Wirth Urbanism as a Way of Life 1938 PDF

“Urbanism as a Way of Life” from American Journal of Sociology (1938) Louis Wirth Editors’ Introduction...

“Urbanism as a Way of Life” from American Journal of Sociology (1938) Louis Wirth Editors’ Introduction Published in 1938, Wirth’s essay on urbanism, and the factors of size, density, and heterogeneity, is one of the foundational statements of the Chicago School of urban sociology. It is clearly influenced by Ferdinand Tönnies, Georg Simmel, and Robert E. Park. Like Tönnies, he views the theory of urbanism as an ideal type. Wirth’s concept of the “schizoid” urban personality, beset by “segmental roles,” is akin to Simmel’s blasé and reserved metropolitan man. Simmel felt, however, that the cosmopolitanism of city life liberated urbanites from the prejudices and provincialities of rural life. Wirth was less impressed by the positive benefits of this emancipation from primary group controls. He drew our attention to the growth of Durkheimian anomie, which consequently engendered a host of modern social problems, including crime, deviance, and various kinds of mental illness that were seen to proliferate in the city. Wirth also informed our understanding of Robert Park’s concept of the city as a “mosaic of social worlds” that increases social distance between people. He viewed this as an outcome of urban density and specialization. He was more sensitive to the practical implications of a theory of urbanism than Tönnies or Simmel, as he suggested that knowledge of the causes of urban social problems were important to apply to a range of social policy and urban planning practices. Louis Wirth was born August 28, 1897, in Gemünden, a small village in the Rhineland district of Germany to a Jewish rural cattle farming family. He followed his maternal uncle to Omaha, Nebraska, in the United States, to take advantage of educational opportunities. He was a successful high school debater and even- tually won a scholarship to the University of Chicago. He flirted for a while with leftist anti-war causes during World War I, and then worked with delinquent boys with the Jewish Charities of Chicago after college. He obtained a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1925. His doctoral thesis on the Jewish quarter of Chicago was published as The Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928). After various teach- ing posts and fellowships, he joined the Chicago faculty under the chairmanship of Robert E. Park in 1931. Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. In The Ghetto, Wirth examined the consequences of centuries of discrimination on Jewish community life, ranging from Renaissance Italy to Chicago’s Maxwell Street. The book served as a model for the university’s researchers in ethnicity, many of whom later studied under Wirth when he joined the university’s faculty. As a professor at the University of Chicago, Wirth blended empirical research and theory in his work and contributed to the emergence of sociology as a profession. The advent of the Roosevelt administration gave many opportunities for sociologists to work with government in congressional testimony, consulting, and funded research. Wirth also played a significant role in organizing an introductory course in the social sciences and was popularly known as a persuasive lecturer. During the late 1930s he grew involved in community affairs in Chicago and was often invited to make public addresses on urban planning and race relations. He became a well-known radio speaker, acting as a moderator and discussant on a series of 62 University of Chicago “round tables” broadcast between 1937 and 1952. As an academic committed to social action, Louis Wirth became involved in numerous groups, commit- tees, and associations concerned with the effects of racial prejudice on community life. He was a founder The Urban Sociology Reader, edited by Jan Lin, and Christopher Mele, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bostoncollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1075388. Created from bostoncollege-ebooks on 2025-01-13 02:55:04.  “URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE” 33 and president of the Chicago-based American Council on Race Relations, which sponsored research into problems of fair employment, education, housing, and integration. In 1947, with funds from the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations, Wirth also established the Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations at the University of Chicago. Led by Wirth, demographer Philip Hauser, and anthropologist Sol Tax, the committee played a key role in addressing the social and political factors underlying racial discrimination O in the city of Chicago. N Wirth was President of the American Sociological Society and his Presidential Address, “Consensus and E Mass Communication,” was delivered at the organization’s annual meeting in New York City in December 1947. He was also the first President (1949–52) of the International Sociological Association. Wirth died suddenly and unexpectedly one spring day in 1952 in Buffalo, New York at the young age of 55. He had been in Buffalo to speak at a conference on community relations; he collapsed and died following his presentation. Wirth also published a book on the selected writings of Karl Mannheim, entitled Ideology and Utopia, which he co-edited with Edward Shils. A useful book on Louis Wirth’s legacy is by Albert J. Reiss, Jr., Louis Wirth: On Cities and Social Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964). This book includes an excellent biographical memorandum by Elizabeth Wirth Marvick. THE CITY AND CONTEMPORARY which were the farm, the manor, and the village. CIVILIZATION This historic influence is reinforced by the cir- cumstances that the population of the city itself is Just as the beginning of Western civilization is in large measure recruited from the countryside, marked by the permanent settlement of formerly where a mode of life reminiscent of this earlier nomadic peoples in the Mediterranean basin, form of existence persists. Hence we should not so the beginning of what is distinctively modern expect to find abrupt and discontinuous variation in our civilization is best signalized by the between urban and rural types of personality. growth of great cities. Nowhere has mankind been The city and the country may be regarded as two farther removed from organic nature than under poles in reference to one or the other of which all the conditions of life characteristic of these cities. human settlements tend to arrange themselves. The contemporary world no longer presents In viewing urban-industrial and rural-folk society a picture of small isolated groups of human as ideal types of communities, we may obtain a beings scattered over a vast territory as Sumner perspective for the analysis of the basic models of described primitive society. The distinctive feature human association as they appear in contemporary of man’s mode of living in the modern age is his civilization. Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. concentration into gigantic aggregations around which cluster lesser centers and from which radiate the ideas and practices that we call SOCIOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF civilization. THE CITY [...] Since the city is the product of growth rather than of instantaneous creation, it is to be expected Despite the preponderant significance of the city that the influences which it exerts upon the modes in our civilization, our knowledge of the nature of life should not be able to wipe out completely of urbanism and the process of urbanization the previously dominant modes of human asso- is meager, notwithstanding many attempts to ciation. To a greater or lesser degree, therefore, isolate the distinguishing characteristics of urban life. our social life bears the imprint of an earlier folk Geographers, historians, economists, and political society, the characteristic modes of settlement of scientists have incorporated the points of view of The Urban Sociology Reader, edited by Jan Lin, and Christopher Mele, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bostoncollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1075388. Created from bostoncollege-ebooks on 2025-01-13 02:55:04.  34 LOUIS WIRTH their respective disciplines into diverse definitions compendent hypotheses which may be derived of the city. While in no sense intended to super- from a set of postulates implicitly contained in sede these, the formulation of a sociological a sociological definition of the city. Neither have approach to the city may incidentally serve to call we abstracted such hypotheses from our general attention to the interrelations between them by sociological knowledge which may be substantiated emphasizing the peculiar characteristics of the through empirical research. The closest approx- city as a particular form of human association. imations to a systematic theory of urbanism are to A sociologically significant definition of the city be found in a penetrating essay, “Die Stadt,” by Max seeks to select those elements of urbanism which Weber and in a memorable paper by Robert E. Park mark it as a distinctive mode of human group life. on “The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of [...] Human Behavior in the Urban Environment.” But While urbanism, or that complex of traits which even these excellent contributions are far from makes up the characteristic mode of life in cities, constituting an ordered and coherent framework and urbanization, which denotes the development of theory upon which research might profitably and extensions of these factors, are thus not exclus- proceed. ively found in settlements which are cities in the [...] physical and demographic sense, they do, never- To say that large numbers are necessary to theless, find their most pronounced expression in constitute a city means, of course, large numbers such areas, especially in metropolitan cities. In in relation to a restricted area or high density formulating a definition of the city it is necessary of settlement. There are, nevertheless, good to exercise caution in order to avoid identifying reasons for treating large numbers and density as urbanism as a way of life with any specific locally separate factors, because each may be connected or historically conditioned cultural influences with significantly different social consequences. which, though they may significantly affect the Similarly the need for adding heterogeneity to specific character of the community, are not the numbers of population as a necessary and distinct essential determinants of its character as a city. criterion of urbanism might be questioned, since we [...] should expect the range of differences to increase For sociological purposes a city may be with numbers. In defense, it may be said that the defined as a relatively large, dense, and permanent city shows a kind and degree of heterogeneity of settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals. On population which cannot be wholly accounted the basis of the postulates which this minimal for by the law of large numbers or adequately definition suggests, a theory of urbanism may represented by means of a normal distribution be formulated in the light of existing knowledge curve. Because the population of the city does not concerning social groups. reproduce itself, it must recruit its migrants from other cities, the countryside, and – in the United States until recently – from other countries. The A THEORY OF URBANISM city has thus historically been the melting-pot of Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. races, peoples, and cultures, and a most favorable In the rich literature on the city we look in vain for breeding-ground of new biological and cultural a theory systematizing the available knowledge hybrids. It has not only tolerated but rewarded concerning the city as a social entity. We do individual differences. It has brought together indeed have excellent formulations of theories on people from the ends of the earth because they are such special problems as the growth of the city different and thus useful to one another, rather than viewed as a historical trend and as a recurrent because they are homogeneous and like-minded. process, and we have a wealth of literature pre- There are a number of sociological proposi- senting insights of social relevance and empirical tions concerning the relationship between (a) studies offering detailed information on a variety numbers of population, (b) density of settlement, of particular aspects of urban life. But despite the (c) heterogeneity of inhabitants and group life multiplication of research and textbooks on the city, can be formulated on the basis of observation and we do not as yet have a comprehensive body of research. The Urban Sociology Reader, edited by Jan Lin, and Christopher Mele, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bostoncollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1075388. Created from bostoncollege-ebooks on 2025-01-13 02:55:04.  “URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE” 35 Size of the population aggregate particular persons, and their dependence upon others is confined to a highly fractionalized aspect Ever since Aristotle’s Politics, it has been recognized of the other’s round of activity. This is essentially that increasing the number of inhabitants in a what is meant by saying that the city is character- settlement beyond a certain limit will affect the ized by secondary rather than primary contacts. O relationships between them and the character of The contacts of the city may indeed be face to face, N the city. Large numbers involve, as has been but they are nevertheless impersonal, superficial, E pointed out, a greater range of individual varia- transitory, and segmental. The reserve, the in- tion. Furthermore, the greater the number of indi- difference, and the blasé outlook which urbanites viduals participating in a process of interaction, the manifest in their relationships may thus be greater is the potential differentiation between regarded as devices for immunizing themselves them. The personal traits, the occupations, the against the personal claims and expectations of cultural life, and the ideas of the members of others. an urban community may, therefore, be expected The superficiality, the anonymity, and the to range between more widely separated poles transitory character of urban social relations make than those of rural inhabitants. intelligible, also, the sophistication and the rationality That such variations should give rise to the generally ascribed to city-dwellers. Our acquaint- spatial segregation of individuals according to ances tend to stand in a relationship of utility to color, ethnic heritage, economic and social status, us in the sense that the role which each one plays tastes and preferences, may readily be inferred. in our life is overwhelmingly regarded as a means The bonds of kinship, of neighborliness, and the for the achievement of our own ends. Whereas the sentiments arising out of living together for genera- individual gains, on the one hand, a certain degree tions under a common folk tradition are likely to be of emancipation or freedom from the personal and absent or, at best, relatively weak in an aggregate emotional controls of intimate groups, he loses, on the members of which have such diverse origins the other hand, the spontaneous self-expression, the and backgrounds. Under such circumstances com- morale, and the sense of participation that comes petition and formal control mechanisms furnish with living in an integrated society. This constitutes the substitutes for the bonds of solidarity that are essentially the state of anomie, or the social void, to relied upon to hold a folk society together. which Durkheim alludes in attempting to account [...] for the various forms of social disorganization The multiplication of persons in a state of inter- in technological society. action under conditions which make their contact The segmental character and utilitarian accent as full personalities impossible produces that of interpersonal relations in the city find their segmentalization of human relationships which institutional expression in the proliferation of has sometimes been seized upon by students of the specialized tasks which we see in their most devel- mental life of the cities as an explanation for the oped form in the professions. The operations of the “schizoid” character of urban personality. This is pecuniary nexus lead to predatory relationships Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. not to say that the urban inhabitants have fewer which tend to obstruct the efficient functioning of acquaintances than rural inhabitants, for the the social order unless checked by professional reverse may actually be true; it means rather that codes and occupational etiquette. The premium put in relation to the number of people whom they see upon utility and efficiency suggests the adaptabil- and with whom they rub elbows in the course of ity of the corporate device for the organization of daily life, they know a smaller proportion, and enterprises in which individuals can engage only in of these they have less intensive knowledge. groups. The advantage that the corporation has over Characteristically, urbanites meet one another the individual entrepreneur and the partnership in in highly segmental roles. They are, to be sure, the urban-industrial world derives not only from the dependent upon more people for the satisfactions possibility it affords of centralizing the resources of of their life-needs than are rural people and thus thousands of individuals or from the legal privilege are associated with a great number of organ- of limited liability and perpetual succession, but from ized groups, but they are less dependent upon the fact that the corporation has no soul. The Urban Sociology Reader, edited by Jan Lin, and Christopher Mele, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bostoncollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1075388. Created from bostoncollege-ebooks on 2025-01-13 02:55:04.  36 LOUIS WIRTH The specialization of individuals, particularly intelligence and ignorance, order and chaos. The in their occupations, can proceed only, as Adam competition for space is great, so that each area Smith pointed out, upon the basis of an enlarged generally tends to be put to the use which yields market, which in turn accentuates the division of the greatest economic return. Place of work tends labor. This enlarged market is only in part supplied to become dissociated from place of residence, by the city’s hinterland; in large measure it is for the proximity of industrial and commercial found among the larger numbers that the city itself establishments makes an area both economically contains. The dominance of the city over the sur- and socially undesirable for residential purposes. rounding hinterland becomes explicable in terms of Density, land values, rentals, accessibility, the division of labor which urban life occasions and healthfulness, prestige, aesthetic consideration, promotes. The extreme degree of interdepend- absence of nuisances such as noise, smoke, and dirt ence and the unstable equilibrium of urban life are determine the desirability of various areas of the closely associated with the division of labor and the city as places of settlement for different sections specialization of occupations. This interdependence of the population. Place and nature of work, and this instability are increased by the tendency income, racial and ethnic characteristics, social of each city to specialize in those functions in which status, custom, habit, taste, preference, and preju- it has the greatest advantage. dice are among the significant factors in accordance [...] with which the urban population is selected and distributed into more or less distinct settlements. Diverse population elements inhabiting a compact Density settlement thus become segregated from one another in the degree in which their requirements As in the case of numbers, so in the case of con- and modes of life are incompatible and in the centration in limited space, certain consequences measure in which they are antagonistic. Similarly, of relevance in sociological analysis of the city persons of homogeneous status and needs unwit- emerge. Of these only a few can be indicated. tingly drift into, consciously select, or are forced by As Darwin pointed out for flora and fauna and circumstances into the same area. The different parts as Durkheim noted in the case of human societies, of the city thus acquire specialized functions. The an increase in numbers when area is held constant city consequently tends to resemble a mosaic of (i.e., an increase in density) tends to produce dif- social worlds in which the transition from one to ferentiation and specialization, since only in this way the other is abrupt. The juxtaposition of divergent can the area support increased numbers. Density personalities and modes of life tends to produce a thus reinforces the effect of numbers in diversify- relativistic perspective and a sense of toleration of ing men and their activities and in increasing the differences which may be regarded as prerequisites complexity of the social structure. for rationality and which lead toward the secular- On the subjective side, as Simmel has suggested, ization of life. the close physical contact of numerous individuals The close living together and working together Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. necessarily produces a shift in the media through of individuals who have no sentimental and which we orient ourselves to the urban milieu, emotional ties foster a spirit of competition, especially to our fellowmen. Typically, our phys- aggrandizement, and mutual exploitation. Formal ical contacts are close but our social contacts are controls are instituted to counteract irresponsibil- distant. The urban world puts a premium on visual ity and potential disorder. Without rigid adherence recognition. We see the uniform which denotes the to predictable routines a large compact society role of the functionaries, and are oblivious to the would scarcely be able to maintain itself. The personal eccentricities hidden behind the uniform. clock and the traffic signal are symbolic of the basis We tend to acquire and develop a sensitivity to a of our social order in the urban world. Frequent world of artifacts, and become progressively farther close physical contact, coupled with great social removed from the world of nature. distance, accentuates the reserve of unattached We are exposed to glaring contrasts between individuals toward one another and, unless splendor and squalor, between riches and poverty, compensated by other opportunities for response, The Urban Sociology Reader, edited by Jan Lin, and Christopher Mele, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bostoncollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1075388. Created from bostoncollege-ebooks on 2025-01-13 02:55:04.  “URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE” 37 gives rise to loneliness. The necessary frequent is difficult. This applies strikingly to the local areas movement of great numbers of individuals in a within the city into which persons become segreg- congested habitat causes friction and irritation. ated more by virtue of differences in race, language, Nervous tensions which derive from such personal income, and social status than through choice or frustrations are increased by the rapid tempo and positive attraction to people like themselves. Over- O the complicated technology under which life in whelmingly the city-dweller is not a home-owner, N dense areas must be lived. and since a transitory habitat does not generate E binding traditions and sentiments, only rarely is he a true neighbor. There is little opportunity for Heterogeneity the individual to obtain a conception of the city as a whole or to survey his place in the total scheme. The social interaction among such a variety of Consequently he finds it difficult to determine what personality types in the urban milieu tends to is to his own “best interests” and to decide between break down the rigidity of caste lines and to the issues and leaders presented to him by the complicate the class structure, and thus induces agencies of mass suggestion. Individuals who are a more ramified and differentiated framework thus detached from the organized bodies which of social stratification than is found in more integrate society comprise the fluid masses that integrated societies. The heightened mobility of make collective behavior in the urban community the individual, which brings him within the range so unpredictable and hence so problematical. of stimulation by a great number of diverse Although the city, through the recruitment of individuals and subjects him to fluctuating status variant types to perform its diverse tasks and in the differentiated social groups that compose the accentuation of their uniqueness through com- the social structure of the city, brings him toward petition and the premium upon eccentricity, the acceptance of instability and insecurity in the novelty, efficient performance, and inventiveness, world at large as a norm. This fact helps to produces a highly differentiated population, it also account too for the sophistication and cosmopol- exercises a leveling influence. Wherever large itanism of the urbanite. No single group has the numbers of differently constituted individuals undivided allegiance of the individual. The groups congregate, the process of depersonalization also with which he is affiliated do not lend themselves enters. This leveling tendency inheres in part in the readily to a simple hierarchical arrangement. By economic basis of the city. The development of large virtue of his different interests arising out of differ- cities, at least in the modern age, was largely ent aspects of social life, the individual acquires dependent upon the concentrative force of steam. membership in widely divergent groups, each The rise of the factory made possible mass of which functions only with reference to a certain production for an impersonal market. The fullest segment of his personality. Nor do these groups exploitation of the possibilities of the division of easily permit of a concentric arrangement so that labor and mass production, however, is possible only the narrower ones fall within the circumference with standardization of processes and products. Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. of the more inclusive ones, as is more likely to be A money economy goes hand in hand with such a the case in the rural community or in primitive system of production. Progressively as cities have societies. Rather, the groups with which the person developed upon a background of this system of pro- typically is affiliated are tangential to each other or duction, the pecuniary nexus which implies the intersect in highly variable fashion. purchasability of services and things has displaced Partly as a result of the physical footlooseness personal relations as the basis of association. of the population and partly as a result of their social Individuality under these circumstances must be mobility, the turnover in group membership replaced by categories. When large numbers have generally is rapid. Place of residence, place and to make common use of facilities and institutions, character of employment, income, and interests those facilities and institutions must serve the fluctuate, and the task of holding organizations needs of the average person rather than those of together and maintaining and promoting intimate particular individuals. The services of the public util- and lasting acquaintanceship between the members ities, of the recreational, educational, and cultural The Urban Sociology Reader, edited by Jan Lin, and Christopher Mele, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bostoncollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1075388. Created from bostoncollege-ebooks on 2025-01-13 02:55:04.  38 LOUIS WIRTH institutions, must be adjusted to mass require- in typical forms of collective behavior and subject ments. Similarly, the cultural institutions, such as to characteristic mechanisms of social control. the schools, the movies, the radio, and the newspapers, by virtue of their mass clientele, must necessarily operate as leveling influences. The Urbanism in ecological perspective political process as it appears in urban life could not be understood unless one examined the Since in the case of physical structure and ecolo- mass appeals made through modern propaganda gical process we are able to operate with fairly techniques. If the individual would participate at all objective indices, it becomes possible to arrive at in the social, political, and economic life of the city, quite precise and generally quantitative results. he must subordinate some of his individuality to The dominance of the city over its hinterland the demands of the larger community and in that becomes explicable through the functional charac- measure immerse himself in mass movements. teristics of the city which derive in large measure from the effect of numbers and density. Many of the technical facilities and the skills and organiza- THE RELATION BETWEEN tions to which urban life gives rise can grow and A THEORY OF URBANISM AND prosper only in cities where the demand is suf- SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH ficiently great. The nature and scope of the services rendered by these organizations and institutions By means of a body of theory such as that and the advantage which they enjoy over the less illustratively sketched above, the complicated developed facilities of smaller towns enhance the and many-sided phenomena of urbanism may dominance of the city, making ever wider regions be analyzed in terms of a limited number of basic dependent upon the central metropolis. categories. The sociological approach to the city The composition of an urban population shows thus acquires an essential unity and coherence the operation of selective and differentiating factors. enabling the empirical investigator not merely Cities contain a larger proportion of persons in the to focus more distinctly upon the problems and prime of life than rural areas, which contain more processes that properly fall in his province but old and very young people. In this, as in so many also to treat his subject matter in a more integrated other respects, the larger the city the more this and systematic fashion. A few typical findings of specific characteristic of urbanism is apparent. empirical research in the field of urbanism, with spe- With the exception of the largest cities, which cial reference to the United States, may be indicated have attracted the bulk of the foreign-born males, to substantiate the theoretical propositions set and a few other special types of cities, women forth in the preceding pages, and some of the cru- predominate numerically over men. The hetero- cial problems for further study may be outlined. geneity of the urban population is further indicated On the basis of the three variables, number, along racial and ethnic lines. The foreign-born and density of settlement, and degree of heterogeneity, their children constitute nearly two-thirds of all Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. of the urban population, it appears possible to the inhabitants of cities of one million and over. explain the characteristics of urban life and to Their proportion in the urban population declines account for the differences between cities of as the size of the city decreases, until in the rural various sizes and types. areas they comprise only about one-sixth of the Urbanism as a characteristic mode of life may total population. The larger cities similarly have be approached empirically from three interrelated attracted more Negroes and other racial groups than perspectives: (1) as a physical structure compris- have the smaller communities. Considering that age, ing a population base, a technology, and an sex, race, and ethnic origin are associated with other ecological order; (2) as a system of social organ- factors such as occupation and interest, one sees ization involving a characteristic social structure, a that a major characteristic of the urban-dweller is series of social institutions, and a typical pattern of his dissimilarity from his fellows. Never before social relationships; and (3) as a set of attitudes and have such large masses of people of diverse traits ideas, and a constellation of personalities engaging as we find in our cities been thrown together into The Urban Sociology Reader, edited by Jan Lin, and Christopher Mele, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bostoncollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1075388. Created from bostoncollege-ebooks on 2025-01-13 02:55:04.  “URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE” 39 such close physical contact as in the great cities undermining of the traditional basis of social of America. Cities generally, and American cities solidarity. All these phenomena can be substanti- in particular, comprise a motley of peoples and ally verified through objective indices. Thus, for cultures of highly differentiated modes of life instance, the low and declining urban-reproduction between which there often is only the faintest rates suggest that the city is not conducive to the O communication, the greatest indifference, the traditional type of family life, including the rearing N broadest tolerance, occasionally bitter strife, but of children and the maintenance of the home as the E always the sharpest contrast. locus of a whole round of vital activities. The The failure of the urban population to reproduce transfer of industrial, educational, and recreational itself appears to be a biological consequence of a activities to specialized institutions outside the combination of factors in the complex of urban life, home has deprived the family of some of its most and the decline in the birth rate generally may be characteristic historical functions. In cities mothers regarded as one of the most significant signs of the are more likely to be employed, lodgers are more urbanization of the Western world. While the pro- frequently part of the household, marriage tends to portion of deaths in cities is slightly greater than be postponed, and the proportion of single and in the country, the outstanding difference between unattached people is greater. Families are smaller the failure of present-day cities to maintain their and more frequently without children than in population and that of cities of the past is that in the country. The family as a unit of social life former times it was due to the exceedingly high is emancipated from the larger kinship group death rates in cities, whereas today, since cities have characteristic of the country, and the individual become more livable from a health standpoint, it members pursue their own diverging interests in is due to low birth rates. These biological charac- their vocational, educational, religious, recreational, teristics of the urban population are significant and political life. sociologically, not merely because they reflect the Such functions as the maintenance of health, the urban mode of existence but also because they methods of alleviating the hardships associated condition the growth and future dominance of with personal and social insecurity, the provisions cities and their basic social organization. Since for education, recreation, and cultural advance- cities are the consumers rather than the producers ment have given rise to highly specialized institu- of men, the value of human life and the social esti- tions on a community-wide, statewide, or even mation of the personality will not be unaffected by national basis. The same factors which have the balance between births and deaths. The pattern brought about greater personal insecurity also of land use, of land values, rentals, and ownership, underlie the wider contrasts between individuals the nature and functioning of the physical structures, to be found in the urban world. While the city has of housing, of transportation and communication broken down the rigid caste lines of preindustrial facilities, of public utilities – these and many other society, it has sharpened and differentiated in- phases of the physical mechanism of the city are come and status groups. Generally, a larger pro- not isolated phenomena unrelated to the city as a portion of the adult urban population is gainfully Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. social entity but are affected by and affect the employed than is the case with the adult-rural urban mode of life. population. The white-collar class, comprising those employed in trade, in clerical, and in pro- fessional work, are proportionately more numerous Urbanism as a form of social in large cities and in metropolitan centers and in organization smaller towns than in the country. On the whole, the city discourages an eco- The distinctive features of the urban mode of life nomic life in which the individual in time of crisis have often been described sociologically as con- has a basis of subsistence to fall back upon, and sisting of the substitution of secondary for primary it discourages self-employment. While incomes of contacts, the weakening of bonds of kinship, city people are on the average higher than those and the declining social significance of the family, of country people, the cost of living seems to the disappearance of the neighborhood, and the be higher in the larger cities. Home-ownership The Urban Sociology Reader, edited by Jan Lin, and Christopher Mele, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bostoncollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1075388. Created from bostoncollege-ebooks on 2025-01-13 02:55:04.  40 LOUIS WIRTH involves greater burdens and is rarer. Rents educational, religious, recreational, or cultural, that are higher and absorb a larger proportion of the urbanite expresses and develops his personal- the income. Although the urban-dweller has the ity, acquires status, and is able to carry on the round benefit of many communal services, he spends a of activities that constitutes his life. It may easily large proportion of his income for such items be inferred, however, that the organizational as recreation and advancement and a smaller framework which these highly differentiated proportion for food. What the communal services functions call into being does not of itself insure do not furnish, the urbanite must purchase, and there the consistency and integrity of the personalities is virtually no human need which has remained whose interests it enlists. Personal disorganiza- unexploited by commercialism. Catering to thrills tion, mental breakdown, suicide, delinquency, and furnishing means of escape from drudgery, crime, corruption, and disorder might be expected monotony, and routine thus become one of the under these circumstances to be more prevalent in major functions of urban recreation, which at its the urban than in the rural community. This has been best furnishes means for creative self-expression confirmed in so far as comparable indexes are and spontaneous group association, but which available, but the mechanisms underlying these more typically in the urban world results in pas- phenomena require further analysis. sive spectatorism, on the one hand, or sensational Since for most group purposes it is impossible record-smashing feats, on the other. in the city to appeal individually to the large Reduced to a state of virtual impotence as an number of discrete and differentiated citizens, and individual, the urbanite is bound to exert himself since it is only through the organizations to which by joining with others of similar interest into men belong that their interests and resources groups organized to obtain his ends. This results can be enlisted for a collective cause, it may in the enormous multiplication of voluntary be inferred that social control in the city should organizations directed toward as great a variety of typically proceed through formally organized objectives as there are human needs and interests. groups. It follows, too, that the masses of men in While, on the one hand, the traditional ties of the city are subject to manipulation by symbols human association are weakened, urban existence and stereotypes managed by individuals working involves a much greater degree of interdepend- from afar or operating invisibly behind the ence between man and man and a more scenes through their control of the instruments complicated, fragile, and volatile form of mutual of communication. Self-government either in the interrelations over many phases of which the economic, or political, or the cultural realm is individual as such can exert scarcely any control. under these circumstances reduced to a mere Frequently there is only the most tenuous figure of speech, or, at best, is subject to the relationship between the economic position or unstable equilibrium of pressure groups. In view of other basic factors that determine the individual’s the ineffectiveness of actual kinship ties, we create existence in the urban world and the voluntary fictional kinship groups. In the face of the dis- groups with which he is affiliated. In a primitive and appearance of the territorial unit as a basis of Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. in a rural society it is generally possible to predict social solidarity, we create interest units. Meanwhile on the basis of a few known factors who will the city as a community resolves itself into a series belong to what and who will associate with whom of tenuous segmental relationships superimposed in almost every relationship of life, but in the city upon a territorial base with a definite center but we can only project the general pattern of group without a definite periphery, and upon a division formation and affiliation, and this pattern will of labor which far transcends the immediate display many incongruities and contradictions. locality and is world-wide in scope. The larger the number of persons in a state of interaction with another, the lower is the level of communication Urban personality and collective behavior and the greater is the tendency for communication to proceed on an elementary level, i.e., on the It is largely through the activities of the voluntary basis of those things which are assumed to be groups, be their objectives economic, political, common or to be of interest to all. The Urban Sociology Reader, edited by Jan Lin, and Christopher Mele, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bostoncollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1075388. Created from bostoncollege-ebooks on 2025-01-13 02:55:04.  “URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE” 41 It is obviously, therefore, to the emerging can hope to determine the criteria of relevance trends in the communication system and to the and validity of factual data. The miscellaneous production and distribution technology that has assortment of disconnected information which has come into existence with modern civilization that hitherto found its way into sociological treatises on we must look for the symptoms which will indicate the city may thus be sifted and incorporated into O the probable development of urbanism as a mode a coherent body of knowledge. Incidentally, only N of social life. The direction of the ongoing changes by means of some such theory will the sociologist E in urbanism will for good or ill transform not only escape the futile practice of voicing in the name of the city but the world. sociological science a variety of often unsupport- It is only in so far as the sociologist, with a work- able judgments about poverty, housing, city- able theory of urbanism, has a clear conception of planning, sanitation, municipal administration, the city as a social entity that he can hope to policing, marketing, transportation, and other develop a unified body of reliable knowledge – which technical issues. Though the sociologist cannot what passes as “urban sociology” is certainly solve any of these practical problems – at least not at the present time. By taking his point of not by himself – he may, if he discovers his proper departure from a theory of urbanism such as that function, have an important contribution to make to sketched in the foregoing pages, a theory to be elab- their comprehension and solution. The prospects orated, tested, and revised, in the light of further for doing this are brightest through a general, the- analysis and empirical research, the sociologist oretical, rather than through an ad hoc approach. Copyright © 2012. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. The Urban Sociology Reader, edited by Jan Lin, and Christopher Mele, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bostoncollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1075388. Created from bostoncollege-ebooks on 2025-01-13 02:55:04.