Urban studies: Definitions and Urbanity

• These notes summarize key concepts and thinkers related to urban studies from several college lectures.

Definitions of the City

• Cities are economic hubs with diversity, density, and progressive social interactions.
• Key features include population size, economic structure, legal criteria, buildings, and social structure.
• Louis Wirth: defines a city as a large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially diverse individuals.

Urbanity as a Way of Life

• Louis Wirth (1938): urban life, characterized by size, density, and diversity, is fundamentally different, leading to fleeting and superficial interactions.
• Criticisms of Wirth include a negative view of the city, neglecting community strength, not unique characteristics and the sharp divide between urban and rural areas.
• Tönnies: distinguished pre-industrial communities (Gemeinschaft) from industrial societies (Gesellschaft).
• Georg Simmel: described "Blasé attitude" as indifference to cope with over-stimulation, favoring intellect over emotion.
• Bystander effect: inaction by bystanders in emergencies.
• Urban etiquette/Civil inattention: avoiding physical/eye contact, respecting personal space, ignoring strange behaviors.
• Emile Durkheim: contrasted mechanical solidarity (traditions, rituals in rural areas) with organic solidarity (interdependence, specialization in cities).

Urbanization vs. Urban Growth

• Million city: more than 1 million inhabitants.
• Megacity: more than 5-8 million inhabitants.
• Metacity/hypercity: more than 20 million inhabitants.
• Megalopolis: extremely large urbanized area formed by merging metropolitan areas.
• World cities: cities with a significant, usually economic, role in the global system; not every big city is a world city.
• Key figures are Geddes (1915), Hall (1966), and Sassen (1991).

Urbanization Trends

• Urbanization: proportion of the global population living in urban areas increases.
• Urban growth: includes absolute growth in urban population/area.
• Agglomeration: core and ring development.
• Suburbanization: from city centers to suburbs
• Counter-/de-urbanization: from urban areas to rural areas.
• Reurbanization: urban renewal

Case Study: Detroit

• Detroit's rise and fall: population peaked at 1.85 million in 1950, declining to 713,000 by 2010.
• Demographic shift: white population dropped from 84% in 1950 to 11% in 2010.
• Detroit's Renaissance: redevelopment in Greater Downtown Detroit.
• Revival areas: limited to 5.2% of the city with an above-average population.
• Lessons from Detroit: placing simple narratives of cities/districts in perspective.

Conclusions on Cities

• Cities experiences, growth, stagnation, decline, and rebirth.
• Megacities grow, often in less developed regions.
• Dynamic of cities are complex to delineate, compare, but are interesting as research due to urbanization.

Visions of the City

• Modern views range from the 19th to mid-20th century.
• Includes examples from Manchester and Chicago.
• Concentric zone model (Burgess, 1925): cities consist of concentric rings, with wealth increasing outward from the CBD.
• Criticisms of Concentric Model: limited focus on Chicago, neglects physical features, overestimates competition, outdated due to changing infrastructure and car use, doesn’t account for gentrification.

Key Urban Thinkers

• Engels studied social conditions in industrial cities like Manchester, critiquing industrialization and capitalism's impact on workers.
• Tönnies: described Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society) to explain evolving social relations during urbanization.
• Durkheim explored social cohesion shifts from mechanical to organic solidarity amid specialization in cities.
• Simmel: studied impact of urban life on the individual psyche, noting adaptation.

Focus on the Chicago School

• Burgess and Wirth: as part of the Chicago School used Chicago as a "laboratory" to study urban processes.
• Themes: segregation, spatial conflicts ("human ecology"), urban experience, and emancipation.
• Sector model (Hoyt, 1939): urban areas expand along transport routes.
• Multiple nuclei model (Harris & Ullman, 1945): CBD importance decreases, creating complex, polycentric systems, as seen in Mann's 1965 European city model.

Postmodern Views

• Sees cities as fragmented with loose connections and examples like Los Angeles.
• Gaming board model (Dear and Flusty, 1998): views contemporary cities as disconnected areas linked via mondial economic ties, not local ties.
• Lefebvre: focused on space production interplay with capitalism.
• Harvey: studied links as capitalism, globalization, and gentrification with spatial inequality.
• Smith: developed gentrification theories highlighting "rent gap" economic motivator.
• Soja: introduced "spatial justice" and the influence of space in social inequality.
• Davis, a sociologist/urbanist, studied the growth of slums and militarization of urban spaces.
• Themes: political-economic explanations for inequality/segregation.
• Concept splintering: multi-nodal cities.

Urban Theory and Application

• Theories specific for certain times and locations, like Chicago in the 1930s or LA in the 1990s.
• They offer perspectives to examine how a city develops as a "lens" or "toolbox."

Gentrification

• Process by successful urbanites replace poorer groups (De Kam & Reijndorp, 2015: 83).
• Driven by agency (movement of people) and/or structure (capital flow) (o.a. Neil Smith).
• Influenced by rent gap theory: gap between real and possible value of a place.

Definitions of Public Space

• Topographical: streets, parks, plazas, boulevards.
• Meeting places: spaces for public interaction, regardless of social status.
• Accessibility: spaces accessible to all, without restrictions.
• Ownership: spaces owned by government.
• Boundaries between public and private can be unclear.
• Private spaces can serve a public function as can public spaces be restricted and public doesn't always exist.

Importance of Public Space

• Necessary use: passage from one area to another.
• Optional/ social use: spaces for engagement, relaxation, and meeting others.
• Designing cities at eye-level: design planning at 5 km per hour.
• Value of Green Spaces: rising property values near green spaces.
• Forum for expression: enabling discussion and protest.
• Environmental management: improving air quality, reducing heat stress, minimizing traffic noise.
• Promoting healthier lifestyles.
• Fostering community.
• Supports social structure: provide places to meet, essential for inclusive communities.
• Interacting with different groups that encourage familiarity.

Mobility and Living Environment

• Limited evidence suggests physical environment directly impacts physical activity.
• Neighborhood qualities that influence health are hard to measure.
• Neighborhoods as locations of health problems: with problems result of spacial planning.
• Spatial Interventions: building bike lanes and increasing green spaces.
• Nudging: subtly guiding behavior.
• Social Interventions: programs such as designated driver campaigns.
• Digital Interventions: mobile apps designed to promote exercise.

Notes on Public Space Mgt

• Users differ in public spaces so cannot always please everyone.
• Responsibility of management has to be taken into account.
• Construction isn’t always a guarantee of use.
• There needs to be broad and integrated approaches to healthcare.
• Goverments must work in multidisciplinary teams.

Conclusions on Public Space

• Public space is useful for people to move and socialize.
• There should be restrictions to ensure public access.
• Social and spacial change will encourage activities by different social actors.
• It is difficult to steer users.

Defining Globalization

• Giddens: intensified world interactions connects far locations, so local affairs become influenced by events miles away, and reverse.
• Gilpin: integration of the world market.
• Scholte: "De-territorialization" supraterritorial realtions between people increases.
• Harvey: describes as "time-space compression."
• Intensification of relations and transactions via tech and it leads to interactions indifferent geographical scale/distance.

Globalization and Cities

• Globalizations are central to urbanization.
• You can't understand gloabalization without examining cities
• Gloabalization is both present and random; places are important.

Distinctions on Cities

• Michael Pacione's: absolute urban growth, relative urban growth, and positioning of cities.
• Absolute urban shift occurs in both developing/developed regions.
• Relative: Distrubution of cities can be administrative like aggolomerations and proper city. Or in mega cites

Urban Size and Worlding Cities

• Urban shift from grassroots level.
• Worlding cities can be transnational: religion, migration, trade, soical network.
• Gate keeping the rest of world.
• City updates with daily interactions given resources.

Understanding Complexity of Cities

• What is a city: urban connection in terms of spatial connection.
• Global trade and posittion determine the city.
• Remittances and soical networks are very important.

Defining a Unique Habitat

• Urban habit: informal eocnomy in different idenities.
• Valetines day becomes a cultural case.
• Food supply as new policy
• Requires transport infrastructure, economy and identity
• Need sustainaiblity with equality

Conclusion

• Understand that it is essential to position yourself in space.
• Take worlding into account
• Connect local and global for governance