Urban life & experience

1. Urban life & experience

2. What is it to be “civilized” From Latin: civis = citizen Civic, civilization, civilize, city, civility

3. What’s in a word? • What’s the common thread? • These English words reflect the long association between the idea of the city and the idea of some kind of refinement of thought or behavior • The association is as old as the Roman empire: • the Romans saw cities as the way to spread a certain way of life, and they systematically planted cities throughout their empire

4. Lifeworlds • Ways of being • Ways of seeing • Ways of knowing • Shaped by personal experience through daily routines in particular places at particular times • Urban lifeworlds are very different from rural lifeworlds, leading to: • predictable changes in attitudes and outlook • enduring political divides between urban & rural areas

5. Sociospatial Dialectic • Two-way road • City  Inhabitants • a dialecticis a mutually-defining opposition • How did urbanization shape the human mind, body, and social world? • How does a person shape the city?

6. Dancing in the Street! What’s so civilized about this?

7. To be “civilized” • Emotional-psychological responses • You take for granted encounters with strangers • You become tolerant of difference • You accept impersonal forms of social coordination (e.g. walk-signals, laws, regulations) • You accept a wide range of specialized authorities (police, doctors, EMS, bouncers, librarians, etc.) • Your extended family probably takes a back seat to a wide range of non-family social ties • You think of yourself in terms of “what you do” which means a specialized job or profession • You internalize certain spatial patterns (e.g. gridiron street layouts or freeway interchanges)

8. To be “civilized” • Physical-biological impacts • You live longer than hunter-gatherers and early farmers • You are protected from wild animals, many bugs, and some (but not all!) natural hazards & therefore • Your food supplies are more secure, leading to less malnutrition but also a struggle against obesity • Your health suffers in “special” urban ways • Noise pollution can affect your tension levels, sleep patterns, concentration, etc. • Air pollution affects your eyes, lungs & brain • Urban jobs can cause you to physically atrophy • Urban routines (colonization of night for leisure) can affect your sleep cycles • Your reproductive choices are greatly multiplied, which leads to better health over many generations • You internalize particular ways of moving (e.g. driving a car, a bike, a motorcycle, walking a certain way …)

9. Your impact on the city How do these impacts differ?

10. Your impact on the city • Environmental degradation • Pollution in “ordinary ways” such as • Human wastes • Solid waste • Driving • maintaining a lawn • Using mass transit or driving • Pollution in “deviant ways” • Graffiti & vandalism • Contribution to various establishments • Renting/owning property  housing market • Purchasing goods & services  retail/service sector • Working  urban economy • Going to school  economic specialization • Participation in a “community” • Contribution to the maintenance of urban social norms, beliefs, attitudes, expectations, etc. • Violation of some people’s standards some of the time

11. What does the “urban community” mean to you? Duties vs. responsibilities?

13. Late 19th c. theories of urban society • Ferdinand Tönnies  • Emile Durkheim: • Mechanical vs. organic solidarity • Anomie (normlessness) • Deviance (e.g. suicide) • Georg Simmel: (way of life) • Apathy, privacy, display

14. Louis Wirth (early 20th c.) • Population numbers, density and heterogeneity shape urbanites: • Withdrawn, aloof, brusque, impersonal • Egocentric & selfish • Idiosyncratic • Social segregation (by groups) • Social fragmentation (of lifeworld) • Lack of social support except for impersonal (and less adequate) forms of support • Vulnerable to neurosis, chemical abuse, and other forms of deviance

15. What is your definition of “deviant”?

16. What is your definition of “deviant”? “The Castro” San Francisco (a gay enclave)

17. Dilemmas • In either case, the city raises difficult moral and ethical issues • What can be done? • How much can be done? • What is the best means of addressing “urban pathologies”? • What are urban pathologies and what are lifestyle choices? • Homelessness • Drug addiction • Prostitution • Homosexuality

18. Tolerance levels rising • Are we still changing as a society to reflect our urbanized lifestyle? • To what degree are international hostilities against “Americanization” just the result of rural values around the world resisting urban values? • To what degree are American politics driven by the urban-rural divide within this country?

19. The 2004 election

20. A different view… Mapped by county, with size proportional to population

21. Different interpretations of the urban problem • To some, the problem is that morally unacceptable behaviors proliferate and reinforce one another in the city (conservative view) • The problem is a matter of individual failure • People are free to do what they want, and therefore their suffering proves that they have failed • State as the preserver of social order (Right wing) • To others, the problem is that people too easily fall through the cracks in the city (liberal view) • The problem is a matter of structural inadequacy • Implied solutions include redistributing money from the wealthy and the corporations to the poor • State as safety net (Left wing)

22. What can we add to this debate?

23. Summary • Urban social life (urbanism) is distinct from the social life of the tribe or village • The concept of “civilization” derives from the social and psychological transformations produced by urban life • Deep social ties founded in kinship decline • Shallow, temporary ties based on specialized skills and interests increase • Morality becomes more relativistic and tolerant • Social norms become weaker while people also become more tolerant of differences • Judgments regarding urban “pathologies” are not unanimous • At one extreme “anything goes” • At the other extreme anything other than the white, nuclear family is “deviant”