Introduction to Cities
Description
Understanding how cities shape human life through space and place
Cities function as dynamic systems where physical space, social forces, and human experience intersect. Introduction to Cities: How Place and Space Shape Human Experience, Third Edition, provides a robust analytical framework for understanding these relationships. Written by three distinguished urban scholars, this updated edition addresses contemporary challenges including global migration patterns, housing crises, and post-pandemic urban transformation.
This book features new chapters on housing and neighborhoods, migration, and the post-pandemic city. Fresh perspectives examine how cities in China, India, and emerging economies respond to regional corridorization and shifting global connectivities. Throughout, Planning and Building the City boxes link chapter themes to urban planning processes, while Making the City Better boxes address practical solutions to urban issues.
Readers will also find:
- Foundational chapters on urban theory and research methods providing analytical tools for rigorous examination of urban phenomena and change
- Coverage of China's Belt and Road Initiative and its place-making impact on regional corridorization and urban development patterns worldwide
- A revised analytical framework highlighting how cities both shape and are shaped by broader social, economic, and environmental forces
- Text boxes throughout featuring methodological approaches of key scholars and practical applications for studying contemporary urban life
- Updated evidence on global urban transformations examining integrating and fragmenting regional connectivities alongside local community dynamics
Designed for undergraduate and graduate courses in urban sociology, urban studies, and urban planning, this text serves students across sociology, political science, geography, and American studies. Scholars examining cities from varied disciplinary perspectives will find Introduction to Cities an authoritative foundation for urban research and analysis.
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Persons
KRISTA E. PAULSEN is Professor in the School of Public Service at Boise State University. She earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of California at Santa Barbara and has authored multiple books and articles in urban sociology. Her research examines change and stability in cities using qualitative and community-engaged methods.
XIANGMING CHEN is Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Global Urban Studies and Sociology at Trinity College, Connecticut. A comparative scholar of cities, his research addresses how cities change through the intersection of local factors and global forces, shaped by national policies and infrastructure development.
ANTHONY M. ORUM is retired from the Departments of Sociology and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He served as Founding Editor of City & Community from 2002 to 2009 and as Editor-in-Chief of The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies. He held a Fulbright Award at Fudan University in Shanghai.
Content
Preface ix
List of Illustrations x
List of Tables xvii
List of Boxes xviii
About the Authors xix
Acknowledgements xx
About the Companion Website xxii
Part I Foundations 1
1 Cities as places and spaces 2
Cities as places 6
Box 1.1 Studying the city 7
Identity, community, and security 10
Places as the site of our identity 10
Places as the site of community 11
Places as sites of security 13
Human beings make and remake places 13
Box 1.2 Planning and building the city 16
Place and space 17
Box 1.3 Making the city better 20
Cities shape the fates of human beings 21
Cities reflect changes in the contexts around them 22
2 Social theories of urban space and place: The early perspectives 26
The social and theoretical roots of modern urban theory 27
Box 2.1 Studying the city 29
Early European Theories: Tönnies and Simmel 30
Ferdinand Tönnies: Community and society 30
Box 2.2 Planning and building the city 31
Georg Simmel: The metropolis and mental life 32
The Chicago School of Sociology 34
The city as social space 35
The city as concentric zones 36
Assessing concentric zone theory 38
Human ecology 38
Life in the city as a way of life 40
Box 2.3 Making the city better 42
W.E.B. DuBois and the importance of race in the city 43
Evaluating early social theories of urban life 45
3 Social theories of urban space and place: Contemporary perspectives 49
A break with the past 50
Theoretical descendants of Marx 50
Manuel Castells and the urban question 50
David Harvey: Injustice and inequality in the city 51
Box 3.1 Making the city better 52
John Logan and Harvey Molotch: The city as a growth machine 54
Further reflections: Marx and the critique of modern cities 55
The return to place and the turn to culture 56
Jane Jacobs and the discovery of community in the modern metropolis 56
Box 3.2 Studying the city 57
Sharon Zukin and the turn to culture and consumption 59
From spaces of production to spaces of consumption 61
Going global 63
The rise of the global city and its metamorphosis 63
Box 3.3 Planning and building the city 65
A turn to the Global South and East 67
Evaluating theories of the city 68
4 Methods and rules for the study of cities 73
Validity and reliability in the study of cities 74
Box 4.1 Studying the city 77
Cities and the question of numbers 78
The city as a case study 79
The city as a stereotypical or prototypical case 80
Ethnographic and historical case studies 84
Box 4.2 Studying the city 85
Urban analytics 87
Box 4.3 Studying the city 90
From one to multiple cases 91
Theory, methods, and insights 92
Part II The Development of Urban Spaces and Places 97
5 Cities as dynamic spaces 98
Cities as dynamic spaces 99
Remaking the metropolis 99
Planning and metropolitan development 102
Box 5.1 Planning and building the city 105
Toward a postindustrial metropolis 106
Deindustrialization and urban transformation 106
The origins and impacts of global competition 107
The implications of deindustrialization for place and space 109
A changing urban landscape and hierarchy? 110
Los Angeles: The prototype of the postwar metropolis 111
Box 5.2 Studying the city 115
The metropolis's increasing scale and complexity 116
Infrastructure and technology as new codrivers of city- making 118
Box 5.3 Making the city better 120
Making sense of the changing metropolis 121
6 Housing and neighborhoods 126
Housing and neighborhoods in urban places 127
Housing, home, and neighborhood: Fundamental concepts 127
Housing across time and space 129
Box 6.1 Planning and building cities 129
Housing in the early industrial city 130
Suburban expansion 132
Housing and neighborhoods in context: Policy and markets 136
The politics of housing policies 136
The implications of planning and zoning for housing and neighborhoods 137
Privatization and gated communities 139
Planning, policy, and discrimination in the United States 140
Markets and financial contexts 142
Housing for all: Challenges and solutions 144
Box 6.2 Making the city better 145
Housing instability and homelessness 145
Box 6.3 Studying the city 147
Part III Power and Inequality in Cities 157
7 Difference and inequality in urban places 158
How difference and inequality matter 159
Racial segregation and inequality 159
Box 7.1 Studying the city 161
Origins of segregation in the US 163
Social class and place 165
Social class in the industrial metropolis 165
Gentrification and the remaking of the metropolis 166
New dimensions of gentrification 169
Place and the distribution of opportunity 170
Gender and sexuality in the metropolis 174
Gender and place 174
LGBT+ neighborhoods 175
Box 7.2 Making the city better 176
Difference, inequality, and place 179
Box 7.3 Planning and building the city 180
8 Migration's impact on cities 187
Migration in context 189
Migration to the United States and Canada 189
Migration to and within Europe 192
China's unprecedented migration 194
Sociological approaches to cities and migration 196
Immigrant assimilation: The influence of the Chicago School 196
Box 8.1 Studying the city 197
Ethnic enclaves: Places created by and for immigrants 199
Ethnic enclaves across time and place: Case studies 201
Five Points, New York City 202
Pilsen/Little Village, Chicago 204
Baishizhou, Shenzhen 206
Changing immigrant gateways 207
Box 8.2 Planning and building the city 208
Box 8.3 Making the city better 210
Urban migration in a shifting political context 212
9 Power, authority, and conflict in cities 220
The institutional contexts of power and authority 221
States and markets 221
The global economy and neoliberalism 222
Cities today as contested spaces 224
The nature of local governance and politics 225
Box 9.1 Making the city better 226
Local authorities and marginalized peoples 229
Racial minorities and local authorities 230
The homeless and local authorities 231
Box 9.2 Planning and building the city 232
The very poor and local authorities 233
Contesting mistreatment by local authorities 234
Box 9.3 Studying the city 235
Major contests over deep meanings and spaces in the metropolis 237
Jerusalem: The quintessential contested city 237
The contested spaces of Berlin 239
Considering power and space in urban contexts 241
Part IV Cities in a New Era of Globalization 247
10 Urbanization and cities in developing countries 248
Urbanization 249
The basic path of urbanization and its impact on place 249
Developing- country cities in historical perspective 251
Box 10.1 Studying the city 251
The basic dimensions of urbanization 253
Urban hierarchy 253
Urban primacy 254
Over- urbanization versus under- urbanization 255
Natural increase and in- migration 257
From process and system to place 258
A profile with multiple wrinkles 258
Megacities as places: Opportunities and challenges 259
Size and density 259
Creating wealth and sustaining poverty 260
Box 10.2 Making the city better 262
The developing megacity as a lived place 263
Governing the megacities 266
Box 10.3 Planning and building the city 267
Reassessing the developing- country city 268
11 Cities in the global economy 275
Cities in a globalizing world: theoretical background 276
Emerging cities in the global economy 277
Yiwu, China: The world's central hub for small merchandise 277
Rajarhat, India: A tech city on the metropolitan edge 279
Re- emerging cities in the global economy 280
Hamburg, Germany: Prosperity, challenges, and re- emergence 280
Shanghai: Global rise from local renaissance 283
Deeper and higher into the global economy 285
Dongguan, China: From a rural township into a world factory- city 286
Box 11.1 Studying the city 287
Dubai, United Arab Emirates: From a desert outpost to an urban miracle 289
Cities in a networked and fragmented global economy 290
The regional dimension and reconfiguration of cities 291
The (re)emergence of regional- urban corridors 292
City differentiation in a changing world 294
Box 11.2 Planning and building the city 295
Individual flexibility under systematic constraint 296
The new regional corridorization of cities 297
Box 11.3 Making the city better 298
Part V Changes and Challenges for Resilient Cities 305
12 Cities in a rapidly changing climate 306
Cities and the natural environment 307
Cities' reliance on nature 307
Risk, hazard, and disaster 309
Challenges and inequities in urban environments 311
Resources and pollution 311
Box 12.1 Studying the city 312
Inequitable distributions of risks 314
Box 12.2 Making the city better 315
Cities in a changing climate 319
Cities' contributions to climate change 320
The changing profile of disaster 320
Climate adaptation and mitigation 323
Rebuilding vulnerable cities 324
Box 12.3 Planning and building the city 325
Sustainability, resilience, and a "just transition" 327
13 The post- pandemic city 336
Why revisit the pandemic? 337
The pandemic as an urban crisis 337
Wuhan: The original epicenter 340
Box 13.1 Making the city better 342
New York City: Ground Zero, again 343
Economic implications 345
Implications for urban space and infrastructure 346
Changes and challenges in gathering 346
The remote work revolution 348
Box 13.2 Studying the city 350
Lingering implications of new work and social patterns 352
Implications for small and midsized cities 354
Fleeing the city 354
The increasing appeal of midsized cities 355
Box 13.3 Planning and building the city 356
Looking ahead and planning for resilience 358
Glossary 368
Index 376
List of Illustrations
- Figure 1.1 Actual and projected percentage of population in urban areas by world and region, 1950-2050 (2030 and 2050 are projections).
- Figure 1.2 Redevelopment in the older areas of Shanghai has displaced an estimated one million households. This woman was one of the last remaining residents in her neighborhood, having refused to relocate.
- Figure 1.3 The shared old kitchen (left). The individual upgraded kitchen (right).
- Figure 1.4 Jane Jacobs at the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village in 1961. For Jacobs, the neighborhood tavern was an important place for locals and visitors alike to renew connections.
- Figure 1.5 Salters Garden in London reveals how places are made and remade across the centuries, both deliberately and as a result of larger forces. Here one can see traces of ancient Roman and medieval London (the wall on the left), which were revealed when the Cripplegate area was bombed during the Blitz of World War II. The garden was built in the 1990s.
- Figure 1.6 Destruction from the 2010 Otautahi earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, left open spaces throughout the city. The creative placemaking agency Gap Filler worked to fill some of those spaces with sites for play and healing. This giant, social media-friendly swing, called #chchswing, was developed through collaboration with local youth organizations.
- Figure 1.7 Cairo's Tahrir Square during the Egyptian uprising of 2011, when as many as one million protestors would gather there. This public space became a crucial site for organizing and communicating, and it became a symbol for the movement itself. In other countries experiencing the Arab Spring uprisings, public spaces also played key roles, such as the make-do use of a traffic circle in Bahrain.
- Figure 1.8 Park(ing) Day in Luxemburg. Created in 2005 in response to the lack of public open space in city centers, Park(ing) Day has become a global event in which people remake parking places as sites for play, relaxation, and community-building.
- Figure 2.1 Manchester as it looked in the 1840s (around the time that Engels was writing). As in other industrial cities of this era, Manchester's poor and working-class residents struggled to find decent housing and food, and lived with polluted air and water. These circumstances, as well as the unprecedented crowding found in growing cities, contributed to early theorists' generally bleak view of urban life.
- Figure 2.2 Ebenezer Howard's Garden City Plan attempts to unify the city and the natural world. Not only is the small city surrounded by natural and agricultural spaces but nature can also be found within the city as well in the form of parks and gardens. How different is this vision from contemporary small towns and suburbs that try to balance the advantages of urban and rural spaces?
- Figure 2.3 Ernest Burgess' map of Chicago's "concentric zones." The Central Business District in Chicago, known as "the Loop" after the elevated railway that circles it, is Zone 1. From this dense center, we move to decreasingly dense outer areas at the city's edge. As applied to Chicago, the zones or rings are really semicircles. The wavy line that vertically bisects this figure represents the shore of Lake Michigan.
- Figure 2.4 As this scene from a Manhattan sidewalk reveals, the density of urban environments brings people into close contact with one another even when they have no social or emotional connections. Wirth argued that this proximity, and the resulting overstimulation, leads city dwellers to adopt a blasé attitude as a means of defense.
- Figure 2.5 Dancers at a "silent disco" in Warsaw, Poland. Cities can be isolating places, and technologies like headphones and social media can sometimes heighten isolation. But these technologies can also be used to create "in real life" community.
- Figure 2.6 What were then called the "negro quarters" of Philadelphia (probably the Seventh Ward), around 1900. This area was at the heart of Du Bois' study.
- Figure 3.1 Many types of community organizing and urban protest movements build on the critiques of urban inequality put forth by David Harvey. Here, organizers from Los Angeles' Bus Riders Union identify areas impacted by 2011 service cuts.
- Figure 3.2 Children at play on a New York City sidewalk. While playing in the street was seen by some as a form of juvenile delinquency, many urban children had few other places to play. Jane Jacobs made the case that streets and sidewalks provided play spaces that adults could easily supervise from steps or windows, thus decreasing the likelihood that children would get into trouble.
- Figure 3.3 New York's SoHo district in 1970. While this street still bustles with commercial activity, garment manufacturing was on the wane, and the area was becoming home to more and more of the artists that would transform its character.
- Figure 3.4 Canary Wharf in London epitomizes the urban impact of global economic transformations that Sassen calls attention to. Once a working dock, the wharf's navigational use faded with the shift to container shipping that accompanied economic globalization. The area has since been redeveloped as a financial services center.
- Figure 3.5 Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg, constructed for the 2010 World Cup. Sporting "mega-events" are one way in which cities can generate positive attention in the hopes of attracting growth and investment, but this often comes at a cost for residents.
- Figure 3.6 (De)Globalization, the Squeezing and Return of the Nation-State, and the Global City's Resilient Power. The one-headed arrows indicate capital and other flows through the global, national, and local spaces, while the double-headed arrows denote downward or upward pressures.
- Figure 4.1 A new Whole Foods market opened in New York City's Bowery neighborhood in 2010. While the area was once synonymous with vagrancy and crime, it is now home to upscale retailers such as Whole Foods, which specializes in organic and natural products. A systematic inventory of the retail and service offerings in a neighborhood can be one means of documenting changes associated with gentrification.
- Figure 4.2 The Street Life Project made innovative use of cameras to capture what really happens in public spaces such as street corners and plazas. Whyte and his team would analyze the film, frame by frame, to see how many people were present in a space, how long they stayed, and the kinds of interactions they engaged in.
- Figure 4.3 School children in Muncie, Indiana, around the time of the Middletown study. The Lynds and their assistants focused on ordinary facets of town life, including who went to school and what the school day was like. In doing so, they emphasized the typicality of Muncie, stating in their introduction that "a typical city, strictly speaking, does not exist, but the city studied was selected as having many features common to a wide group of communities" (Lynd and Lynd 1959, 3).
- Figure 4.4 Many urban scholars and practitioners make use of photography to reveal aspects of life in cities that are otherwise hard to capture. Joan Kadri Zald, a social worker and photographer, documented homeless individuals in Tucson and Ann Arbor, calling attention to complex dimensions of their lives and backgrounds. This married couple was among the large number of homeless families that Zald encountered in her work.
- Figure 4.5 Walking the dog is a routine activity that brings individuals into contact with places and one another. Sociologist Margarethe Kusenbach suggests that accompanying people on these outings can be a productive research strategy.
- Figure 4.6 Maps are a powerful tool in the arsenal of an urban researcher because they represent data spatially and visually and help identify patterns within urban environments. This can facilitate better decision-making by providing a clear, intuitive understanding of geographic contexts of urban phenomena. This figure is one of the Poverty Maps of London (1898-1899) by Charles Booth, a pioneer in geodemographics. In it, we can easily see the wealth disparity between the more affluent western end (yellow-red) and the working-class eastern end (blue) of Central London, with pockets of extreme poverty dispersed throughout (black).
- Figure 4.7 Railroads play a central role in Cronon's analysis of Chicago. In this 1870 map, you can see that by the time of the Great Chicago Fire, the city had established itself as a central transportation node connecting the productive lands of the American West to the markets of the eastern seaboard and Europe. It then became a center of manufacturing and processing as well,...
