CITIES - 19th Century Roots

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CITIES - 19th Century Roots

• Durkheim - disintegration of moral cohesion
• Weber - calculative rationality
• Marx - destructive forces of capitalism

• concerned with the social, economic and political
  implications of the transition from feudalism to
  capitalism
• urban question subsumed under the broad analysis
  of society as a whole

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Durkheim on the city - 1

• Moral basis of social life
• Function of either homogeneity (parts of a social
  whole) or
• Heterogeneity (complimentary differences)
• Moral basis of social life not directly
  observable needs an index - law
• Repressive law strong collective conscience
  mechanical solidarity - societal
• Restitutive law division of labour organic
  solidarity - restoration of normality - individual

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Durkheim on the city -2

• Mechanical solidarity
• Low differentiation and individualisation
  characteristic of traditional homogeneous society
• Organic solidarity
• A social bond based on the interdependence of
  differentiated groups and individualised persons

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Durkheim on the city -3

• MATERIAL DENSITY population concentrations
• MORAL DENSITY differentiated interaction and
  social relationships

• both expressed through urbanisation
• migration to the city breaks bonds of mechanical
  solidarity by weakening traditional beliefs
• Influenced the Chicago School Human Ecology
  City Growth - Wirth

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Weber - 1
Individual actions and consciousness as the basis
of analysis non-totalising only partial
accounts possible

• Generalisations through the construction of ideal
  types INDIVIDUAL (capitalism, bureaucracy) or
  GENERIC (goal oriented rational-action)
• Size of cities is not important economic and
  political organisation is more important
• The city as a market place trade and commerce

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Weber - 2

• Partial political autonomy is a key criterion
  PATRICIAN CITY (run by nobles) PLEBIAN CITY (run
  by elected assembly of citizens)
• Medieval cities fundamental challenge to
  feudalism paving the way for rational-legal
  capitalist social order
• erosion of traditional values and development of
  new forms of individualism
• From kinship to individuals
• Main form of association guild and later
  corporations
• New forms of political representation
• Influenced the writing of Wirth Urbanism as a
  way of life

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Marx - 1

• DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM - totality
• Dialectical
• Whole comprised of unitary contradictory parts
• Materialism
• Material world exists prior to our conceptions
  about it (opposite of idealism)
• But the way in which the world appears may hide
  its essential character

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Marx - 2

• Division between town and country historical
• The growth of a merchant class extended trading
  links facilitating a division of labour
• Established relations of production guild
  system - prevents entry and regulates movement of
  labour closed system
• Capitalist manufacture weaving attracted to
  the country side
• Great industrial towns developed around weaving
  open system in which capitalism thrived

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Marx - 3

• Feudal system division between town and country
  a division of labour between agriculture and
  manufacturing
• The establishment of capitalism permeates
  agriculture
• The only division of labour is between labour and
  capital
• The town country division is no longer the
  subject of analysis
• Urbanisation is however seen as the necessary
  condition for the development of socialism
• Since capitalism is most fully developed in
  cities conditions for the struggle by labour
  against capital

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Rostow Stages of economic growth

• The traditional society
• The preconditions for take-off
• The take-off
• The drive to maturity
• The age of mass consumption

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Modernism - 1

• Cultural and philosophical movement emerging with
  the Renaissance full fruition in the late 19th
  and early 20th centuries
• Application of rational thought and scientific
  analysis could lead to universal progress
• Eventually led to social engineering rational
  comprehensive planning
• This was termed SUCCESION

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Modernisation 9 Characteristics
Samuel Huntington The Change to Change
Modernisation, Development and Politics (1971)

• Revolutionary process
• Complex process
• Systemic process
• Global process
• Lengthy process
• Phased process
• Homogenizing process
• Irreversible process

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Chicago School Burgess (and Park)

• Drew on analogies between the urban and natural
  world SOCIAL ECOLOGY
• Urban growth as a series of 5 concentric circles
• Zone 1 business district
• Zone 2 transition
• Zone 3 working mens homes
• Zone 4 residential
• Zone 5 commuters

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Postmodernism - 1

• Linguistic turn meaning of words not derived
  from the world but to common sets of
  understandings between people
• Thus there is no single version of the truth
  depends on the representations associated with
  understandings between people
• Claims of a superior understanding by one group
  is an attempt to impose this understanding on
  another meta narrative or totalising discourses
• Theories or knowledge claims bound up with power

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Neo-Marxism Harvey
Social Justice and the city published in 1973

• Concepts of justice take on different meanings
  over time, space and persons
• Discourses of justice are expressions of social
  power
• Need to understand the material basis for power
  differentials
• Need to understand the material base for the
  production of difference
• Rise of social movements and new social movements

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Neo-Marxism to Postmodernism Harvey

• Examines urban conflicts and ways of resolving
  them
• In a study of a proposed highway in Baltimore
  finds 7 competing arguments
• Efficiency
• Economic growth
• Historical heritage and aesthetics
• Social and moral order (priority over other
  social needs)
• Environmental
• Distributive justice
• Neighbourhood and communitarian

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Questions of Justice - 1
5 questions raised by Young (Justice and the
politics of difference, 1990) worth considering

• create forms of social and political organisation
  and systems of production and consumption to
  minimise the exploitation of labour power
• confront the phenomenon of marginalisation
• empower rather than deprive the oppressed access
  to political power and engage in self-expression

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Questions of Justice - 2
5 questions raised by Young (Justice and the
politics of difference, 1990) worth considering

• eliminate imperialist attitudes in the design of
  urban projects and modes of consultation
• bring about non-exclusionary and non-militarised
  forms of social control in order to contain
  increasing levels of personal and
  institutionalised forms of violence
• Minimise impacts on the environment now and in
  the future (Harvey)