SOCIOL Final Flashcards Chapter 15
Urban
A geographic area with a high population density ( typically thought of as 1000 individuals per square mile).
Population density
the number of people living in a common unit of space, like a square mile or square kilometer.
Metropolitan regions
A continuously populated region with several jurisdictions, typically a large central city surrounded by several smaller towns, that are all physically and economically connected to one another.
Suburban communities
Defined as cities and towns within metropolitan regions and close to, but not part of, the boundaries of central cities.
Rural
Areas that are less dense and not adjacent to an urbanized region
Central city
the main city in a metropolitan area
Urbanized
The process through which large numbers of people move to cities in search of jobs and opportunities and cities grow in size and complexity.
Kingsley Davis
Urbanization follows an S curve
Megacities
Cities with populations of over 10million people, like Mexico City, Sao Paolo, Brazil, or Lagos, Nigeria, are another recent phenomenon that has emerged throughout the world.
Megaregion
Two or more large cities in geographical proximity are linked together through infrastructure and through economic activity.
What three factors facilitated the growth of suburbanization ?
1) Residential developers found that there was a demand for large houses for yards which could be built in the suburbs.
2) Greater investments in highways that allowed an easier commute to the city
3) White flight: The movement of White families out of central cities and into the suburbs.
Redlining
The determination by governments and banks that neighborhoods with high percentages of racial minorities were ineligible for mortgage loans. Redlining has been illegal since the 1970s.
Racial Covenants
(White) home buyers pledged not to sell their home to non-White buyers.
Suburban sprawl
The boundaries of suburbs have stretched further and further away from central cities
Edge cities
A concentrated area of business, shopping, and entertainment just outside of the historical urban centers of commerce. Edge cities differ from classic suburbs in having a considerable amount of land devoted to economic activities, not just residences and local businesses.
Urban Ecology
An approach to the study of cities, social change, and urban life introduced into sociology by the Chicago School to explain how different social groups within cities compete over scarce resources; how groups cluster themselves in a city.
Burgess’s “concentric zone”
Burgess’s circular zones consist of a city center, a transitional area where immigrants and the poor live, a working-class area with single-family tenements, a middle-class family residential area, and, finally, the commuter zone.
What did the Burgess model suggest ?
As individuals assimilated or moved upward into the working and middle classes, Burgess’s model suggests that they moved outward into residential areas with higher quality housing and into “commuter zones” for wealthy people, who were willing to pay more for space and separation from urban life.
How is the Burgess model constructed ?
Zones:
1) CBD (Central Business District)
2) Factory
3) Zone of transition
4) Working class zone
5) Residential zone
6) Commuter zone
Growth Machine
Investors and governments work to increase the size of the city’s population and make it attractive for businesses to locate there to enhance the overall level of economic activity occurring within a city.
Gentrification
Occurs when neighborhoods like SoHo undergo a process of change where new investment, new people, and new establishments move into and alter the character of the neighborhood; businesses move in that charge higher prices.
Davis research
Documents the way that “growth coalitions” sought to keep poor Black and Latinx populations from spreading into spaces deemed historically important by allocating tax subsidies to favored developers and by excluding groups representing the city’s poor communities from taking part in decision making on urban planning.
Klinenberg Studies
Documents remarkable growth in the number of Americans living by themselves—with the highest rates in places like Washington, D.C., Denver, and Minneapolis. In the Manhattan borough of New York City, about half of all housing units are now occupied by a single individual.
Social Isolation
Meaning a lack of interpersonal connections and a decline in civic life.
Bowling Alone: Robert Putnam
Americans have been spending less time with family, less time in groups like bowling clubs, and less time engaged in civic organizations since the mid-1960s.
Wirth studies
Wirth argued that city dwellers interact in largely anonymous, superficial, and transitory ways in their day-to-day exchanges with one another. He attributed this to the unique “specialization” of urban residents into different types of occupations and careers, the “differentiation” of urban individuals by social class, and the “segregation” of urban spaces by race, all of which do not exist to the same degree in smaller, more intimate communities.
Simmel: Effects of Urbanism
The anonymity of the city allows individuals the freedom to express themselves in new ways while also escaping the tendency toward conformity in small towns. In the city, individuals find both freedom and isolation.
Gans’s view of urbanism
Gans agreed that there are differences between the type of life in nonurban and urban areas but argued that these differences result from factors like the age, race, occupation, and income of residents—not from urbanism per se.
Fischer’s view of urbanism
The sheer size and density of urban spaces lead individuals to sort into subcultures with similar interests or occupations. As a result, cities have higher rates of artistic innovation, higher rates of crime, and more “extreme” lifestyles.
Jane Jacobs
Argued that vibrant neighborhoods that encourage the use of public spaces can foster social connections, interaction, and public safety; stated that neighborhoods that combine business and residencies foster interaction between neighbors and safety.
Community
Thought of as the degree to which individuals connect with, support, and interact with each other.
Social ties
The various types of connections that individuals make with other people, no matter where they live.
Social Networks
The study of the ties that link people and groups together.
Social capital
The resources available to individuals through their relationships and networks
Culture of poverty
The idea that the poor hold values and ideas that make them less interested in trying to get ahead than other groups in society.
Urban Renewal
The attempt to improve impoverished areas by tearing down existing structures and even whole neighborhoods, replacing them with new structures or uses.
Urban Ghetto
A term used to refer to sections of cities characterized by severe racial or ethnic segregation and deep poverty.
The Great Migration
The movement of large numbers of Blacks from the South to the North in the first half of the twentieth century.
The Truly Disadvantaged: Wilson
The decline in manufacturing jobs led to less stable jobs for minority populations. This contributed to fewer households being supported leading to an increase in the need for welfare and more poverty.
Concentration of poverty
When a geographically bounded area experiences extremely high rates of economic disadvantage that often lead to higher rates of social problems in that area.
Segregation
The spatial separation of the population based on race or ethnicity.
Global neighborhoods
Neighborhoods that contain members of several different racial and ethnic groups
Segmented assimilation
The immigrants and their children follow one of several possible pathways of assimilation; upwards or downwards.
What are the pathways in Segmented Assimilation ?
1) traditional trajectory of upward mobility and cultural assimilation into the mainstream.
2) Downward economic mobility and lives of urban poverty.
3) Integration into the economic mainstream while sustaining ties to the culture of their original home by continuing to live within residential enclaves.
1862 Homestead Act
Offered 160 acres of land to anyone who agreed to live there and develop a plot of land in states with land but few people or farms.
Robert Wuthnow
Small towns can be thought of as “moral communities,” by which he means “a place to which and in which people feel an obligation to one another and to uphold the local ways of being that govern their expectations about ordinary life and support their feelings of being at home and doing the right things.
Robert Gordon
The introduction of the first mail-order catalogs, which gave rural customers the ability to purchase the same goods as urban residents, was a significant and underestimated factor in transforming rural communities.
Shared fate
Shared fate is the belief that what happens to one member of the group happens to all, whatever other differences might exist; small towns.
Brain drain
The departure of a significant number of the most educated and skilled citizens, who go to live and work in other regions or countries.
Ethnic enclaves
large, stable sections of cities where the local labor market, residential market, and culture are dominated by a specific ethnic group.
Remittances
Money sent from migrant workers to family and friends at home
Global City
A particular kind of city, in which the headquarters of international firms that create and control the cross-border flow of information and commerce are located.
Global elite
Those who control international commerce
Global service class
Those who cater to the global elite
urban glamour zones
Where a global elite (locals and visitors) shop and eat, often isolated from poor people or even ordinary middle-class residents of the city.
1968 Fair Housing Act
Made racial covenants illegal; prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, sex, (and as amended) handicap and family status.
Transition Zone
The Transition Zone is characterized as industrial and typically dominated by manufacturing facilities. It surrounds the mainly commercial city center and is surrounded by working-class residential housing, maximizing access to markets to sell manufactured goods and housing for factory workers.
Commuter Zone
The outermost ring of the Concentric Zone Model is commuter-residential and consists mainly of low-density, estate-style housing, usually comprised of high-income professionals. Urban overcrowding is typically unappealing to people, so property values for low-density and spacious estates will be at a higher premium than higher-density urban properties.
According to the Burgess Concentric Zone model, which zone are low-income residents most likely to inhabit and why?
The Transition Zone, because of its close proximity to industrial and manufacturing jobs in the Central Business District
