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Is the City the place to create a modern utopia?

Is the City the place to create a modern utopia?. Yanarella ask wether the city a magnet or a container? Marx believed urban development was essential for the socialist utopia he dreamed about.

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Is the City the place to create a modern utopia?

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  1. Is the City the place to create a modern utopia? Yanarella ask wether the city a magnet or a container? Marx believed urban development was essential for the socialist utopia he dreamed about. Weber suggests that the city is no longer an important social phenomenon since it was stripped of its political and economic autonomy.

  2. Utopia and Social Diverserity Lewis Wirth’s seminal article on “Urbanism as a Way of Life” (1938) anticipates the tensions posed by increasing social heterogeneity within the confines of fixed, urban places

  3. Standard economic theory also suggests that for local public goods (Tiebout, 1956) there exist markets that are more efficiently provided by homogeneous groups, since larger, socially more heterogeneous jurisdictions will have greater diversity in public service tastes and disagreement (i.e., conflict) over policy preferences.

  4. So what is the solution? Segregation? Is there anything good about social diversity?

  5. What type of society is Bickford promoting?

  6. Ecological Differentiation Definition: Concentrated poverty, segregation, and differences of social capital. Why is this bad?

  7. What happens when people do not have a stake in the larger community? not a problem if you are in an gated and self-sustained environment and don't have to leave. Gated communities just push crime to an adjacent area.

  8. What Causes Ecological Differentiation? Bickford’s argument: Our desire for safety, order, homogeneity is not necessarily natural or self-determined but rather there are exogenous factors that influence our desire for such things: Media Parents Friends INSTITUTIONS

  9. Utopia = social engineering? Some political/policy decisions make segregation worse. "The world is being constructed, quite literally, in ways that adversely affect how we regard politics and who we recognize as fellow citizens".

  10. Examples 1) Economic development policies that promote gentrification (the ousting of poor so that the land can be used by businesses). Eminent domain. 2) transportation: highways over alternatives (San Diego trolley example) 3) minimum sized lots 4) no sidewalks 5) Breaking up the CCSD

  11. Social Regulation Public vs. Private - what is public?; what is private? The definition of privacy is a power struggle: The private is political. The owners of shopping mall want public tax dollars to help them build their mall and to help maintain the roads and expand the freeways and want police protection but they want the right to say this is private property and we can exclude anyone we want. Prunyard decision 1980. Semi-Public space.

  12. Who do you trust to make the decisions regarding our community? • Public Institutions • Private Individuals, Private Organizations

  13. PUBLIC V. PRIVATE DECISIONS Bickford makes a good point - we want government to butt out and let us make our own choices but in reality we aren't really making any choices. We are simply substituting one authority over another. Her example is the CID (common interest development) or PUD (planned unit development).

  14. What Type of Society • A diverse one • One with many voices & perspectives • Heterogeneous

  15. How do we achieve this? Change the political institutions, the rules of the game (i.e. Incorporation) Overlapping boundaries that link us together and start letting us expand the notion of neighbor or citizen.

  16. Jefferson came to the reluctant defense of the American city after the War of 1812 because he became convinced that America’s national security required strong commercial centers and heightened national power that only cities could provide.

  17. Can we achieve this?

  18. Warner - Privatism Secular culture of privatism The individual should find happiness in personal independence and the search for wealth. A community should be a union of money-making, accumulating families. Community regulation should simply keep the peace between money-makers (and if possible help create a positive setting to make money).

  19. The Down-Side of Privatism? What does Warner suggest? The culture of privatism stopped a universal public health program from full realization Merchant-led (private) committees are not very effective in solving collective action problems regarding public goods.

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