral urbanization in these Fourth World regions; Mike
Davis makes this clear in the title of this recent book, Planet of Slums (2007). But
others have argued that the marginality of shantytown inhabitants is largely a myth
(Perlman, 1976), and Howard Husack (2009) has recently referred to them as
“slums of hope.”
Box 11.2
Rapid Urbanization and Slum Formation
Rapid urban population growth has outpaced the ability of city authorities to pro-
vide for housing and environmental health and infrastructure. Cities such as Dhaka
in Bangladesh or Mumbai in India are, realistically speaking, metropolitan or urban
regions, spanning large territorial areas. Others like Metro Manila in the Philippines
or Jakarta in Indonesia are really mega-urban regions. The nature of the govern-
ments differs considerably. Jakarta’s urban government has the status of a provincial
government equal to that of other provinces in Indonesia. The metropolitan govern-
ment in Manila coordinates among some seventeen local authorities, the majority of
which are municipalities with a few town councils.
Squatter and slum settlements have formed mainly because of the inability of city
governments to plan and provide affordable housing for the low-income segments of
the urban population. Hence, squatter and slum housing is the housing solution for
this low-income urban population. In the mega-urban regions or metropolitan ar-
eas, part of the problem would lie in the coordination among different authorities
that are in charge of economic development, urban planning, and land allocation.
The economically more dynamic regions such as Asia have experienced strong
growth because the state sector drives development agendas. National and city gov-
ernments have generally adopted the position that economic development will take
care of basic needs such as housing and environmental and health infrastructure. In
cities of higher-income countries such as Malaysia, private sector developers are
more interested in building homes for the middle-income market. The proliferation
of slum and squatter settlements, however, shows that planned economic growth has
to be aligned with the planned development of health services, environmental infra-
structure, and housing.
continues
Box 11.2 continued

In Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, neither the government nor the private devel-
opers are able to provide the housing needed for 50,000 migrants per year. An ad-
ditional 20,000 young urban households are formed annually that enter the real
estate market. The resulting growth in squatter and slum settlements now com-
prises 15 percent of the housing in the city. This kind of housing is associated with
lack of sanitation and air pollution. In other low-income cities like Dhaka, only
one-quarter of the population in the city is connected to the piped sewerage system
with two in three households served with a potable water supply.
In many cities such as Metro Manila in the Philippines and Kuala Lumpur in
Malaysia, rapid development of new real estate comprising condominiums and
shopping malls has led to gridlocked traffic, severe environmental pollution, and
unstable squatter settlements sandwiched between prime commercial complexes
and high-class condominiums. With the intensely competitive demand for land in
cities, the urban poor will increasingly be marginalized. Many are now settling at
the fringe of the most rapidly growing cities. Rapid growth of the larger cities and
mega-urban regions in the developing countries is reflected in their being sur-
rounded by dense and generally impoverished shantytowns and numerous other
forms of so-called informal or irregular housing. These are characterized by inade-
quate infrastructure, service provision, and security of shelter and land tenure.
SOURCE: G. Ooi and K. Phua, “Urbanization and Slum Formation,” 2007.
The status of shantytowns varies from city to city and country to country. In
many places, they are simply illegal settlements built on the outskirts of cities, and
they exist under the threat of annihilation by state authorities. In other places, how-
ever, shantytowns have acquired legitimate status through political activism, and
they constitute working-class suburbs that have many services, including electrical
power, running water, and schools. Shantytowns differ not only in location, building
materials, and physical appearance but also in the types of groups that live in them.
Some settlements suffer from social disorganization and crime, while others provide
opportunities for entrepreneurial activity. Charles Abrams (1977) discovered five dif-
ferent types of squatter settlements during his research in cities in South America:
1. Owner squatters. This group conforms to our common idea of the urban
squatter: The individual or household owns its own building but not the land
on which it was built.
2. Squatter tenants. This group is composed of new in-migrants to urban centers
who do not live in their own buildings but rent this space from other squat-
SHANT Y TOWN DEVELOPMENT 293
ters. Because the “landlord” does not pay taxes or for the upkeep of the struc-
ture, substantial profit may be realized from this business enterprise.
3. Speculator squatters. Like regular landowners, this group understands that oc-
cupying land and gaining property rights is a way to make a profit. Squatting
is viewed as a business venture in the hope of obtaining title to the land.
4. Store or business squatters. This group consists of individuals who operate busi-
nesses and often live within the squatter settlement. Because they pay no rent
or taxes, they may be able to make substantial profits.
5. Semisquatters. Individuals or households in this group construct a building on
private land but later come to terms with the owner on the rental or even pur-
chase price for the space. The boundary between the legal tenant and the
semisquatter may be blurred, particularly within developing economies.
Some shantytowns possess a robust social order (Aina, 1990; Cooper, 1987;
Neuwirth, 2006). They often are the location for small-business enterprises started by
urban migrants. Shantytowns may also be the location for small and medium-size fac-
tories employing residents from the surrounding area. The penetration of multi-
national corporations into metropolitan areas in the developing nations as part of the
restructuring of the global economy has created new manufacturing jobs and support
for local entrepreneurs. In these and other ways, shantytowns may be integrated into
the world economy.
In many developing nations, shantytowns may be the only places where the work-
ing class can find affordable housing. According to one estimate, a majority of shanty-
town dwellers actually live in rental housing (Datta, 1990). Individuals who construct
housing in these settlements become real estate entrepreneurs and form an important
real estate submarket within the larger metropolitan economy. Real estate investment
brings in much-needed income for individuals and households living within the shan-
tytown. However, as in the developed nations, there may be problems with this priva-
tized housing market. The increased cost of construction materials has meant that
shantytown housing around Mexico City has become excessively expensive, and new
pressures have been placed on the Mexican government to address the issue of afford-
able housing (Schteingart, 1990).
It has been suggested that shantytowns should be viewed as workers’ suburbs that
require greater attention and services from local government, not as slum areas. But
the recent projections of population growth in urban areas of the developing nations
raise new concerns and may eclipse the earlier discussions of working-class suburbs.
The United Nations reports that more than a third of all urban residents—1 billion
persons—now live in slums, most of them in cities in the developing world. By 2030
that figure is expected to increase to more than half—or some 2.5 billion persons liv-
ing in urban slums (UN-Habitat, 2005). This is likely to be accompanied by increased
poverty in urban areas. Of the 14.5 million people living in Metro Manila in 2000,
for example, it is estimated that 60 percent had incomes below the poverty line and
that 40 percent lived in slums and shantytowns in areas outside of the urban core.
THE INFORMAL ECONOMY

AND COPING STRATEGIES
In previous chapters we noted that many urban sociologists follow the ecological ap-
proach. They focus on individual behavior and the aggregation of separate interests in
the public and private sectors. The sociospatial perspective, in contrast, recognizes that
while society is composed of individuals, a focus on groups, such as classes and net-
works, is a preferred way of understanding metropolitan dynamics. Homeowner poli-
tics and the struggle to control territory and its quality of life are also important
political considerations. When studying the cities in the developing world, the nature
of class structure and especially the control by select elites through the government and
military are important factors. Urban researchers also assert that urban dynamics is not
exclusively a class phenomenon and suggest that the appropriate unit of analysis for the
study of urban populations in developing nations is the household.
The household and its coping strategies are basic to an understanding of urban
life everywhere, that is, in the developed nations as well as the developing nations.
Households are collective units that share housing and food, trade clothing and other
consumer durables, and are composed of individuals who pool monetary resources.
According to Mingione (1988), not all the members of a given household are imme-
diate family. Households may contain distant relatives and even friends. The collec-
tive pooling of resources does not preclude differences among household members,
such as conflicts between men and women. What counts most with this emphasis is
that it conforms better to the reality of urban life in many countries than the focus of
mainstream sociology on individual decision making or of Marxists on class alone.
The study of household survival strategies shows that the poor do not accept their
adversity in a passive manner. They innovate and find ways to support themselves and
others. This dynamism makes shantytown life quite complex and leads to both posi-
tive and negative outcomes, such as the reproduction of generations despite poverty
and the existence of criminal activity. Households cope with adversity by making col-
lective decisions rather than allowing the burden of poverty to fall on each individ-
ual’s shoulders alone. To reduce expenses they may engage in self-provisioning, which
“includes domestic processing or production of food, making clothes, undertaking re-
pairs, self-construction of housing” (Roberts, 1991:142). Other household coping
strategies include reducing the number of members (often children, as in the earlier
example of the Buñuel film) and connecting with the informal economy.
The issue of the informal economy is an important focus of urbanization research
in developing countries and is increasingly an equally relevant topic for the developed
countries (Safa, 1987). In the informal sector, whose activities are considered “off the
URBAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND POLITICS 295
books” or illegal, people sell everything from drugs, cigarettes, and convenience store
items (such as soda) to produce (such as fruits and vegetables)—and even their own
bodies for sex. As global restructuring expands in developing cities, bringing with it
highly paid professional services, poor people find informal or casual employment as
shoe shiners, messengers, delivery persons, and domestic helpers, in addition to the
burgeoning demand for restaurant and other commercial laborers. Many laborers, es-
pecially domestic servants and babysitters, are hired off the record.
The informal sector is dominated by a market economy, although this is not the
same as capitalism because barter or trade as well as monetary exchange prevail, and
no formal structures dominate pricing (Korff, 1990). Work is precarious and does
not bring the kinds of benefits that people in developed nations identify with full-
time employment, such as health insurance or social security. Researchers of this
phenomenon note that the numbers of people and activities in the informal sector
are growing in all countries, a fact we have noted in connection with the illegal drug
industry’s role in poor ghetto areas of the United States.
The study of household coping strategies and the informal economy paints a
multidimensional picture of shantytown life and illustrates how individuals may take
advantage of opportunities in cities that are not usually noted when attention is given
only to formal economies and our own limited, culture-bound conceptions of every-
day life.
URBAN SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS AND POLITICS
Another important topic that is often neglected in discussing urbanization in the de-
veloping world is the significance of political struggles within the city (see Castells,
1983; Walton, 1987; Cooper, 1987). According to one observer, urban movements in
developing countries are characterized by a gradual transition during the past decade
from comprising local movements with limited sociopolitical goals to being more
conscious movements making much greater demands on the state and with social and
political effects that are no longer limited to the local arena (Datta, 1990:44).
An example of this change concerns the broadening movement for affordable
housing (Castells, 1983; Ramirez, 1990) and the drive to make squatter and shanty-
town settlements legal. Organized efforts of poor people have pitted them against the
government with demands for better health, education, and neighborhood services—
a phenomenon that is also characteristic of communities in developed nations and
that transcends class distinctions. Another recent development is the growing number
of class-based union activities that take place in cities. Deindustrialization has meant
the decline of manufacturing jobs in the developing nations and with it the drastic
decline in the power of unions. But as manufacturing jobs have been shunted to the
developing world, an associated rise in union activity and class struggle has resulted.
Countries such as Brazil and India, for example, have formidable industrial labor
forces, and with them have come active trade union movements and class-based polit-
ical action.
Special attention must be given to the role of women in political movements in
developing nations. When women migrate to the city, they acquire new opportunities
for marriage and male-female relations, “even if social conservatism may also be exac-
erbated by the novelty and difficulties of urban life” (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 1990:77).
African and Latin American studies show that women take advantage both of the
informal economy and of shantytown dwellings to earn a living, although some fall
victim to male domination and criminal exploitation such as prostitution (Schlyter,
1990). One important measure of the freer status of city women is their important
role in urban social movements. Coquery-Vidrovitch suggests that this important
representation may be the result of the active involvement of women in voluntary as-
sociations connected with urban shantytown life.
Uneven development and the proliferation of shantytowns may lead to political in-
stability. The national government is not viewed as an avenue for solving ordinary
people’s problems. This makes struggles at the most local level increasingly important
as a vehicle for change. According to one African study, the government of Nigeria is
seen as no more than the instrument of the dominant class, committed to perpetuating
an unbalanced distribution of income and wealth and preserving the dominance of
capitalist ideology and political power (Mabogunje, 1990:361). Reports of the perfor-
mance in government of different groups, whether military or civilian, reveal a cynical
use of state apparatus to enrich individuals at the expense of the commonwealth.
Urban social movements are connected to the global economy. Workers in devel-
oping countries constitute a complex social order with many different class statuses
(Portes and Walton, 1981). Changes in the activities linked to global investment
have differential effects on the working class in the developing world. These differ-
ences are reflected in different political positions and complex ideological issues
among trade union parties, some of whom are active socialist or communist organi-
zations, although there are conservative and reactionary political elements as well. In
other words, national and urban politics in the developing nations involves a variety
of organized political positions despite the greater presence in many countries of
worker-oriented or left-wing movements than in developed nations.
The global economy also affects urban social movements directly through its agents
of international control. In the 1970s, for example, the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), which controls most of the debt and national financing in the developing na-
tions, called for austerity measures and reductions in state expenditures among all its
client countries. In turn, national governments responded by eliminating subsidies on
food and other consumer goods. This placed a severe burden on households. In re-
sponse to the threat of hunger or increased misery, residents of cities began rioting in
protest of food subsidy cutbacks. The “IMF riots” (Walton, 1987; Cleaver, 1989), as
they came to be called, were powerful political events that affected the stability of state
PAT T E R N S O F U R B A N I Z AT I O N 297
regimes in diverse places around the globe, including Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
As summarized by Datta (1990:45), “food riots caused the fall of the Tolbert regime in
Liberia in 1979 and threatened the imminent collapse of the regimes in Tunisia and
Morocco in 1981, in the Dominican Republic in 1984 and 1985, in Brazil in 1983, in
Chile in 1983 and 1985.” As a result of organized opposition to global restructuring
agents such as the IMF or to multinational corporations and industrial development,
urban social movements have broadened their perspectives to deal with issues that af-
fect all levels of society, including the local, the national, and the global.
Urban social movements are important in the developing world and take many
forms. In Chile, for example, between 1968 and 1972, 400,000 people converged on
the city of Santiago and established free squatter settlements, or campamentos (Schneier,
1990:349). Similar self-governing squatter communities can be found in Mexico, where
they are a powerful political force in urban areas (Castells, 1983). In Nigeria, shanty-
towns have been organized into neighborhoods that have demanded greater political
representation. According to one African study, “The mobilization of people at such a
level within a city should at least encourage improved information flows and increase
the prospect of greater participation by all in the governance (as distinct from the gov-
ernment) of the city” (Mabogunje, 1990:364). Urban social movements are common
among city dwellers in both the developed and undeveloped countries of the world.
We have been discussing phenomena that countries in the developing world have
in common. These include the presence of primate cities, the complex social order of
shantytowns, household coping strategies and the informal economy, and the chang-
ing complexion of urban social movements and politics. Much of the research on
these topics has been published only since the 1970s, when they were brought into
sharper focus for those in developed, Westernized countries.
Above all, studies show that the “comparative” perspective on global urbanization
that conceptualized a break between the industrialized West and developing nations
must give way to the sociospatial perspective, which acknowledges the growing com-
monalities and links between metropolitan restructuring patterns in both regions.
Along with increasing acknowledgment of global links is the recognition of certain
differences that exist among countries. Not everything is determined by global pro-
cesses alone. National and local differences also add to the complexity of urbanization
in the developing world. In the final section of this chapter, we survey briefly these lo-
cal sources of variation in a region-by-region analysis.
PAT TERNS OF URBANIZ ATION
Latin America
Latin America contains one of the world’s largest cities, Mexico City, with a popula-
tion of 19 million persons in 2007, and several of the world’s most rapidly growing
metropolises: Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in Brazil, Buenos Aires in Argentina,
Caracas in Venezuela, and Bogotá in Colombia. The continent of South America,

along with Central America and Mexico, was urbanized hundreds of years ago dur-
ing the period of the Aztec, Mayan, and Inca civilizations, which founded great cities
at the time of the European Middle Ages. In the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies, the Spanish and Portuguese conquests founded new towns and administra-
tion centers. Uneven spatial development engendered by colonialism created primate
cities in most countries. Many of the cities were located on the coast because of the
dominance of trade with the colonial power, although Mexico City, the capital of the
ancient Aztec empire, remains an inland magnet for migration.
Cities in Latin America share a common form because of their legacy as Spanish
colonial history. The Leyes de Indias (Laws of the Indies), signed by Charles II in
1573, included 148 ordinances concerning the location and construction of settle-
ments in the Spanish colonies (including the Philippines). These are among the first
comprehensive guidelines for the design and development of cities. As shown in Box
11.3, the ordinances specify how public, religious, commercial, and residential spaces
were to be designed, including the symbolic placement of the cathedral on a raised
area facing the main piazza so that it can be seen from all sides and “acquire greater
authority.” As a result of the Laws of the Indies, all Spanish cities in Latin America
contain a large central plaza, with the main cathedral, city hall, and commercial
buildings on the streets facing the plaza. Residential areas spread out from the main
plaza, and often these are focused around the many secondary plazas, giving a strong
sense of order to the entire city. In addition to the regular patterns established by the
ordinances, housing and public buildings are built around open courtyards, following
a generic Mediterranean design with houses directly fronting the street, making a
sharp divide between the public world of the street and the private space of the house
(Leontidou, 2009). In recent decades, some suburban housing has been built with a
form more similar to that of the suburbs in the American Southwest, where there is
not the same boundary between public and private space.
The development of cities in Brazil is of course different from other countries in
Latin America because they were not part of the Spanish empire. But they do share char-
acteristics common to Mediterranean cities more generally, including extensive plazas
and housing and government buildings built around open courtyards. The coastal city
of Recife in northern Brazil is built along canals and is called the Venice of South Amer-
ica, with much of the older area of the city, built in the 1700s, resembling other Euro-
pean cities. Both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo have extensive favelas (shantytowns) that
house millions of persons in the two megacities.
Recent urbanization for Central and South America is shown in Table 11.2. Al-
though Latin America is one of the most urbanized areas in the world, there is substan-
tial variation within the region. Countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay,
and Venezuela have between 80 and 90 percent of their populations living in urban ar-
eas, whereas the figures for El Salvador and Guatemala are less than 60 percent. South
Box 11.3
Urban Design from the Laws of the Indies, 1573
The Laws of the Indies, signed by the Spanish king Charles IV in 1573, specified
both the selection of town sites as well as the design of cities and towns in the new
world. Here is a sampling of the more than 200 requirements included in the Laws.
112. The main plaza is to be the starting point for the town; if the town is situated
on the sea coast, it should be placed at the landing place of the port, but in-
land it should be at the center of the town. The plaza should be square or rec-
tangular, in which case it should have at least one and a half its width for
length inasmuch as this shape is best for fiestas in which horses are used and
for any other fiestas that should be held.
113. The size of the plaza shall be proportioned to the number of inhabitants . . .
[it] shall be not less than two hundred feet wide and three hundred feet long,
nor larger than eight hundred feet long and five hundred and thirty feet wide.
A good proportion is six hundred feet long and four hundred wide.
114. From the plaza shall begin four principal streets: One [shall be] from the mid-
dle of each side, and two streets from each corner of the plaza; the four cor-
ners of the plaza shall face the four principal winds, because in this manner,
the streets running from the plaza will not be exposed to the four principal
winds, which would cause much inconvenience.
115. Around the plaza as well as along the four principal streets which begin there,
there shall be portals, for these are of considerable convenience to the mer-
chants who generally gather there; the eight streets running from the plaza at
the four corners shall open on the plaza without encountering these porticoes,
which shall be kept back in order that there may be sidewalks even with the
streets and plaza.
116. In cold places, the streets shall be wide and in hot places narrow; but for purposes
of defense in areas where there are horses, it would be better if they are wide.
118. Here and there in the town, smaller plazas of good proportion shall be laid
out, where the temples associated with the principal church, the parish
churches, and the monasteries can be built, [in] such [manner] that every-
thing may be distributed in a good proportion for the instruction of religion.
126. In the plaza, no lots shall be assigned to private individuals; instead, they shall
be used for the buildings of the church and royal houses and for city use, but
shops and houses for the merchants should be built first, to which all the set-
tlers of the town shall contribute, and a moderate tax shall be imposed on
goods so that these buildings may be built.
SOURCE: Laws of the Indies, 1573 (http://codesproject.asu.edu/node/10).

America includes several countries with urban populations concentrated in large cities:
40 percent of the urban population of Argentina lives in cities with populations of 1
million or more, and more than a third of the urban populations of both Brazil and
Chile lives in these larger metropolitan areas. Table 11.2 also shows the strong presence
of primate cities in this urban system. In Chile and Uruguay, 40 percent of the urban
population lives in the capital city, and in Argentina, El Salvador, and Peru, the figure
is more than 30 percent of the population.
Countries such as Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico have benefited from the global
search for cheap labor. Mexico, for example, is host to the successful maquilladoras
program, which locates primary manufacturing in a band of space along the U.S.
border for shipment back to the United States as finished products. The maquillado-
ras system is similar to enterprise zones in the United States and is becoming increas-
ingly popular with developing nations as deindustrialization continues in the United
States and Europe. The enterprise zones allow multinationals in developed nations
to retain control of production and marketing while still benefiting from the ex-
ploitation of cheap labor in foreign countries with the active support of their govern-
ments. The maquilladoras program relies heavily on the use of female labor, which
has been made compliant by the culture of paternalism (Fernandez-Kelly, 1991),
and enjoys active subsidies from both the Mexican and U.S. governments.
Some Latin American countries, such as Argentina and Brazil, have a long history
of industrialization. But to be successful and compete with foreign competition, they
TA B L E 11.2 Urbanization in Selected Latin American Countries, 1990–2005.

Living in cities
of 1 million Living in
or more largest city
Urban Population
(% of urban (% of urban
(% of total) population) population)
1990 2005 1990 2005 1990 2005 1990 2005
Argentina 28,300,000 34,900,000 87 90 39 39 37 36
Bolivia 3,700,000 5,900,000 56 64 25 31 29 26
Brazil 111,700,000 157,000,000 75 84 34 37 13 12
Chile 11,000,000 14,300,000 83 88 35 35 42 40
Colombia 24,000,000 33,200,000 69 73 30 36 20 23
Cuba 7,700,000 8,500,000 73 76 20 19 27 26
El Salvador 2,500,000 4,100,000 49 60 19 22 39 37
Guatemala 3,700,000 5,900,000 41 47 11 28 22 17
Mexico 60,300,000 78,300,000 73 76 32 35 25 25
Peru 15,000,000 20,300,000 69 73 27 26 39 35
Uruguay 2,800,000 3,200,000 89 92 41 36 46 40
Venezuela 16,600,000 24,800,000 84 93 34 37 17 12
SOURCE: Table 3.10, World Development Indicators 2007 (New York: World Bank, 2007).
must use the most sophisticated techniques to make products that will sell on the
global market. In the last decade they have confronted the same competition for man-
ufactured goods imported from China as have American companies. To succeed in
the changed economic market, capital-intensive methods, such as automation, are
used that require little labor. Consequently, even in countries that have achieved some
industrialization, factories are run without significant labor forces. New employment
opportunities are not created at a pace that could absorb the excess rural population.
The result is the perpetuation of shantytown growth despite industrial development.
Brazil is a prime example of the dilemma presented by world system competi-
tion. Historically, Brazil has had a successful indigenous steel industry. It can com-
pete on the world market principally because it is capital intensive and uses the latest
techniques of production. But this also means that it employs comparatively few
people. Hence it is not a major source of employment, something Brazil desperately
needs. In the 1870s England was the world’s leader in steel production, reaching the
million-ton mark. At that time, England’s steel industry employed 400,000 workers.
In the 1980s Brazil routinely produced four times that amount of steel but did so us-
ing only around 28,000 workers (Cochrane, 1982:16). Modern technology and pro-
duction techniques make a difference that is surely a mixed blessing to developing
countries, and the need to compete in the world system constrains the types of de-
velopment policies those countries can pursue.
Box 11.4
Economic Insecurity and Polarization in Brazil
Economic disparity in Brazil lends itself to a continued sense of apartheid, as rising

conspicuous consumption is positively unabated, regardless of growth rates. São
Paulo’s economic elite avoid the city’s infamous jams and carjackings in favor of
journeying by helicopter (there are 240 helipads compared to New York City’s 10)
and travel around its opulent Daslu mall in golf carts. By Latin American stan-
dards, the disparities in Brazil are particularly unnerving, with a political system
that in the two decades since the negotiated end of its military dictatorship has
been saddled with instability through corruption and inertia. Brazil’s elites, in place
since colonial times, have remained above reproach throughout its modern history,
under both dictatorship and democracy, and have long enjoyed security from com-
monplace criminality. The rise of gated communities in Brazil, therefore, is a mani-
festation of a growing middle class, which in itself would ordinarily be taken as a
sign of progress were it not for the structural deficiencies that prevent wider eco-
nomic and social mobility.
continues
Box 11.4 continued

The condominium fechado (closed estate) can be seen as an extension of the
widespread measures put in place by many members of the more affluent working
classes, particularly in areas of São Paulo with stable local industries, where private
security arrangements are the norm (given a notoriously unresponsive police force).
The 30,000 strong Alphaville community, however, is a particularly interesting
and curious example of urban development. The brainchild of the Albuquerque
and Takaoka Company, the settlement was founded on farmland in counties 23
kilometers to the west of the city. Its origins lie in a number of co-determinants,
namely rising crime in São Paulo, improvements in infrastructure under a massive
public works program, and new modes of urban planning around the city. Now in
its third decade and comprising 20,000 dwellings in 33 zones, it even boasts its
own university and supports 150,000 retail and domestic workers
Alphaville (“first city”) residents are not troubled by the widespread kidnappings
that take place elsewhere in metropolitan São Paulo—constant surveillance by
CCTV and patrols, even around school playing fields, by armed security personnel
reassure its compound-dwelling inhabitants. Residents of Alphaville, some execu-
tives of multinationals, rebut claims of paranoia and claim that it enables them to
live in conventional housing rather than apartment blocks equally as shut off from
urban ills and allows children to play freely in the street.
The city is managed by Alphaville Urbanismo, incorporated in 1995. The com-
pany provides all utilities and requires no public services. In addition to the monthly
residence fees, residents are reliant on private education and health care provision,
placing Alphaville living well beyond the reach of the average Brazilian family. With-
out city governance, ironic given Brazil’s ‘ungovernable’ society in ungated areas,
residents are required to participate in communal affairs through regulatory com-
mittees. Alphaville’s founders, Albuquerque and Takaoka, believe the concept has
been a proven success, so much so that they now plan to extend it to lower-income
Brazilian families in new affordable in-fill developments amid Brazil’s metropolises
elsewhere.
SOURCE: Andrew Stevens and Elisangela Fracaroli, “São Paulo’s Alphaville Gated Community:
An Early Answer to Middle-Class Insecurity,” 2009.
Latin America is the scene of some of the most explosive population growth in
the world. For example, São Paulo, Brazil, had a population of less than 3 million in
1950, but its population is approaching 24 million today. Brazil is the most popu-
lated country in South America, with a census count of 174.2 million in 2000 and a
population estimated at 186.8 million in 2005. The Brazilian government estimates
that the population will increase to 204 million by 2030, before beginning a slow
decline due to an aging population, declining birthrates, and high levels of early
mortality due to AIDs (Brazil, Economic Research Institute, 2008). This total is sub-
stantially different from estimates made in the 1980s, when the United Nations pre-
dicted that the population would increase to 246 million by the year 2025 (United
Nations, 1985). But even so, it is estimated that over 90 percent will reside in urban
areas. Brazil will become a country of giant cities. To feed these people, Brazil can ex-
ploit its arable landmass—but many of these new lands are part of the rain forest. As
noted in Chapter 1, the growth of the megacity has been accompanied by serious
problems of political and unsustainable pressures on the environment. A potential
ecological disaster of global magnitude is in the making.
Unlike Brazil, Mexico is semiarid and lacks appreciable agricultural resources,
and it has not been successful in reducing its rate of population growth. It has al-
ready cultivated virtually all available land. Population pressures will force people
into the cities or to El Norte (as the United States is called). At the end of the 1980s,
Dogan and Kasarda wrote:
The urban population is expected to increase from 55 million in 1985 to 131

million in 2025, the equivalent of 13 cities of 10 million each. Is there a limit to
Mexico City’s growth, this bowl constrained by a circle of pollutant-trapping
mountains? Guadalajara and Veracruz might become enormous metropolises.
How many new cities of over a million will spring up in the Mexican “desert”?
How many Mexicans will head for California, either legally or clandestinely?
(1988, 24–25)
In addition to immense population pressures, Latin American countries have

shared a history of political instability. They have been controlled for over a century
by the dictates of U.S. foreign policy and by the demands of American corporations.
Over the years, developmental strategies have been hemmed in by such global con-
straints. There is a great need to nurture domestic industrial development. In the
past, political problems and periodic military coups seem to hamstring such efforts,
and while there have been significant advances in democratic rule through much of
Central America, instability is also fostered by inequalities in the class system, which
is one of the most skewed in the world. Class structure, government control, and
global power are prominent factors in understanding development in Latin America.
Asia
The global region of Asia represents great diversity and contains at least half of the
world’s population. Often overlooked beneath the generic labels such as Asian his-
tory or Asian culture, the separate countries have very different histories, as well as
very different cultures, so that generalizations as to urban trends are very difficult.
In many Asian countries, primate cities—Tokyo-Yokohama, Pyongyang, Seoul,

Taipei, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Bangkok—represent the centers of eco-
nomic growth and development (Yeung, 1988:162). For example, in the 1980s, Tokyo
accounted for 60 percent of Japan’s elite business leaders and 60 percent of the total
capital invested, along with a third of all department store sales; Seoul contained 78
percent of South Korean business headquarters and 90 percent of all large enterprises,
while accounting for 27.9 percent of South Korea’s GNP; and Bangkok housed one-
third of Thailand’s manufacturing and almost 80 percent of its banking, and it con-
tributed 26.8 percent toward the country’s GNP (Yeung, 1988:162). China’s coastal
development program, which situates manufacturing activity in planned urban ag-
glomerations, has been different from that of any other country in the region (New-
man and Thornley, 2005).
In all of these countries, urban development programs are often given a high pro-
file. Among the issues that must be confronted is the lack of an adequate infrastructure
to meet the demands of the growing urban population. The case of urban redevelop-
ment in Manila is instructive. The Philippines suffered from the crony capitalism of
the Marcos dictatorship for two decades before electing Corazon Aquino (wife of the
political opposition leader assassinated by Marcos’s security forces) president of the
country in 1986. Millions of dollars from the World Bank and other international
agencies lined the pockets of the military leaders, while underdevelopment continued
to plague the country; more than 80 percent of its export crops are owned by the Dole
pineapple conglomerate, and many Filipinos in rural areas work in a plantation system
characterized by Ligaya McGovern (1996) as a “militarized zone.” With perhaps the
highest birthrate in all of Asia, overpopulation has led many Filipinos to leave rural
communities for the capital city of Manila. The result has been uneven development
within the metropolitan Manila region, where neighborhoods not much different from
those in any modern city exist alongside squatter settlements. For those unable to find
employment in rural areas or the cities, overseas labor has become an important safety
valve, as the Philippines have one of the highest labor-exporting countries in the world,
with substantial communities of Filipino workers, both male and female, in the devel-
oped nations (Tyner, 2008).
In recent decades several Asian nations, beginning with Korea, Taiwan, and Singa-
pore, exploded the myth of “third world dependency” and the notion of “peripheral”
development by growing rapidly as industrialized countries. They were helped along
by the influx of capital investment from Japan and the search for cheap labor by multi-
national corporations from across the globe. Many of the resulting enterprises are joint
domestic and foreign operations. In the 1980s, the “Asian tigers” (Hong Kong, Tai-
wan, South Korea, and Singapore) led the world in percentage growth of gross domes-
tic product at 7 percent a year (Berry, 1989:176), helped by the continuing demand
for consumer goods—especially electronics, textiles, and clothing. This pattern of “ex-
port-led” development has also been tried successfully in Spain and Italy (see Chapter
10) among other countries. The economies of the Asian countries suffered in the Asian
economic crisis beginning in 1997, but they have since rebounded—although their
success has since been overshadowed by the emergence of China as a major industrial
power.
An important characteristic of the economic development in Asia has been the
dominant role played by the national government in promoting growth. This inter-
vention is not restricted to subsidization of capital investment and development but
also includes strong control of unions and, often, harsh methods of regulating the
working-class population; unions are not allowed and child labor, low wages, and
sweatshop conditions are common (Lee, 1982; Palen, 1990).
While some countries have urban systems dominated by one large primate city,
China has embarked on an ambitious program to control urban growth by creating
new cities and industrial areas (it is said that China creates twenty new cities each
year). The development of the Asian tigers changed the dynamics of global capital
investment in the 1980s; more recently China has become as competitive in manu-
facturing as established economies among the developed nations. While some coun-
tries have explosive growth rates that will produce increasing urban populations and
environmental pressures in the decades to come, Japan has an aging population and
smaller towns are disappearing as the population moves to urban areas. The Asian
Pacific Rim, which is linked to Japan (see Chapter 10) as well as the United States,
contains economic forces that likely will be the major sphere of power and develop-
ment in the twenty-first century. We will review information concerning urbaniza-
tion trends in selected Asian countries, and we will look in more detail at urban
development in India and China, the two largest Asian countries.
Table 11.3 gives an overview of urbanization in selected Asian countries. Most of
these countries do not show the same high levels of urbanization that we saw in the
previous table for Latin America. In 2000, Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines all
had more than 50 percent of their population living in urban areas, but the level of
urbanization in other countries, including India, Thailand, and Vietnam, was less
than 30 percent. A relatively small proportion of the population lived in large cities
of 1 million persons—but in these cases the apparent high level of urbanization is
the result of primacy (the case of Manila in the Philippines, Bangkok in Thailand,
and the like). Interesting facts not apparent in the table include the following: In
2000, 56 percent of the population of Thailand lived in the capital city (Bangkok),
and in three other countries (South Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam) one-quarter
or more of the population lived in the largest city.
India and China exhibit differences in their patterns of urbanization for many rea-
sons, including India’s colonial past and China’s long history of empire and state bu-
reaucracy. More recently, different national policies have produced rapid change in
China’s urban system, while India has seen a continuation of earlier urban growth; as
in Latin America, the factors of state control and local class structure explain a great
TA B L E 11. 3 Urbanization in Selected Asian Countries, 1980–2005.
306
Living in cities of % of population

1 million or more in largest city
% living in (% of total (% of urban
Urban Population urban areas population) population)
1980 1990 2005 1990 2005 1990 2005 1990 2005
Bangladesh 20,600,000 35,600,000 20 25 9 13 32 35
China 192,300,000 311,000,000 527,000,000 27 40 13 18 3 3
India 158,800,000 216,000,000 314,000,000 26 29 10 12 6 6
Indonesia 32,900,000 54,500,000 106,100,000 31 48 9 12 14 12
Korea 31,600,000 39,000,000 74 81 51 51 33 25
Malaysia 5,800,000 8,900,000 17,000,000 50 67 6 6 13 8
Myanmar 8,100,000 10,100,000 15,500,000 25 31 7 8 29 27
Philippines 18,000,000 29,800,000 52,100,000 49 63 14 14 27 21

Thailand 7,900,000 16,100,000 20,700,000 29 32 11 10 37 32
Vietnam 10,300,000 13,400,000 21,900,000 20 26 13 13 30 23
deal about development. Until the 1980s, China’s Communist government restricted
the size of China’s largest cities, and this effectively controlled the growth of the
largest cities. In the last decade, more than 200 million Chinese moved from rural ar-
eas into the cities, but this growth took place in many different urban centers and did
not result in huge megacities or urban slums as are found in India. The current popu-
lation figures for the largest cities and metropolitan areas in India and China are
shown in Tables 11.4 and 11.5.
Of all the rapidly growing population areas of the globe, only China seems to
have controlled the rate of urbanization to match its development potential. China’s
government pursues a balanced growth process of rural and urban development. Un-
der the hukou system, the rural population is prevented by law from moving to cities
(Kim, 1988). This prevents the kind of in-migration to the cities from rural areas
that is common in the rest of the developing world.
Such balanced growth has had positive effects, and living in one of China’s large
cities is associated with increased income, access to public services, and an improved
quality of life (Bradshaw and Fraser, 1989). Beginning in the 1980s, China launched
an extensive drive to integrate into the world economy, particularly by manufactur-
ing textiles and other household and consumer goods. The government adopted
rapid modernization policies that included the location of new cities and coastal de-
velopment zones that have resulted in an even greater balance to urban growth, in
contrast to the uneven development that has plagued other countries in the develop-
ing world (Yusuf and Saich, 2009).
TA B L E 11.4 Largest Urban Agglomerations in India, 1960–2005.

City 1960 1980 2000 2005
Mumbai (Bombay) 4,060,000 8,658,000 16,086,000 18,202,000
Delhi 2,283,000 5,558,000 12,441,000 15,053,000
Kolkata (Calcutta) 5,652,000 9,030,000 13,058,000 14,282,000
Chennai (Madras) 1,915,000 4,203,000 6,353,000 6,918,000
Bangalore 1,166,000 2,812,000 5,567,000 6,465,000
Hyderabad 1,241,000 2,487,000 5,445,000 6,117,000
Ahmadabad 1,181,000 2,484,000 4,427,000 5,122,000
Pune (Poona) 777,000 1,642,000 3,655,000 4,411,000
Surat 311,000 877,000 2,699,000 3,558,000
Kanpur 951,000 1,612,000 2,641,000 3,019,000
Jaipur 402,000 984,000 2,259,000 2,748,000
Lucknow 644,000 993,000 2,221,000 2,567,000
Nagpur 674,000 1,273,000 2,089,000 2,350,000
Patna 359,000 881,000 1,658,000 2,029,000
Indore 389,000 808,000 1,597,000 1,914,000
SOURCE: United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects, 2007 Revision.

China and India can also be contrasted with regard to the quality of life in their
cities. Just the mention of India’s cities (Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi) conjures up im-
ages of extreme poverty that became even more familiar following the recent success
of the film Slumdog Millionaire. To an extent, these images are accurate. The first two
cities have large homeless populations, and all possess a declining quality of life. In-
dia’s cities are surrounded by shantytowns, called bustees, that grow each day. Their
presence has not prevented the city center from experiencing terrible overcrowding.
The population density of Calcutta, for example, has been estimated at 45,000 resi-
dents per square kilometer, with the overwhelming majority living below the poverty
line. Misery, disease, squalor, and malnutrition afflict the hordes of urban street
people. The urban implosion of India is the consequence of rural push factors as well
as urban pull. The “green revolution” that modernized India’s agriculture has been
relatively successful and has led to a decline in the number of people needed to grow
food in rural areas. As a result, in recent years more Indians are looking toward the
cities for their livelihood.
The uncontrolled migration of people from rural areas to India’s cities, on the
other hand, only makes a bad situation worse. In the 1980s, one observer noted:
The most serious problems are related directly or indirectly to the extreme short-
age of housing, and to inadequacy of physical and social infrastructures to meet
the needs of the urban low-and middle-income groups. . . . The shortages are the
principal cause of the progressive deterioration of the urban environment during
the past 20–25 years. Proliferation of slums is the most visible symptom of the en-
vironmental deterioration. The other major symptom is the rapid increase in the
levels of air and water pollution in or near the cities, far above the internationally
accepted levels for maintaining human health and safety. (Nath, 1989:264)
From 2000 to 2007, the population of India’s five largest cities increased by 7.4
million persons, most of whom moved into the shantytowns of these megacities. The
population of India’s largest urban agglomerations from 1960 to 2005 is shown in
Table 11.4.
Some of India’s cities, such as Delhi, have large areas that are middle class and quite
prosperous. Bombay was planned by the British as a colonial center and retains its
planned streets and residential districts that allow services to be delivered with some ef-
ficiency. It is a major center of industrial and service employment. In short, despite
their declining quality of life, India’s cities are not all mired in extreme poverty and
deprivation (Misra, 1978). However, the construction of new middle-class housing es-
tates and efforts to redevelop and improve the appearance of neighborhood areas has
had negative effects on many of the urban poor, as described in Box 11.5.
Chinese cities fared comparatively better under Communist rule. One of the first
acts of the Maoist regime in the 1950s was to eradicate the poverty and prostitution
Box 11.5
Urban Poor Made Homeless in
India’s Drive for More “Beautiful” Cities
Large areas of habitation of India’s urban poor have been forcefully taken over by city
government. The groups of people affected are often the ones who have been em-
ployed in informal sectors or are self-employed in the tertiary services sector. Their
displacement has as much to do with the space they live in as with the work they per-
form. The areas that they occupied are being transferred into larger private corporate
entities such as commercial complexes and residential developments. These units are
also often coupled with labor-replacing devices ranging from automatic tellers and
computer-aided machines to vacuum cleaners and home delivery services, thus elimi-
nating the work earlier done by the lower rungs of the urban population. While the
driving force behind these changes is manifestly the new globalized economy, it is of-
fered on an environmental platter of “cleanliness” and “beautification.”
In Chennai City, 40 percent of the population lives in slums—there are 69,000
families who have been identified to be living on government land—and they are to be
relocated to areas far removed from the city. The areas vacated will be taken over by ho-
tel resorts, commercial and residential complexes, and modern businesses. Much of the
“clearance” is being undertaken in the name of “beautification” and tourism.
In Kolkata (Calcutta), “Operation Sunshine” evicted over 50,000 hawkers from
the city’s main streets, and over 7,000 hutments were forcibly demolished along the
sides of storm water drains and the metro and circular rail tracks.
In Delhi, where substandard settlements house as much as 70 percent of the city’s
population, not only have vendors, cycle-rickshaws, beggars, and shanties been
“evicted,” but also 75,000 families who lived on the banks of the Yamuna River. The
resettlement colonies and industrial areas that were once supposed to be at the fringe
of the city are now contiguous urban sprawls. Increasing numbers of poor inhabi-
tants continue to live in shantytowns without services. Rapidly shrinking employ-
ment opportunities and crusading environmental activism have made the situation
significantly worse for them. While the city gets the Clean City Award from far-off
California, its own citizens grimly face critical inadequacies of work, shelter, civic
amenities, and governance.
In vicious combination, these three trends are changing the urban landscape from
“homes” to “estate ownerships” in the name of liberalization, privatization, and glo-
balization. The replacement of housing for poor urban dwellers with commercial
and upmarket developments raises several questions about the nature of “planning”
itself. Who makes these plans? Who are they made for?
SOURCE: Adapted from Dunu Roy, “Urban Poor Increasingly Made Homeless in India’s Drive
for More ‘Beautiful’ Cities,” City Mayors—Development (http://www.citymayors.com/sections/
development.html).
310
TA B L E 11.5 Largest Cities and Metropolitan Areas in China, 2000.

City Population Metropolitan Area
Shanghai 8,214,000 12,800,000
Beijing 7,362,000 10.800,000
Tianjun 5,855,000 9,300,000
Hong Kong 6,843,000 6,800,000
Wuhan 4.040,000 5,700,000
Shengyang 4,669,000 4,900,000
Chongging 3,127,000 4,800,000
Guangzhou 3,935,000 3,900,000
Chengdu 2,954,000 3,400,000
Xian 2,872,000 3,200,000
Changchun 2,192,000 3,000,000
Haerbin 2,990,000 2,900,000
Nanjing 2,678,000 2,800,000
Zibo 2,484,000 2,700,000
SOURCE: Adapted from City Mayors, The World’s Largest Cities; and United Nations, Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, Urban Agglomerations 2003.
F I G U R E 11.2 The Shanghai Tower. The three tallest buildings in the world are located in cities
in the developing nations. SOURCE: Rensler Architects.
endemic to the streets of Shanghai, the focal point of global colonial interests. City ser-
vices throughout China are regulated by the state and function to maintain the quality
of life. The Chinese government has also implemented strict measures of birth control,
and most families are not permitted to have more than one child. This state policy of
restricting population growth in a country of more than 1 billion people has had some
success among urban households but has been less successful in the countryside.
There is a visible contrast between cities in India and cities in China, as noted in
one of the first books about urbanization in China: “Slums and squatter settlements
seemed absent, conspicuous consumption and foreign oriented life styles were not
visible, a high degree of economic equality and security seemed to prevail, unemploy-
ment seemed absent, close-knit neighborhoods and families seemed to persist, and
crime, drug addiction, prostitution, and other forms of deviance seemed minor or
nonexistent” (Whyte and Parish, 1984:2–3). Twenty-five years later, despite adding
more than 280 million persons to the urban areas in China, there are still low levels of
unemployment and there are no slums (World Bank, 2009).
For many decades, a household registration system (hukou) kept urban growth in
check. Each person in China was assigned a residential location that defines accessibility
to state-provided benefits. This policy effectively regulated rural to urban migration—
one could move to the city but would not be eligible for health, education, or other ser-
vices. This policy began to change in 1985 when the Ministry of Public Security
authorized new regulations for the “Management of Population Living Temporarily in
the Cities,” and in 1988 the Ministry of Labor recommended that impoverished prov-
inces in the center of the country export labor to the growing industrial centers of the
coastal region (Guthrie, 2010). China’s urban strategies, including the important role
of the hukou are summarized in Box 11.6.
The urban system in China dates back many centuries, and the current clustering of
large cities follows from a pattern of development that was evident during the imperial
period (Xeh and Xu, 1984). But it has been strongly influenced by the coastal develop-
ment strategy—designed in part to decentralize political power away from the more
conservative voices in Beijing (Guthrie, 2010). During the 1980s and 1990s, there were
a number of important policy shifts that would open China to the global economy, in-
cluding the development of new industrial strategies, the creation of new economic
zones that allowed firms to take advantage of tax incentives targeted to specific types of
investment, aggressive export strategies, and (less obvious to the outside) the implemen-
tation of regionally specific development strategies within China itself. The 1979 Joint
Venture Law was the first series of regulations that allowed foreign capital into China.
This was followed in 1980 with development policies that created four special economic
zones (SEZs) in Fujian province (Xiamen) and Guangdong province (Shantou, Shen-
zen, and Zhuhai). The special economic zones were designed to increase investment and
foreign trade in the eastern and southern provinces, granting the coastal regions greater
autonomy for export trade.
Box 11.6
China’s Urbanization Strategies
In the rapidly urbanizing world of the twenty-first century, China is expected to

play an important role, chiefly because of its size and the speed at which it is chang-
ing. In 1980, China’s urban population was 191 million. By 2007, it was 594 mil-
lion, excluding migrants. About half of China’s population now lives in cities.
China’s phenomenal urbanization has become a focus of policy makers around the
world, both in terms of coping strategies and the benefits and challenges the coun-
try has experienced. What are some of the strategies that have helped manage the
explosive urbanization in China?
A cornerstone of China’s urbanization strategy has been the hukou, or household
registration system to control migration and to try to channel migrants to small or
medium-sized cities. There are crowded conditions but not slums in the cities. In-
creasingly, however, larger cities are relaxing the hukou rules, and there is an ongo-
ing debate about the future role of this system and what it portends for migrants’
access to urban services.
There is low urban poverty and unemployment. With the rapid growth of the
Chinese economy, urban poverty has been contained and is estimated at between 4
and 6 percent of the population. Despite the rapidly increasing urban population,
unemployment is also low, in the 3 to 4 percent range.
Another key element of China’s successful urbanization is the devolution of public
services and many administrative functions to city governments. In 2005, Chinese
citizens’ degree of satisfaction with local governments rose to 72 percent—consider-
ably higher than in many other countries, including the United States. China has also
been frugal about its use of land space for urban development: Cities now occupy
about 4.4 percent of the total land area. But urbanization has increased the income
gap between villages and cities, and problems of rural poverty persist. And there are
not as yet adequate services for migrants nor safety nets for the poor and elderly.
While China has coped more effectively than many countries with the demands
of urbanization, a number of urgent issues need to be tackled. Between now and
2025, another 200 to 250 million people will migrate to China’s cities. Providing
jobs and infrastructure for this anticipated inflow of people poses major challenges.
Rapid economic growth will remain critical. Urban residents use 3.6 times as much
energy as rural residents, suggesting that energy use is far from its peak. China suf-
fers from water scarcity, with just over 2,100 cubic meters of water available per
person—one-third of the world average. The situation is more precarious in the
northern part of the country, where climate change may worsen arid conditions.
SOURCE: Adapted from China’s Rapid Urbanization: Benefits, Challenges & Strategies (World
Bank, 2009).
The economic reforms and industrial policies have produced four main urban
agglomerations:
Liaodong Peninsula (Shenyang-Dalian): Shenyang in the north and Dalian in

the south are the dominant cities in this region; Shenyang is the major industrial
town and Dalian is the major port. Other cities include Anshan, Fushun, Benxi,
and Liaoyang.
Beijing-Tianjin: Beijing (the capital city) and Tianjin are the dominant cities of
this cluster located in the Yellow River valley. Other important cities of the
region include Tanggu and Tangshan.
Yangtze River Delta (Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou): Shanghai (the largest city
in China) is the dominant city of this cluster, which also includes the industrial
centers of Nanjing and Hangzhou.
Pearl River Delta: The former British colony of Hong Kong and the older
Chinese city of Guangzhou are the dominant cities in this region.
Cities located within these clusters are connected by railway, expressway, and canals
and are dominated by heavy industry. The Beijing-Tianjin and Liaodong Peninsula re-
gions contain China’s metal, machinery, petrochemical, and industrial centers. Newer
cities have emerged within these clusters, including Dongguan, Shenzhen, and Zhuhai
in the Pearl River Delta, and Changzhou in the Yangtze River Delta. Two other urban
agglomerations have emerged in the last two decades:
Shandong Peninsula: Jinan and Qingdao are the dominant cities in this region,
with Yantai as the major port of the region.
Fuzhou-Xiamen (Minnan): Fuzhou and Xiamen are the important cities in this
region, although they are not as dominant as the major cities in other clusters.
Development in this area will depend to some degree on relations with Taiwan.
The cluster city development promoted by the Chinese government has allowed
Chinese cities to link with other Asian countries on the Pacific Rim and form urban cor-
ridors that are expected to be the major centers of urban growth in the Pacific Rim in
the coming decades (Choe, 1998; Yusuf and Nabeshim, 2009). One example of this is
the Beijing-Seoul-Tokyo (BESETO) Urban Corridor shown in Figure 11.3. This eco-
nomic corridor links important manufacturing areas across three countries (China, Ko-
rea, and Japan) with emerging world markets across Asia, the United States, and Europe;
interestingly, the corridor also links countries with older established manufacturing
(Japan), one of the Asian Tigers (Korea), and the new manufacturing giant (China).
As a result of these policies, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, foreign
investment in China dwarfed that of Japan in comparable development periods.
While many in the West would complain that Chinese markets were closed to foreign
F I G U R E 11.3 The Beijing-Seoul-Tokyo (BESETO) Urban Corridor. The BESETO urban cor-
ridor links manufacturing areas across three Asian countries, including the industrial zones
around the capital cities of Beijing (China), Seoul (South Korea), and Tokyo (Japan). SOURCE:
Sang-Chuel Choe, “The Evolving Urban System in North-East Asia,” Fu-chen Lo and Yue-
man Yeung, eds., Emerging World Cities in Pacific Asia (New York: United Nations University
Press, 1996). http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu11ee/uu11ee0f.jpg
producers, the foreign investment regime was more liberal than that of either Japan or
South Korea, and manufacturers in other Asian countries moved their production to
China to take advantage of even cheaper labor (Guthrie, 2010:121). As the film doc-
umentary China Rising (2006) demonstrates, even older Chinese workers who found
stable employment in the factory system of the Communist era have been displaced
by low-wage labor in the emerging industrial centers.
Africa and the Arab Countries

Of all the continents, Africa presents the clearest case of the overurbanization/under-
urbanization dilemma. For the most part, the poverty, overurbanizationization, and
political instability endemic to this region reflect a legacy of years of colonial rule (Si-
mon, 1989) and the Cold War policies of the United States and the Soviet Union in
the period that followed. South of the Sahara Desert, the primate cities were all
founded as trading centers and located near the coasts or with easy access by water to
the coast. Some countries, such as Nigeria, have a moderately developed urban hier-
archy containing several cities: Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, and Oshogbo. However, most
countries, such as Kenya, are classic cases of primate city development. Kenya’s capi-
tal, Nairobi, with a population of 3 million persons in 2007, contained some 40 per-
cent of the country’s urban population. Here, as in most of Africa, the intermediate
level of the urban hierarchy (that is, cities with populations greater than 100,000 but
less than 1 million) is notably absent.
Africa contains fifty-four separate countries, and it is difficult to generalize about
the scale of development or urbanization. The north, which contains Arab countries,
is highly urbanized. In 2008, 85 percent of the Libyan population and 59 percent of
Morocco’s population were living in cities. Egypt contains one of the world’s most
populated cities, Cairo, with an urban area of nearly 11.9 million people in 2007.
Other sub-Saharan countries have rates of urbanization of between 40 and 50 per-
cent, although countries in eastern and central Africa generally have lower levels of
urbanization, and in several cases urban growth for the last decade or more has been
slowed or even declined due to political instability and conflict in countries such as
Ethiopia and Sudan. Table 11.6 provides information on urbanization for selected
African countries from the period 1980–2005.
Most African countries have a primate city land-use pattern similar to that of
other developing nations. The center consists of wide boulevards loaded with traffic
and passing in between high skyscrapers built in the common “international style” of
the developed West at the end of the twentieth century. Affluent natives and the for-
eign community make their home there. Beyond the glitter domes of development,
the core is surrounded by mile upon mile of shantytowns—the most depressing ag-
glomeration of ersatz housing imaginable—where entire families follow a precarious
existence and play the “life lottery,” hoping to acquire some meager portion of the
wealth circulating through the center.
Years of dominance and economic exploitation by colonial powers, coupled with
political conflict and poor local leadership, have left Africa in an undeveloped state.
Many countries continue to rely on natural resources and tourism for economic
growth, but political conflicts have discouraged travel to many countries. With the
discovery and exploitation of oil, Nigeria acquired considerable capital, as is the case
with Libya. However, most countries remain locked in the grip of poverty, with lim-
ited industrial schemes and weak rural economies. Without agricultural development
in the rural areas, migration to the cities is an inevitable result. Extensive squatter set-
tlements, or bidonvilles, have been characteristic of urban development of recent de-
cades (Aina, 1990; Schlyter, 1990).
The Arab cities are also scenes of uneven development. Cairo is known for its
cosmopolitan population but also for its squatter settlements, such as the inhabitants
of the immense cemetery, the City of the Dead, or the people known as the zebaleen,
TA B L E 11. 6 Urbanization in Selected African Countries, 1980–2005.
316
Living in cities of Living in

1 million or more largest city
Urban Population (% of total (% of urban
(millions of persons) percent population) population)
1980 1990 2005 1990 2005 1990 2005 1990 2005
Angola 1,500,000 3,900,000 8,500,000 37 53 15 17 40 33
Cameroon 2,700,000 4,700,000 8,900,000 41 55 14 20 20 20
Congo 7,700,000 10,500,000 18,500,000 28 32 15 17 35 33
Egypt 17,900,000 24,200,000 31,700,000 44 43 22 20 37 35
Ethiopia 40,000,004 6,400,000 11,400,000 13 16 3 4 28 25
Libya 2,300,000 3,400,000 5,000,000 79 85 49 55 44 42
Morocco 8,000,000 11,600,000 17,700,000 48 59 16 16 23 18
Nigeria 19,100,000 31,700,000 63,400,000 35 48 11 14 15 17

Senegal 2,000,000 3,100,000 4,800,000 39 42 17 19 44 45
South Africa 13,300,000 18,300,000 27,800,000 52 59 25 30 10 12
Sudan 3.900,000 6,900,000 14,800,000 27 41 9 12 34 31
Zambia 2.300,000 3,300,000 4,100,000 39 35 9 11 23 31
Zimbabwe 1.800,000 3,100,000 4,700,000 26 36 10 12 34 32
SUMMARY 317
who live off of other people’s garbage at the massive city dump (Abu-Lughod,
1969). Most Arab countries have medium-size cities and have not experienced a
large rural exodus because their hinterlands have always been sparsely settled. The oil
kingdoms of the Middle East have utilized their great wealth to create cities with
modern architecture, such as Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and Dubai in the United Arab
Emirates. These cities have been designed to showcase the wealth of the Arab states
and to attract wealthy tourists from Europe; built with a workforce recruited from
other Middle Eastern countries and from southern Asia, they are dependent on the
oil industry monoculture.
SUMMARY
Many countries in the developing world have been mired in a vicious cycle of over-
urbanization/underurbanization for many decades. The failure of agricultural devel-
opment in rural areas means future populations face starvation or migration. The
limited success of urban economic growth and the toxic effects of the World Bank
and other institutions’ efforts to install free market trade policies means that cities in
the developing nations, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, will continue to play a
marginal role in the global economy. Without balanced policies of development,
these countries will face a bleak future. The issue is not simply growth and industrial
development financed by developed nations. Rather, there is a need for linked policies
that improve agricultural production on the one hand and urban economies on the
other. Especially in places such as Asia and Africa, it is essential that rural populations
be stabilized so that the migration pressures on cities can be relieved. Yet development
that is led simply by global capital investment will not head countries in that much-
needed direction.
For example, in the 1980s the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
encouraged developing countries to build enterprise zones of manufacturing that
would capture global investment. However, this development has come at a price
because much of the labor force in developing countries consists of young women be-
tween sixteen and twenty-five years old. The movement of young women from their
home villages to secure employment in the city disrupts traditional family structures.
These women once constituted the backbone of traditional agriculture. With the
young female population working in factories, rural agriculture in many countries is
on the verge of collapse. The decline of rural economies pushes more and more people
into the cities or, in the case of Mexico, to move across national borders.
Shantytowns are growing rapidly in response to continued population expansion.
São Paulo, Brazil, and Calcutta, India, have millions of residents in their favellas and
bustees, while Mexico City’s colonias populares (irregular settlements) are said to con-
tain as much as 60 percent of the city’s population (estimated at 18 million in 2000).
The pattern of shantytown/central core uneven development is the exact opposite of
what is found in developed nations, where there are maturing and relatively affluent
suburbs surrounding a declining urban core. But more important, the gap between
the wealthy and the majority of the population is quite enormous.
For the most part, governments in developing nations have failed to achieve a bet-
ter quality of life for their citizens. As we have seen over the last two decades, domina-
tion of the economy and the government by the ruling class leads to harsh measures
of social control, hyperaggressive police, death squads, and repressive political dicta-
torship rather than enlightened policies of social reform. The passion of the people in
developing nations manifests itself as a political clash between the fortunate few
backed by the government and the afflicted and disadvantaged. As the urban popula-
tion in these countries grows to some 5 billion persons in the next twenty years, with
a majority having incomes below the poverty line and living in massive urban slums,
the demands for social reform are likely to increase. While China has charted a sepa-
rate course for economic development and managed urban growth, it is unlikely that
the expansion of global capitalism will be able to meet the needs of persons in devel-
oping nations. For the immediate future, the response of people and governments in
the developed world will likely focus on repairing the economic turmoil that began
with the housing crisis in the United States and that has left national, state, and local
governments around the globe with few resources for programs in their own commu-
nities, much less in the developing world.
KEY CONCEPTS
uneven development
colonialism
internationalization of capital
demographic transition
primate city
shantytown
informal economy
crony capitalism
overurbanization / underurbanization
1. The global economic system is increasingly important to the developing na-
tions. Discuss the relationship between the two. In what ways has modernization
theory changed because of the influence of the global system?
2. Discuss the importance of demographic change in studying urbanization in the
developing world. How is urbanization in these countries different from that found
in developed nations?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 319
3. Urbanization in developing countries is often characterized by the dominance

of a primate city, overurbanization, shantytown development, and the important
role of the informal economy. Define and discuss these concepts and give an example
of each.
4. Discuss how urban social movements in developing countries have addressed
poverty, uneven development, women’s rights, and other social issues.
5. What are some of the important differences in urban development in Latin
America, Asia, and Africa? What factors might account for these differences? Which
theoretical model (dependency theory, modernization theory, world systems theory,
or the sociospatial model) might best explain these differences?
6. China has charted a new course for economic growth and management of ur-
ban growth. How was this accomplished? What are the consequences for the devel-
opment of the urban system?
CHAPTER
12
METROPOLITAN PLANNING AND

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
I n May 2008 , the Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman was in Berlin, and
he wrote an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times that began, “I have seen the future,
and it works.” He went on to extol “this marvelous urban environment” with its pitch-
perfect public transportation servicing medium height high-rise buildings embedded
in a larger urban-scape of commercial service establishments and green areas. He then
commented: “It’s the kind of neighborhood in which people don’t have to drive a lot,
but it’s also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in America, even in big metro-
politan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as greater Berlin—but
Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.”
The Nobel Prize winner is speaking here not as an objective scientist, but as another
tourist from America, and one who subscribes to the subjective bias against suburban
sprawl. As any other observant visitor to Berlin can attest, he leaves out other aspects of
the experience: the mixed groups of drug addicts loitering around select public places
including open-air heroin users and speed freaks; Nazi skinheads roaming the very
community transportation corridors Krugman lauds; sectors of the city that could be
called slums in the American style, except that the housing is better maintained and
the streets are cleaner; and, despite the popularity of Berlin, an increasing and denser
development of the region outside the city for the kind of single-family homes that are
most characteristic of the United States and that he seems to dislike despite the fact
that he probably lives in one back in Princeton, N.J., where he is a professor.
To be sure, Krugman has an excellent point and his comparison between Berlin
and Atlanta is well taken. However, any tourist comparing American and European
urban development patterns for public consumption, such as this Op-Ed columnist,
must be held responsible for pointing out the single most important reason for the
contrast. Simply put, European cities have fought sprawl and have a more “rational”
public mode of living that includes clustered high-rises and efficient public trans-
portation precisely because in Europe planners have political power and leverage over
land use built by profit seekers. America has nothing comparable because Americans
321
322 12: METROPOLITAN PL ANNING AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
dislike public housing and government planning and are generally opposed to govern-
ment regulation and intervention. The fundamental ideological divide between these
societies could not be more different. Witness the frustrating and irrational response
average U.S. citizens have made in opposition to government-sponsored health insur-
ance during the summer of 2009. European countries adopted universal health care,
in contrast, scores of years ago. At about the same time, in the post–World War II era,
they also sanctioned local and national planning schemes for housing and the con-
struction of the kind of public transportation mix of buses, trains, and bike lanes that
are so impressive to visitors from the United States like Krugman. In short, Europe’s
long past commitment to public, government control over land-use planning can
only be dreamed about as an American future.
It remains to be stated clearly that the typical U.S. citizen’s opposition to govern-
ment planning ideologically benefits the real estate profit making industry more
than it does those same citizens. Such ironies are typical of America because capital-
ist pursuits of profit have long dominated public discourse and many people possess
beliefs about the putative “evils” of government intervention that are actually against
their own best interests. Active urban planning and universal health care are, per-
haps, the two best examples contrasting American and European societies.
Yet it must also be noted that Krugman and other casual tourists are wrong in
their impressions in another context. We have already provided ample evidence show-
ing how the emergent form of urban living and working arrangements is the multi-
centered region. This is increasingly true for many European societies as well, even
with their strong public planning regulations still in place. Single-family home living,
long the norm of housing in the United States, is progressively more attractive to Eu-
ropeans, not to mention residents of other countries around the globe. Can we really
claim today that a majority of citizens in other societies prefer living in high-rises,
even if they are only modestly built to four or five stories, rather than pursuing the
dream, often referred to as an American one, of owning a single-family home? The
public versus private option is currently being debated in many places in Europe that
were once unchallenged bastions of government land-use control and planning. To be
sure, the historical commitment to the kind of clustered neighborhood development
admired by American tourists, like Krugman, continues to define most European
cities even after having abandoned the fully fledged welfare state in the twenty-first
century. But increasingly, and visibly, areas around historical central cities are being
developed for profit and for low density, multicentered metropolitan living, just as it
has been ever since the 1920s in the United States.
One excellent example of these contemporary changes is the city of Espoo, Finland,
which belongs to the greater Helsinki metropolitan area—a typical multicentered region
like those in the United States. Espoo is the second largest city in Finland and has a pop-
ulation of over 240,000. It also has its real estate privatized, despite planning and unlike
the larger city of Helsinki, where the municipal government still maintains control over
land use and, by contrast, possesses the kind of immense planning powers admired by
SPRAWL 323
critics of American urbanism. Espoo itself contains the contradictions that come from
changes in welfare state capitalism characteristic of Europe. On the one hand, it en-
velops the city of Tapiola, a world famous planned “garden city” that was built in the
1950s and is still thriving. Tapiola was designed according to the strict government clus-
ter planning once well known in the United States, during that same post–World War II
period, in places such as Garden City, New York (see below for a discussion of this
movement). On the other hand, Espoo is home to the new headquarters complex built
by the giant electronics corporation, Nokia, which is a private business and no doubt
possesses executive and other well-paid high-tech employees who prefer to live in private
single-family homes, own cars, and like to drive to work, much as their well-paid coun-
terparts in sprawling and “dysfunctional” Atlanta, Georgia, like to do.
There is a critical difference between Espoo and Atlanta, and one that still marks
the difference between the relatively unplanned landscape of the United States and
the once highly planned one of Europe. Any person, young, old, healthy, confined to
a wheelchair, pregnant, pushing children in a carriage, or walking a dog or bicycle
can, if they have the not inexpensive fare, take a bus or a combination bus and tram
and travel wherever they like within Espoo, between Espoo and Helsinki, or any of its
surrounding areas. And they can do so using a clean, efficient, safe transportation in-
frastructure with convenient and frequent service. The same certainly cannot, by any
stretch of the imagination, be said of Atlanta and almost all other American metro re-
gions where, as Krugman notes, the car reigns supreme.
Critics of the U.S. approach to urban development consider the present pattern
evil because of its almost exclusive reliance on cars. This is perceived as wasteful of en-
ergy and other resources, a contributor to global warming, and excessively expensive
to individuals. But there is another evil equal to the much maligned auto. The multi-
centered metro form of urban space embodies, at its core, the phenomenon of sprawl.
Perhaps this characteristic is the single most targeted aspect of our current way of liv-
ing that is viewed in a most negative light. We have argued that the multicentered
metro region functions, on a much grander scale, just as compact central cities once
did by providing locations for jobs, leisure activities, government offices, organized
entertainments such as professional sports, which take place in stadiums, educational
facilities of all kinds, commercial and retail businesses, and millions of housing units
for local residents many of which represent the norm of single-family homes. In order
to accomplish this task, social organization that is regional in scale and relies on the
car as the main means of transport assumes the perceived pattern of sprawl. For an in-
creasing number of urban professionals in the United States, sprawl is a serious eco-
nomic and environmental problem that our society can no longer afford.
SPRAWL
In the earlier pages of this text we have argued that the contemporary growth pattern of
our urban areas is a new form of sociospatial organization. We call it the “multicentered
metro region.” Sprawl can be the most serious outcome of this new form, but most crit-
ics of it fail to connect the cause to the development of the region, just as Krugman
failed in his observations above. Instead they invariably dream of a solution that would
bring large compact cities back, and by concentrating significant numbers of people in
select spots, they also dream of a return to open, green spaces surrounding these metrop-
olises. We call this a dream because it is. On its most fundamental level it fails to recog-
nize that most Americans, when given a choice, do not want to live that way and that
there are important economic forces pushing business locations at a further remove
from the historical downtown core. In the United States, sprawl remains the serious
problem that it is, not because the centrifugal force pushing out is so much stronger
than the centripetal one pulling toward the center, but because so little power has been
given to planners and regulators of land use that they have been unable to modify its
shape throughout the larger region for more rational conservation of resources and be-
fore it has turned into our present pattern of endless ticky-tacky homes and strip zoned
highways. To suggest that sprawl can be stopped and that we can return to a city-
centered mode of living for everyone, which virtually all critics of sprawl eventually
claim, is to ignore the other and even greater causal force operating today in our human
environment: the ability, under a capitalist system of land marketing, to supercede mu-
nicipal boundaries and to spread out. What is needed is not a return to compact city
forms, with higher density residential living, but greater power to plan for minicenters
and clustered neighborhood development in suburban regions, even if they will remain
dominated by the norm of the single-family home.
The recognition that sprawl is a major environmental problem has its own social
history. In the 1950s, it was suburbia, rather than sprawl, that drew the ire of critics.
As we have seen, a mass movement to single-family living outside the historical cen-
tral city began during that time. By 1970, only twenty-five years after World War II,
more Americans were living in suburbia than in our large cities. As this phenomenon
picked up speed and came to define the very nature of growth in the Sun Belt, with its
own massive ingestion of population from other parts of the United States, suburban
life, despite all its critics in academia and in the architectural and planning profes-
sions, became the normative form of American living. Endless sprawl, particularly ev-
ident in those same Sun Belt regions or in areas like Long Island, outside our largest
and oldest Northeast cities, emerged as a consequence and its critique by the very
same group of professionals eventually supplanted complaints about suburbia itself.
Results of unregulated regional growth are quite troubling now. For example,
Phoenix, Arizona, one of the fastest growing Sun Belt regions, increases its area about an
acre an hour, while Atlanta, Georgia, is now spread out more than the entire state of
Delaware. According to a report that was released in 2001, sprawling development
claims farmland at a rate of 1.2 million acres a year; an average suburban family now
makes ten car trips a day and owns at least two vehicles; and commuting in slow mov-
ing rush hour traffic wastes an estimated $72 billion a year in fuel and productivity
SPRAWL 325
(Mitchell, 2001:58). In previous chapters we have also seen that extreme racial and in-
come segregation is a consequence of sprawl. And adding to all these woes is the fact
that outward development around metro cores gobbles up open space, grasslands,
forests, and farmlands at a pace that threatens the very balance of nature in our country,
thereby making it mandatory to import basic food products that were once grown lo-
cally and in abundance. In supermarkets today we buy products that have no fertilizer
or pesticide information regarding how the garlic, lettuce, tomatoes, and other com-
mon vegetables are grown in lands as far away as China.
Fighting Sprawl Through Smart Growth

Fighting sprawl presents society with the inevitable issue of providing planners with
more powers. However, few places in our country have been willing to give govern-
ment greater control over land use. The general term for a more aggressive approach is
called “smart growth,” and it is a combination of tax incentives, buyouts of farmland
(called land banking), and better planning of new developments so that they are more
concentrated and can be serviced by public transportation. As early as 1967, the state
of Oregon, under its governor, Tom McCall, moved to preserve farmland that was
being rapidly gobbled up by suburban development by declaring set boundaries for
cities and by land banking open areas in order to preserve green space. Portland, Ore-
gon, went even further in the hands of several activist mayors by establishing a metro-
politan planning agency that not only maintained its city boundary and green belt,
but also by investing heavily in new public transportation in order to make living
within the city of Portland more attractive than the surrounding suburbia. For some
time, in the 1990s, Portland was lauded as precisely the kind of pedestrian friendly,
clustered dwelling, and public transport–using city that could be found in Europe and
that has attracted the attention of American tourists like Paul Krugman. Lately, how-
ever, the center in Portland has not held. Reports are becoming common about devel-
oper violations beyond its growth barriers. The once admired Portland green belt has
been breached by building. In sum, aggressive planning to prevent sprawl is still the
main tool advocated by opponents, but simply put, it may be impossible in the
United States to invoke so-called smart planning without having to live with its daily
violations that inevitably lead to the further expansion of the metro area without more
rationalized cluster development in minicenters.
A second important component of smart growth is investment in light rail public
transportation that competes with automobile commutation. Once again, very few
areas in our country have been able to succeed in constructing competitive light rail
projects. Although they exist in a number of cities, not enough money has been in-
vested in their passenger capacity in order for them to begin to replace people’s re-
liance on automobiles for commutation. Furthermore, despite some early support in
the urban renewal days of the 1960s when the federal government provided cities
with funds for public transportation projects, limited funding has been common-
place ever since. Put succinctly, while the federal government is the obvious actor
that could bring about the success of light rail projects throughout America, it has
provided only piecemeal hit-and-miss support for many decades while abdicating a
more aggressive role.
Portland has a successful but very modest facility called the Metropolitan Area Ex-
press, or MAX. It services communities within the existing municipal boundary.
MAX has succeeded within this context, although it hasn’t become a solution to
sprawl because it has been combined with strong planning controls on developers
thereby pushing growth further outside the core. In contrast, Atlanta also has a light
rail facility, called MARTA. Too limited in scope and without any coordination of
clustered planning on its route, this version is a failed attempt to provide the region
with adequate public transportation. A third example is Metro Rail in the city of Buf-
falo, N.Y. Under Great Society legislation during the 1960s, adequate federal funds
were provided to the region for a showcase project. Yet suburban interests and feuding
local politicians worked against this mandate, and eventually the reactionary subur-
ban residents triumphed and blocked the infrastructure of public transport from ex-
tending beyond the city line. Heavy auto dependency and sprawl in the now familiar
pattern followed quickly. In short, one of the things that makes the study of sprawl
such a frustrating problem is that we have the tools to cure many of its ills; however,
residents in metro areas other than Portland have rejected the aggressive use of those
tools. What’s more, even Portland has been so subjected to the powerful centrifugal
forces producing a spreading regional pattern that it has failed to stop the hemorrhag-
ing of farmland and forest loss.
A SHORT HISTORY OF
METROPOLITAN PLANNING
The story of sprawl testifies to the fact that land-use planning in the United States is
weak, and the responses of tourists to places in Europe where it remains strong con-
firms this observation. Yet it cannot be asserted that metropolitan planning has not
been tried in this country. Just the opposite. Every town, village, municipality,
county, city, and state has its own planning authorities. Any budgeted government
function must comply with providing such an organizational entity that supervises
its assigned oversight duties. Purchasing and planning go along with this activity as
does cooperating with private developers and people investing in land for profit.
Most commonly, government presence has been felt in metro areas in order to
build and operate public housing or subsidized housing projects precisely because the
private sector has been unable to provide the same. As we have seen, the failure of our
capitalist society to solve the affordable housing crisis has led, instead, to our current
economic meltdown with its use of subprime mortgage lending. In the 1950s the
A SHORT HISTORY OF METROPOLITAN PL ANNING 327
government went into the business of segregating poor people and placing them in
high-rise public housing projects. Results of that effort were largely disastrous. In
sum, the lack of affordable housing is a central contradiction of American society and
has plagued us for centuries, even when local governments were given the authority to
plan aggressively for the construction of public housing.
Pruitt-Igoe, for example, was a massive public housing project constructed in the
early 1950s in St. Louis, Missouri. It was inspired by the work of the leading architect
of the postwar generation, Le Corbusier of France, and executed in design by several
famous architects, including Minoru Yamasaki. The project consisted of thirty-three
eleven-story buildings with a total of 2,700 apartment units on a site that encom-
passed almost sixty acres (about one-tenth of a square mile). The project represented
the zenith of government-sponsored high-rise/low-income housing construction. Yet
residents experienced problems almost immediately after Pruitt-Igoe opened in 1954
(Montgomery and Bristol, 1987). Elevators broke down and were not repaired. Chil-
dren were injured playing in corridors or stairwells that could not be monitored ade-
quately by adults. Crime began to terrorize residents due to the large scale of design
that allowed muggers to remain hidden. People complained of isolation from friends
and neighbors.
Within five short years after Pruitt-Igoe opened, occupancy rates were already on
the decline despite the subsidized rent. By 1970, vacancy rates in the buildings had
reached more than 50 percent.
The St. Louis housing authority made the fateful decision that the problems with
the project were insurmountable and ordered its complete demolition. By 1976, the
entire project was torn down. Pruitt-Igoe was a combination of architecture design
following modernist principles that pursued progress in human/spatial relations and,
simultaneously, a type of government intervention that made apartments at subsi-
dized rents available to poor people. Architectural critic Charles Jencks sets this date
as the time when modernist ideas about the promise of architecture as promoting so-
cial progress gave way to the postmodern period with its abandonment of such lofty
aspirations (Holston, 1989).
With the failure of Pruitt-Igoe and other public housing projects came the real-
ization that modernist architecture and government intervention in public housing
required reexamination. In Chicago, the Cabrini-Green housing projects are now
being dismantled and replaced by single-family town houses (see Box 12.1).
Within the metropolitan region, we find separate agencies devoted to planning
that employ significant workforces at each level of government, including each city,
suburb, and township within the metropolitan area, plus a countywide and regional
planning department! Yet our metropolitan environments seem to be characteristi-
cally unplanned. This “planning paradox” (see Gottdiener, 1977) exists because in the
United States planners have very little direct power to enact their schemes and for the
most part are confined instead to advisory roles. The civic culture of the United States
Box 12.1
Redevelopment of Cabrini-Green
In 1929 Harvey Zorbaugh published his study The Gold Coast and the Slum, a
description of Chicago’s wealthy lakefront neighborhoods along Lake Michigan
(the Gold Coast) and of the slum area of tenement housing just half a mile in-
land. In the 1950s, the slum area was cleared and replaced with some two dozen
high-rise public housing units called Cabrini-Green. In the early years most of
the occupants were white, but by the 1960s the area was almost entirely com-
posed of poor black families. The film Cooley High (1966) was shot at the local
high school of the same name. By the 1980s the projects, sometimes called the
worst in America, had become symptomatic of all that was wrong with public
housing in the United States: All of the residents had incomes below the poverty
line; most units were single-parent households; and drugs, gangs, and crime
were rampant. In 1996 Dantrell Davis, a seven-year-old boy, was shot and killed
while walking to the elementary school across the street from the project, still
holding his mother’s hand.
For years the site remained not simply a black spot in the city’s history but also a
controversial area with respect to plans for urban redevelopment. Many floors of
the buildings were boarded up and some of the buildings were vacant, while the re-
mainder sported large graffiti showing which gangs controlled the buildings. The
Chicago Tribune sponsored a design competition for the best redevelopment plan
for the area. Neighborhood organizers charged that the city wanted to turn the land
over to real estate developers for middle- and upper-class housing close to the
downtown area, and city planners looked for ways to relocate low-income house-
holds that would be displaced by the removal of the buildings. Finally, in 1998 and
1999, eight of the high-rise buildings were demolished in a scene reminiscent of the
earlier destruction of the Pruitt-Igoe projects in St. Louis.
In the area adjacent to the project, new townhouses selling for $180,000 were
built by a developer, and in 2003 a Starbucks opened in a strip mall across the
street from the projects, seeming to confirm the fears of neighborhood activists.
But along with the 65 new units in the Mohawk North condominium develop-
ment are 16 units of public housing. From the outside, the public housing units are
indistinguishable from the private development, and the floor plans of each unit are
similar “railroad flats” common to both older and newer housing in this area of the
city. By dispersing low-income households and creating, in effect, a mixed-income
housing development, the city hopes to eliminate the problems of concentration
and isolation of poor families described by Massey and Denton in Urban Apartheid
(1993). In the coming decade, the high-rise public housing developments will dis-
appear, to be replaced by new row houses—perhaps the end of the slum described
some seventy-five years earlier in The Gold Coast and the Slum.
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANDUSE PLANNING 329
has always resisted direct intervention in the market by government. Compounding

this restriction is the problem of the urban planning profession in our society. Most
schemes come from the private sector, but even when they emerge from public bu-
reaucracies, like Pruitt-Igoe or Cabrini-Green, they most often reflect the ideas of ar-
chitects who believe they can create successful living and working arrangements for
people through principles of design and the control of the built environment alone.
Recall that Pruitt-Igoe appeared to be first-rate on paper and represented the highest
ideals of the modernist school of architecture but turned out to be a total failure in
practice. These limitations to urban planning invite a sociological analysis, which is
presented in the next section.
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANDUSE PLANNING
The Advisory Role of Planners

The most basic kind of planning involves zoning for land use. Based on the principles
that like activities should be located near one another and that industrial activities and
residential areas should be separated, zoning partitions metropolitan space into dis-
tinct areas for each activity. Space is partitioned into zones reserved for residential use,
commercial activities, and industrial work, among other functions. Planners use de-
tailed maps to draw up land-use guides that constitute the zoning master plan. In
most cases, such a plan needs to be adopted by local residents or their elected repre-
sentatives. Thus, the ability to plan is restricted by the advisory role of planners. In
the end, the public and elected officials determine whether a plan will be accepted
and also whether it will be accepted in total or with modifications. Changes and mod-
ifications are always a possibility with land-use schemes, and both planners and archi-
tects may not like the final result.
Planners also work with elected officials and representatives from the business
community to develop new uses of land. They may set aside land or help design an
industrial park for factories and businesses, an office tower or city skyscraper com-
plex, a mall, or a large residential development. New developments require infra-
structure planning as well as the construction of the buildings themselves. Roads
have to be put in along with sewer and utility lines and the like. The impact on the
surrounding area also requires careful thought and planning. New developments,
just like zoning schemes, must be approved by local political authorities. Sometimes
citizens object to new growth, and developments can be blocked or changed accord-
ing to local resident desires. Most of the time, however, local elected representatives
approve growth, since that is the priority of city government. Local communities of-
ten feel they must compete against one another to develop new industrial parks,
shopping malls, and office centers, adding to the pressures for growth across the met-
ropolitan region.
Physical Determinism
Architects who like to plan for social effects, as well as many planners, believe that op-
timal living and working arrangements for people can be achieved through the use of
construction, design, and landscaping technology. This approach assumes that
people’s behavior can be controlled or channeled into desirable forms through the
manipulation of physical design. As Herbert Gans (1968:28–33) has argued, this
commits the fallacy of assuming that physical design will determine personal behav-
ior. As social scientists are aware, behavior is determined by a complex relation of var-
ious social processes interacting in and with spatial forms rather than through the
influence of the physical environment alone. In practice, planners and architects seem
to ignore the social basis of behavior and falsely believe that construction design by it-
self can bring about desired change, such as increasing the frequency of neighborly in-
teraction. Physical determinism, which privileges the abstract space of the planning
professional over social space, has been responsible for some spectacular failures of
planning, including the Pruitt-Igoe and Cabrini-Green housing projects, where it was
thought that new architectural designs would somehow alleviate the social problems
brought about by social exclusion. Perhaps the newest and most important example
of the fallacy of physical determinism is the ideology of the “New Urbanism.”
The New Urbanism

This contemporary movement of architects and planners includes among its members
Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jaime Correa, Steven Peterson, Barbara Lit-
tenberg, and Daniel Solomon. More so than any other single factor, New Urbanists are
opposed to the present-day pattern of metropolitan sprawl and see it as both an im-
mense waste of resources and a blow to the well-being of central cities. Calthorpe and
Fulton (2001), for example, critique the existing form of urban planning, which de-
signs zoning areas that separate residential from commercial and industrial use. They
see such restrictions as old-fashioned and more relevant to a time when industry was
messy and polluting. Now our economy is based on information processing, and most
of its economic activities are environmentally clean. For this reason, Calthorpe and
Fulton, as New Urbanists, advocate planning for cities that has a mix of residential,
commercial, and manufacturing or global economic functions. In their view, plans re-
specting these new realities would, among other things, do away with regional sprawl.
A major criticism of their approach is that they take as given the activities of both
planning agencies and local governments. Their argument centers around the belief
that metropolitan regions would look better “if only” planning were better. This belief
fails to respect the way private interests in pursuit of profit circumvent and even sub-
vert plans. Real estate interests have a habit of taking what in their view is best about
urban planning and disregarding the other recommendations in order to make money.
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANDUSE PLANNING 331
In short, it is not an outdated form of planning, as Calthorpe and Fulton contend,

that is the culprit behind sprawl and inefficient land-use schemes but the relentless
pursuit of profit through real estate. The latter is often followed by subverting govern-
ment regulations and by having planning schemes modified or even discarded.
Another aspect of the New Urbanism is the belief that the behavior of people can
be altered for the better through more enlightened architectural design. As the enemy
of the present-day sprawl pattern of development, New Urbanists seek, through archi-
tectural design, to create residential communities with a high degree of both neighbor-
ing and street life. According to their charter, “We are committed to re-establishing
the relationship between the art of building and the making of community, through
citizen-based participatory planning and design” (Fichman and Fowler, 2003:18).
New Urbanists seek to build up cities by first constructing neighborhoods and
communities with active citizen participation that are then connected to larger dis-
tricts and areas within the metropolitan region. At the most local level, architects like
Duany and Plater-Zyberk believe that residential communities can be physically de-
signed to promote neighboring, even though many metropolitan residents prefer net-
working and possess communities without locality. For this reason, their designs
feature houses with porches and emphasize pedestrian pathways rather than streets for
automobiles. An excellent example of their ideas put into practice is the new residen-
tial development Seaside, a community of 300 homes and 200 apartments on 80
acres located one hundred miles west of Tallahassee, Florida. Its human scale is accen-
tuated by residential housing that is consciously based on the forms of a century ago.
All houses have front porches, and most are located on pedestrian paths rather than
roads. Lots are small and narrow to facilitate social interaction among neighbors.
Communities such as Seaside also incorporate many construction features dictated by
architects that play an uncertain role in promoting a new sense of community, such as
the mandated use of tin roofs or tall, narrow house windows. The elitism of architec-
tural choice may not appeal to everyone.
New Urbanists, like many architects, believe that social goals such as encouraging
neighboring and stemming sprawl can be achieved through the physical means of de-
sign and construction. This is a fallacy. Residents of communities do not behave in
certain ways simply because well-known architects direct them to do so. Neighboring,
in particular, may be facilitated by the presence of porches, but it is not the determin-
ing factor. Rather, people create neighborhoods by establishing primary relations with
neighbors. They have to want to do so. Many do not because their local reference
groups are spread out across the metropolitan region and elsewhere, and yet they can
keep in constant communication with these significant others through cell phone and
Internet technology. This pattern is known as “community without locality,” as we
have already discussed. Studies of Seaside and Celebration, another New Urbanist
development in Florida, confirm that because the housing is quite expensive, the resi-
dents are almost exclusively affluent middle-class Americans. These people prefer their
far-flung “communities without locality” to relying on neighbors alone. Furthermore,

communities cannot be created merely by facilitating pedestrian traffic. Many people
are so dependent on their automobiles that they ignore the role of sidewalks in their
daily life. While commercial shopping facilities may be located in New Urbanist de-
velopments, residents are more likely to use their cars in order to shop where they
please throughout the metropolitan region, as exemplified by the failure of the “Up-
town District,” a project in San Diego, California.
Some of the most influential planned projects today have come not from contem-
porary architects and theorists of community development but from utopian thinkers
who created coherent plans for growth involving theories of design that are still con-
sidered important today. The final section of this chapter addresses these ideas.
UTOPIAN SCHEMES:
HOWARD, LE CORBUSIER, AND WRIGHT
Idealistic thinkers in centuries past lamented the evils of civilization and created a
genre of literature known as utopian writing. Plato’s Republic might be the earliest ex-
ample, but the consummate vision belongs to Thomas More’s Utopia. These accounts
of some fictional paradise provide us with a means of measuring the prospects of hu-
man endeavor by showing how we can perfect ourselves and our society even while
exploring our all too frail shortcomings as a species. Over the centuries, utopian liter-
ature has provided important inspiration to socially concerned individuals, as has the
equally fascinating genre of dystopian writing, especially science fiction’s dystopian
accounts of life in future cities (such as William Gibson’s 1984 book, Neuromancer).
Utopia, from the Greek word meaning “no place,” and dystopia, a more recently
coined expression that means an imaginary place of dread, are examples of places that
exist elsewhere in time and space. While the former usually signals the modernist
theme of progress, the latter represents our fears about the myth of progress. This
yearning for the perfection of settlement space and the realization that it may never be
attained due to the limitations of our civilization constitute an important strain in
Western literature and cinema. The philosopher Henri Lefebvre (1991) calls all such
spaces that exist in our minds as imaginary places heterotopias. As mental conceptions,
heterotopias have the ability to influence our behavior and to define prospective
schemes for architects and planners.
In nineteenth-century Europe, when the evils of industrialization and urbaniza-
tion became a major social concern, individuals exercised the utopian spirit by con-
ceiving of alternative urban environments. Some of these modernist visions were
highly influential in the planning and architectural professions, and indeed by the
twentieth century, architects no longer confined themselves to the design of individ-
ual buildings but composed manifestos and schemes that addressed the living and
working arrangements of the entire city space itself. Among the important conceptu-
U TO P I A N S C H E M E S : H O WA R D, L E CO R B U S I E R , A N D W R I G H T 333
alizers of new urban environments are Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier, and Frank
Lloyd Wright. The modernist vision of each was expressed, respectively, as the Garden
City, the Radiant City, and Broadacre City.
The Garden City

Ebenezer Howard, who lived during the turn of the last century, was a social reformer
in England. Like others of his time, including Friedrich Engels, he was appalled at the
social costs of British industrialization. Some thinkers, such as Robert Owen, re-
sponded by founding a utopian movement that advocated the construction of com-
munities (such as New Harmony, Indiana) that would counteract the evils of the
industrial city but required a fundamental break with acceptable ways of family or so-
cial life. Howard’s response was to propose an alternative way of living that everyone
could follow, even those uninterested in the utopian movement’s social change.
To Howard, the city represented the future of economic growth, but it was, to ex-
press it directly, a lousy place to live. In contrast, the rural areas remained in organic
harmony with their surroundings, but they were afflicted with limited economic op-
portunity. Howard’s vision combined the two. He proposed that all new industrial
growth be channeled to new locations in outlying areas that would combine indus-
trial employment with country living on a moderate, human scale. These “garden
cities” would represent the very best of city and country living.
The concept of the garden city proved to be very powerful (see our discussion
above of Espoo and Tapiola, Finland). Capitalist industrialization in the nineteenth
century knew no bounds. The older cities were crowded and polluted, and large cities
gobbled up their adjacent countrysides in a relentless process of accretion. Because
planners understood that growth was inevitable, they were attracted to Howard’s idea
of breaking urban expansion off and aspiring to locate new industry and housing in
moderate-size communities.
Howard’s ideas influenced the “new town” movement in England, which was re-
sponsible for building hundreds of such places, as well as the measured establishment
of medium-size cities in Russia, although the latter case does not embody the ideal of
the “garden,” or suburbanized urban environment. In the United States, a group of ar-
chitects, notably Clarence Stein, popularized Howard’s approach. Working with local
authorities and developers, they constructed several places across the country, includ-
ing Garden City, New York, outside of Manhattan, and Baldwin Hills, California, lo-
cated in Los Angeles. Ebenezer Howard lived to see the opening of the New York
community in 1928. In practice, most of the American garden cities lack their own in-
dustry and hence are little more than middle-class suburban housing developments
with some interesting features, such as shared public spaces. These ideas, all derivative
of Ebenezer Howard’s vision, are still put in practice by developers of large suburban
residential projects such as planned unit developments, or PUDs.
The Radiant City

Le Corbusier was the professional name of the Swiss-born French architect Charles-
Edouard Jeanneret (1887–1965). Along with several German architects, such as Walter
Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier is considered the founder of the
international style of design and one of the leaders of the modernist movement in archi-
tecture. The type of building associated with this movement is familiar to anyone who
has seen the skyline of a large city, because the design concepts took over the world of ar-
chitecture following World War II. International-style buildings are clean, straightfor-
ward, rectangular shapes with flat roofs. They are framed in steel and feature large glass
windows that are sealed shut. Not until the postmodern architectural revolt of the
1980s were downtown office buildings liberated from the dictates of this concept.
Le Corbusier was influential because he propagated certain ideas about city living
instead of confining his practice to building design. He believed in the triumph of
technology over social conditions of industrialization. Buildings themselves were to be
“machines for living,” that is, the most efficient designs for the sustenance of everyday
activities. The urban environment would itself have to be changed to conform to the
dictates of more enlightened architectural design. Because Le Corbusier lamented the
terrible social costs of industrialization, he proclaimed the modernist rallying cry, “Ar-
chitecture or Revolution,” sincerely believing that capitalist countries had little choice
but to follow his ideas or confront the revolt of the urban masses.
Le Corbusier’s ideas and those of his contemporaries constituted the ideology of
modernism, which legitimated the notion of progress and the improvement of hu-
man conditions year after year through the intervention of technology. Modernist
ideology asserted that the lot of individuals could be improved by the acquisition and
application of knowledge—scientific, technological, architectural, social, and psycho-
logical. Part of modernist culture was the celebration of architecture and “modern”
ideas about city planning.
Le Corbusier’s plan for an entire metropolis, the “radiant city,” reordered social
space across a large, industrial aggregation. Instead of the relatively low density of
housing and chaotic land use that was characteristic of the cities at that time, Le Cor-
busier proposed that buildings should be high-rises. By condensing the living space
using building height, open spaces would be liberated, and Le Corbusier envisioned
these spaces as parks that would surround residential clusters, thereby transforming
the congested, sprawling industrial city into an open, airy, and efficient place of mo-
bility and light.
A second important feature of the new design followed from Le Corbusier’s and
the modernist belief in the virtues of technology. Le Corbusier believed that the wide-
spread use of public transportation and auto modes of transport would vastly improve
the efficiency of urban scale. He proclaimed the “death of the street,” that is, the
pedestrian thoroughfare characteristic of all cities in the past. He envisioned instead
U TO P I A N S C H E M E S : H O WA R D, L E CO R B U S I E R , A N D W R I G H T 335
rapid movement facilitated by autos, trains, highways, and feeder roads of people and
commodities between the various nodes of urban space, residences, factories, shops,
and government buildings.
The lesson of Pruitt-Igoe and Cabrini-Green (see discussion above) illustrates the
deeply ingrained physicalist fallacy of Le Corbusier. Construction design, which disre-
gards social process, cannot alone change everyday life. Unfortunately, the modernist
ideas of the international style, and especially the concepts of Le Corbusier, were highly
influential in urban planning through the 1960s. Along with Pruitt-Igoe, another major
tragedy of planning in this vein is exemplified by the case of Brasilia, the capital city of
Brazil, which was constructed following Le Corbusier’s idea of the radiant city. De-
signed by the architects Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer in 1960 and located in the in-
terior 600 miles from the Rio de Janeiro coast, Brasilia looks like a giant bird from an
aerial view. But on the ground, its limitations have become legendary. The “death of the
street” produced an austere, alienating environment in which urban life is shrouded in
anonymity. Neighboring and community interaction have all but disappeared because
of the inability to overcome the automobile-based lifestyle and the imposing super-
human social scale, which has led to feelings of isolation and anonymity among resi-
dents (Holston, 1989).
The city was built to be the country’s new capital, and so government adminis-
trators and their support staffs find employment there. However, Brasilia has failed
to attract the diverse kinds of industry and everyday life that would convert it to a
major city. Brasilia, among other austere creations of modernist city planning, re-
minds us of the perils of physical determinism and the need for architects to work in
conjunction with social science to bring about an improvement of urban conditions.
Broadacre City
Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–1959) was the premier American architect for most of the
past century. His ideas, unlike Le Corbusier’s, are still appreciated today, even if some
of his designs have become outdated. Wright was no modernist. In fact, he was much
influenced by the crafts movement in the United States and by Asian architecture,
particularly the Japanese use of interior space. Wright believed that structures should
be organic extensions of natural environments. Houses, for example, should emerge
from the crown of the hill rather than being built at the top, since the latter should be
reserved for nature. They should embody a fluid connection with the world outside,
and their construction should celebrate natural materials and settings, as exemplified
by the Kaufmann home, Falling Water House (built in 1936), outside Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. This summer home is made of concrete that is stacked like pancakes on
three levels (called cantilevering) so that it sits on a rock above a forest stream. The
water flows under the lower level and out over a falls. Sitting in the living room, one
can watch the water flow and hear the stream as it runs over the rock below.
Frank Lloyd Wright was not enamored with the American city that he saw devel-
oping after World War II and wrote that with each new skyscraper he saw only the
death of the city. Wright’s vision of the new city possessed some similarities with that
of Ebenezer Howard, especially the desire to merge the city and the country, except
Wright thought in modular terms. Instead of a single, human-scale community,
Wright envisioned an immense metropolis whose internal structure reduces space to
a human scale through modular design. Each family would be assigned a single-
family home on an acre of land! The space would enable families to grow their own
food and modify their surroundings according to their own personal tastes. Houses
would be arrayed on an expansive grid. Wright also liked the possibilities of the auto,
and his Broadacre City assumed that the car would be the basic means of transporta-
tion. Each place would be accessible by interconnected roads and highways feeding
into and out of grids. Commercial shopping would take place in regularly spaced
shopping centers, and industry would be isolated in specifically designed factory ar-
eas that were zoned exclusively for business.
Wright’s scheme seems almost like the massive suburban environments of
today—and indeed Wright saw little need for the city. He was one of the earliest ar-
chitects to envision the concept of the shopping center, and his factory-zoned area is
recognizable as the industrial park of the present, a common feature of metropolitan
environments. The key element of Wright’s vision, however, seems elusive, namely,
the one-acre allotment of land that resolved the city/country dilemma at the smallest
scale of each individual family. While suburban residences often have ample back-
yards, these are reserved for leisure activities, including, perhaps, a swimming pool.
But Wright’s vision of every family providing for its sustenance through backyard
farming seems far removed from the realities of metropolitan life.
Our review of architectural visionaries provides us with some alternative ways to
think about massive metropolitan environments and reminds us that urbanized land-
scapes do not necessarily have to assume the form they now possess. The present-day
approach to metropolitan development seems oblivious to other ways of building ex-
cept unending sprawl. But alternatives are possible; only the continuing belief in
physical determinism, which wrongly suggests that architecture and urban planning
can alter social processes, needs to be abandoned. Developers combining proper de-
sign with environmentally aware social science that draws on the legacy of utopian
ideas have had some successes, such as the towns of Columbia, Maryland, and Gar-
den City, New York.
PLANNING CRITICS: JACOBS AND KRIER

Ideas about planning have benefited from the work of critics who have taken both
architects and the planning profession to task for neglecting the human values em-
bodied within social space (Mayo, 1988). Two of the most influential critics are Jane
Jacobs and Leon Krier.
PLANNING CRITICS: JACOBS AND KRIER 337
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs (1961) is concerned that we preserve the city as a viable place to live. She
believes that the best cities have a vital and active street life. Her critique of urban
planning claims that too many projects have ignored the role of human interaction
as providing the lifeblood of city culture when most city inhabitants live in apart-
ments with restricted space. For Jacobs, active urban life can never be planned be-
cause people invent uses for space. They accommodate the pursuit of their needs to
the streets, parks, and playgrounds that they find around them. City planning that
discourages this social interaction through the limiting of public or social space re-
sults in the destruction of the city itself.
For example, adolescents who live in the city spend a good deal of time out on
the streets. Over the years, an incredible variety of street games has arisen using this
space, and many of these have been handed down through the generations, such as
“Ring-a-Levio,” “Johnny on the Pony,” hopscotch, rope-jumping games, and stick-
ball. Skateboarders and others make use of urban spaces in ways never envisioned by
architects and planners (Bordain, 1999). Projects planned only in terms of efficient
automobile traffic (such as Le Corbusier’s radiant city or Brasilia) arrange for wide
thoroughfares that are heavily traveled. But such efficiency in the name of trans-
portation destroys the ability of children to use the streets for play. Can you imagine
active street games in the immense auto corridors of Los Angeles or on the well-
traveled two-way streets in your community? In contrast, Jacobs celebrates the streets
and advocates blocking them off on a periodic and temporary basis to allow for
neighborhood interaction. This is precisely what many cities do when they sponsor
neighborhood festivals during the summer months.
According to Jacobs, human-scale public spaces in the city, such as sidewalks,
parks, and playgrounds, provide people with a number of resources: (1) They consti-
tute learning environments for children; (2) they allow for parents’ surveillance of
the neighborhood and their children’s activities; and (3) they facilitate intimate, pri-
mary relations among neighbors, thereby providing a strong sense of community.
Jacobs’s ideas have had a strong impact on the way urbanists and planners think
about city life. Local governments encourage park use, street festivals, temporary
blocking of community roads, and toleration of sidewalk vendors. But not all of Ja-
cobs’s ideas have been accepted. Some of her followers advocated the elimination of
elevators in apartment buildings to facilitate neighborly interaction, but the results
were disastrous for the residents of these buildings. Planners who emphasize revital-
izing streets and city parks must take the high crime rate into account; in many
cities, downtown revitalization efforts using Jacobs’s ideas have failed due to the fear
of urban crime on the part of suburban residents. Jacobs’s ideas about community
may also be passé. Many city residents socialize with networks of friends and rela-
tives who do not live nearby, as we saw in Chapter 8. Teenagers may prefer to travel
to their own friendship networks rather than socialize on the street. On the whole,
however, Jane Jacobs’s ideas have influenced urbanists because she captured the heart
and soul of urban culture. Her importance lies in convincing us that urban culture
depends on the relationship between personal interaction and public space. The fact
that this culture is in danger of dying today is certainly not the fault of her concep-
tion. As we direct our attention to metropolitan regions, it is important to ask
whether her ideas are equally relevant for suburban settlement spaces.
Leon Krier
Although Leon Krier is a contemporary architect practicing in Germany, his ideas
have been highly influential in the United States in recent years. Like Jacobs, his
main concern is revitalizing urban culture. He views this as principally a problem of
scale: The contemporary city has grown too large to shelter a livable environment,
and it is necessary to return urban building to a human scale. Krier’s model of the
city is the preindustrial town, and he advocates a return to the type of building char-
acteristic of societies hundreds of years ago. In this sense, Krier is a critic of mod-
ernist ideology and one of the inspirations for postmodern architecture.
According to Krier, settlement space should be divided into districts with no
more than 15,000 people in each subdivision. Ample use is made of squares, monu-
ments, and public spaces, which should have the proportions of the classical pre-
industrial towns. These changes, inspired by “retro” thinking, would return urban
space to a human scale. Krier also has his critics (see Dutton, 1989). More so than
Jacobs, he commits the fallacy of physical determinism. He ignores social process
and the larger societal forces that make up the modern city, and the kind of transi-
tion in scale that he envisions would be difficult for all but the most affluent resi-
dents. Krier’s proposal, like those of most architects, also commits the elitist/populist
fallacy. He never asks what people want; he only dictates design prescriptions
through abstract space.
Despite these drawbacks, Leon Krier’s work has had an enormous influence on
architects designing new communities in the United States who seek to overcome
modernist ideology, especially the New Urbanist movement (see above). Among his
most significant disciples is the team of Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk.
Krier’s ideas have been influential because there is a growing sense that typical subur-
ban communities have isolated people unnecessarily. At the same time, these ideas
seem destined to be realized by the most affluent but remain unavailable to the aver-
age family interested in a suburban home.
OTHER TRENDS IN PLANNING TODAY

In contrast to the New Urbanism and its projects, which dictate a design of human
scale, other recent developments in both urban and suburban settlement spaces have
OTHER TRENDS IN PLANNING TODAY 339
embraced projects that are notably large in scale. Projects such as the building of the
garden city Columbia, Maryland, and the construction of Battery Park City at the
tip of Manhattan are large in scope and encompass many acres. Large tracts of land
have been converted from agricultural use in the suburbs or cleared of slums in the
city core. These mega-projects usually incorporate mixed-use developments of hous-
ing and commercial shops. Due to the influence of planning critics, however, many
of these designs incorporate human scaling despite their large size.
Among the most successful developers of large but human-scale projects is James
Rouse, whose company built the Baltimore Inner Harbor, Faneuil Hall in Boston, the
South Street Seaport in Manhattan, and the Santa Monica Mall. The Baltimore,
Boston, and New York projects in particular were constructed on deteriorating, un-
used land that was revitalized. Rouse’s success involved a blending of open spaces, rea-
sonably priced and varied eating places, and upscale shops. Such redevelopment
transformed spaces of bleak prospect into vital urban centers with an active public
life. The Baltimore Harbor project, for example, consists of a large horseshoe of open
space that surrounds the shore of the harbor inlet. Concrete steps lead to benches and
play areas. One section is devoted to an array of alternative and moderately priced
eateries. Two attractions, the Baltimore Aquarium and the Revolutionary War battle-
ship Constellation, also draw visitors.
Another of Rouse’s successful developments is Columbia, Maryland, a new town
that mixes apartment and single-family home construction with accessible and us-
able open space and shopping areas. The entire project has been planned to conform
to human scale and includes pathways totally dedicated to pedestrian use that link
the various sections of the town. As one observer notes:
In Columbia the size of residential areas was determined primarily by the number
of households needed to support an elementary school. The Rouse Company, as
developer, insisted that within a block of the school there be a swimming pool, a
community building, and a convenience store, and that people be able to walk or
bike to these facilities without crossing any major streets. Three to five neighbor-
hoods made up a village, which offered more facilities, including a supermarket, a
bank branch, and other businesses, also accessible by the community’s forty-
seven miles of walking and biking paths, as well as by car. (Langdon, 1988:52)
The success of the Rouse Company has influenced the way other mega-projects
have been designed. In New York City, for example, a ninety-two-acre section of the
dilapidated downtown with few residential units was demolished to build Battery
Park City. The project consists of high-rise apartments, offices, and shopping facili-
ties. Located at the southern tip of Manhattan, the development makes ample use of
its view of the Hudson River. Residential blocks are integrated with an esplanade
that includes spaces to sit and socialize with neighbors. Many other projects across
the country, such as RiverPlace along the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon,
have adopted the successful approach of human-scale residential blocks, mixed com-
mercial and housing land use, and pedestrian amenities to provide a more attractive
environment for residents.
SUMMARY OF PLANNING ISSUES

People in the United States regard planning with suspicion. They prefer to defend in-
dividual property rights and the home rule prerogative of local government control
over land use. Although every jurisdiction, no matter how small, seems to have its
own planning department, professional experts are relegated to an advisory role. Plan-
ners must maneuver within this politically constrained milieu by exercising their in-
fluence on developers, speculators, homeowners, renters, local community activists,
and public officials (Weiss, 1987). It is not an easy task. In the main, the professional
planners employed by business and government devote their time to working out the
ordinary details of mandated land use and construction requirements. They pursue
the unglamorous job of drafting site usage plans for developers, reviewing and updat-
ing zoning maps for local governments, and assessing traffic studies. They also collect
and review demographic information on the present and future growth patterns of in-
dividual towns. But this bureaucratic domain of activity remains removed from the
active task of fashioning environments in which other people will live.
As we have seen, the limitations placed on professional planners have not prevented
individuals from dreaming their dreams of the perfect city. Visionaries and utopian
thinkers have tried their best to lead citizens of modern society toward some Eden that
actualizes the promise of industrial progress. Some ideas, such as Howard’s garden city,
have been influential enough to affect future generations. Colossal failures, such as the
superhuman building blocks of Le Corbusier’s radiant city (actualized in every high-
rise public housing project, not to mention the ashes of Pruitt-Igoe), have also been
helpful because they have shown what we cannot or should not do. Happily, visionary
plans are tried sometimes, and even more happily, most of the time on a small enough
scale so that the human cost of failure is not dear. We learn from mistakes and successes
as our knowledge of planning human environments accumulates.
One important lesson that has recently been learned concerns the yearning for
human-scale places in the face of unending metropolitan sprawl and the experience
of immense, impersonal city space. Developments today feature an informed use of
space. Macro-environments, such as the Santa Monica enclosed mall, are composed
of many mini-environments that nurture sociability. The huge Battery Park City proj-
ect opens itself out to the surrounding urban fabric and natural setting, providing for
social interaction through human-scale public spaces and the extended esplanade on
the Hudson River. Finally, as we have seen, new towns developed in their entirety
(such as Columbia, Maryland) succeed by devoting space to pedestrians and thereby
providing alternatives to automobile transportation to perform everyday tasks such as

shopping, leisure activities, and commuting to work and school.
A return to human scale alone, however, even through the best efforts of planners,
will not save the declining quality of life in either our central cities or our massive,
sprawling suburbs. As discussed in Chapter 9, the high level of crime has taken an im-
mense toll on the free use of urban space, not to mention its cost in lives. We can
rightly wonder what will happen to the Hudson River esplanade and its pedestrian
traffic if it becomes a haven for muggers. How enjoyable would the miles of pedes-
trian paths of Columbia, Maryland, be if the community were not isolated from the
realities of homelessness and destitution characteristic of inner-city districts? The
growing problems of land use, congestion, traffic jams, housing blight, environmental
pollution, and suburban sprawl spur the public to search for planned solutions to ur-
ban growth. These and other problems may yet encourage local citizens to give up
their traditional and narrow concern with protecting their property rights in favor of
a more coordinated approach to development. Yet the problems of the metropolitan
region have societal roots that are not easily addressed by technical recommendations
without massive social change.
These contradictions are clearest when we study the impact of environmental
pollutants on communities. As we shall discuss, the burden of costs for society’s
progress seems to fall on poor and minority neighborhoods. Government at all levels
participates in producing this pattern of discrimination. In many communities, air
pollution affects and endangers the lives of everyone, rich and poor. Environmental
problems are found in all metropolitan regions and require economic, political, and
social responses in addition to better-quality spatial design.
As sociologists have noted, professional planners, government officials, and ar-
chitects would probably remain limited by their own outlook even if they were given
more power. They preach the fallacy of physical determinism, which holds a blind
faith in the power of construction technology and design to alter social relationships.
Rarely do they profess what Frank Lloyd Wright saw as the organic, holistic needs of
families and households. They are more comfortable with limited prescriptions that
conform to the dictates of their professions’ focus: building design and construction
for architects, landscaping or land-use schemes for planners, or political expediency
for politicians. Much more is needed to control the forces of development in the
United States, but little public debate seems to be devoted to the issue of planning or
the search for alternatives to our deteriorating environment.
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
On October 1, 1980, the Love Canal section of the small town of Niagara, New York,
located near the Canadian border, was declared an environmental disaster by President
Carter. He ordered the permanent evacuation of all families from their homes. This
action followed after two previous evacuations beginning in 1978 (Gibbs, 1981:5). Be-
tween 1920 and 1953, the area, an uncompleted canal, was used as a dump site for
toxic chemicals from both the private sector and the federal government, particularly
the U.S. Army. Homes had been built on top of landfill after the site was no longer
used for dumping. Residents who lived along the canal had been exposed for many
years to carcinogens from the toxic wastes that leaked into groundwater and oozed to
the surface. In the 1970s, some of the 1,000 families that lived near the canal site be-
gan to complain about the high incidence of cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and
central nervous system diseases (Gibbs, 1981:3). Once the full extent of the poisoning
became known, evacuations proceeded, but this action came too late to save many
people from contracting cancer and other environmentally caused health problems.
On April 26, 1986, a nuclear power plant located in Chernobyl, near the Ukrain-
ian capital city of Kiev, exploded. The blast ignited the graphite moderating core of
the reactor and resulted in the unleashing of intense radiation across a wide area of the
former Soviet Union and Western Europe. Fallout from the disaster was measured as
far away as the United States and showed up in the dairy production of countries such
as Norway, but the most severe effects were felt by hundreds of thousands of people
living in the small towns in the area (Marples, 1988). Had the winds been blowing
northward at the time, the Ukrainian people’s historic city of Kiev (population 2.4
million) would have been destroyed along with countless lives. Official figures from
the Soviet Union listed thirty-one people killed by the accident, but other estimates
are as high as 500 (Marples, 1988:42). It was also estimated that as many as 50,000
people may have been directly exposed to excessive radiation, with nearly 500,000
premature deaths predicted over subsequent decades. The disaster forced the perma-
nent evacuation of persons and homes from a thirty-kilometer zone, but over
100,000 children outside this area were also taken from their families to avoid expo-
sure. Thousands of people were treated for radiation sickness. To this day, the region
contains “hot spots” that are a threat to life.
Unfortunately, the above examples are not isolated cases. The United States, for
instance, had its own potential nuclear catastrophe when the Three Mile Island reac-
tor near Middletown, Pennsylvania, began emitting radioactive steam on March 28,
1979. That emergency was controlled without immediate loss of life or property.
Many countries around the world have toxic pollution sites and unsafe radioactive
facilities within their borders that compromise the health of citizens every day.
In this chapter, we will use the sociospatial perspective to study environmental is-
sues that result from, and create problems for, the expansion of urban and suburban
settlement space. Because the living and working arrangements in modern societies
impact the health and well-being of all residents, questions raised about environmen-
tal quality have as much to do with spatial issues as they do with economic develop-
ment. The environmental question and its relation to sociospatial development raise
a variety of issues. One set deals with the nature of constructed space, or “second na-
ture,” as Henri Lefebvre (1991) calls it. These issues involve the activity of planning,
which seeks to obtain the best living and working arrangements in developing cities.
The built environment, any built environment, such as a city or a mall, possesses
attributes that may enhance or hinder the functioning of its use. Elements of the en-
vironmental fabric such as streets, pedestrian pathways, automobile corridors, and
housing complexes can be placed in harmony with one another to facilitate the move-
ment of people and vehicular traffic throughout the constructed space. Planning and
architectural design address these kinds of issues. In addition, urban and metropolitan
governments have sought to incorporate sound environmental principles into future
plans. This type of planning is called “sustainable growth,” and it has emerged as a
very important perspective today.
A separate set of questions involves the inherent quality of the environment. What
are the outcomes and by-products of social activities? What effects do the different
types of activities, such as manufacturing, have on population groups within their
vicinity? Who pays the environmental costs for development? What is the environ-
mental impact of growth on the health and well-being of citizens? These and other
questions frame the discussion of urban and suburban settlement spaces as a built en-
vironment. Let us explore this topic first and relate it to metropolitan considerations.
Environmental Quality
All societies seek to improve their quality of life through industrial development. Some
countries, such as the United States, already possess a heritage of more than one hun-
dred years of industrialization. Although all human activities produce waste products
that may adversely affect others, such as the effluent problem in an ancient city like
Beijing, the scale and intensity of the environmental costs of industrialization are un-
precedented. Manufacturing results in by-products that are toxic to animal and plant
life; energy generation affects the temperature and quality of water and air with conse-
quent effects on living things; and the extraction of natural resources, such as gold, re-
sults in environmental damage, such as the releasing of toxic metals into forest streams.
Societies around the globe have always put developmental desires above environ-
mental concerns. In places such as China, Brazil, and sections of Europe, the health-
related impacts of industrialization weren’t even publicly recognized until quite
recently, as we saw in Chapter 11’s discussion of Shanghai’s pollution problem. For
many centuries, all societies have held an unwavering belief in the idea of progress.
Technology, science, and industrial growth, it is commonly understood, hold the
promise of making our lives better and better. At present this assumption has been
called into question by some environmentally conscious individuals. According to
Murray Bookchin (1990:20), the certainty that technology and science will improve
the human condition is mocked by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, massive
hunger in the developing world, and poverty in the first world.
Most Americans appreciate the quality of life made available to them by the ac-
complishments of industrialization, but environmental activists suggest that this com-
fort for the relative few, globally speaking, has been acquired at a phenomenal cost to
the many around the world. Furthermore, the unprecedented scale of human devel-
opment today has resulted in global effects such as the widening hole in the ozone
layer, global warming, acid rain, the eradication of plant and animal species, and the
increasing threats to fresh drinking water. In response, environmentalists have called
for a new ordering of global priorities that would seek out environmentally enhancing
methods of industrial production and safe technologies (Naess, 1989; Gore, 1992).
This means redefining the relationship between humans and settlement space on this
planet. As the level of awareness about these environmental issues increases across the
globe, perhaps the issues of growth and development will be reexamined. New, envi-
ronmentally sound methods of production and safe technologies such as rechargeable
electric cars may usher in a transformed relation between people and the Earth that
preserves the well-being of both. Environmental concerns translate into new jobs and
industries so that ecologically conscious development can be compatible with saving
the planet (Kazis and Grossman, 1982).
The above concerns have been part of the environmental movement in the United
States for some time. In the classical phase of activism, which began in the 1800s,
Americans sought to protect large areas of the country from development and endan-
gered species from destruction. Naturalists such as John Muir (1838–1914), who won
protection for places like Yosemite and led the fight to establish the national parks sys-
tem, and organizations such as the Audubon Society, which has been at the forefront
of the fight to save native birds and other wildlife, are examples of the classical phase
of environmentalism (Bullard, 1990). In the twentieth century, the mature phase of
activism attacked the unbridled nature of industrialization in the United States. Con-
cerned citizens fought for regulatory agencies, the passage of environmental statutes,
and the establishment of industrial standards for control of pollutants. Over the years,
regulations and legally binding statutes have been passed by both the federal and state
levels of government. In 1970 the mature phase efforts culminated in the establish-
ment of a separate federal agency under the executive branch, the Environmental Pro-
tection Agency (EPA), which serves as the public’s advocate and coordinates research
on environmental issues. In the 1970s, the EPA was granted powers to regulate
mileage standards for automobiles, thereby leading to the production of fuel-efficient
engines. Although there is still much work to be done and an imminent need for resi-
dents of the United States to rethink their relationship with the settlement space of
advanced industrial society, the classical and mature phases of environmental activism
have accomplished a great deal. This is especially the case when we consider the sensi-
tivity many Americans have acquired in the past several decades to the need for fuel
economy, recycling of waste products, and the search for safe technologies.
A third type of activism is grassroots or community efforts. Advocates of grass-
roots mobilization point out that while social concern about environmental quality
is quite high in the United States, there is little appreciation for the social equity and
social justice aspects of environmental impacts (Gale, 1983). These impacts are dis-
tributed inequitably across settlement space, creating a particular sociospatial dimen-
sion to the differential impact of costs. As one observer puts it, “An abundance of
documentation shows blacks, lower-income groups, and working-class persons are
subjected to a disproportionately large amount of pollution and other environmental
stressors in their neighborhoods as well as in their workplaces” (Bullard, 1990:1).
The classical and mature phases of environmental activism have drawn in thou-
sands of people, but the overwhelming majority of them and the concerns they express
are those of the middle class. The environmental costs paid by poor and minority
people have largely been ignored. This sociospatial pattern of environmental costs is
most revealing. Love Canal in New York State was situated within a white, working-
class community, and it was these people who paid the price of toxic pollution. In Ala-
bama, the town of Triana was judged to be the unhealthiest in America (Reynolds,
1980:38). The residents of Triana are black, and they have been poisoned by the pesti-
cide DDT and the chemical PCB from a creek whose quality is the responsibility of
the federal government. Time and again research shows that society continues to pro-
duce toxic pollution and that poor and minority communities are its victims (Bullard,
1990; Berry, 1977; Blum, 1978).
Many of the hazards that differentially affect minorities and the poor are the conse-
quence of industrial location patterns. Factories, chemical plants, mills, and the like are
located in areas isolated from middle-class residential space. Because housing costs are
lower in settlement spaces constructed around manufacturing areas, this is where poor
people are more likely to live. Chemical emissions, spillovers of toxic by-products, un-
pleasant smells, and loud noises are just some of the hazards that affect these relatively
powerless communities. These areas are often selected for unwanted land uses (or
LULUs) such as landfills, toxic waste dumps, and effluent treatment plants. Hence, even
though regulations have increased for safeguarding environmental quality, they have
also led to injustices in the disposal of environmental threats, especially because of the
inequitable siting of toxic dumps and landfills. For example: Four landfills in minority
zip code areas represented 63 percent of the South’s total hazardous-waste disposal ca-
pacity. Moreover, the landfills located in the mostly black zip code areas of Emelle (Ala-
bama), Alsen (Louisiana), and Pinewood (South Carolina) in 1987 accounted for 58.6
percent of the region’s hazardous-waste landfill capacity (Bullard, 1990:40).
The differential locational impacts of environmental costs and the issues of social
equity that they raise have yet to be addressed. Most communities seek to avoid be-
coming hosts to activities that represent social problems, such as outpatient mental
clinics, halfway houses for criminals, and drug treatment centers. They advocate not in
my backyard, or NIMBY, politics, which makes location a struggle that the least pow-
erful community loses. The same is true for LULUs such as hazardous waste dumps or
landfills. But allowing the stronger to make the weaker pay for all of society’s costs vio-
lates principles of social justice.
In recent years, grassroots activists have organized poor and minority communi-
ties to fight for their rights. They are forcing the larger society to rethink environmen-
tal issues. If toxic dumps are unfair to any community, why not design production
operations to minimize environmental damage? If landfills are becoming a problem,
can’t recycling and other, even more imaginative schemes be considered for the ever-
increasing volume of garbage we all produce? How can we reorder our priorities to
avoid having people pay unfairly for pollution? These and other questions frame the
agenda for grassroots organizing and environmental activism in the years to come.
This agenda has also become central to the “environmental sustainability” movement.
Sustainable Growth
The concept of “sustainable growth” derives from the environmental movement but
it has also had an immense impact on urban planning. For this reason it ties together
the two concerns of this chapter.
Local governments deploying this concept frame future growth in terms that also
relate to environmental goals. They pursue planning for development that, at the same
time, asks the following question: How can we sustain and improve the environmental
quality of life defined as a series of concrete planning targets? Another term for this ap-
proach is the “livable cities” movement. As noted above in the discussion of planning,
while these concepts are all sound, they require strong government controls in order to
be put into effect. Now, in the twenty-first century, with environmental concerns in-
creasing and becoming more commonly placed on the public’s political agenda, there
is some hope that if people do not wish to provide planners with power to control
sprawl and suburban development, they may opt to do so for ecological reasons to pre-
vent further decline in the quality of life due to our global environmental issues.
Sustainable development uses concepts from the ecological movement to guide
this form of “smart growth.” Environmentalists define the impact of any activity as its
“ecological footprint.” Taken together, the way in which a metro region uses resources
and the effects of its activities on the environment define its unique “footprint.” The
stated goal of sustainable growth is to reduce that footprint to as small an impact as
possible. The use of recycling, mass transit, electric or hybrid vehicles, use of solar en-
ergy and other renewable energy resources, and citizen activities aimed at cleaning up
vacant lots, streets, and highways are but a few of the tools applied in the pursuit of
sustainable growth. Sustainable growth has meant a renewed role for local govern-
ment; in this case, it becomes the manager of environmentally aware development.
Activist positions by administrators instigate change and mandate that environmental
concerns be addressed. This approach also means that local communities and neigh-
borhoods must be transformed into activist organizations that pursue improvements
in environmental quality. In fact, the local community component of sustainable
growth is quite critical to its success. One problem emerging in recent years with this
movement is that more cities and metropolitan areas claim to be pursuing sustainabil-
ity than are actually doing so. Consequently, there is a danger that the term may just
be used as an election slogan rather than a concrete goal of local administrations. A
study by Portney (2003) found that of twenty-five cities in the United States that pro-
claim they are pursuing sustainability, only eight had actually taken the goal seriously.
Furthermore, there is a more serious problem when no apparent linkage is made be-
tween ecological measures and planning for smart development. Thus, people might
be very enthusiastic about recycling, and most places in America have public sanita-
tion services that support this activity, but there is absolutely no connection made be-
tween this activity and reducing the waste of natural resources immediately adjacent
to the built environment by greedy developers and indifferent public authorities who
both ignore the need for better regional planning to avoid sprawl.
Portney also uncovered a third problem with the putative push to “sustainability.”
Cities and metropolitan regions vary considerably with regard to what they understand
to be sustainable environmental issues. Some places emphasized environmental quality
most directly. Others included adequate health care, proper schools, and an acceptable
standard of living as goals. According to Portney’s study, then, there is no guarantee
that pursuit of sustainability necessarily means pursuit of environmental quality. When
the term is found as part of a governing agenda, there is also no guarantee that mea-
sures deployed will be pursued actively until they are successful. Finally, as we have
seen, there is also no direct linkage in virtually all places with environmental programs
to stronger land-use planning controls aimed at managing sprawl. Despite these draw-
backs, the sustainable development movement is becoming increasingly popular in the
United States as public awareness grows regarding serious environmental problems and
the costs of growth. As mentioned above, while little sympathy is given to advocates
wanting to abandon the so-called American way of life that emphasizes auto use and
single-family homes as the norm, increasing environmental issues resulting from that
way of living may push us in the direction of significant changes towards more sustain-
able patterns.
Increased public involvement in the planning process is needed to refocus atten-
tion on those issues that affect our daily lives rather than on the profits to be reaped
from development and the increased tax revenues that accompany urban growth. It is
up to America’s leaders and citizens to become more involved in a protracted dialogue
regarding the kind of environments they prefer to live in. One last source of reform
remains unexamined so far: the activities surrounding the drafting and execution of
public policy and state intervention. We will consider this topic in the next chapter.
KEY CONCEPTS
sprawl
smart growth
planning paradox
physical determinism
New Urbanism
sustainable development
IMPORTANT NAMES
Ebenezer Howard
Le Corbusier
Frank Lloyd Wright
Jane Jacobs
Leon Krier
Andrés Duany
1. Environmental problems must be considered as a sociospatial issue. What are
some examples of sociospatial inequalities and environmental problems that you are
aware of in your community?
2. The textbook suggests that physical determinism and the elitist-populist
dilemma are major shortcomings with urban planning. What do these terms mean?
What can be done to overcome these limitations?
3. We have discussed three utopian planners—Howard, Le Corbusier, and Wright.
How did these planners differ in their ideas for improving urban life? Which has had
the most influence on urban development in the United States?
4. What is meant by New Urbanism? Why are some observers critical of this move-
ment? Do you think that New Urbanism can solve the social problems confronting
metropolitan regions discussed in Chapter 9?
5. Are there gated communities in the area where you grew up? Do these commu-
nities match the description of those in this chapter? In what ways?
CHAPTER
13
METROPOLITAN SOCIAL POLICY
A s we have seen, comprehensive planning at the national, regional, and local level can
have positive outcomes, although this fact has not convinced Americans to support
increased government control over land use. In China, for example, state planning for
economic and urban development has established city clusters in coastal areas, created
a transitional economy and managed urban growth in part by building twenty new
cities each year. This has not come without costs, as pollution from industry and au-
tomobiles is of great concern, and environmental policies must now match the eco-
nomic growth strategies that have been put in place; interestingly, new construction
in Chinese cities has taken a lead in this respect, and the second tallest building in the
world, the Shanghai Tower now under construction (see Figure 11.2), will showcase
environmentally friendly design.
In the previous chapter, we examined both the potential and the limitations of ur-
ban planning in the United States. But the effort to fashion a living environment bene-
ficial to all citizens does not end by exhausting planning options. A separate approach,
one that is often initiated in conjunction with planning, involves government interven-
tion guided by public policy. The state has the authority to allocate money from tax rev-
enues for social programs and to authorize deficit spending to address social needs.
Government actions not only can direct behavior by prohibition, that is, by passing laws
that prohibit certain acts, but also can provide incentives and opportunities to channel
resources in specific ways. This push-versus-pull feature of public policy is important to
keep in mind when examining the issue of political intervention. Although this chapter
examines the role of government in improving metropolitan life, it is worth noting that
other public interventions, such as the location of toxic waste dumps in poor communi-
ties, can also create problems. Just how much intervention is needed and in what forms
remain critical issues for any discussion of government policy.
Before beginning our discussion of metropolitan policy, let us consider the follow-
ing question: What is the urban policy of the United States? One might expect that in
a country that has been urbanized for many decades and with many large cities, there
would be some form of urban policy that would guide decision-making at the na-
tional as well as local level. And when we consider the social issues confronting our
349
350 13: METROPOLITAN SOCIAL POLIC Y
metropolitan communities (Chapter 9), the need for comprehensive policies to ad-
dress these issues would seem obvious enough. The federal agency most involved with
metropolitan policy, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD),
has responsibility for housing programs, but not for the many other areas affecting our
cities and suburban regions, such as transportation and economic development. While
the last four Republican presidential candidates have pledged to eliminate HUD,
Barack Obama has said that he will make the director of HUD a cabinet-level posi-
tion. But even this will not give the United States a comprehensive urban policy as we
move into the twenty-first century, unlike the situation in many other countries that
have had one for some time. The United States possesses a civic culture that is averse
to government intervention in the market. In earlier chapters we identified this per-
spective as privatism, the belief that government should restrict its role to supporting
the business community (the private sector) and should seek market solutions to social
problems. However, this reliance on the market to solve all questions concerning social
policy can lead to problems. In the previous chapter, we saw that the desire to plan the
development of metropolitan regions was hamstrung by the inability of planners to
obtain sufficient power over land-use decisions to implement effective environmental
changes. There are other problems with the market as a mechanism to make decisions
involving the allocation of resources. These include the difficulty of maintaining the
quality of life when public resources are involved and the problems of uneven develop-
ment that appear to be inevitable in a capitalist society.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS

In 1833 William Forster Lloyd presented two lectures on “the checks to population”
at Oxford University. The lectures followed Charles Malthus’s earlier warnings about
overpopulation and likely would be unknown were it not for an analogy that Lloyd
presented in the first of the lectures. He asked his readers to consider a village of
farmers, each with his own herd of cows in individual fenced pastures. In addition,
there is a village commons that the farmers have access to and may use. But if all of
the farmers put their cattle in the village commons to graze, the grass will be eaten
and the commons will be destroyed. Lloyd asks, “Why are the cattle on a common
so puny and stunted? Why is the common itself so bare-worn, and cropped so differ-
ently from the adjoining enclosures?” (1833:30).
Because each farmer seeks to use the public resource of the village commons to
private advantage, they all will attempt to graze their cows as often and as long as
possible on the common green. If the farmers are interested in improving their situa-
tion, they have few alternatives. They could each buy a farm that would be owned
privately with sufficient grazing land—an expensive move. Or they could band to-
gether and create a community scheduling agreement that would recognize the need
of each farmer and the need of the field to regenerate itself. Because the users of this
THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS 351
public resource might have disputes, the individuals involved would also have to
arrange for arbitration in the event of disagreements or abuse.
Lloyd’s analogy of the village commons was included in an essay titled “The Trag-
edy of the Commons” published in 1968. While Lloyd was addressing the problem of
overpopulation, Garrett Hardin used the example of the despoiling of the commons
to address the problem of public goods and natural resources (Hardin, 1968). This
has been said to be one of the most influential scientific articles of the twentieth cen-
tury; it has been cited in more than 3,400 other articles (Walker, 2009:283). In any
retelling of this story, the tragedy of the commons speaks clearly, as it points to the
need for the social institution of public authority and local government, which safe-
guard the benefits to the many from the abuses of the few.
Settlement spaces in modern society contain many public resources such as air, wa-
ter, streets, public transportation, and parks and recreational areas. Safeguarding these
common environmental resources becomes increasingly difficult as the population and
frequency of use rise (see Chapter 12). As a consequence, government must develop ac-
tive public policies to deal with the many problems arising from large populations liv-
ing in the same settlement space. Often these policies involve laws or regulations that
restrict individual rights but are considered necessary to preserve public resources.
Consider one brief example: In New York City during the 1970s, partly as a conse-
quence of a rising crime rate, apartment dwellers purchased dogs in great numbers.
The inevitable outcome? Piles of dog excrement made walking the city streets a haz-
ardous affair. It was estimated that the city was drowning in 500,000 pounds of feces
each day! The issue pitted civic groups (Children Before Dogs) against pet owners (Pet
Owners Protective Association) while city officials proposed a corps of “Envirmaids”—
female inspectors who would police the city “night and day.” Finally the state of New
York passed State Health Law 1310 (1978) mandating that owners clean up after their
dogs in public (Brandow, 2008). The “pooper scooper” regulation made it a crime not
to comply. To this day, any tourist can observe dog owners from all social backgrounds
scooping up after their animals to keep the streets clean. The rule is an infringement on
the individual rights of pet owners, but it is sanctioned by society because it leads to a
greater public good: the enjoyment of a common resource, public space. Most environ-
mental policy is of this type, and support for such measures requires a public culture
that is committed to protecting environmental resources.
In the United States (and many other countries) there are laws that limit the free
market to provide for the public good. Some of the most restrictive are the Southern
California anti-air-pollution statutes, which are regulated by an independent state
agency and affect everything from automobile exhaust systems to emissions from in-
dustrial activity, to the burning of trash and the use of outdoor barbecue grills. The air-
quality control board has the authority to limit daily activities when air pollution
reaches hazardous levels in the Los Angeles metropolitan region. Over the years, South-
ern California has lost many businesses because they preferred to relocate rather than
pay the extra cost of compliance. But that has not diminished public support for air-
quality regulation. Rather, in such an environment, where pollution is an ever-present
danger to human health, intervention is the only solution until the causes of air pollu-
tion are eliminated by other means. Hence, although we dislike government interven-
tion, we find it useful. Sustaining the quality of life in metropolitan regions is an
especially difficult task without the aid of government policy and regulation because
the free market is incapable of doing so on its own.
UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT AND POLIC Y:

REDISTRIBUTIVE PROGRAMS
In capitalist society, resources tend to flow to those who are most powerful. There are
many reasons for this, and not all of them imply wrongdoing on anyone’s part. Under
pure market conditions, when individuals compete in business with one another,
one’s prosperity is supposed to spur the others to copy success. Thus the market serves
to discipline business people to adopt the best and most efficient means of pursuing a
profit. What holds for business, however, does not necessarily apply to individual
people. In recent years we have witnessed massive abuse by corporate officials in the
Enron affair, a series of scandals on Wall Street involving some of the top brokerage
firms, and scandals in the mutual funds industry that bankrupted pension funds and
entire investment funds for some cities. Now, as a consequence of the market going
completely awry, we confront immense economic problems and must look to the fed-
eral government in Washington for all sorts of private sector bailouts. As of Septem-
ber 2009, the public bailout of private business in the United States amounted to
about $2 trillion dollars—a sum so immense that it is quite impossible to compre-
hend. Pharmaceutical companies in the United States operate within the capitalist
market; they charge what the market will bear, even for drugs that are required to treat
life-threatening conditions. Those people who have the most money can afford the
medicine that is needed to keep them healthy. But what happens to people who are
too poor to pay for their medication? Why do some people have adequate medical in-
surance while others do not? Should not all Americans, as a right of citizenship, have
equal access to adequate health care? Or should quality of care and access to medicine
depend solely on the ability to pay? In the struggle to pass health care legislation, the
Obama administration took strong measures to control the health insurance and
pharmaceutical companies; the same companies spent millions of dollars on advertise-
ments and campaign contributions to prevent any meaningful reform, and many per-
sons remain strongly opposed to government intervention in the health-care system.
Finally, the housing industry in our society is also part of the market system.
Those individuals who can afford a private home can get one. The more you can af-
ford to spend, the better your home will be. But what about those individuals who
cannot afford the price? What happens to the poor who cannot even afford rent? In
UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT AND POLIC Y: REDISTRIBUTIVE PROGRAMS 353
Box 13.1
Human Rights in the City
The Global Charter Agenda for Human Rights in the City is a declaration (a charter)
with an action plan (an agenda). When the local governments adopt the charter,
they will commit themselves to develop inclusive public politics in order to protect,
respect and implement human rights on their territories, on a local level. The most
recent draft of the charter includes the following preamble and provisions:
Whereas all human beings are endowed with the rights and freedoms recognized in
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the international instruments that
build upon it, in particular, the International Covenants on Economic, Social and Cul-
tural Rights, and on Civil and Political Rights and other basic human rights treaties,
Whereas the city is a basic political community in which all its inhabitants par-
ticipate in a common project of freedom, equality in diversity, and development,
Whereas citizenship, rights and responsibilities are firstly expressed at the level of
the city:
All city inhabitants have the right to a city chartered as a local political commu-
nity that ensures adequate living conditions for all persons, and provides good co-
existence among all its inhabitants, and between them and the local authority.
All city inhabitants have the right to the safety of their person and property
against any type of violence, including that potentially committed by law enforce-
ment agencies.
All of the city’s children, whatever their gender, have the right to living conditions
that enable their physical, mental and ethical development and to enjoy all the rights
recognized by the 1989 International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The city ensures all its inhabitants under the age of 18 decent living conditions,
in particular, the opportunity to receive normal schooling.
All city inhabitants have the right to a socially and economically inclusive city
and, to this end, to access basic social services in acceptable technical and financial
conditions.
The city creates, or promotes the creation of, quality and non-discriminatory
public services that guarantee the following minimum items to all its inhabitants:
training, health, housing, energy, water, and sufficient food.
The city also guarantees all its inhabitants access to sufficient healthy and nutri-
tional food, and that no person is deprived of food for lack of economic means.
The charter-agenda shall become effective in each city after it goes through a
consultation process that allows the inhabitants of the city to discuss it and adapt it
to local conditions and to the national legal framework, and upon its acceptance by
a qualified majority of the city assembly.
SOURCE: Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City (October 2008).
the European Union, the right to medical care and adequate housing is considered a
human right, and many cities include these rights in their city charter. Should we in
the United States stand apart from other developed societies by sanctioning poverty,
homelessness, or the ruination of elderly persons who must pay for health and hous-
ing expenses they cannot afford?
Over the years, all capitalist societies have had to face the social costs of uneven
development that creates social inequalities within metropolitan regions and between
population groups. In the United States, government has enacted legislation at all lev-
els supporting social programs that address social ills. Social welfare programs are de-
signed to pool resources so that all persons have access to them (as is the case with
Medicare programs for the elderly) or to redistribute them (in the case of rent vouch-
ers for low-income households). Using a means test to determine who qualifies for
specific programs, government officials decide what is needed and who should be eli-
gible to receive assistance. Because these programs are supported by public tax rev-
enues or by special government borrowing, they redistribute wealth from those who
are better off to the poor. As we will discuss shortly, such schemes are not without
their abuses or critics.
In its most basic form, then, the issue of uneven development and public policy
involves a question of money because sustaining the quality of life has both private as
well as social costs. Government programs may address problems of hunger and
homelessness, which result from low wages among the working poor, but only in-
come redistribution can directly address the problem of poverty. Hence many social
programs are destined to fail because they cannot or do not consider the fundamen-
tal cause of the problems they seek to address, such as low wages and lack of employ-
ment for working families.
Public policy is created by government representatives in conjunction with research
staffs and various academic aides. Some policies find the government directly interven-
ing in the production of new resources such as the building of dams, highways, hous-
ing, and nuclear energy facilities. These directly aid private-sector business interests as
well as the general welfare. In other cases, incentives are created to channel individual
behavior in certain directions, such as the tax subsidy provided to people who purchase
single-family homes. The enactment of programs often requires new staff and adminis-
trators. Government at all levels is a major employer in the United States, accounting
for more than 25 percent of the entire workforce. Social programs run by government
also support immense bureaucracies, such as the welfare departments in each state.
Hence, not only the less affluent but also state workers benefit from public intervention.
There are many ways that government policy redistributes wealth and channels
resources toward the public good. Medicaid and Medicare are meant to protect the
quality of life among those individuals who are less affluent or whose incomes are re-
stricted because they are single parents or elderly. State boards of education try to
equalize school resources among different public districts, regardless of neighbor-
URBAN AND METROPOLITAN POLIC Y 355
hood family incomes. Public health crises such as the AIDS epidemic are also ad-
dressed by government policy. Finally, housing programs exist in a variety of forms;
there are even public programs to deal with homelessness.
Government policies also give assistance to and subsidize the private sector. Public
programs aimed at helping individuals in need may be co-opted by private-sector in-
volvement toward the pursuit of profit by business. With the introduction of school
voucher programs in many states, many new organizations have developed school agen-
das and sought funding, diverting funding away from the public schools. The largest
abuse of federal programs is often by service providers—when, for example, doctors bill
Medicare for fictitious office appointments. This co-optation of government interven-
tion is a serious limitation of public policy in the United States, and it alone may be suf-
ficient to cause programs to fail, as the experience with low-income housing programs
run by HUD shows.
Most of the examples discussed so far concern the general problems of inequity in
our society rather than issues specifically relevant to metropolitan areas, although is-
sues of inequity certainly have major impacts on the quality of life in urban spaces.
Let us look more closely at some of the programs aimed at the needs of both cities and
suburbs, and the various political, economic, and social ramifications of government
policy in metropolitan areas. In the previous chapter, we discussed how the desire for
planning is associated with the modernist belief that increased rationality of land use
and architectural design can improve our lives and lead to progress for all. Some
countries, such as the welfare capitalist societies of Scandinavia, hold a modernist be-
lief in government policy as also aiding progress through rational state intervention.
The United States is characterized by a different public ideology called privatism,
which requires government to aid business interests through the market. While our
approach has had success in some areas, it also leaves public programs vulnerable to
co-optation by powerful interests. As we will see next, the pursuit of social justice of-
ten fails even when government intervenes with the best intentions.
URBAN AND METROPOLITAN POLIC Y

There is no escaping the fact that public policy is shaped by fundamental philosophical
positions and ideologically held beliefs regarding government intervention. As we have
seen, the dominant belief in the United States is that government should always play a
limited role in the economy and that market solutions are usually best; however, it is
not inappropriate for the government to subsidize private business. This attitude con-
trasts with those of industrialized countries in Western Europe, for example, which
have more active public policy and more publicly supported benefits such as national
health-care schemes and family subsidies (although, as we discussed in Chapter 10,
some of these countries have begun to limit social welfare programs and restrict which
groups are allowed to participate).
The United States, therefore, is ambivalent about government intervention. Dif-

ferent political positions support various points of view in regard to state programs.
On the one hand, many liberals lament the takeover of public programs by powerful
business interests, faith groups, and voluntary organizations that may replace paid
labor. On the other hand, many conservatives oppose the use of government agen-
cies to do work that could be done in the private sector, pointing to the supposed in-
efficient and deleterious effects of government control. Our discussion of the failure
of federal policy to build upon the garden city movement in the 1930s, due to the
opposition of the powerful real estate lobby, demonstrates the overwhelming influ-
ence of privatism on American public policy.
In addition to the philosophy of privatism, there is a second obstacle to govern-
ment intervention to improve urban life. Under the federalist arrangements between
the national government and the states, the condition of cities is the responsibility of
the states, despite the fact that many urban problems, such as poverty and housing af-
fect entire urban regions and are national in scope. Over the years, the respective roles
of the federal government and the state government in dealing with these and other
urban issues have become a matter of political debate (see the concluding section of
this chapter).
The urban renewal program of the 1950s–1970s provides an illustrative case of the
evolving relationship between business and government as well as the limitations of
policy. Urban renewal grew out of the Roosevelt administration’s commitment to res-
cue the housing and banking industry from the Great Depression, a serious economic
crisis indeed. The Housing Act of 1934, for example, established the Federal Housing
Authority, which guaranteed home loans. The 1937 Housing Act mandated that the
government provide funds for the support of low-income house construction and slum
clearance. These powers were amplified in the Housing Act of 1949 under Title I assis-
tance and in subsequent acts passed in 1954, 1961, 1968, and 1970. The Department
of Housing and Urban Development grew into a massive bureaucracy that oversaw the
many programs associated with urban renewal. Intervention in the housing market has
always been viewed as an aid to the real estate industry, one of the three largest indus-
tries in the U.S. economy, rather than a showcase of modernist ideas mixing planning
with policy, as was the case in the Scandinavian countries during the same period. Pro-
viding homes for people and caring for their community needs was only a secondary
goal of the many U.S. programs in this area. As a result of this contradiction between
public goals and the private market, metropolitan housing policy has had only mixed
results. It proved to be a great boon to business but was less effective in attaining its so-
cial goals, so that in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the United States had
higher levels of poverty, lower rates of home ownership, and more extensive urban
blight than the European countries that we studied in Chapter 10.
During the period from 1950 to the present, government intervention aimed at
helping cities has gone through three separate phases, each of which reflected the dom-
inant role of business in defining the interventionist agenda. In the earlier period, fed-
eral funding targeted slum removal and construction of affordable housing. In the
middle period, these social goals were dropped, and the focus turned to the support of
economic development for local business. Finally, government funds were used to sub-
sidize economic development for global competition. In all three phases, local govern-
ment operated less as a vehicle for social justice for all citizens than as an aid to
businesses experiencing declining profits in the new global marketplace. And it was
during this period that the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations relaxed regu-
lations on the mortgage and security markets, crucial factors that led to the housing
crisis and collapse of world markets beginning in 2009.
Support for Slum Removal

In the immediate post–World War II period, urban renewal was aimed at revitalizing
the downtown areas of cities and clearing away slums or blighted dwellings. Programs
were supposed to replace cleared land with affordable housing and income-earning
civic projects. According to some estimates, over 5 million low- to moderate-income
housing units in U.S. cities were candidates for destruction and replacement (Flanagan,
1990:292). By the end of 1961, renewal programs had eliminated more than 126,000
substandard housing units, but only 28,000 new dwellings were built (Robertson and
Judd, 1989:307). The net result was a decline in the number of dwelling units for low-
income households and an increase in housing costs in poor neighborhoods.
By the late 1950s, the amount of federal money allocated for central city slum
clearance and renewal increased greatly each year. Combined expenditures were $706
million in 1960, $1.8 billion in 1966, and $3.8 billion by 1970, or an increase of over
500 percent in ten years (Mollenkopf, 1975). There were many reasons for the federal
government’s spending spree, most of which occurred through the Department of
Housing and Urban Development. By the 1950s, central cities were being devastated
by the immense outflow of people to the suburbs. This shift, as we already discussed,
was made possible by government highway and housing programs. As a result, down-
town retailers and their department stores were in danger of being shut down because
of the success of suburban shopping malls, while entire residential sections of the city
gave way to blight and decline as middle-class people moved out. City politicians ap-
pealed to the federal government for help in rescuing downtown areas. A second cause
involved the national response to the ghetto riots of the 1960s, which also highlighted
the deterioration of inner-city areas. Funding for HUD projects more than doubled
after 1966, the year of the worst rioting. While some low-income residents were
helped by the ambitious redevelopment schemes subsidized by the federal govern-
ment, much of the urban renewal involved the clearing away of slums to allow private
real estate interests to use downtown land for profit making, including the building of
middle- and upper-middle-income housing projects and the regeneration of central
city commerce through the construction of plazas, civic centers, and pedestrian malls.
At that time, observers noted that the policy seemed to be more effective at removing
African American and/or poor residents than at replacing slums with affordable hous-
ing. Over 75 percent of all persons displaced by renewal projects were black, and ur-
ban renewal became known as “Negro removal” (Robertson and Judd, 1989:3).
Paradoxically, at the same time that HUD programs were intervening in urban
renewal projects in the central city, other federal housing policies in the form of tax
subsidies to homeowners and war veterans would destroy city neighborhoods by pro-
moting suburbanization. In the United States (but not in most other industrial coun-
tries), homeowners are allowed to deduct the interest that they pay for their home
mortgages from the amount of taxes they owe to the federal government. The Service-
men’s Readjustment Act of 1944, more popularly known as the GI Bill, guaranteed
home loans for veterans; by the time the original legislation ended in July of 1953,
2.4 million veterans had purchased new homes with loans backed by the Veterans Ad-
ministration. These subsidies, which amounted to billions of dollars each year, were
responsible for the massive shift to the suburbs, or white flight. By the 1970s, it was
already clear that the United States had become segregated by race and class, with
middle-class whites dominating the suburbs while the inner cities were increasingly
populated by minorities and those whites who either could not afford to move to sub-
urbia or preferred to live in the city in newly built or renovated upper-middle-income
housing. Government intervention, working within the confines of the privatism ide-
ology, was no longer rational social policy, and in fact worked against the interests of
the larger society in the fight to save the city.
Support for Economic Development

By the late 1960s, the goals of urban policy had changed as a result of political pressures.
Commitment to the revitalization of slums was abandoned in favor of using govern-
ment programs to bolster private business interests in the city. It was now apparent that
urban economies, which had been dependent on manufacturing, were in decline. De-
industrialization had taken over the country, and cities needed to retool themselves to
compete with other communities within their metropolitan region for new employ-
ment. Downtown business interests, along with local politicians, regrouped and worked
together to use federal funds for revitalization projects. The focus of renewal shifted
from slum clearance to support for economic development, such as the construction of
sports stadiums, hotel and tourist complexes, and high-rise service centers.
For example, in the 1960s, the city of Los Angeles used urban renewal funds to
bulldoze the blighted section of Bunker Hill near downtown. But instead of replacing
the structures with affordable housing and preserving the community, the city and its
partners in the business sector constructed a music center, high-rise banking offices,
and expensive high-rise apartment complexes. Slightly east of this redevelopment, the
city eradicated another blighted residential neighborhood and replaced it with a

sports facility, Dodger Stadium, instead of low-income housing (Davis, 1990).
Such projects, backed by powerful political and business interests, were responsible
for the eradication of inner-city neighborhoods and small businesses, while the signs of
progress greeted residents with visible advertising for the joint government/business
ventures. In many cases, city neighborhoods that did not represent high-yield profit
making for business were bulldozed despite the objections of local residents. Gregory
Squires (1989) illustrated this trend by presenting a dozen case studies drawn from
cities around the country in Unequal Partnerships: The Political Economy of Urban Re-
development in Postwar America, and other researchers have presented case studies of
public-private partnerships in individual cities (Robertson and Judd, 1989; Stone,
1989; Davis, 1990).
In the 1960s and 1970s, economic development as an urban policy meant that
privatism had taken over not just through co-optation as it had in previous periods
but overtly as part of city revival schemes. According to the argument, business con-
cerns come first in a period of recession because when business prospers, the tax cof-
fers of the city are also enriched. Housing programs and community redevelopment
had to take a backseat, as did the fight against the problems of uneven development
and for social justice. As in other periods, while some federal programs directly aided
business, others also helped the middle class. City government could not stem the
tide of middle-class white flight during this period because the pull of subsidized sub-
urbanization was too powerful (see Chapter 6). Government could try to make the
city a better place in which to do business, but it could not make it a better place in
which to live. While government subsidies continue to aid business interests in the
cities and mostly white homeowners in the city, by the end of the twentieth century
the focus of urban development had shifted to a new and higher level, as American
cities began to compete against one another, and even against cities in other countries,
in the new global marketplace.
Support for Global Competition

The shift to a financial and service economy for the downtown had now turned into
global competition. Each place was in competition for limited investment that was at-
tuned to worldwide opportunities within the marketplace of global capitalism. National
programs that supported private enterprise would bypass local bureaucracies and down-
size the role of government planning. Issues of social justice were ignored. This restruc-
turing of the federal/city government relationship reached its zenith during the eight
years of the Reagan administration and resulted in the cutback of urban policy until
there was little funding for urban programs of any kind. Several reasons have been ad-
vanced for the federal abandonment of HUD program initiatives over the years. Sadly,
most are political. In the 1980s Ronald Reagan ran on a platform that de-emphasized
the needs of cities. The plurality of active voters lived in the suburbs, and they were at-
tracted by his call to get government “off the backs” of people. This meant that under
the Reagan and Bush administrations from 1980 to 1992, there were severe cuts in pub-
lic welfare programs, which officials explained as the inevitable consequence of the mas-
sive buildup in military spending that left large budget deficits (and no money left over
for the cities or for urban residents, most of whom voted Democratic and did not sup-
port the Reagan agenda). The new regime followed a conservative philosophy that fa-
vored market solutions to social problems. It also reaffirmed the political principle of
federalism, which made the condition of cities a responsibility of the states. This princi-
ple suggests that local and state governments were better able to deal with local prob-
lems and that urban revitalization should be market driven rather than pulled along by
federally financed and planned projects. Such sentiments were supported by a majority
of voters, who backed President Reagan’s conservative agenda and later elected George
H. W. Bush. The cuts to federal programs that gave assistance to urban areas were un-
precedented. Robertson and Judd (1989:314) made these observations about national
aid to cities during this period:
Overall spending dropped from $6.1 billion in fiscal year 1981 to $5.2 billion in
fiscal year 1984. The $5.2 billion spent for the fiscal year 1984–1985 amounted
to a decline of almost 20 percent when corrected for inflation. By the 1989 bud-
get year, money for urban programs was cut $4.4 billion, a further reduction of
about 40 percent when the effects of inflation are considered. Nearly all subsidies
for the construction of public housing were ended. Urban mass transit grants
were reduced 28 percent from 1981–1983 and were cut another 20 percent by
1986. CETA [Comprehensive Employment and Training Act] funds were elimi-
nated after 1983.
The Clinton administration began with high hopes for the redevelopment of ur-
ban regions, but these hopes were quickly dismantled by scandal and bitter partisan
politics. Clinton’s nomination of Henry Cisneros, the very popular and successful
mayor of San Antonio, Texas, to head the Department of Housing and Urban De-
velopment was derailed when it was revealed that he had had an affair during his
time in office, and Bill Clinton would face similar accusations for much of his sec-
ond term. The 1990s brought little in the way of new ideas or new aid to urban ar-
eas, and the cities and states were left to fend for themselves.
As bad as the 1990s may have been, the situation for cities and metropolitan ar-
eas was even worse during the George W. Bush administration. Although the Clin-
ton administration managed to achieve a budget surplus by the end of its second
term, which might have been used to shore up local governments in the throes of fis-
cal crisis, there was no effort to do this under President Bush. Instead, a sizable gov-
ernment surplus was turned into a budget deficit of historical proportions. Much of
the spending went to support the U.S. military presence in Iraq, and many credible
reports claim that billions of dollars of this effort were unaccounted for and are
probably lost forever. While the deficits of the Bush years impacted ordinary citizens,
they also had substantial effects on local government. When cities and towns found
themselves in fiscal crisis and unable to support services or repair needed infrastruc-
ture, they could not turn to the federal government for relief. This might have been
possible when the federal government had a surplus, that is, in the latter years of the
Clinton presidency, but there were no such opportunities during the Bush years. In-
stead, city services, investments in infrastructures, funding for housing programs,
and much else declined in real dollar amounts during these years.
Local politicians now work directly with business to revive ailing urban economies
as their only way out of fiscal distress. Such a strategy only works when the business
community has the resources to help. Public/private partnerships in the face of fiscal
crisis also represent an extreme example of privatism because the reduction in or elim-
ination of policies aimed at improving social well-being has occurred at every govern-
ment level since the 1980s. This trend continued through the 1990s as the Clinton
administration issued waivers to states that sought to eliminate welfare programs and
replace them with a variety of “work incentive” programs. The result has been a sub-
stantial reduction in the number of welfare recipients, but this does not mean that
former welfare recipients now participate in the paid labor force. Fewer than half of
the persons removed from welfare rolls over the last decade have found permanent
employment, and the number of families seeking assistance from food pantries and
other private-sector charities has increased substantially.
According to Desmond King, local policy has been reduced completely to the
subsidization of the private sector through either supply- or demand-side incentives
to business (King, 1990). The former consists of tax breaks, rent-free land, and local
bond financing designed to attract capital to the area. One such plan commonly used
is tax increment financing, where businesses are allowed to forgo local taxes for a spec-
ified period of time so that they can recover development costs for new projects in a
community. After a specified period of time, the development is placed back on local
tax rolls; the creation of TIF zones is described in more detail in Box 13.2. The city of
Chicago currently has more than 130 TIF districts that bring in some $500 million in
tax revenue (Cook County Clerk’s Office, 2009). Demand-side incentives include
city (and suburban) development activities to create new industries with the aid of the
private sector by underwriting development costs, such as in the creation of high-tech
industrial parks. In both cases, the policies commonly used now stand in stark con-
trast to those of the 1960s, because the emphasis is on the private sector and eco-
nomic development, without the reference to issues of social equity and injustice that
once obscured the emphasis on privatism.
At the close of the first decade of the twenty-first century, we have seen the global
economic crisis progress through successive waves that have impacted local governments
Box 13.2
Tax Increment Financing and Urban Development
Tax increment financing (TIF) is a special tool that a city such as Chicago can use to
generate money for economic development in a specific geographic area. TIFs allow
a city to reinvest all new property tax dollars in the neighborhood from which they
came for a 23-year period. “New” revenues arise if new development takes place in
the TIF district, or if the value of existing properties rises, resulting in higher tax
bills. These funds can be spent on public works projects or given as subsidies to en-
courage private development. But TIFs can also make it easier for a city to acquire
private property and demolish buildings to make way for new construction.
With consistent community participation, TIFs can be a tool for implementing
a community-based revitalization plan through encouraging affordable housing de-
velopment, improving parks and schools, fixing basic infrastructure, putting vacant
land to productive use, creating well-paying jobs, and meeting other local needs.
The state law that allows Illinois cities and towns to create TIFs requires that they
are only established in areas that are “blighted,” or in danger of becoming blighted.
To determine if an area is eligible, the city conducts a study of the area and writes a
“redevelopment plan” and a “project budget”—an overview of the development pri-
orities for the area and how TIF dollars will be spent during the TIF’s 23-year life.
The redevelopment plan must be approved by the city council.
TIFs are politically appealing tools because they do not require the city to raise
your tax rate. Instead TIFs generate money for redevelopment by raising the value of
the property that is taxed. TIF money can be used for: a) planning expenses, such as
studies and surveys, legal and consulting fees, accounting, and engineering; or b) ac-
quiring land and preparing it for redevelopment, including the costs of environmen-
tal cleanup and building demolition, especially in older areas, where making a site
ready for a developer reduces costs and eliminates a major barrier to redevelopment.
To aid this process, the TIF law gives the city expanded powers to acquire private
property through its power of “eminent domain.” If the city can show it is acting for
a “public purpose”—a very loosely defined idea—it can force property owners to sell
their land to the city at “fair market value.” The city then resells the land to a private
developer, often at a deep discount, or uses it for a public building.
Under Illinois law, the clerk’s office receives and processes a municipality’s ordi-
nance establishing the TIF district and directing the clerk to dictate to the Cook
County treasurer the allocation of revenues to the TIF. Revenue is generated for the
TIF as property values increase within the TIF district. Under state law, the clerk’s
office must redistribute revenue to the TIF districts according to the amount of the
increment or increased value since the initial or frozen value. Parcels are taxed uti-
lizing the current property value of the property, but any taxes collected because of
increases to the value beyond the frozen or initial value of the property are diverted
from other tax districts and distributed to the TIF.
SOURCE: Adapted from TIFs 101: A Taxpayer’s Primer for Understanding TIFs, Cook County
Clerk’s Office (2009).
P R I VAT I S M A N D I S S U E S O F S O C I A L J U S T I C E 363
in several ways. A number of cities lost their entire employee retirement accounts in the
collapse of the investment banks. As homeowners have been forced to abandon their
homes because of increased interest rates, the cities lose property tax revenue (the largest
single source of public school funding for most communities). As state governments
confront mounting deficits due to decreased sales tax revenue, the deficit is passed down
to the cities in the form of program budget cuts, forcing local communities to cut pro-
grams and lay off workers. In many states, state and local governments introduced
mandatory furloughs (unpaid days of leave, in effect, wage and salary cuts for workers in
the public sector), and some states, such as California, are in such serious financial dis-
tress that they seem faced with unprecedented quality-of-life cutbacks in education, in-
frastructure repair, basic environmental services, and publicly supported health care.
There is little hope for assistance to cities and metropolitan regions in the foresee-
able future. The immense and quite incomprehensible level of federal deficit spending
had a measurable effect on local communities even before the economic crisis. We
now see a very damaging, critically injuring effect on local government. Furthermore,
current projections indicate that our foreign entanglements will lead to astronomical
deficit spending for many years to come. To be sure, this is terrible news for cities,
towns, counties, and even state governments in the United States.
PRIVATISM AND ISSUES OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

Has the support of private enterprise and abandonment of active intervention in
cities been successful? Our analysis of metropolitan problems (Chapter 9) shows just
the opposite. The limitations of privatism and government subsidy for economic de-
velopment include the failure to realize benefits from development, especially by
low-income residents; the proliferation of beggar-thy-neighbor competition among
different cities, which does not benefit local areas; the subsidization of capital invest-
ment that is not reinvested locally; and the destruction of public resources without
benefit from the public subsidization of private-sector growth (Barnekov and Rich,
1989). What are the limitations of the ideology of privatism and the present con-
straints on pursuing social justice more broadly?
Lack of Community Benefits from Public Investment

Publicly supported growth does not bring the kind of benefits purported by boosters of
public/private partnerships. In Houston, which claims to be a city based on private en-
terprise, business has used government funds in many ways to develop infrastructure,
subsidize industry, and grease the wheels of profit making. During the city’s growth,
the costs of development were passed along to residents. By maintaining a low tax rate
on business, the city failed to plan adequately for highways, sewage systems, garbage
collection, water quality, and road maintenance (Feagin, 1988). Future residents will be
saddled with the immense public bill to finance the missing infrastructure and the costs
of growth. The experience of Houston has been duplicated in other U.S. cities, which
now face immense infrastructure problems of their own. This has not prevented cities
from spending millions in taxpayer money on “development” projects such as sports
stadiums, convention centers, and luxury housing, which provide few benefits for the
city as a whole and none for those most in need. The alleged “crisis” of the infrastruc-
ture and of public support for the quality of life in our urban areas is not, as some polit-
ical leaders maintain, a crisis of funding alone, but represents skewed priorities when all
available money is spent on civic development projects of dubious value. Other case
studies reveal that privatism twists the intent of public/private partnerships to the full
benefit of business. Economic development programs are intended to attract private in-
vestment in the local community to the benefit of the city as a whole. But increasingly
we have seen private businesses turn this process on its head, threatening to leave for
other locations unless they are granted special concessions. In some cases cities have
been forced to pay significant amounts to keep local businesses in place, and in other
instances states have had to step in when the local community lacks the resources.
Case studies have shown how the competition for investment dollars simply forces
local jurisdictions to make excessive sacrifices. This is especially true as capital becomes
increasingly mobile in the global economy. In the past decade, we have seen cities and
states offering incredible tax breaks and other incentives to attract new or relocating
industrial plants, another use of public funds to support private business. Between
1996 and 2007, for example, spending by the state of North Carolina doubled from
$550 million to $1.3 billion, with $1.1 billion of the total set aside for tax incentives
for business (Disilvestro and Schweke, 2008). In 2001, the city of Chicago provided
the Boeing Company with $20 million in incentives to relocate its headquarters from
Seattle, outbidding Denver ($18 million) and Dallas ($14 million). The deal included
payment of $1 million to another company to vacate its lease in the riverfront build-
ing that the city had selected for the new corporate headquarters and required the city
to develop a downtown heliport (Lyne, 2001). Some observers have called this ruthless
competition among places for investment the “new arms race.” In the chase after
global dollars, social equity programs are cut or abandoned. As a result, cities have a
diminished capacity to support socially beneficial programs and to sustain the com-
munity quality of life, and the uneven development within and between metropolitan
regions is of growing concern.
The Crisis of Local and State Government in the United States

Government policy involves an often unproductive struggle between the dominant
priority to support business and the lesser goal, often passionately pursued by social
movements, of social justice. Spatial competition among places for limited public and
private investment also affects the success of policy because the United States has no
overarching national program for metropolitan revitalization. In the 1950s, competi-
P R I VAT I S M A N D I S S U E S O F S O C I A L J U S T I C E 365
tion was between central cities and their suburbs; in the 1970s, it was between regions
of the country, especially between areas that were not experiencing a decline in manu-
facturing (such as the Sun Belt) and those that were (for example, the Frost Belt). By
the 1980s and 1990s, however, cities large and small had been brought into a universal
global competition for scarce resources. These policies pitted place against place to the
advantage of capital and at the expense of local taxpayers. In July 2009 President
Obama hosted a Metropolitan Summit at the White House, where he announced that
he had ordered the first comprehensive interagency review of “how the federal govern-
ment approaches and funds urban and metropolitan areas so that we start having a
concentrated, focused, strategic approach to federal efforts to revitalize our metropoli-
tan areas.” (More of his speech at the Metropolitan Summit can be read in Box 13.3).
Although the Obama administration has committed itself to forging an active urban
agenda, it remains to be seen if the general policy direction and use of public funds to
support private enterprise will continue, or if instead a new emphasis on social justice
will emerge. As homelessness, housing deterioration, and other urban problems inten-
sify, renewed pressure is being placed on the federal government to intervene once
more to stem the decline in the quality of community life. If such a turnaround does
occur, it will come only with a renewed debate on the philosophy of intervention.
Box 13.3
Remarks by President Obama at the Metropolitan Policy Roundtable
“It’s great to be joined by some of the finest urban thinkers in America for what I
understand has been a critical conversation on the future of America’s urban and
metropolitan areas.
“Now, as you might imagine, this is a subject that’s near and dear to my heart.
I’ve lived almost all my life in urban areas. Michelle and I chose to raise our daugh-
ters in the city where she grew up. And even though I went to college in L.A. and
New York, and law school across the river from Boston, I received my greatest edu-
cation on Chicago’s South Side, working at the local level to bring about change in
those communities and opportunities to people’s lives.
“And that experience also gave me an understanding of some of the challenges
facing city halls all across the country. And I know that those challenges are partic-
ularly severe today because of this recession. Four in five cities have had to cut ser-
vices, just when folks need it the most, and 48 states face the prospects of budget
deficits in the coming fiscal year.
“But we’re going to need to do more than just help our cities weather the current
economic storm. We’ve got to figure out ways to rebuild them on a newer, firmer,
continues
Box 13.3 continued

stronger foundation for our future. And that requires new strategies for our cities and
metropolitan areas that focus on advancing opportunity through competitive, sus-
tainable, and inclusive growth. And that’s why all of you are here today. And I know
that there were a lot of ideas that were shared throughout the morning and afternoon.
“Now, the first thing we need to recognize is that this is not just a time of challenge
for America’s cities; it’s also a time of great change. Even as we’ve seen many of our
central cities continuing to grow in recent years, we’ve seen their suburbs and exurbs
grow roughly twice as fast—that spreads homes and jobs and businesses to a broader
geographic area. And this transformation is creating new pressures and problems, of
course, but it’s also opening up new opportunities, because it’s not just our cities that
are hotbeds of innovation anymore, it’s our growing metropolitan areas.
“We’re going to take a hard look at how Washington helps or hinders our cities
and metro areas—from infrastructure to transportation; from housing to energy;
from sustainable development to education. And we’re going to make sure federal
policies aren’t hostile to good ideas or best practices on the local levels. We’re going
to put an end to throwing money at what doesn’t work—and we’re going to start
investing in what does work and make sure that we’re encouraging that.
“But we also need to fundamentally change the way we look at metropolitan de-
velopment. For too long, federal policy has actually encouraged sprawl and conges-
tion and pollution, rather than quality public transportation and smart, sustainable
development. And we’ve been keeping communities isolated when we should have
been bringing them together.
“So I know that this change is possible. After all, I’m from a city that knows a little
something about reinventing itself. In the nineteenth century, after a cataclysmic fire,
Chicagoans rebuilt stronger than before. In the last century, they led the world up-
ward in steel and glass. And in this century, under my friend Mayor Daley’s leader-
ship, they’re helping to lead the world forward in newer, greener, more livable ways.
“Daniel Burnam said, ‘Make no little plans.’ And that’s the spirit behind his
bold and ambitious designs unveiled 100 years ago this month that helped trans-
form Chicago into a world-class city. That’s the same spirit which we have to ap-
proach the reinvention of all America’s cities and metropolitan areas—a vision of
vibrant, sustainable places that provide our children with every chance to learn and
to grow, and that allows our businesses and workers the best opportunity to inno-
vate and succeed, and that let our older Americans live out their best years in the
midst of all that metropolitan life can offer. Now is the time to seize that moment
of possibility, and I am absolutely confident that, starting today with this conversa-
tion, you and I together, we’re going to be able to make this happen.”
SOURCE: Remarks by the president at Urban and Metropolitan Policy Roundtable, July 13, 2009
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/remarks-by-the-president-at-urban-and-metropolitan
-roundtable).
U R B A N P O L I C Y: T H E P O L I T I C A L D E B AT E 367
URBAN POLIC Y: THE POLITIC AL DEBATE

Over the past two decades, debate has raged regarding whether traditional liberal or
conservative solutions to the urban crisis should be applied. Most analysts of urban
problems discuss solutions in terms of precisely this clash of ideologies. In this sec-
tion, we discuss policy recommendations along ideological lines. In a later section,
we will point to a course of action that offers the possibility of rising above this clash
of perspectives by addressing the limitations of current public policy arrangements.
Liberal Positions on Urban Problems

Liberals tend to focus on the limitations of existing social institutions and to seek
remedies that equalize the ability of all citizens to overcome those limitations. They
support government intervention and spending as a means of combating social ills.
Most urban problems are caused, in this view, by the inequities of the resource distri-
bution system in our society. Poverty and associated problems of uneven develop-
ment are the inevitable consequence of the fact that economic rewards and social
opportunities are not equally available to all citizens. The liberal agenda uses govern-
ment intervention as a tool to overcome uneven development. It supports active in-
volvement of policy to identify, address, and help resolve serious urban problems of
the less affluent. Economic deprivation and persistent racial segregation are contrib-
uting factors in the rise of crime and drug use rates. Programs could be designed, as
they were in the 1960s, for job training, long-term unemployment assistance, and
even government-subsidized corporate internships that might provide job possibili-
ties for the most disadvantaged city residents. In addition, government-subsidized
medical care, family assistance, and aid for the homeless could provide a social safety
net below which U.S. citizens would not fall. This would improve the life chances of
the less affluent and remove from the city streets some of the worst cases of need that
threaten the quality of life for everyone.
Conservative Approaches to Urban Problems

Conservatives, in contrast, believe in limited government intervention and severely
restricted government spending. They accuse liberals of squandering society’s wealth
through excessive public spending. Consequently, they are opposed to the kinds of
programs sponsored by liberals precisely because they cost money and must be sup-
ported by taxes on private income or corporate profits. Conservatives also address
the issue of uneven development. In their view, less advantaged people and places
must make themselves more competitive so that they can join in the contest for cap-
ital investment. It’s up to people and places themselves to become more attractive.
Conservatives believe that many of the problems of the poor reside in their own per-
sonalities and family traits. The classic statement of this came from Edward Banfield,
who argued that poor people are not motivated to find legitimate jobs and that they
prefer not to work (Banfield, 1974). James Murray’s influential book Losing Ground
(1984) argued that welfare and other government programs actually increased poverty
and caused the number of unwed mothers to rise. This book was referred to (by conser-
vatives) as the bible of the Reagan administration and would continue to influence ur-
ban policy in both Bush administrations. Others have argued that liberals sought to
expand welfare programs simply to create more jobs and support the growth of the gov-
ernment bureaucracy.
The conservative position has been taken up by some black critics of liberalism
such as Shelby Steele. They argue that urban liberals and their programs, such as affir-
mative action, have ruined the moral character of blacks while the latter have lan-
guished in the ghettos of northern cities. African Americans have been made
dependent and are losing the ability to cultivate their own inner resources due to city
bureaucracies and their liberal programs of aid. Consequently, the immense problems
of the ghettoized poor (formerly called the “underclass”) are in effect the outcome of
decades of liberal policies that forced blacks to become wards of the state (Steele,
1990). It must be pointed out that even if people favor government intervention for
the pursuit of social justice, our study of the record of government metropolitan pol-
icy over the past fifty years shows that expensive public programs have continually
been co-opted by the business community. Funding that was intended for commu-
nity development often went to economic development, and funding for social wel-
fare programs has huge administrative costs that support a mostly white, middle-class
workforce. Hence there is considerable evidence against returning to the blind faith of
some liberals and active public spending to combat the many social ills that plague
our metropolitan areas, even if we could do so. The problem may be not so much in-
dividual moral character or social programs to provide assistance to those who need it,
but rather the uneven development and economic inequalities that give rise to those
problems to begin with.
Overcoming the Liberal-Conservative Impasse

What hope exists for the urban future? The lessons of history teach us that either/or
choices are unfair. We must look beyond the clash of liberal and conservative ideology
and beyond all ideological means of understanding urban problems. What possible
solutions might overcome the liberal-conservative ideological impasse? An important
but neglected dimension to the debate on urban problems involves recognizing the
fact that local governments have only a limited ability to plan adequately for social
change. The ideological debate between liberals and conservatives misses an impor-
tant dimension, namely, the limitations of local government as administrative struc-
tures. It also fails to address the particular relationships among the federal, state, and
local levels that have always worked against adequate planning and public policy in
REGIONAL GOVERNANCE 369
the United States. Within metropolitan areas, there are so many levels of government,
each with its own limited administration, that power is both highly fragmented and
weakly applied. Social programs initiated by cities are ineffective because they must
tackle problems that are regional in scope. So cities simply control too small a piece of
the regional pie to fight the immense problems of uneven development, such as the
need for affordable housing. In fact, it can be argued that the city is not the place to
initiate programs aimed at social problems of broad scope or at alleviating the in-
equities of uneven development. Suburbs and cities share similar problems, and the
growth patterns of one are linked to those of the other. Hence a metropolitan perspec-
tive on improving the quality of life becomes imperative for adequate public policy.
Problems that are national in scope, such as crime or the crisis of health care, must be
returned to the responsibility of the national and state levels of government, where
they belong. By understanding the relationship between spatial and social levels in the
study of policy, we can sort out what should and should not be the responsibility of
local government. And by adopting a metropolitan, regional perspective, we can de-
sign better ways of attacking the problems of social justice and uneven development.
REGIONAL GOVERNANCE
There is strong evidence that the political fragmentation of metropolitan regions in the
United States contributes to and may be responsible for uneven sociospatial develop-
ment. For example, Detroit and Toronto are industrial cities located just 230 miles
apart. Detroit, like many other American cities, has long been in the throes of eco-
nomic crisis. While the metropolitan region contains more than 4 million people (and
many wealthy suburbs), the city of Detroit has lost more than half of its population,
from a peak of 1.9 million in 1950 to just 912,000 in 2008. One-third of the popula-
tion lives in a household with an income below the poverty level, and for many years
Detroit held the dubious title of “murder city” because it had the highest murder rate
in the nation. Most of us are familiar with the Detroit of popular culture—from the vi-
brant Motown sound of the 1960s to the troubled rap music of Eminem and the film
8 Mile of the 2000s. The comparison between Detroit of the 1960s and 2000s is of
some interest. Detroit of the 1960s was still a booming industrial city. Now entire city
blocks are vacant, the housing long since abandoned due to white flight to the suburbs
and destroyed by arson. Some of these neighborhoods have actually been reclaimed by
“urban forests,” and deer have returned to the city. Today Detroit is overwhelmingly
black and poor, with apparently few opportunities for economic revival due to the re-
cent restructuring of the auto industry that brought the city to greatness in the 1950s.
In contrast, Toronto has doubled its population since 1950, going from slightly
more than 1 million to 2.5 million persons in 2000. The metropolitan region has also
grown rapidly, from 3.9 million in 1990 to 5.1 million persons in 2007. Compared to
Detroit, Toronto is relatively crime free, with a murder rate lower than any U.S. city
with a population of 1 million or greater. While there has been recent concern about
increases in poverty, the most recent figure suggests that about 16 percent of the popu-
lation is below the poverty line. Yet Toronto’s residents are a diverse mix of racial, eth-
nic, and class groups comparable to any major American city. Toronto is also an
immigrant city, as more than half of the city’s residents are foreign born (more than any
American city). One might expect the rapid growth and diverse population to generate
a good deal of urban problems.
One thing does much to explain Toronto’s success: the enactment in 1953 of a
federal form of government for the thirteen previously independent municipalities in
the area. The original thirteen have consolidated into six. They are responsible for lo-
cal affairs, while the metro council handles area affairs, including Metro-wide plan-
ning (The Economist, May 1990:17).
The metro-wide government consolidates resources in the entire region and coor-
dinates the growth of both the central city and its suburbs. As a result, many of the
problems brought about by uneven sociospatial development that have plagued De-
troit have been avoided by the Toronto region. Public schools across the Toronto re-
gion are well funded, and most students complete their high school career in four
years. While there are some good public schools in the Detroit area, these are in the
better-off suburbs; nearly half of the students in Detroit’s public schools do not grad-
uate from high school.
Regional government has worked in Toronto. In contrast, Detroit cannot possibly
find the resources to address its problems because it is cut off from the affluent sub-
urbs. Should society tolerate the extreme forms of deprivation and affluence that can
be readily seen in this region, even if all metropolitan Detroit residents suffer from the
continued downsizing and outsourcing of the automobile industry? The only metro-
politan region in the United States with funding arrangements similar to Toronto is
Minneapolis–St. Paul. Enacted in 1972, the fiscal disparities policy was designed to
prevent the type of uneven development that we find in many American cities. A por-
tion of the revenues that come into each of the local governments is set aside for a com-
mon fund, which then is distributed to communities across the metropolitan region.
One might expect that this would result in a transfer of revenues from the suburbs to
the central cities, but that is not the case; in the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan re-
gion, the northern suburbs are less well-off than those in the south, and they receive
the largest transfer of revenue. One of the supporters of this policy is Myron Orfield,
who has published a book titled American Metropolitics. Box 13.4 presents some of his
arguments as to why promoting regional equity is good for all those involved. Interest-
ing given our earlier discussion of privatism, Orfield was attacked as a “socialist” and
even “communist” for his support of the fiscal disparities policy while serving in the
Minnesota state legislature.
Due to the autonomous home rule of local communities that discourages regional
forms of government, suburban settlement spaces have effectively insulated themselves
REGIONAL GOVERNANCE 371
Box 13.4
Promoting Regional Equity
Policies to reduce physical inequities in metropolitan areas can bring great benefits.
They can narrow the disparity in local government’s capacities to provide public
services; they also can reduce incentives for fiscal zoning and inefficient tax-base
competition and the negative consequences of those actions. However, those gains
do not always come without costs. Poorly designed policies to reduce inequality can
also compromise local autonomy, derail efficient provision of local services, and
create incentives for inefficient patterns of migration. Finding policy designs that
strike the best possible balance between trade-offs is not a trivial exercise.
Policies that promote equity in the distribution of local taxes can reduce incen-
tives for fiscal zoning and tax-based completion and their negative outcomes in sev-
eral ways. By ensuring that all local governments can provide the infrastructure and
services communities need to function, equity-enhancing policies can guarantee
that all residents of a metropolitan area enjoy at least a minimum standard of ser-
vice for important local public goods like public safety. By reducing the need for lo-
cal governments to “steal” revenue-generating land uses from each other, such
policies allow them to engage in more thoughtful and beneficial land-use planning.
Intrametropolitan competition for a limited tax base harms a region. It is a waste
of resources for local governments to engage in bidding wars for businesses that al-
ready have chosen to locate in a region. In such situations, public monies are used
to improve the fiscal position and services of one community at the expense of an-
other, while businesses take unfair advantage of the competition to reduce their so-
cial responsibilities. The mere threat of leaving can induce troubled communities to
offer a business large public subsidies to stay.
Greater equity frees local governments from the pressure to base land-use deci-
sions primarily on the need for additional revenues. Instead, they can focus on de-
veloping land-use plans that accommodate growth efficiently, reduce the effects of
concentrated poverty, and respond to the desires of local citizens without fearing
that the resources available to them will be diminished. Furthermore, reducing the
incentives for completion allows local governments to focus on cooperative efforts
to help build a strong, dynamic region that is attractive to employers and residents.
Public services provided at least in part by local governments in most states (pub-
lic safety, a healthy environment) are an integral part of what most Americans would
regard as an acceptable quality of life. The implication is that all people have the
right to a reasonable standard of service—a standard that a highly fragmented and
fiscally stratified system with full local autonomy may not always be able to meet.
SOURCE: Myron Orfield, American Metropolitics: The New Suburban Reality (Washington, DC:
The Brookings Institution, 2002).
from the need to address the problems of uneven sociospatial development. But the
contrast is not only one of spatial organization. Canada has a system of health care that
is run by the national government; the United States does not. The two federal govern-
ments differ regarding what they have chosen to bear as national responsibilities, a deci-
sion that affects the quality of life for metropolitan residents. The national concern for
social justice cannot be separated from local issues of public policy. We may not know
all the solutions to urban decline, but one very good attempt at finding a solution that
avoids ideological debates must focus on the structural limitations of city government
and the excessive fragmentation of local jurisdictions. Along with these sociospatial con-
cerns are jurisdictional dilemmas among local, state, and national levels that must be
faced to determine who shares the burden of responsibility for the quality of life in the
United States—the individual alone (as conservative policy dictates), the city, the state,
or the federal government. Without metropolitan coordination, and lacking support
from higher levels of government, cities simply do not possess the resources they need to
address commanding problems of everyday life. At some point in the future, national
leaders must provide the vision necessary to share the responsibility for social concerns
at the federal and state levels, where it belongs. Until then, the quality of life not only in
central cities but across metropolitan regions as a whole will be dependent on the well-
being of local business concerns within an increasingly competitive global economy.
KEY CONCEPTS
tragedy of the commons
uneven development
redistributive programs
urban renewal
public housing
public subsidy
liberal / conservative approaches to urban problems
metropolitan government
regional governance
tax increment financing
1. Why is the market system unable to adequately determine the allocation of re-
sources across the metropolitan region? What is the rationale for public intervention
in urban planning and metropolitan development?
2. The United States has a federal system of government. What does federalism
mean, and what are the consequences of federalism for urban planning and govern-
ment programs in metropolitan areas in the United States?
3. What is the ideology of privatism? Where did it originate, and what effect does it
have on urban policy? What are two of the limitations of privatism? What are some of
the consequences of these limitations?
4. What are some of the important differences between liberal and conservative po-
sitions as to the causes of urban social problems? How can we overcome the liberal-
conservative impasse? What are some of the changes in federal urban policy during
the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush presidencies?
CHAPTER
14
THE FUTURE OF URBAN SOCIOLOGY
T he beginning of the twenty-first century marks a new era in human history. The
world’s urban population numbers more than 3 billion persons. For the first time,
more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and in the next two de-
cades the number will increase by another 2 billion persons to more than 5 billion.
In 2030, it is expected that some 70 percent of the total world population will live in
urban areas (United Nations, 2007).
We know that these urban areas are linked in exciting and new ways that would
have been unimaginable just a short time ago. We are connected by a global economy
where the life opportunities of persons in one country may be dependent upon capi-
tal flows of new investments from a nation on the other side of the world. The mass
media brings us world music from Africa and the Middle East. We use the Internet to
keep in touch with old friends who move to other countries and to make new friends
in places we have never even heard of. We inhabit a global world, to be sure, but more
than that, it is, for the very first time, an urban world.
The people living in this new urban world, the urban world of the twenty-first cen-
tury, will confront many new and important issues. We know that more than a third of
the world’s urban population now lives in shantytowns, many with inadequate drink-
ing water or sanitation, substandard housing, and few economic opportunities. The
number of persons living in urban slums will increase to more than half of the world’s
urban population by 2030—some 2.5 billion persons (Neuwirth, 2006; UN Habitat,
2009). Problems of pollution will increase as the less developed nations industrialize
and create new urban infrastructures that require the same resources for development
that we find in the developed nations. This is already happening in China and India. A
changing global climate may lead to major changes in crop production and weather
patterns around the world, creating new scarcities of food and water that we have
barely begun to consider.
Global society is urban society. And no field of study is more important for un-
derstanding these changes than urban sociology. Will urban sociology step up to this
challenge?
375
376 14: THE FUTURE OF URBAN SOCIOLOGY
UNDERSTANDING OUR
NEW URBAN WORLD
Urban studies is a comparatively recent field of study. Perhaps because of the exciting
changes—and important challenges—that the new urban world of the twenty-first
century presents, urban studies and its related disciplines—urban sociology, urban
geography, architecture—have emerged as something of a growth industry in aca-
demic publishing for the past decade or more. This work is built around both new
and old perspectives in the field and offers some insight as to where urban research
will lead in the future. In this final chapter, we explore several topics that are impor-
tant to our understanding of the new urban world. These topics include globaliza-
tion, world cities, theming of the urban environment, racialization of urban space,
the revanchist city, and cyberspace and the end of the city.
Globalization
First, there is an extensive literature on globalization and world cities. We have dis-
cussed some of the important characteristics of globalization and the impact of glob-
alization on urban development in the industrialized countries (Chapter 10) and in
the developing world (Chapter 11). But it is important to remember that globaliza-
tion is not a new phenomenon, nor is it a new area of study in sociology. We usually
think of globalization as something that started recently and is just now having im-
portant effects on our lives. Although many textbooks seem to suggest that globaliza-
tion began with the European discovery of the Americas and the development of
European colonial empires, there are earlier precedents. The great Chinese empires of
the Middle Ages linked trading centers across Southeast Asia with the Chinese urban
centers, then the largest cities in the world. Even earlier, Rome, the first truly urban
civilization, depended upon wheat grown in Egypt to sustain its growing urban popu-
lation, and Roman cities across Europe and the Middle East were linked with an ex-
tensive road system. Indeed, much of the spectacle of ancient Rome was the product
of globalization, from the obelisks brought from Egypt and placed in the Roman Fo-
rum to the exotic animals exhibited in the Colosseum that came from countries at the
edge of the empire.
The European colonial system connected cities across the world in a new and
more systematic fashion. During this period of mercantile capitalism, raw materials
(silver from the Americas, spices from the Far East) were brought back to the Euro-
pean trading cities. The neocolonial empires of the twentieth century reestablished
and intensified this system of economic dominance (even today the majority of ex-
port crops produced in the Philippines is under the control of just one American
corporation—Dole). This system of globalization and colonial dependence is de-
scribed by the world systems theory of the 1970s and 1980s, in which the industrial-
UNDERSTANDING OUR NEW URBAN WORLD 377
ized countries and the former European colonial powers are seen as part of the core,
and countries in the developing world are seen as part of the periphery (Wallerstein,
1976). The current literature on globalization builds upon these earlier models to de-
scribe an increasingly complex system of economic competition and urban growth.
Significant issues of economic and social justice associated with globalization have
been contested in protests against the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank in cities across the world. We know something about the costs of globalization
in terms of job loss and economic restructuring in metropolitan regions across the
United States (Chapter 6) and in other industrialized countries. Perhaps less well un-
derstood is the impact of globalization on urbanization and urban systems in the de-
veloping nations.
The growth of urban centers in China—the number of metropolitan areas with
populations of more than 2.5 million persons will increase from a dozen in 2000 to
more than twenty by 2025—is largely a consequence of the concentration of in-
dustrial production in the urban clusters identified in Chapter 11. In many other
countries in the developing world, the growth of urban centers is the result of con-
tinuing migration from rural areas as individuals and households are unable to sup-
port themselves from simple agricultural work and come to the cities looking for
work. Most of the growth of urban populations in the developing nations in the
coming decades will be of this type (United Nations, 2007). These urban centers will
not be part of the world urban system in the ways currently described in the litera-
ture; instead, they are likely to become part of what has been called the Fourth
World—areas left behind in the globalization process (Giddens, 2000; Hutchison
2009).
Globalization remains a topic closely studied by urbanists in all countries. One
key area of globalization research involves the study of how it affects local labor mar-
kets. Changes in the demand for high- and low-tech labor, retail workers, or financial
service workers, for example, can directly affect the economic well-being of cities.
Commercial growth and housing development are all tied to the ebb and flow of local
jobs, including the quality of wages.
American metropolitan regions have been adversely affected by the flight of in-
dustry and people from the urban core. Industrial decline has been attributed to the
acquisition of local businesses by multinational corporations. Some transnational
corporations have purchased American companies just to shut them down or down-
size them to increase corporate profits and strengthen market position. These actions
have contributed to urban decline. Other places have benefited from new invest-
ment, much of it also involving multinationals. Sustained growth in places like Los
Angeles, San Diego, and Miami owes a considerable amount to the continuing via-
bility of those cities as sites of global investment (see Box 14.1). Future research on
globalization needs to examine the contradictory impacts of this international busi-
ness activity to determine how they affect different parts of the metropolitan region.
Box 14.1
Miami, Capital of the Caribbean
Miami may well be the most foreign of any large metropolitan area in the United
States. Its exotic qualities often invoke images of glamour and splendor, but at
times there also is a sense of alienation from mainstream America. The city is above
all a showcase of the forces of globalization and of the complexity of those forces.
According to some measures, Miami is the most internationalized metropolitan
area in the country. The effects of globalization on Miami have been massive, and
unprecedented in urban America.
In about forty years, not a long time in the life span of cities, Miami transformed
from a quiet resort town at the periphery of the United States to a dynamic me-
tropolis in the center of a growing economic region comprising North and South
America and the Caribbean. Between 1960 and 1990, the population of Dade
County more than doubled, to approximately 2 million people, and the urban
economy grew accordingly. By 1996, Dade County’s economy was $56 billion, ex-
ceeding the gross national product of Colombia, one of its main trading partners.
Miami’s transformation and growth are based on the convergence of two devel-
opments: the arrival of very large numbers of Latin American immigrants and the
globalization of the world economy. The latter facilitated the intensification of fi-
nance and trade flows across political borders, allowing for the emergence of inter-
national economic regions, such as the one in which Miami plays a prominent part.
Massive immigration, in turn, gave Miami a definitive advantage in terms of the
human resources and as a node in the globalizing world economy.
In 1960, on the eve of Miami’s transformation, Latinos made up 5 percent of the
metropolitan populace. Today, they represent more than half of the city’s 2 million
people, and approximately 66 percent of all Latinos are Cuban. According to the
1990 census, almost half of Miami’s population was born abroad, and over 60 per-
cent speak a language in addition to English at home. Miami’s rise to prominence is
often attributed to its becoming a multicultural city. The presence of large numbers
of relatively skilled and educated bilingual Latinos makes Miami an attractive loca-
tion for companies that do business in Latin America. However, the influx of immi-
grants was accompanied by a rapid internationalization of Miami’s economy.
Miami handles more than a third of all trade with Latin America and over a half
of all trade with Central America and the Caribbean. More than 350 multinational
companies have offices in Miami, and it has become the third largest foreign bank-
ing center in the United States (after New York and Los Angeles). Miami is the
prime example of a world-class trading city in the United States, made possible by
the cultural connections created by its binational communities.
continues
Tourism is still a major source of income, but it is increasingly aimed at interna-

tional markets, especially Latin America and Europe. Besides tourism, international
trade and real estate have become leading sectors of the Miami economy. All growth
is welcomed, but the city is primarily promoted on the basis of its virtues as an inter-
national place. Miami’s designation as the capital of Latin America, the Americas,
and the Caribbean has been in vogue since the late 1970s.
SOURCE: Jan Nijman, “Globalization to a Latin Beat: The Miami Growth Machine,” 1997.
World Cities
Peter Hall’s work on The World City highlighted seven metropolitan regions—
London, Paris, Moscow, New York, Tokyo, Rhine-Ruhr (Germany), and Randstad-
Holland (The Netherlands)—and brought attention to cities as places of political and
economic power (Hall, 1966). But the study of global cities emerged more directly
from world systems theory and political economy models of urban growth (Chapter
4). Friedman and Wolff (1982) introduced the concept of a global network of cities
where urbanization was linked to the internationalization of capital, and a later article
by Friedman (1986) suggested that the way in which cities are connected to the world
economy offers a key to their growth and development. Cities connected to the world
economy in similar ways would be alike regardless of differences in history, national
policies, and cultural influences. The global city is the site of the concentration and
accumulation of world capital and with a large number of professionals in specialized
control functions, such as lawyers, computer programmers, and accountants.
Saskia Sassen’s study of global cities argues that the presence of global cities has
important consequences for the nation and for the global economy (1994; 1999;
2001). Sassen’s work is different from the earlier world system theory in that Sassen
asserts that the leading global cities, not the nations themselves, have emerged as key
structures in the world economy. The global city is characterized by specific forms of
urban development, including the redevelopment of the urban core and displace-
ment of the poor, construction of high-rise office towers, and an increasing social
and spatial polarization. The transformation of cities into high-tech international
business centers privileges global corporations at the expense of other groups, partic-
ularly minorities, immigrants, and women. Sassen presents the corporate office
building as a metaphor for the polarization that characterizes the global city: During
the day, the building is occupied by highly educated, well-paid executives making
global transactions; at night it is cleaned by female immigrant workers paid mini-
mum wage. The influence of global firms on urban development raises important
moral claims: Whose city is it? (Sassen, 2001).
While this literature has focused on major world cities, other work has emphasized
that many cities compete to become global cities. The decline of manufacturing means
that cities must find new ways to link to the global economy; they compete with one
another to attract corporate headquarters, sports facilities, and new businesses in re-
sponse to globalization and to achieve world-city status (Short, 2004). Abrahamson
(2004) suggests that almost all cities are likely to have some features that make them
global and that the focus on a small group of cities—such as Sassen’s work on New
York, London, and Tokyo—underestimates how widely the global-city construct may
be generalized. Chicago and Frankfurt, for example, are significant global cities when
concentration of economic activity is used as a measure; Los Angeles figures promi-
nently in cultural activity but is less important in other areas.
In his analysis of global cities, Mark Abrahamson ranks thirty cities on a composite
economic index (including the number of stock exchanges, banks and financial institu-
tions, multinational corporations, and services) and cultural industries index (recorded
music, movies, and television). The resulting global economic hierarchy puts New York
at the top of both indexes, with London, Paris, and Tokyo grouped in a second tier with
similar economic and cultural profiles. Abrahamson (2004:164) notes that “everyone
else lags substantially far behind them.” He finds evidence of regional economic
centers—Chicago and Frankfurt—as well as regional cultural centers—Mumbai, Rio
de Janeiro, Manila—cities that could move to world-city position by increasing their
cultural activities (something that both Chicago and Frankfurt have sought to do) or by
increasing their economic potential. These sorts of development activities are the focus
of John Rennie Short’s work on global cities (2005). He notes that the discourse on
globalization leads cities to seek development that will better connect them to the new
world economy: the construction of international airports, the establishment of interna-
tional business centers, the building of world-class sports facilities, and the successful
competition for events such as the World’s Fair, the Olympics, and the World Cup.
Many scholars have expressed concern with the way “world cities” and “global
cities” reify earlier colonial/imperial models of a “world system” with the implied rank-
ing of cities as either modern or in need of development (Fraser, 2006). Although cur-
rent research gives considerable attention to world cities, from our perspective, the
concept of “world cities” is misguided. At times these urban spaces act as cities because
some of their global functions are concentrated in their cores. At other times, however,
these spaces function as multicentered regions, not cities, and it is necessary to study
them in this larger configuration in order to understand them. When speaking of stock
and bond trading, for example, the spaces corresponding with these activities would be
lower Manhattan, the City of London, and downtown Tokyo, respectively.
Market trading is generally a centralized city phenomenon, although stock mar-
kets like NASDAQ are inscribed in telephone and computerized telecommunication
links worldwide and have no physical space at all. To be sure, such activities are con-
sidered “command-and-control functions,” but they are not the only kind. Multi-
national corporate headquarters are the other major component of the global econ-
omy, and these are increasingly located outside the cores of large cities in separate cen-
ters. When urbanists speak of “world cities” as if this complex and evolving regional
array of urban and suburban settlement space did not exist, they overlook the very
significant fact that the “world city” is but a small space embedded within a larger
metropolitan region.
Employment in financial services within the City of London, for example, has sig-
nificantly declined in recent years (Buck and Gordon, 2003) as nationally linked busi-
ness services have moved into the area. Many corporate headquarters have left
Manhattan for areas in the multicentered region of New York, New Jersey, and Con-
necticut, or for places in other parts of the country. And if we return to the metaphor
of the office building in the global city, it should be clear that the maintenance staff
and service workers who make these buildings work on a day-to-day basis live their
daily lives in very different spaces of the metropolitan region than the office staff who
occupy the buildings during the 9-to-5 workday—and the company executives live
their lives in yet other spaces! The deconcentration and reconcentration of command-
and-control centers across regions, the increasing divide—both spatially and socio-
economically—among those who occupy these centers, and similar sociospatial
factors make it imperative for future research to take the multicentered metropolitan
region as the focal urban form.
Theming of the Urban Environment

The urban environment across the metropolitan region, including cities and sub-
urbs, is increasingly themed and branded because consumerism that relies on fran-
chising and media advertising is so much a part of the way our economy works. In
addition, with the decline of manufacturing within American cities, tourism has
taken over as one of the major ways downtowns now make money. Theming is the
process by which attractions compete for tourist dollars. Increasingly, European
cities and even places in China and India rely on theming and branding as their ur-
ban economies shift to an emphasis on consumption.
Most of us have visited theme parks (Disneyland, Disney World, Busch Gardens),
eaten at themed restaurants (Hard Rock Café, Rainforest Cafe), and even visited
themed nightclubs (House of Blues). Research on the role of theming in American cul-
ture and, more exactly, the way theming is used to sell products and places that, on
their own, may not be markedly different from one another, is a relatively undeveloped
area of study (for an exception, see Gottdiener, 1995; 2001; Hutchison and Wright,
1996). In Las Vegas, for example, every casino sells the identical product, gambling, al-
though they might vary slightly according to their house odds. On the outside, how-
ever, every casino is different, and each offers a thematic fantasy as an attraction.
According to Gottdiener (2001), many of the themes can be bunched together: the
Wild West, the romanticized desert, famous cities of the world, and exotic tropical lo-
cales. These motifs work because they have already been well established as familiar
symbolic forms by Hollywood cinema and by television.
The success of places like Las Vegas over the decades as a gambling mecca, in con-
trast to the decline of American cities with industrial/manufacturing traditions, pin-
points both the prospects and problems facing places as they attempt to attract new
investment and residents, because not every location can depend on casino gambling
for economic stability (Gottdiener, 1994). We have seen the collapse of Atlantic City,
an older resort community in New Jersey that was rebuilt as a casino gambling com-
plex in the 1980s, in the second wave of the global financial crisis just two decades
later. Tourism, on the other hand, which is a more abstract way of looking at the suc-
cess of Las Vegas, can be successfully promoted in most places. In 1972 Robert Ven-
turi, Steven Izenour, and Denise Scott Brown published Learning from Las Vegas, an
important book that examined symbolism in the architecture of the Las Vegas Strip
and the iconography of urban sprawl. What we can all learn from Las Vegas in this
day and age is precisely the way architectural theming can be used to attract people to
urban areas. In Las Vegas, theming is the major weapon in the competition for cus-
tomers, and casinos have gone to previously unheard-of lengths in the creation of
spectacular environments that provide fantasy stimulation and entertainment. When
theming is used by other American metropolitan regions in order to attract tourists,
however, popular Las Vegas motifs may not work. Consequently, the promotion of lo-
cal tourism as a new growth industry requires places to research precisely what themes
make sense within the local context. Future research should pay attention to these ef-
forts and their variation among urban places.
Racialization of Urban Space

The racialization of urban space refers to the process by which urban and suburban
social space is associated with various ethnic and racial groups and to the serious con-
sequences of extreme segregation discussed in Chapter 9 that still plague American
society. The racialization of space impacts the activities and opportunities of groups
and individuals both within and beyond particular urban spaces: For persons living
within racialized spaces, there is a stigma attached to the address they include on ap-
plications for employment; for persons living outside the racialized space, the racial-
ized neighborhood (and its residents) are to be avoided (Hutchison, 2009). The
racialization of space is a clear example of how the sociospatial perspective takes us be-
yond human ecology to analyze meanings that are given to urban spaces. As we saw in
Chapter 1, urban spaces are meaningful spaces—they have specific meanings (some-
times contradictory) to persons within and outside of the local community. Racialized
spaces often are contested spaces, and groups within the community struggle to de-
fine these spaces in particular ways (Wacquant, 2008).
The concept of racialized space is important for understanding particular pat-

terns of development in cities. In the United States, older inner-city neighborhoods,
housing projects, and the like have become associated with minority populations
and with violent crime. Gotham (2004) describes how racialization was a fundamen-
tal part of the debate over urban renewal and the future development of black and
white space in Kansas City. City planners painted a picture of the inner-city neigh-
borhoods as racialized spaces, which made the decision to allocate public monies to
condemn housing and business the only acceptable plan for development.
When the downtown areas of cities become racialized space, there is a decline in
business of all kinds. The redevelopment of the Chicago Loop, highlighted by the
very successful development of Millenium Park that turned downtown Chicago into
a major tourist destination, required the elimination of downtown movie theaters
that featured black films and the removal of other institutions that served this popu-
lation. This was followed by the development of a new arts district that brings in a
very different clientele, including new Borders and Barnes and Noble bookstores.
The tourists to the area include not only visitors from other states and even coun-
tries, but also persons from the suburbs who avoided the downtown area for decades
and viewed Chicago as a “black city.” The project has been viewed as a success as the
area has become deracialized (Hutchison, 2005).
Although the racialization of space most directly brings to mind the image of in-
ner-city neighborhoods, the concept can also refer to other areas. It has been used by
scholars in Europe to study ethnic populations in the multicultural city and by schol-
ars in the United States to study ethnic neighborhoods and populations. One of the
most visible and long-lasting of these neighborhoods is the ubiquitous Chinatown;
other areas such as Italian or Irish neighborhoods are also prominent features of the
American urban environment. In many cases, these neighborhoods were defensive—
the Chinese, Italian, and Irish immigrants experienced prejudice and discrimination
when they first arrived in the United States, and the ethnic neighborhood provided a
safe haven and opportunity for members of the ethnic group (Chapter 8).
Although much of the research on the racialization of space focuses on negative
labels that are forced upon the community by members of the dominant group liv-
ing outside of these spaces, it should be recognized that racialized spaces may also be
created from within the neighborhood or group. Street gang graffiti advertises the
presence of groups competing for control of urban space and creates racialized spaces
that may appear dangerous and mysterious to the outsider. In many ethnic neigh-
borhoods, one finds murals that have been painted to create a racialized space that
becomes a source of pride and identity for the group.
There are racialized spaces that have positive images as well. In Chicago and New
York there has been extensive gentrification in Bronzeville and Harlem, the former
ghetto areas in each of these cities, and in both cases the visitor can take guided tours of
the area (for a fee). Tourist bureaus in major cities supply maps that show the location
Box 14.2
Racialization and Tourism in Chinatown
The phenomenon of Chinatown occurs in many major cities in the West, re-creating
a small part of the Orient wherever they spring into being. In old American western
towns, Chinatown came into existence because of the large-scale immigration of
cheap Chinese labor into the states during the building of the railroads. These areas
have always been regarded with an element of suspicion and fear by Westerners, to-
gether with a curiosity and desire to indulge in the pleasures and vices that frequently
seem to occur there, even to this day.
The liner notes to Thin Lizzy’s Chinatown album capture the air of mystery sur-
rounding the racialized community. San Francisco’s Chinatown intrigued tourists
from its beginning. One of the main attractions toward the end of the nineteenth
century was a group of opium dens that flourished in the warren of underground
passages beneath the houses, shops, and restaurants. In 1877 Miriam Florence
Leslie, wife of the publisher of Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, toured one such den with a
group of her friends. She recorded her impressions in her book, California: A Plea-
sure Trip from Gotham City to the Golden Gate. The tour guide was a local police offi-
cer. As late as 1974, the popular image of crime and corruption was still real enough
to capture public attention as the title of the Roman Polanski film Chinatown (even
though none of the film actually takes place in Chinatown).
By the end of the twentieth century, Chinatown had become something very dif-
ferent; no longer dark and mysterious, it now was a tourist destination, advertised in
city maps and the official tourist Web pages for major cities (not just in the United
States but across North America and in other countries as well). While some China-
towns remain working communities, others have taken on a Disney-like flavor as
they shed ethnic culture for tourist business; as is the case with other themed envi-
ronments, the re-creation of the historic ethnic community means that it no longer
is a living ethnic community; the racialized space has been tamed and marketed to
the larger society. They also are important economic generators within the commu-
nity; after 9/11, when many businesses across lower Manhattan were struggling to
survive, the mayor held a news conference announcing that the rebirth of the city
economy would begin in Chinatown.
of ethnic neighborhoods, such as Chinatown in New York and San Francisco, along
with lists of ethnic restaurants and stores. The example of Chinatown, discussed in Box
14.2, is very interesting in this respect; it is an example of how a racialized space that
long held negative meanings (opium dens and prostitution) in the popular imagina-
tion has been given a positive meaning (an important tourist destination) that has now
become part of the city’s advertising campaign.
The Revanchist City

When Neil Smith set out to study gentrification in New York in the 1990s, he was
struck by the changing political climate that had brought about new laws targeting
the homeless, panhandlers, and other groups (Smith, 1999). There were attacks on
homeless persons and gays in the streets, and affirmative action and immigration pol-
icy was under attack in the courts. Smith coined the term “revanchist city” to describe
the new political order. The term comes from the French word revanche, which means
revenge, but which also has a specific social meaning. Revanchist refers to the bour-
geois radicals who opposed liberal reforms in the Second Republic and the socialist
parties that had put forth women’s rights and other social reforms. After the fall of the
Second Republic, when the French government surrendered to Prussian forces in the
Franco-Prussian War, the people of Paris formed the Paris Commune and refused to
turn the city over to the new government. Much of the city was destroyed in the sub-
sequent fighting, and when the Paris Commune was ended, the leaders and their fol-
lowers were hunted down and a terrible revenge taken: More than 40,000 persons
who had defended the city, the enemies of the bourgeois political class, were executed.
The Revanchists had taken their revenge and restored the conservative political order.
There were similarities, Smith suggested, between the revanchism of nineteenth-
century Paris and fin-de-siécle New York City. The liberal climate of the post-1960s
had been replaced by paranoia and fear generated by sensational media coverage of im-
migration, crime, and other hot-button topics. In 1993, Rudolph Giuliani was elected
mayor, promising a better quality of life for “conventional members of society.” The re-
vanchist policies of the Giuliani administration blamed urban decay on the failures of
liberal policy and upon the marginalized populations of the city: Among those identi-
fied as major threats to the established order were the homeless, panhandlers, prosti-
tutes, squatters, graffiti artists, squeegee cleaners, and even reckless bicyclists (Slater,
2009). Laws against panhandling, begging, sleeping in the open, and the like were used
to remove the homeless from the streets, at the same time that funding for programs
for many of the marginalized populations was in decline.
The revanchist city has become very influential in urban studies, but revanchist ur-
ban policy was not something entirely new in the United States, nor is it confined to
New York City. Metropolitan governments have long imposed harsh penalties on the
homeless and other groups who are thought to be threatening to shoppers, commuters,
investors, and tourists. Smith’s discussion of the revanchist city has been used to de-
scribe the 1990s redevelopment of central Glasgow (MacLeod, 2002), the control and
management of public spaces in Britain (Atkinson, 2003), and policies directed against
Muslims and other ethnic groups in Rotterdam (Uitermark and Duyvendak, 2008).
Even before the economic crisis of the 1990s, there were calls for cuts in spending
for social programs of all kinds: With the mounting expenses and growing deficit due
to the Iraq War, it would be necessary to cut expenditures for housing, food stamps,
Box 14.3
The Meanest Cities in the United States
While most cities throughout the country have either laws or practices that criminal-
ize homeless persons, some city practices or laws have stood out as more egregious
than others in their attempt to criminalize homelessness. The National Coalition for
the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty have chosen
the meanest cities in 2009 based on one or more of the following criteria: the number
of anti-homeless laws in the city, the enforcement of those laws and severities of
penalties, the general political climate toward homeless people in the city, local advo-
cate support for the meanest designation, the city’s history of criminalization mea-
sures, and the existence of pending or recently enacted criminalization legislation in
the city. Although some of the report’s meanest cities have made some efforts to ad-
dress homelessness in their communities, the punitive practices highlighted in the re-
port impede true progress in solving the problem.
1. Los Angeles
2. St. Petersburg
3. Orlando
4. Atlanta
5. Gainesville
6. Kalamazoo
7. San Francisco
8. Honolulu
9. Bradenton
10. Berkeley
St. Petersburg (ranked second) wasn’t even on the list of the twenty meanest
communities in 2005, but broke into the top ten in the 2009 listing. Here’s why:
Since early 2007, St. Petersburg has passed six new ordinances that target homeless
people. These include ordinances that outlaw panhandling throughout most of
downtown, prohibit the storage of personal belongings on public property, and
make it unlawful to sleep outside at various locations. In January 2007, the Pinel-
las-Pasco public defender announced that he would no longer represent indigent
people arrested for violating municipal ordinances to protest what he called exces-
sive arrests of homeless individuals by the city of St. Petersburg. According to num-
bers compiled by the public defender’s office, the vast majority of people booked
into the Pinellas County Jail on municipal ordinances were homeless individuals
from St. Petersburg.
SOURCE: City Mayors, “Do Not Handcuff the Poor and Homeless,” 2009 (http://www.citymayors
.com/society/homeless_usa2.html).
and other programs. Similar arguments were made during the 1980s, when high lev-
els of military spending led to increasing deficits; in both instances, Republican ad-
ministrations used the federal budget crisis as an argument to cut funding for those
groups most affected by the declining economy. In earlier chapters, we have noted the
increased political activity of groups on the right in periods of economic decline, and
we can expect to see much the same in the coming decade as public anger and fear
over the declining economy reaches a climax. Revanchist urban policy designed to re-
store public order and directed against marginalized populations will most likely be
an increasing area of study for urban sociologists (Deflem, 2008).
Cyberspace and the Declining Importance of Location

Finally, there is a literature that emphasizes the growth of new technologies and the
new information society, resulting in a declining importance of geography and space
and, ultimately, of the physical structures of the metropolis. This discussion is con-
nected in some interesting ways to the decline of the public realm: The more time
that persons spend online, whether talking with friends, shopping in cyber malls, or
trolling websites, the less time they spend participating with fellow citizens in their lo-
cal community.
Manuel Castells (1998) describes contemporary society as an informational global
economy, where the global structure of the world system is based upon a logic of flow,
connectivity, networks, and nodes. The core activities of the global economy are linked
in real time, and the daily work schedule is now on a planetary scale. While your credit
card company may have service lines open from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., this means
that call operators in India on the other end of the line are working from 8:00 p.m. to
8:00 a.m. on a night shift in their home country. Capital flows in the emerging mar-
kets—the urban clusters in Japan and China discussed in Chapters 10 and 11—bypass
the corporate headquarters of the West. Global cities are no longer defined by the pres-
ence of the corporate headquarters, but by a space of flows.
Castells’s view is unsettling. If the new global economy is in fact a system of flows
as he describes, there is no longer a geography of spatial location, and social processes
will have no particular grounding in the study of cities, suburbs, and metropolitan re-
gions, thereby erasing the importance of urban sociology as a discipline. Clearly,
Castells has overstated his case because strategic locations are a necessity for businesses,
and the valorization of particular places is exactly how urban landscapes grow. Further-
more, what of all the people left behind by the new global economy? People inhabit
lively inner-city neighborhoods, older industrial towns, and growing megacities of the
developing world that may not be fully “wired” to the world system but are still con-
nected to it in older ways that have always functioned well for global capitalism in the
past—through ordinary trade, manufacture, retailing, and the like located in specific
places. A new term has been used to describe the spaces left behind in the new global
economy: the Fourth World, but this is clearly no compensation to the millions of
people left behind in the empty spaces of Castells’s “information economy” (Hutchi-
son, 2009).
Interestingly, it was Karl Marx who wrote that capitalism would destroy space and
time by accelerating the production process in the pursuit of profit. This brings us back
to the work of Henri Lefebvre, to his concept of the social production of space, the
emergence of metropolitan regions, and the origins of the new urban sociology dis-
cussed in Chapter 4.
It seems clear that Marx was correct: Modern capitalism has created new technolo-
gies that have collapsed time and space; our very casual references to the powerful idea
of cyberspace indicate how quickly and pervasively this transformation has taken place.
Yet the core of the global economy remains manufacturing, as Marx also asserted, even
if people in the United States only have the vaguest ideas of how that key process plays
itself out in the obscure regions of China, India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.
The important challenge for urban sociology, of course, is whether the information
economy makes the metropolitan region irrelevant.
There is a growing body of literature arguing that urban spaces are still impor-
tant. Even if we place an online order for goods produced in a country in a different
part of the world through Internet shopping, the places where the goods are manu-
factured are grounded in time and space, as are the locations where the goods are
stored and shipped. This suggests that we need to base our understanding of the
spaces of flows within those areas where productive activity and social reproduction
occur; in other words, we are still interested in specific spatial locations and in the
everyday lives of persons who live in multinucleated metropolitan regions of devel-
oped as well as developing nations. But it also seems clear that the city, as a physical
entity, is less and less relevant as the metropolitan region expands and the new infor-
mation technologies link nodes of activity across these metropolitan spaces. Louis
Wirth would likely struggle to reconceptualize how size, density, and heterogeneity
would inform our analysis of the urban world of the twenty-first century!
U R B A N S T R U C T U R E A N D U R B A N C U LT U R E
In Urban Sociology: Images and Structure, William Flanagan (2010) divides the field of
urban sociology into what he labels the culturalist approach and the structuralist ap-
proach. In general terms, what Flanagan means by the culturalist approach is the hu-
man ecology of the Chicago School and the later development of urban ecology by
Amos Hawley, John Kasarda, and others. We have referred to this as the mainstream
urban sociology of the past. Under the structuralist approach, Flanagan includes urban
political economy, world systems theory, and the related areas of study that began with
the revolt against mainstream urban sociology in the 1970s. These theoretical models
are structural because they emphasize the importance of social structure (and in some
U R B A N S T R U C T U R E A N D U R B A N C U LT U R E 389
cases, the role of the state) in determining urban development and social interaction
within the urban environment. The theoretical models Flanagan identifies under the
structuralist approach would view urbanization as a result of factors outside the metro-
politan region, whereas the culturalist approach would study urbanization by focusing
on factors within the metropolitan region.
As we saw in Chapter 3, the work of the Chicago School of urban sociology was
very diverse in subject matter and research methodology, and we drew a sharp distinc-
tion between the famous studies by the students of Robert Park and Ernest Burgess
referred to as the Chicago School of Urban Sociology (which reflected the ideas of hu-
man ecology) and the later applications of human ecology in the work of Roderick
McKenzie, Amos Hawley, and others (which we refer to as urban ecology). Flanagan
also includes the tradition of community studies, including the work of Robert and
Helen Lynd (Middletown and Middletown in Transition), Herbert Gans (The Urban
Villagers and The Levittowners), and others under the culturalist approach.
In Chapter 4, we described the emergence of a new urban sociology in the work
of Henri Lefebvre (The Production of Space, Critique of Everyday Life) and others in
the 1960s. This also is a diverse area of study, including the Marxist urban sociology
of Manuel Castells (The Urban Question, The City and the Grassroots), David Harvey
(Social Justice and the City), the urban growth model of Logan and Molotch (Urban
Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place), and the like. This work has now merged in
what we refer to as the sociospatial model of urban development.
In the final chapter of Urban Sociology: Images and Structure, William Flanagan
suggests that there is a new unified perspective for urban sociology. The competing
models of the past may not have merged into a single model, according to this view,
but it seems clear that neither the culturalist approach nor the structuralist approach
can adequately explain recent developments in the urban world. The culturalist per-
spective focuses on events within neighborhoods (community studies) or the city (ur-
ban ecology), but it does not place the everyday lives of individuals within the new
global society. The research methodology and theoretical models that are used by ur-
ban sociologists following the culturalist approach do not make the necessary link be-
tween daily life in the metropolis and the larger urban structures that connect persons
around the world in the twenty-first century.
The structuralist approach, on the other hand, focuses attention on the global
system of capitalism and on the political economy of urban life at the national and
sometimes metropolitan level. This approach is necessary for understanding the de-
velopment of the world urban system, and it helps to explain patterns of economic
development and urban change within and across nation states. The importance of
this perspective is obvious if we want to understand how environmental policies in
the developed nations have led to the migration of industrial jobs to developing na-
tions by companies that do not want to comply, or how the new global economy has
created the “dual city” pattern of high technology coupled with a growing service
sector in cities in the developed nations. What the structuralist approach cannot do,
according to Flanagan, is help us understand the impact of these changes on the
everyday lives of persons in cities and metropolitan regions across the world.
Flanagan suggests that a unified perspective for urban sociology will result in a bet-
ter understanding of both the structural forces that have created our new urban world
and the impact of these changes on the lives of individuals in the growing urban ag-
glomerations that now account for more than half of the world’s population. The
structuralist approach is essential for understanding the powerful forces of global capi-
talism that have swept across the globe, creating a new urban world in its image. In this
new world of growing social inequality and troubling exploitation of the world’s di-
minishing resources, future generations will most likely live in larger and larger urban
agglomerations, in a built environment that is far removed from the urban-rural world
that our grandparents knew. To understand the new modalities of urban life—whether
it be in older metropolises of Europe with urban histories stretching back hundreds of
years or the newer and larger megacities of the developing world—we will need the
ethnographic accounts and community studies of the culturalist approach.
Flanagan’s argument concerning the need of a unified perspective for urban soci-
ology is reasonable. While urban sociology may have started from a common point of
applying the European tradition (represented by the work of Töennies and Simmel)
to the circumstances of the industrial city at the close of the nineteenth century, the
field has become increasingly eclectic. Recent work in what is known as cultural stud-
ies offers us glimpses into the lives of persons around the world and emphasizes the
ways in which global urban cultures have developed as our world shrinks and our lives
become more dependent on other groups and other cultures. At the same time, we
know that although there are differences from one area of the world to another and
that there are distinctive urban cultures because of historical traditions, religion, and
the like, the emerging urban metropolis of the twenty-first century shares some im-
portant characteristics regardless of country or region. It is not simply that they are
linked with one another in the ever-expanding system of global capitalism. Most im-
portantly, these urban agglomerations increasingly look like the multicentered urban
region studied by the sociospatial perspective.
THE FUTURE OF THE CITY

In an earlier work on comparative urbanization, Ivan Light published a drawing from
ancient Sumer showing the destruction of a city, with the caption, The City as an Eter-
nal Death Trap. This is one view of the urban future, something that we are familiar
with from films such as Blade Runner, Logan’s Run, Robocop, and Escape from New York.
The fragility of urban life was brought home to Americans by the great tragedy of
9/11. This event was followed by discussion among urbanists about the future of high-
rise buildings—who would want to work or live in one of them? (Interestingly, the
three tallest buildings in the world have been built after 9/11!)
THE FUTURE OF THE CITY 391
The apocalyptic view of the urban future is not entirely new, of course. Whether
this is depicted as the destruction of the city by divine wrath or by nuclear warfare,
human populations have long feared for the survival of the city—the creation that
Lewis Mumford considered the greatest achievement of mankind. More recently ur-
ban theorists have added to this bleak vision, as we saw above, with prophecies that
the city would wither away because of new communication technologies. We know
that this is unlikely to happen: While the Internet exists in unbounded space, it re-
quires a concentration of resources in research and development and manufacturing,
and while these services and production nodes may be located in different countries,
or more likely dispersed across a metropolitan region, they are still grounded in phys-
ical space. The idea of urban clusters that have been used so successfully in promoting
industrial development and controlling urban growth in China appears to be an ap-
propriate metaphor for this new arrangement of activities across the urban region.
In earlier chapters we have described the multicentered urban region as characteris-
tic of suburban growth in the United States (Chapter 6). As we know from looking at
urbanization in the developed nations of the UK and the European Union, this pattern
of development is not unique to the United States, and in fact has a long history in
both regions. Other terms have been used in other countries—patchwork urbanism in
the UK (MacLeod and Ward, 2002), polycentric urban development in the EU
(Kloosterman and Musterd, 2001; Parr, 2004)—but the pattern of development is
similar to that that found in the United States. While there is room for great concern
about the conditions of urban life for persons in the growing slums and vast megacities
of the developing world (Chapter 11), the city is not likely to disappear in the foresee-
able future. Nor is it likely that the multicentered metropolitan region will be altered
by the planning of new urbanism or other policies intended to regenerate the city, and
should we return to the future, we most likely will encounter multicentered urban re-
gions very similar to what we see now in the developed nations. So how can we best
study the multicentered metropolitan region of the future?
Box 14.4
Report from the 2030 Ideal Home Exhibition
The Ideal Home Exhibition has historically reflected the housing preferences of a sub-
stantial proportion of the population, more accurately than the visions of architects and
planners. In particular, the exhibition has reflected and perhaps encouraged the trend
towards suburbanization that has been a major shaper of the urban and rural land-
scapes throughout the twentieth century. In this report from the 2030 Exhibition, the
trend is shown to have continued, despite the attempts of architects, planners, and politi-
cians to stimulate an “Urban Renaissance.”
continues
Box 14.4 continued

The suburban ideal, which has been the mainstay of this exhibition since its
founding at the beginning of the twentieth century, maintains its appeal. And
whilst the model of the suburban house evolves over time, its image of brick walls
and pitched roofs with sprinklings of fake half-timbering or rustic weather-board-
ing remains, in essence, unchanged. Architects have never been comfortable with
the success of these houses. And social trends are at issue here, for the appearance of
houses says much about the values, hopes, and aspirations of the people who
choose to live in them. In the case of the majority of houses shown in the Ideal
Home Exhibition, the values expressed are not much liked by architects.
This year’s exhibition shows us that despite the great social, environmental, and
technological changes we have witnessed over the last twenty years, little has changed
in the aspirations and values of Middle England. Despite the pressures of environ-
mental ideology and the exorbitant cost of land and housing, Middle England con-
tinues to yearn for the house surrounded by a bit of garden in a landscape, which, in
the mind’s eye at least, is still bucolic. This has meant that the trend towards urban
sprawl and the suburban ideal that many predicted, again perhaps through a little too
much wishful thinking, would disappear, is still going strong. And the so-called Ur-
ban Renaissance which many architects and urbanists hoped for twenty years ago,
has, with the exception of London and a few trendy spots in the northern cities,
largely failed to materialise.
One of the consequences of the increasing social polarisation caused by the ever-
growing gap between rich and poor is an increase in the process of suburbanization.
This ‘white flight,’ mirroring that which took place in the latter years of the last cen-
tury in the cities of the United States, began with the middle-class abandonment of in-
ner-city schools, which, at the beginning of the century, were becoming increasingly
dominated by immigrant groups, for many of whom English was a second language.
However this flight has not only been white. Discrimination against new immigrant
groups, made up of illegal economic migrants and environmental refugees, is unfortu-
nately still with us. But going hand-in-hand with this has been a greater acceptance
and assimilation of existing immigrant groups who became established, at or before
the turn of the last century, into the new citadels of Middle England.
In many ways, it is difficult to maintain the idea that twenty-first century subur-
bia is suburban in the twentieth century sense at all. The distinction between the ur-
ban and the suburban has always been ambiguous. But the transformation of the
suburban into the urban has, in the past, been predicated on the annexing of the
suburb by the expanding city. In 2023, as cities in the developed world (in marked
contrast to those in the developing world) decrease in size, the suburban centres have
become more and more physically estranged from the urban centres to which they
were once inextricably linked.
continues
THE FUTURE OF THE URBAN INQUIRY 393
Today, the so-called suburban centres have no need to relate to a larger centre at
all. The increased tendency to work from home, for people to grow their own food,
and even keep animals in their suburban gardens, has reduced the need for a rela-
tionship with the city. People living in the suburbs can nowadays find most of what
they immediately need within walking distance. What they can’t get near to home,
they, or their domestic appliances, can order electronically.
Only thirty years ago, those who found themselves contemplating the birth of the
Internet age and other new technologies of communication would have found it dif-
ficult to imagine that future communities would be like this. For that generation,
electronic communication was the force that would bring people together. We were
going to be one great “Global Village,” not a million little ones. A less predictable
consequence of the electronic revolution of the late-twentieth century has been the
gradual rebellion against electronic culture. Not that people don’t engage with it.
On the contrary, the amount of transactions, whether emotional, social, or business,
that are carried out electronically or virtually, without any form of human contact,
has never been higher. But because of this, people tend to yearn for human contact
and seek it out in their communities.
Young people today who have never known a world where public services existed
would no doubt be amused to learn that things like transport, health, and educa-
tion were once provided by local government and other agents of the state. But the
communities they live in today might have been very different if past governments
had succeeded in delivering their promises on improved public services. Had that
happened, perhaps we would have been living in the results of the ‘Urban Renais-
sance’ that was much-heralded twenty or so years ago.
SOURCE: Sean Griffiths, Back to the Future: Staying with the Suburban Ideal, 2004.
THE FUTURE OF THE URBAN INQUIRY

For many urbanists, analyzing metropolitan phenomena involves a choice between
the competing paradigms of human ecology and political economy. While human
ecology has been useful because it appreciates the role location plays in social inter-
action, it under-theorizes this role and adopts one-dimensional, technologically de-
terministic explanations for sociospatial processes. In contrast, the political-economy
approach deals with many important concepts and issues that ecology neglects, such
as the role of capital and class in the urban drama. It too is limited, however, because
it neglects aspects of culture and politics that cannot be reduced to class phenomena.
Unfortunately it also ignores the important features of spatial relations by consider-
ing location merely as a container for economic processes.
By adopting the sociospatial perspective, we move beyond the limitations of polit-

ical economy to explain how the built environment changes and develops. The nar-
row focus on the restructuring of global capitalism cannot alone explain the changes
experienced by metropolitan development in the twenty-first century. Once spatial
patterns are altered in one region of the metropolis, this change affects all other parts
not just of the metropolis, but also of other cities in the regional as well as national
and even international hierarchy of urban regions. The missing element is supplied by
a focus on real estate interests as the leading edge of change that channels growth in
specific directions. Hence, social space operates as both a product and a producer of
changes in the metropolitan environment.
The ecological and political-economy perspectives both assume that the state has
only a weak role as an agent of change. Human ecology simply ignores government
intervention. Too often, political economists have treated the state as simply the di-
rect agent of capitalist interests. The involvement of the state in sociospatial develop-
ment of urban space within and across metropolitan regions is both critical and
complex. First, government policies help provide the “pull” factors of growth. Sec-
ond, they are the focus of urban and suburban social movements that aim for a redis-
tribution of both wealth and social costs. Third, government officials are relatively
autonomous agents who do not simply follow the needs of capital alone but pursue
interests of their own to bring about social change. Finally, national policies of taxa-
tion and spending transfer wealth from one region of the country to another; hence,
programs such as military spending are critical causes of regional growth or decline,
in addition to private-sector investment patterns. As we have seen demonstrated in a
variety of contexts, private- and public-sector efforts often work hand in hand.
The sociospatial perspective utilizes a semiotic approach to understand how culture
and ideology define sociospatial processes, such as the appeal to progress and mod-
ernism in urban renewal or the use of religious belief to structure the ancient cities of
the past. The sociospatial approach considers all built environments as meaningful so-
cial spaces. Behavior occurs within these social spaces, but our own behavior may
change the meaning and use of that space. The sociospatial approach further captures
the special articulation between territory and culture that produces lifestyle networks
and variation in daily community life within the metropolis. Ethnic, gender-oriented,
or racially defined lifestyles enact themselves within the built environment. The street
corner, the mall, the coffee house, the local bar, the school cafeteria, and the commuter
train, car, or bus are all special venues where social networks interact.
Finally, the sociospatial perspective takes an integrated view of the multicentered
metropolitan region. We have considered both urban and suburban settlement space.
The traditional field of urban sociology possessed too narrow a focus on the central
city. Urban texts invariably treat suburbs only in a special chapter devoted to that pur-
pose, while the remainder of the text specializes in the study of the large central city,
even though a majority of population, employment, and business activity is located
within expanding metropolitan environments. Urban or suburban concerns are largely

metropolitan concerns, and any governmental efforts should begin from a regional
rather than a local perspective.
The future of the metropolitan inquiry will require important conceptual changes.
In place of the traditional urban sociology, we should have a field called the “sociology
of settlement space” that would deal with all forms of human settlement—towns,
cities, suburbs, metropolises, the multicentered region, and the megalopolis—so that
we no longer privilege the city as the sole urban form of space. In place of a conten-
tious and often confusing clash of different paradigms (ecology for aggregate data
analysis, political economy for economic issues, and the culturalist approach for
ethnography), we can look forward to integrated discussions at all levels (micro, macro,
and meso) following the synthesis of the sociospatial approach. Finally, by critically
evaluating the planning efforts of the present and requiring them to recognize the im-
portance of space, we have a means by which we can construct and live in a more hu-
mane and enjoyable environment that confronts, rather than hides from, the
seemingly intractable issues of environmental, representational, and social justice.
KEY CONCEPTS
cultural approach
cyberspace
globalization
world system theory
world city
racialization of urban space
revanchist city
theming
information society
space of flows
multicentered metropolitan region
structural approach
IMPORTANT NAMES
Manuel Castells
Saskia Sassen
1. What is the relationship between world systems theory and globalization? How
did these concepts develop? Have you encountered them in other courses or books
that you have read? How is the use of these terms in urban sociology different from
their presentation in other courses?
2. What is the relationship between world cities and global cities? What are some
of the factors that might be used to determine whether a city might be included in a
list of global cities? Why do the authors critique the recent emphasis on the global
city in urban sociology?
3. What is meant by the racialization of space? How is this concept linked to some
of the basic propositions of the sociospatial perspective presented in Chapter 1? Can
you think of examples of the racialization of space in the community where you
grew up?
4. What is meant by “theming” of the urban environment? What examples are
given in the chapter? Can you think of other examples of theming in commercial de-
velopment in your community? In new residential development or in the redevelop-
ment of older neighborhoods of your community?
5. Manuel Castells’s work on the new information society and the space of flows
might lead some to suggest that cities are no longer important. What do you think
of this argument? How would you critique Castells’s argument using the concept of
the multinuclear metropolitan region and sociospatial theory more generally?
6. What is meant by the revanchist city? Where did the term originate? Can you
identify events or policies within your own community that might be included in
this discussion of the revanchist city?
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INDEX
Abrahamson, Mark, 380 Bell, Wendell, 70

Abrams, Charles, 292–293 Berlin, 261, 321–323
Abstract space, 81 Bidonvilles, 289
Abu-Lughod, J., 315–317 Bilbao (Spain), 172–173
Accumulation of capital, 84–86 Biotic level, 61
Acropolis, 31–32 Birthrate, 288
Adjustable rate mortgage, 223 Black Death, 38
Affordable housing, 218, 222–226, Blasé attitude, 54
242, 293, 295 Bohemia, 196–197
African Americans, migrants, 219 Boeing Corporation, 364
in suburbs, 134–135, 185–186 Bookchin, Murray, 37
Alphaville, 301–302 Booth, Charles, 47
Anderson, Elijah, 195 Borchert, John, 124
Arab cities, 33–35, 314–317 Braudel, Fernand, 35
Arentina, 297–300 Brazil, 297–302
Asia, 303–314 Broadacre City, 335–336
Asian Americans, 192–194 Bookchine, Murray, 343
Chinese, 192–194 Brookings Institution, 141, 219
Filipinos, 192 Brown, Michael D., 215
Asian tigers, 277, 304–305, 313 Built environment, 27–28, 90–91
Athens, 23, 30–32 Buppies (Black urban professional), 161
Atlanta, population, 8 Burgess, Ernest W., 60
segregation, 218 concentric zone model, 62–64
migrants, 219 Burning Man Festival, 197–199
Aztec Empire, 35–37 Bush, George H.W., 157
Bush, George W., 215–217, 224, 360
Baghdad, 33 Bustee, 288–289
Banfield, Edward, 367–368
Banlieue, 257 Cabrini-Green (Chicago), 327–329
Barriadas, 288–289 Cairo, 315–317
Barrio urbanism, 187–189 California, fiscal crisis, 151, 240–241
Battery Park City (New York), 360 Proposition 13, 241
Batutah, Ibu, 35 air pollution regulation, 351–352
Beacon Hill, 69 Canadian cities, 140–141
425
426 INDEX
Capital accumulation theory, 84–86 Community and Society, 49–50

Capitalism, 41–47 Community studies, 195–199
Capitalist class, 85 Condition of the English Working Class,
Carnegie, Andrew, 124 The, 44–46
Casino gambling, 191 Condominium fechada, 302
Castells, Manuel, 387–388, 389 Congo Reform Association, 59
Chernobyl (Ukraine), 342 Conservative (see liberal-conservative
Chicago, segregation, 218 ideological debate)
tax increment financing, 361–362, 364 Conspicuous consumption, 124–125,
as global city, 380 159–160
Chicago Loop, as racialized space, 383 Core, 376
Chicago School of Urban Sociology, Consolidated metropolitan statistical
58–63, 65–69, 209–210, 388–390 area, 7–8
Childe, V. Gordon, 28–30 Concentric zone model, 62–64
Chile, social movements, 297 Corporate headquarters, 137–138
China, 34 Cortes, Hernan, 36–37
urban growth 377, 279, 305–314, Cressey, Paul, 65–66
318, 377 Crime, 229–239
quality of life, 308–309 city-suburb comparison, 233–235
Shanghai Tower, 310, 349 costs of, 236–238
coastal development strategy, 311, 349 drugs, 236
Joint Venture Law (1979), 311 suburban, 238–239
urban clusters, 313 violent crimes, 230–235
urbanization strategies, 312 white-collar, 229
China Rising, 314 Crime statistics, cities and suburbs,
Chinatown, 182, 384 229–230
City as a laboratory, 58 metropolitan areas, 233–235
City in History, The, 2–3, 23, 26 property crimes, 231–232
City of leisure, 19 violent crimes, 230–235
City of London, 380–381 Crony capitalism, 287
City of tomorrow, 19 Cultural level, 61
Class conflict theory, 82–84, 85–86 Culturalist approach, 388–389
Class stratification, 156–160 Culture, 17–19
Clinton, Wiliam Jefferson, 228 Cyberspace, 387–388
Cluster city development, 313
Colonial dependency, 376 Defoe, Daniel, 38
Colonialism, 289, 298 Deindustrialization, 130–131, 251–253,
Columbia (Maryland), 170, 339 255–256, 257–258
Commodification, 43 Demand side, 16, 123–125
Common interest developments, 203–204 Demographic transition, 287–289
Community, 194–195, 200–201, Denton, Nancy, 213
205–206, 206–207 Dependency theory, 286
decline of, 200–202 Detroit, 116, 138–139, 369–370
gay and lesbian, 204–205 Developed nations
neighborhood and, 194–200, 200–202 Eastern Europe, 265–271
new forms of, 202–205 economic restructuring
without locality, 205–206 France, 255–257
INDEX 427
Germany, 257–260 social problems, 269–270

immigration, 251–252, 256–257 social segregation, 270–271
Italy, 260–263 Ecological approach, 61, 69–70, 72–73
Japan, 271–276 Ecological theory, 290
privatization, 254 Economic development, 358–359
quality of life, 249 Eeconomic inequality, 156
racism, 254, 260 Economic insecurity, 301–302
Rhine-Ruhr District, 257–259 Economic investment, global cycles of, 211
Spain, 263–265 Economic restructuring, 167–168, 227,
United Kingdom, 250–254 252–253, 255–256, 258–259,
urbanization, 245–277 262–263
Western Europe, 248–265, Economy and Society, 76–77
276–277 Education, 201–202
Developing world, 279–318 Engels, Friedrich, 44–47, 53, 77–78
Africa, 314–317 England, early industrialization, 43
Asia, 303–314 Environmental activism, 344–346
China, 305–315 classical phase, 344–345
demographic transition, 287–289 mature phase, 345–346
globalization, 283–285 Environmental costs, 151–152
India, 305–309 Environmental issues, 341–347
informal economy, 294–295 Environmental Protection Agency,
Latin America, 297–303 344–345
mega regions, 282–283 Environmental quality, 343–346
primate city, 289–290 Espoo (Finland), 322–323
shantytowns, 290–294 Ethnic diversity, 182–183
urban agglomerations, 279–293 Ethnic enclave, 82
urban corridor, 314 Ethnic formation, 176
urban social movements, 295–297 Ethnographic study, 65, 68
urbanization, 279–283, 283–287, Euripides, 26
299–300, 305–306, 315–316 European city, 321–323
Development theory, 283–284 Everyday life, 19
Dinks, 161 Exclusionary zoning, 134, 217–218
Division of Labor in Society, The, 50–51 Extended commodity production, 41
Double shift, 167–168 Extended conditions of capital
Drugs, 236–238 accumulation, 77–78
criminalization of, 238
and crime, 236–238 Factorial ecology, 71–72
and incarceration, 237–238 Factorial Ecology of Calcutta, The, 72
Dual city, 132 Fannie Mae (Federal National Morgtage
Duany, Andres, 330–332 Association, 127
Duke, James B., 124 Favela, 288
Durkheim, Emile, 30, 38, 50–51 Feagin, Joe, 90, 124
Dystopia, 332 Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA), 215
Eastern Europe, 265–271 Federal Housing Authority (FHA), 127
central city decline, 269 Festival marketplace, 172–173
free markets, 265–266 Firey, Walter, 69
428 INDEX
Fiscal crisis, 239–241 Gottman, Jean, 2

Fisk University, 60 Government, role of, 15–16, 81
Flanagan, William, 388–390 Government intervention, 91–92,
Florence (Italy), 260 355–357
Fong, Timothy, 193–194 subsidies, 147–149
Ford, Henry, 178 Great Britain (see United Kingdom)
Fordism, 128 Great Depression, 127, 227
Foreclosure rates, 224–225 Growth machine, 86–88
Fourth world, 291, 377, 388 Growth networks, 92
Frankfort, as global city, 380 Growth poles, 136–137
French Revolution, 49
Frey, William, 128 Hall, Peter, 379
Fully urbanized county, 138–139 Hannertz, Ulf, 195
Functional specialization, 117–118 Harden, Garrett, 351
Harris, Chauncy, 64
Galleria (Houston), 135 Harvey, David, 84–86, 389
Gang, The, 67–68 Hawley, Amos, 72, 124
Gans, Herbert, 195 Health care, 323
Gary (Indiana), 125 Henderson, Charles, 58
Garden City, 323, 333 Heterotopia, 332
Gated communities, 202–203 Hispanic population, 179, 187–190,
Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, 38, 49–50 Home mortgage, 127–128
gender roles, 165–168 Home ownership, 225–226
Gendered space, 168–171 Homelessness, 227–229
Gentrification, 219, 383 children, 277
Germany, 257–260 India, 304
reunification, 259–260 mobilization, 228
Rhine-Ruhr District, 257–259 Homeowners, subsidies, 358
urbanization, 258–259 Household coping strategies, 294–295
Ghetto, 221 Housing, affordable, 218
Ghetto, The, 56 crisis, 222
Ghettoized poor, 164–165 Housing discrimination, 217–218
Ginnie Mae (Government National Housing policy, 212
Mortgage Association), 127 Houston, 148, 363–364
Giulini, Rudolph, 383 Howard, Ebenezer, 333
Global capitalism, 13–15, 128 Hoyt, Homer, 64
Global Charter on Human Rights, 353 Hukou system, 307, 311
Global cities, 379–381 Human ecology, 69–72, 72–73
Global city, 138 Human rights, 353
Global competition, 359–363 Hutchison, Ray, 382
Global economy, 95–96, 137–138, Hypersegregation, 212–214
150–152, 375, 284 Hyperurbanization, 13
Globalization, 123–130, 131–132,
376–377, 285–286 Immigrant gateway city, 180–182
Gold Coast and the Slum, The, 65–67, 328 Immigration, 176–180, 251–252,
Gordon, David, 84 256–257, 176–180
Gottdiener, Mark, 90–91, 94, 138–139 first wave, 176–177
INDEX 429
second wave, 177 Latin America, 292–294, 297–303

third wave, 178–180 Law of the Indies, 298–299
Imperial Forum (Rome), 32 population growth, 302–303
India, 35, 305–311 shantytowns, 290–293
quality of life, 308 squatter, 292–293
urban agglomerations, 307 urbanization, 297–300
Industrial Workers of the World, 177 Latino population, 378–379
Industrial City, 41–47 Law of the Indies (1573), 298–299
Industrial park, 136 Le Corbusier, 334–335
Infant mortality, 221 Lefebvre, Henri, 19, 80–82, 87–88,
Informal economy, 132–133, 88–89, 93–94, 223, 332, 388, 389
294–295, 296 Levittown (New York), 128–129
International division of labor, 83 Liberal-conservative ideological debate,
International Monetary Fund, 356–357, 367–369
296–297, 317 Life and Labour of the People
Internationalization of capital, 286 in London, 47
Irvine (California), 126–127 Light, Ivan, 390
Italy, 261–263 Livingston, Kirsten, 238
economic restructuring, 262 Lloyd, Richard, 196–197
Rome, 39–40 Lloyd, Forster Lloyd, 350–351
tourism, 262 London, 251–253
London Labour and the London Poor,
Jackson, Kenneth, 123–125 The, 47
Jacobs, Jane, 337–338 Logan, John, 86–87, 389
Japan, 271–276 Los Angeles, 5–6, 126, 188–189
population decline, 273–274 Love Canal (New York), 341–342
technopoles, 274 Lynd, Helen, 14
urbanization, 273 Lynd, Robert, 14
Jeremiah, 25–26
Johnson, Charles, 60 Manila, 286–287, 292, 293–294, 304
Journal of the Plague Year, A, 38 Maquilladora, 300
Judges, 25 Manchester, 44–46
Marx, Karl, 30, 41-43, 76–78, 155, 388
Kampong, 289 Massey, Douglas, 213
Katrina (Hurricane), 214–217 Mayhew, Henry, 47
Krier, Leon, 338 McCormick, Cyrus, 89
Krugman, Paul, 321–323 McKenzie, Roderick, 61, 68–69, 72
Mechanicall solidarity, 38, 50–51
Labor theory of location, 82 Medicaid, 354–355
Land use planning, 326–327 Medicare, 354–355
Laquian, Aparicio, 282 Medieval City, 37–38
Las Vegas, 381–382 Megacities, 9–13, 280–283
unemployment, 222 Megamall, 136
Lamarche, F., 86–87 Megaopolis, 2
Lamentations, 25–26 Mental image, of place, 210
Land use planning (see metropolitan Mercantile capitalism, 376
planning) Metropolitan area (MA), 7
430 INDEX
Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) Multinational corporations, 377

Portland, 326 Multiple nuclei, 64
Metropolitan Community, The, 68–69 Mumford, Lewis, 23–24, 26, 43
Metropolitan district, 6 Murray, James, 368
Metropolitan government, 369–372
Metropolitan planning, 321–323, National Community Reinvestment
326–329, 340–341 Coalition, 225–226
Metropolitan problems, 209–244 National Housing Act (1934), 127
crime, 229–239 Native Americans, 190–192
fiscal crisis and public services, casino gambling, 191
239–241 Oneida Nation, 191
homeless population, 227–229 Salt River Reservation, 191
housing crisis, 222–227 Natural increase of population, 88
racism and poverty, 211–221 Neighborhood, 199–200
socio-spatial approach, 210–211 Neighboring, 199–200
Metropolitan region, 2–6, 6–9, 68–69, New Bohemia, The, 196–197
141–144, 279–283, 369–372 New Orleans, 215–217
Metropolitan statistical area (MSA), 7–8 New urban sociology, 13–19, 75,
Mexican Americans, 187–189 393–395
Mexico, 303 New Urbanism, 330–332
Mexico City, 36–37 New York City, segregation, 218
Miami, 378 corporate headquarters, 137
segregation, 218 drug trafficking, 236
Middle class, 160–163 fiscal crisis, 240
Middletown, 14 pooper scooper law, 351
Migration, 288 infant mortality, 221, 385
Middletown Revisited, 14 New York Times, 227
Militarized zones, 304 Nigeria, social movements, 297
Military expenditures, 149–150 Nightlife, 171–172
Millenium Park (Chicago), 383 Nine-eleven (9/11), 390
Modernity, 52 Nodal services, 131–132
Modernization theory, 283–284 North Carolina, 364
Mohenjo-Daru, 24
Molotch, Harvey, 86–87, 389 Obama, Barack, economic
Monterey Park (California), 179–180, stimulus, 241
192–194 Metropolitan Summit, 365–366
More, Sir Thomas, 332 Omphalos, 31–32
Mortgage foreclosure, 224–225 Oneida Indian Nation (Green Bay), 191
Mortgage lending, 225–226 Orange County (California), 138–139
Moscow, 266–267 Organic solidarity, 50–51
Motor City, 18 Organization Man, The, 195
Muir, John, 344 Ottoman Empire, 35
Multicentered urban region, 5–6, 13, Overurbanization, 314–315, 317–318
19–21, 123–141, 391, 394–395
Multicentered metropolitan region, Pacific Rim, 277
139–141, 323–324 Pan-Athenaic Way, 31
INDEX 431
Park, Robert, 49, 56, 59–62, 72 Pullman (Illinois), 125–126

Paris Commune, 385 Pullman, George, 125
Peripheral urbanization, 284
Periphery, 377 Quintus Smyrnaeus, 26
Philadelphia, population, 8, 133
Philadelphia Gentlemen, The, 158–159 Racialization, 382–384
Phoenix, population, 8 Racism, 128, 211–220
Physical determinism (in planning), Radiant City, 334–335
331, 340–341 Rational calculation, 55
Pilgrimage, 39 Reagan, Ronald, 224, 359–360
Pittsburgh, 131 Real estate, 17, 81, 86, 87–88, 89–91,
Place marketing, 173 126, 223–226, 227–228
Planet of Slums, 291 Regional governance, 369–372
Planning paradox, 327–328 Renaissance City, 38–40
Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth, 330–332 Rentier class, 85–86
Plato, 332 Republic, The, 332
Poblaciones, 288–289 Republican Forum (Rome), 32
Polish Peasant in Europe and America, Revanchist city, 385–388
The, 58 Rhodes, Robin, 31
Political economy, 16, 76–78, 80–82, 393 Rome, 32–33, 39–40
Political instability, 303 Rouse Corporation, 172–173,
Post-Fordist production, 284 339–340
Pollution, 375 Rhine-Ruhr district (Germany), 257–259
Population deconcentration, 128–130
Population growth, 279–280, 302–303 Sacred spaces, 28
Portland (Oregon), 325–326 St. Louis, 327–329
Posthomericus (The Fall of Troy), 26 St. Petersburg (Russia), 266–267, 384
Poverty, 44–47, 220–221 Salt River Indian Reservation
and children, 221 (Phoenix), 191
definition of, 220 San Francisco, 68
Primary metropolitan statistical area Sassen, Saskia, 379
(PMSA), 7–8 Satellite city, 125–126
Primate city, 289–290, 304–305 Science park, 136–137
Privatism, 350, 358–359, 363–364 Schnore, Leo, 134
Production of Urban Space, 389 Seaside (Florida), 331
Proletariat, 43 Second circuit of capital, 80, 85–86,
Property values, and crime, 236–237 88–89, 91, 223, 227
Propylaea, 31–32 Sector Theory, 64
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, The, 178 Segregation, 182–183, 185–186,
Pruit-Igoe, 327–329 212–220
Public housing, 212, 326–329 involuntary, 212
Public policy, 349–350, 355–358, voluntary, 212
358–359, 369–372 African Americans
Public space, and crime, 236 Asian Americans, 214
Public-private partnerships, 360–361 Hispanics, 214
Puerto Ricans, 189–190 Semiotics, 93–95
432 INDEX
Sentiment and Symbolism as Ecological Squatter settlements, 292–293

Variables, 69 business squatters, 292
Settlement space, 21 owner squatters, 292
Shanghai Tower, 310 semisquatters, 293
Shantytown, 290–294, 317–318, 375 speculator squatters, 293
Shevky, Eshrev, 70 squatter tenants, 292–293
shopping malls, 135–136 Squatting, 227
Short, John Rennie, 380 Standard consolidated statistical area
Silicon Valley, 78–79, 136–137, (SCSA), 7–8
150–151 Standard metropolitan area (SMA), 6
Simmel, Georg, 51, 52–55, 55–56 Standard metropolitan statistical area
Simple commodity production, 41 (SMSA), 6
Singer Sewing Machine Company, 125 Stanford, Leland, 124
Single-family homes, 123, 322 Stanford University, 126
Sixtus V, Pope, 39–40 Steele, Shelby, 368
Sjoberg, Gideon, 24 Stewart, Martha, 238
Slum formation, 291–292 Steering, racial, 212
Slum removal, 357–358 Storper, Michael, 82
Small, Albion, 49 Structuralist approach, 388–390
Smart growth, 325–326 Suburban development, 95–96
Smith, Adam, 41 Suburban dominance, 133
Smith, Neil, 385 Suburban ideal, 391–393
Social area analysis, 70–71 Suburban lifestyle, 160–163
Social class, 156–164 Suburban region, 2–6
Social Darwinsim, 62 Suburbanism as a Way of Life, 58
Social disorganization, 56–58, 194–195, Suburbanization, 95–96, 123–130
209–210 Suburbs
Social inequality, 354–355 crime, 238–239
Social justice, 363–367 manufacturing, 136–137
Social Justice and the City, 389 office and administrative centers,
Social networks, 205–206 137–138
Social polarization, 132–33, 301–302 retail sales, 135–136
Social space, 81 social characteristics, 134–135
Socialist City, 267–268 Sun Belt, 8–9, 16, 95–96, 130,
Social welfare, 355 141–146, 324
Socioeconomic status, 156–157 growth and decline, 151–152
Sociospatial approach, 19–21, 95–97, push and pull factors, 148–150
97–98, 155, 394–395 recent trends, 150–152
to social problems, 210–211 Supply side, 15–17, 124
Sociospatial perspective, 2–6, 88, 94, Sustainable growth, 346–347
175–176, 284–287, 290 Symbols, 93–95
Spaces of consumption, 174–176
Spain, 263–265 Tapiola (Finland), 323
economic restructuring, 265 Taueber, Karl, 212
urbanization, 264 Taueber, Alma, 212
Spatial semiotics, 19 Tax increment Financing (TIP), 361–363
Spencer, Herbert, 61 Taxi Dance Hall, The, 65–66
INDEX 433
Taylor, Graham, 125–126 Ur, 23

Thanatopolis, 23–24 Urban, definition of, 10–11
Theme parks, 381 Urban and suburban settlement space, 20
Theming of urban environment, 381–382 Urban agglomerations, 12, 280–283,
Theory of the Leisure Class, 159–160 308, 310, 313
Thomas, W. I., 58–60 Urban corridor, 313–314
Thrasher, Frederick, 67–68 Urban culture, 17–19, 93–95, 172–176
Time and space, 388 Urban development, 15–17
Toennies, Ferdinand, 38, 49–50 Urban design, 299
Tokyo, 271–273 Urban ecology, 69–71
Toronto, 369–370 Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of
Tourism, 382, 384 Place, 389
Tragedy of the commons, 350–352 Urban future, 390–393
Transportation infrastructure, 323 Urban lifestyles, 159–207
Transportation technology, 124–126 Urban growth, 12
Trojan Women, The, 26–27 Urban implosion, 43
Trolley lines, 126 Uran planners, 329, 340–341
Twin Cities, 19 Urban policy, 355–357
Urban problems, 33, 209–210
Ullman, Edward, 64 Urban Question, The, 389
Unemployment, 221–222, 241 Urban realms, 5–6
Uneven development, 47, 78–80, Urban regeneration, 175–176
201–202, 210–211, 222, 276–277, Urban regions, 1–6
283, 290, 296, 352–355 Urban renewal, 356–357, 358
United for a Fair Economy, 226 Urban revolution, 29
United Kingdom Urban social movements, 295–297
economic restructuring, 252–253 Urban semiotics, 17–19, 394
urbanization, 252 Urban sociology, 1, 13–21, 49–72,
United Nations, 11, 139–140 75–97, 375–395
United States, 99–121, 123–153 Urban space, use of, 228
Colonial period, 101–105 militarization, 228
Immigration, 176–182, 185–194 Urban sprawl, 283, 323–325, 325–326
Industrial expansion, 105-–14 Urban studies, 376
Metropolitan period, 114–120 Urbanism, 51–52
Metropolitan problems, 209–240 Urbanism as a Way of Life, 56–58
Neighborhoods and community, Urbanism and Suburbanism as
194–206 Ways of Life, 58
People and lifestyles, 155–182 Urbanization, 13, 23–24, 51, 99–121,
Suburbanization, 123–153 279–283
Sun Belt, 144–153 Africa, 314–317
Urban policy, 352–371 ancient, 28–30
Urbanization, 99–121, 123–153 Asia, 303–314
United States Census, 133 changing perspectives, 283–287
Universal Declaration of Human China, 305–314
Rights, 353 developing world, 279–317
University of Chicago, 49 Eastern Europe, 265–271
Upper class, 157–159 India, 305–308
434 INDEX
Urbanization (continued) Italy, 260–264

Japan, 271–275 immigration, 251–252, 256–257
Latin America, 297–303 quality of life, 249
Primate City, 289–290 racism, 254, 260
United States, 99–121, 123–153 Rhine-Ruhr District, 257–259
Western Europe, 245–265 Spain, 264–265
Utopia, 332 United Kingdom, 250–254
Utopian schemes, 332–336 urbanization, 245–277
White flight, 212, 358
Veblen, Thorsten, 124–125, 159–160 Whyte, William H., 195
Veterans Administration, 127 Wilson, William J., 220
Villes créés, 35 Wirth, Louis, 55–58, 194–195
Villas miserias, 288–289 Women and the built environment,
Villes spontanées, 35 168–171
Women and the economy, 165–168
Walker, David, 82 Working class, 163–165
Washington, Booker T., 59 Working poor, 164
Washington, D.C., segregation, 218 World Bank, 317
Washington, George, 89 World cities, 379–381
Weber, Max, 30, 37–38, 76–77 World City, The, 379
Welfare capitalism (Scandinavia), 355 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 335–336
Welfare programs, 360 Wright, Talmadge, 228
Western Europe, 248–265, 276–277
economic restructuring, 252–253, Yuppies, 161
255–256, 258–259, 262–263, 265
France, 255–257 Zoning, 329
Germany, 257–260 Zorbaugh, Harvey, 65–67, 328
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Mark Gottdiener is the recipient of the 2011 Robert and Helen Lynd Lifetime
Achievement Award. He is professor of sociology at the State University of New York-
Buffalo. He received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York-Stony Brook
and taught at the University of California-Riverside before moving to Buffalo. Mark
is the author of more than sixteen books and edited volumes in urban sociology, ur-
ban semiotics, and urban theory, including Life in the Air; Key Concepts in Urban
Studies; Las Vegas: An All American City; The Social Production of Urban Space; The
Theming of America; and Postmodern Semiotics. He teaches courses in urban sociology,
contemporary theory, and cultural studies. Mark is married and has two children.
Ray Hutchison is professor and chair of urban and regional studies at the University
of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of
Chicago and taught at the University of California-San Diego and the University of
Nevada before moving to Green Bay. Ray is series editor of Research in Urban Sociol-
ogy (now in its tenth volume) and editor of The Encyclopedia of Urban Studies (2009).
In 2008 he received the International Award of Merit from the Romualdo Del Bianco
Foundation in Florence for his participation in international seminars and work-
shops, including The Tourist City (2008) and Everyday Life in the Segmented City
(2010). Ray is the author of more than twenty-five articles and book chapters on ur-
ban sociology, immigration and refugee populations, and street gangs. He teaches
courses in urban sociology, the city through time and space, and ethnic and racial
identities. Ray is married and has three children.
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“The best urban sociology textbook available!

This updated version of Gottdiener

Organized around an integrated paradigm—the sociospatial perspective—the fourth edition of

Mark Gottdiener is professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY.

Cover Image © Jon Arnold/JAI/Corbis

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

Copyright © 2011 by Westview Press

Find us on the World Wide Web at www.westviewpress.com.

Designed by Trish Wilkinson

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mark Gottdiener dedicates this fourth edition to the memory of his

Ray Hutchison dedicates this fourth edition to Dulce Reyes Hutchison,

Preface to the Fourth Edition xiii

1 THE NEW URBAN SOCIOLOGY 1

2 THE ORIGINS OF URBAN LIFE 23

3 THE RISE OF URBAN SOCIOLOGY 49

The Chicago School of Urban Sociology, 58

4 CONTEMPORARY URBAN SOCIOLOGY 75

5 URBANIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES 99

6 SUBURBANIZATION, GLOBALIZATION, AND

Key Concepts, 153

7 PEOPLE AND LIFESTYLES IN THE METROPOLIS:

8 MINORITY SETTLEMENT PATTERNS,

9 METROPOLITAN PROBLEMS: RACISM,

Key Concepts, 242

10 URBANIZATION IN THE DEVELOPED NATIONS 245

11 GLOBALIZATION AND URBANIZATION

12 METROPOLITAN PLANNING AND

13 METROPOLITAN SOCIAL POLICY 349

14 THE FUTURE OF URBAN SOCIOLOGY 375

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

xiv PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION xv

xvi PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

THE NEW URBAN SOCIOLOGY

2 1: THE NEW URBAN SOCIOLOGY

The metropolitan regions of the United States contain an incredible array of

TA B L E 1. 1 Most Populated Cities in the United States, 1980–2007.

Detroit 1,203,000 1,028,000 951,000 917,000 –77,000 –7.5 –34,000 –3.6

6 1: THE NEW URBAN SOCIOLOGY

DEFINING THE METROPOLITAN REGION

DEFINING THE METROPOLITAN REGION 7

Standard consolidated statistical area (SCSA) was a forerunner of the CMSA.

SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of the Census.

This is determined by measuring the extent to which people in outlying counties

8 1: THE NEW URBAN SOCIOLOGY

MEGACITIES AROUND THE WORLD 9

TA B L E 1.2 Most Populated Metropolitan Regions in the United States, 1980–2007.

MEGACITIES AROUND THE WORLD

10 1: THE NEW URBAN SOCIOLOGY

MEGACITIES AROUND THE WORLD 11

SOURCE: United Nations, Demographic Yearbook 2005, Table 6.

Our projection of population growth in megacities and urban regions is based

12 1: THE NEW URBAN SOCIOLOGY

TA B L E 1.3 World’s Largest Urban Agglomerations, 1975–2025.