GEOG 340: Day 17

1. GEOG 340: Day 17 HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Finishing Chapter 13; Urbanization, Urban Life, and Urban Spaces

2. Did anyone get the e-mail about the Global Issues Film Festival? Did anyone go? • Still working on the exams. • “Salmon Confidential” will show tonight at 7 p.m. in Building 200, Rm. 203. • Today we will hear from Sarah & Keltie, along with Melissa, and then later Doug R. on this week’s chapter. • But first, I will show a short video on the “golden ratio,” as elaborated on by Leonardo Da Vinci. I talked about it last week, as did Thanh. Housekeep-ing Items

3. The authors vividly describe different conceptions of urban vs. rural, and what best meets people’s needs. • What best meets your needs? City? Country? Village? And, if city, what size of city? • Remember Ebenezer Howard’s attempt to find the perfect compromise in the “garden city.” • The authors also talk about the sociospatial dialectic – in which urban space shapes urban society and vice versa. Can you think of examples. Chapter 14

4. Their reference to the concept of the lifeworld is rather complex, but what I take from it is that, partly by circumstance and partly by choice, we create semi-permeable bubbles for ourselves within cities. We do not engage with all of the city all of the time. It would be too overwhelming. • What is your lifeworld, even if it is subject to change and fluctuation? Chapter 14

5. The bourgeoisie…. has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. …The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society….Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind– Karl Marx and Friederich Engels. Chapter 14

6. The Industrial Revolution, and consequent urbanization, was one of most wrenching social processes ever encountered by human beings. Three sociologists who were amongst the first to study the phenomenon were Ferdinand Tőnnies (1855-1935), Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), and Georg Simmel (1858-1918). Chapter 14 mechanical vs. organic solidarity Gemeinschaft vs. Gesellschaft struggle of the individual against conformity

7. Gemeinschaft= strong communities ties as found in rural and traditional societies. Gesellschaft= functional ties based on impersonal interdependence, as found typically in cities. • The ‘mechanical solidarity’ of traditional societies is based on groupthink. ‘Organic solidarity’ emerges from the differences and densities of urban society where people are linked through a division of labour. • At a certain point, though, organic solidarity can yield to anomie, and thereby to deviance (breakdown of norms). • People also are faced with psychic overload in cities, become indifferent to others, and seek to protect themselves and find ways to withdraw. • Dual aspects of cities – freedom to be ourselves without constricting social conventions, and danger of becoming part of the ‘lonely crowd.’ Chapter 14