The Urban World, 9 th Ed.

The Urban World, 9th Ed. J. John Palen

Chapter 7: Urban Culture and Lifestyles • Introduction • Social Psychology of Urban Life • Reevaluations of Urbanism and Social Disorganization • Characteristics of Urban Populations • Urban Lifestyles • A Final Note of Caution • Summary

Introduction • Move to the consideration of the city as a unique social organizational form and social milieu • Urbanism rather than urbanization • Understanding the influences of the beliefs and myths about city, suburban, and rural life

Social Psychology of Urban Life • Early Formulations • Tönnies’s description of the shift from gemeinschaft (a community where ties are based upon kinship)to gesellschaft (a society based on common economic, political, and other interests) • Karl Marx’s dichotomy between the urban and the rural • In all frameworks, the rural represents the past

The Chicago School • Concerned with examining scientifically the changes produced by urbanization • Influenced by Georg Simmel’s earlier vision of the social-psychological consequences of city life • “Urbanism as a Way of Life” • Louis Wirth argued that the city created a distinct way of life—called “urbanism”—that is reflected in how people dress and speak, what they believe about the social world, what they consider worth achieving, what they do for a living, where they live, with whom they associate, and why they interact with other people

Reevaluations of Urbanism and Social Disorganization • Determinist Theory • Wirthian social disorganization, which included decline of family and weakening of bonds, breakdown of primary groups, and decline of cultural homogeneity • Community Lost: urbanization is said to more or less automatically produce the characteristics of urbanism as a way of life • Compositional Theory • Gans suggests that the city is composed of not just one urban way of life but rather a wide variety of lifestyles • The nature of the individual’s local community and primary groups are most important

Subcultural Theory • Claude Fischer argues that space does matter, and there is something different about cities • Urbanization strengthens and intensifies subcultural groups • Being middle class in a small town is not the same as being middle class in a city • Size does matter

Characteristics of Urban Populations • Age • Urban population is younger than rural because they attract immigrants • Cities have more activities for young adults • Gender • Less-developed countries have a higher proportion of urban males • Developed countries there is a higher likelihood that single women will leave rural areas for city jobs

Race, Ethnicity, and Religion • Cities more heterogeneous than small towns • Raises the potential of intergroup cleavage, competition, and conflict • More likely when represented by socioeconomic status boundaries • Socioeconomic Status • North American cities have been losing middle-class residents since World War II • Overall city income averages tend to hide sharp individual and neighborhood variations in socioeconomic status

Urban Lifestyles • Cosmopolites • Urban sophisticates, most often having incomes to match their lifestyles • Unmarried or Childless • Overlap with the cosmopolites; younger and apartment dwellers • Brains have replaced money and accomplishment trumps religion and wealth • Gay Households • Estimated to be some 8.8 million gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons in the United States • According to the U.S. census, gay male households are more likely to live in downtown gay neighborhoods, while lesbians more commonly reside in suburban areas

Ethnic Villagers • Residents in neighborhoods dominated by a single ethnic group often called “urban villagers” or “urban provincials” • Often mislabeled as slums • Neighborhood Characteristics • Territoriality: strong sense of territory • Ordered Segmentation: each ethnic group carefully and specifically defines its territory • Peer-Group Orientation: a group made up of members of the same age and sex who are at the same stage of the lifecycle • Family Norms: Family life in middle-class families is child-oriented, but in settled, ethnic, working-class areas family life is generally adult-oriented

Housing: not primarily viewed as a status symbol • Imagery and Vulnerability: psychological distance from the city; they are “in” but not “of” the city • Vulnerable to change induced from the outside • Deprived or Trapped • For the 15 to 20 percent of the population who are the bottom, the slum has the character more of an urban jungle than an urban village • Most of the residents of unstable slums are for all practical purposes excluded from the economic and social life of the larger society • Housing Problems

A Final Note of Caution • Urbanism as a way of life is remarkably diverse • There is no single urban lifestyle per se • It is important to distinguish between the different urban lifestyles

The Urban World, 9 th Ed.