The Explorer: Into The City

The Explorer: Into The City

By: Betsy Bonilla

           The world around us is rapidly changing, we noticed it by the new clothes we wear, the new cars we drive, how we now communicate with each other. We see it with our everyday changing lifestyles and even where it is that we actually live. What we have and how we have it is not always noticeable but it has ultimately pulled us away from rural areas into urban ones. We see it depicted in the media all the time; on the news, the Internet and every day on the TV. Even children's TV shows have to be changed to go along with our "evolving" way of life.

           Consider Dora the Explorer:

Before

 

            The little Hispanic girl that has a talking backpack, map, a furry purple monkey for a best friend and many other talking animals that she takes on adventures through the wilderness- over the mountains though the woods type of stuff- mean while "trying" to teach kids Spanish. Well, after about 10 years or so, someone decided that it was time for Dora to grow up and to move on to better and bigger things...the city! Here she replaces all of her fuzzy furry friends (never to be seen again including her best friend ‘boots’) with kids just like her (Kind of. Oh and Diego is now Pablo, I think.), adds some 'bing bing' (fancy charm bracelet and some diamond earrings), new cloths and throws away that magical paper map for an APP MAP on her fancy new cell phone. Unfortunately this is what the future generation is getting exposed to on a daily bases (and apparently loving Aunts in college). This unrealistic, materialistic view is what seems to be what makes the world go around.

After

            As they mentioned on the documentary: Requiem for Detroit, about the once great, successful, powerful, rapidly growing city, "ability to move on, meant the chance to move up". With the high demands of a faster and more reliable means of transportation that is exactly what Detroit once did, it move up and fast. With Ford moving from the farm, to the city pavement the car industry, in Detroit, added fuel to the growing desire for individuality and superiority. In an urban place where you now have to sell your labor for an hourly wage, at first having a car meant that you needed one and once everyone was able to afford one it became about who had the best one, the newest one. For sometime this was great for the rapidly growing city which brought in new people and new jobs. However, that was also it’s down fall and possibly all of ours. As soon as more competition and the need for smaller more efficient vehicles became present was when Detroit began to stand still. Most of the city left behind in ruins with only the poor left behind to climb out of the rubble. With the wonderful evil capitalism digging its claws deeper into humanity it continued and continues to separate the poor from the wealthy. It is just doing it on a different landscape.         

            Just think that in about 20 years or so 60 percent of the world's population will live in urban areas, some growing a lot faster than others. Granted that what someone might consider to be an "urban area" is completely different then what others might consider it to be. So we can't just look at the size or the population of the city or town, we also have to look at its location, its laws, its infrastructure or the lack there of, even how people interact with each other; the community. As I am writing this it has become harder and harder to distinguish what is the city and what is not. Some cities like Chicago have started to expand outward covering more land, blurring the boundaries of what is urban and what is not. Other places like Greenland consider places with 200 inhabitants to be urban and are growing a much smaller pace, but still growing.  

            So it is very important to look at all the different ways in which an urban community is made up of and to look at the past and present of what works or does not work. As Neil Blackshaw mentions in his article, “Whose city is it anyway? The harsh truth about urbanisation,” there are two ways to look at a city: as “...the key to economic growth and increased prosperity...” or “as being chaotic, and a focus of poverty and violence”. Unfortunately most, if not all, of the time it is only the wealthy that truly get to prosper from such type of environment and the poor are pushed to one side left to suffer. People who lack resources cannot leave the urban lifestyle to “better pastures” even if they wanted too and they cannot afford to live comfortably within the social spaces of the city. Sometimes growth is good, everyone seems to gain for a little while but when things grow too fast, and in a sense out of control, it becomes extremely, if not impossible, to sustain itself. This is why we have to study and learn about urbanization and urbanism, the actual structure and its culture, respectively according to Gottdiener. It is our future and let’s face it, the ‘one percent’ is not going to grow but the poor sure is.     

Work Cited

Gottdiener, M., Ryan, M. T., & Hutchison, R. (2015). The New Urban Sociology (Fifth Edition ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

http://documentarystorm.com/requiem-for-detroit/ 

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/apr/16/whose-city-is-it-anyway-the-harsh-truth-about-urbanisation

Life in the Big City

     
      From the dawn of humankind upon the face of earth, we, as a species, realized that there was safety in numbers. However, it was not always possible to sustain a large group of humans in one area until the invention of agriculture, and even then, it took some time to develop a logical system of laws to govern a large group of people. With these two things, the city was inevitable. As the ages progressed, so too, did the cities. Today we stand at ever impressive heights with cities so vast and complex that issues such as sewage and drinking water are solved through use of ever increasingly technical advances. The city became a hub for those looking for jobs, and eventually, it became the place specialization in certain fields of work that came to be known as factory work.

The ruins as they were.

       One such city is that of Detroit, as seen in the aptly named “documentary” “Requiem for Detroit.” Detroit was a major center of the automobile industry and it flourished around it. However, capitalism, as Marx predicted, has a way of finding the lowest price for work, and as such, Detroit was rapidly stripped of it's automobile plants due to outsourcing on foreign shores. Detroit's economy was smashed; all it's eggs were in one basket. What remains may be seen by some as an apocalyptic future destined to hit other cities as outsourcing of jobs continues.

      However, is this the future of all cities? The most notable example for us would be the closest “mega-city” to us, Chicago. This city holds a rough estimate of 10 million people, global prestige, and a wide variety of different job fields – all in all Chicago seems like it has quite a lot going for it, but what can stop the continued and increasing outsourcing of American jobs? Frankly, it seems inevitable that this should continue to occur. But it really can't be said by any one person, or even a group of people; only time will tell. On the other hand, a city like Detroit where it specialized so heavily in one field was also inevitably going to be outdated by increasingly efficient automated technology. The days when a factory full of human beings was necessary are simply behind us as technology has given us machines that can more effectively produce parts and machines.
       But what of Detroit? Can the city still survive? Some people certainly think so. Despite the one sided view that is passed around, Detroit still is there, and is still functioning to some degree. A large number of buildings have been abandoned or outright destroyed due to that abandonment, however, people still live and work in Detroit, and some are even investing money into it!

Success doesn't look at cameras.

       Dan Gilbert is one such person. One might think it foolish to invest in a city that seems to be in it's death throes, but Dan is quite the successful man. 

      “Mr. Gilbert, though, is not just any innovative, optimistic developer. This is a guy who at age 12 organized a pizza delivery service, with children on bikes rushing store-bought pies to neighbors. (Local restaurants eventually shut down the operation with a complaint to the health department.)

       He remains just as driven, but now his self-made fortune stands at $3.5 billion, according to Forbes. He has learned from mistakes of previous efforts to reimagine downtown, and he and his staff will apparently have a largely free hand. Government officials have promised to expedite permits for renovations, signs and so on.”

       One does not need to be deeply invested in economics to understand that when there is vastly more supply than demand, the supply is going to cheap – Detroit is a buyer's market, and this is just what Detroit needs. Mr. Gilbert has a vision of remaking the downtown Detroit area to be a bustling hub for commerce as it once was. Where some see the ruins of a former bastion of America, people like Mr. Gilbert see the opportunity to invest and renovate.

       But what of the outsourcing of jobs, and the increasingly proficient technology that simply outdates the work that people can do. Part of the problem of trying to understand, or even more difficult, fix, a thing so complex as a city is that no one person can truly understand the economy. People are complex, and a system set up by people to govern millions of people is even more so. Only time can truly tell what will become of Detroit, or even some of our other cities with their economic issues, crime, etc., but one thing is for certain. Despite what seems to be popular opinion, though diminished – Detroit is still there.

G-g-g-ghost!

Do You Know Where You Are?

Do You Know Where You Are?

   There is a big difference between living in the city and living in a suburb. Some people may read that statement and think that I am stating the obvious. However, there are many characteristics of a city that you are likely to associate with some areas that are considered the suburbs. I personally have lived in the city of Chicago, as well as a surrounding suburb of the city. I grew up in a suburb called Maywood which is a suburb of Chicago. However, if a tourist was to visit Maywood they would probably consider it the city since the buildings and surroundings are similar to those of Chicago. Maywood is a suburb that is home to about 25,000 residents. In my opinion, Maywood is not too much different than the city, except for the fact that it is less people. There are poor people, there is moderate crime, gangs, and many other things that would most likely not appear in the suburbs on television. When the word suburb is spoken people usually think of a beautiful middle, or upper class, white neighborhood. However, that is not always the reality. According to the authors of the book, The New Urban Sociology, famous sociologist Louis Wirth coined the term urbanism, which can be explained as an urban way of living. Well, what exactly would be considered as “urban behavior?” Another famous sociologist named Georg Simmel explains that people are different based on where they are raised. In the book it explains a story in which Simmel describes a man named Hans who was a famer that moved to the city. He explains that he has to adjust to the city life, and that is was as easy as it sounds. Simmel says that Hans adjusted to the customs of the urban life, but he goes on to describe them as if they are making him completely different than anyone who was not raised in the city.  Hans developed an attitude that helped him in a number of ways. He was able to tune out loud noises because he was used to hearing them. Now, I understand that he was a farmer and he was from a rural area, but in the book when they talk about the city they usually discuss the city versus the suburbs. So, the argument that I am trying to make is that when people speak of urban areas they do not just mean the city.  When in the city of Chicago it is hard to actually determine when you have reached the city’s limits and reached the suburbs. If you have ever been on the Westside of Chicago then you know that it is not the prettiest, or the safest looking place in the state of Illinois. When you leave the city going west you will notice that the suburbs of Maywood, as well as Bellwood, will continue looking as bad as the Westside. Now, I admit that there is a difference in the two suburbs I named and the city, but there is also that same type of difference between the suburbs of Maywood and Naperville. The question remains, why are these two suburbs so different, and is Maywood considered urban? The authors of the text explained that the different countries around the world have different ways that they consider an area a city, town, or a suburb, or whatever they choose to call the particular area. On page fifty seven of the book it explains that Simmel says that another characteristic of urbanism was working while making only enough to get by. Well, that may be true about some individuals that live in the city, but not all. That statement is another one that could be associated with someone that lives in the suburbs. For example, my mother and father both worked as long as I could remember, we were not rich, or upper class and we lived in the suburbs. As I read the story about Hans I start to feel as if Simmel, as well as other people, may think that life in the suburbs is exactly how it is on television, but I know for a fact that is not always true. There is a difference between a rural community, an urban community, and a suburb, but what about the places like Maywood that is technically a suburb that is filled with city like characteristics? Maybe a famous Sociologist needs to come up with a term to describe a small, suburb, that is filled with urbanism.

This link is related to my blog: http://time.com/3060122/poverty-america-suburbs-brookings/

To be without shelter

From cities of the dead to agglomerations, the path of modern day cities have changed dramatically over the last 2 millenniums. Cities have become something seen as alive, vibrant, and continuously moving. They have been named the city that never sleeps (New York, New York), The Town too Tough to Die (Tombstone, Arizona), the village with a past, the city with a future (Kenai, Alaska), and  the city too busy to hate (Atlanta, Georgia during Jim Crow in the turbulent 60’s). This decade’s cities however glamorous the name and picture, have an underlying issue of impoverished areas and homelessness.

There are few things necessary for survival; food, water, and shelter. Yet within city limits there are people not receiving these things. In fact, the US conference of Mayors’ 2014 Hunger and Homelessness Survey indicated that in the partaking cities, 71 percent were seeing a rise in the need for emergency food assistance. 43 percent of these also experience an incline in the rate of homelessness (1). The rising homeless population within the city centers has further been established by the National Coalition for the Homeless when it is indicated that between the years of 1981 – 89 homeless rate tripled and the need for shelters doubled over the next decade (3).  This has become an epidemic that hasn’t benefited from urbanization or modernity.

Modernity is associated with urban areas and capitalism. Spoken about briefly within The New Urban Sociology (4), modernity is indicated as having been viewed as good by some, and bad by others. Even those within sociology’s brain trust of the time argued (Durkheim v Engels). However, the shift was accompanied specialization of tasks, a monetary economy, impersonal interaction, and even possibly a loss of sense of community. Homelessness has increased as the monetary economies have appeared and spread. Then the monetary economies have pushed aside the homeless and started to neglect them. This was accomplished through various laws “The quality of Life Laws” in New York and some loitering laws in general, by actions the gentrification of neighborhoods and placement of fences keeping homeless out of certain areas, and the utter disregard for the homeless basic needs as there is a nightly shortage of beds in shelters.

               Now understanding that modernity, monetary economy, or cities aren’t specifically to blame for the homelessness crises doesn’t necessarily discount them as contributors. Others may be the tendency for commercial districts and “city centers” to move. Take for example DeKalb, Illinois. While this is not a city, the center before NIU was what is now considered downtown DeKalb, whereas now it may be considered to be out on Sycamore Road by Walmart. This minor distance changed the way each area was viewed and interacted within. Now imagine that in the city of Chicago, the center has changed over the last Century and along with it Commercial areas. As pointed out in Chapter 2 of The New Urban Sociology (4), the changing of city centers and capitols has had a detrimental impact on those around it. It is an area that supplies jobs and monetary opportunities, without which one could not survive in a monetary economy. The book even mentions how in the past several hundred thousand people followed their prince from their town in order to survive off his money/favor. People follow the shift of the commercial area, but others are left behind.  

The reason I bring homeless into a discussion on the readings is not just that they relate to concepts discussed, but also because they show an increasing need to re-examine the urban community. The rates show discrimination as homeless are more likely to be black (2). Sexism is shown in the rates of refusal of beds between men and women. Ageism in the rates of beds for older and younger homeless individuals. Rising rates for those that should receive help; veterans & mentally ill. The lack of protection for adolescents as half of the 60 percent of homeless women have children living with them on the street. As Gandhi put it “The true measure of any society can be found in the way it treats its most vulnerable members.”

              

Source 1 

http://www.usmayors.org/pressreleases/uploads/2014/1211-report-hh.pdf.

Source 2

http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=310291&renderforprint=1&CFID=122884578&CFTOKEN=90981796&jsessionid=f030d19e104b2ed727c73d704e1047495454

Source 3

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/How_Many.html

Source 4

The New Urban Sociology (assigned Reading)

Urban Development: A Concentration of Cultural Values Upheld

I’m that guy that Dr. Weffer scoffs at. You know, the one who will claim to be from Chicago when out of state, but who actually grew up on a two acre lot where I spent more time in cornfields and having “bonfires” (a term which, by the way, us rural kids take very seriously. If it’s in a pit, you suburbanites, it doesn’t count) than I probably ever will spend within Chicago’s city limits. And yet while my backyard is quite literally soybeans, I have always (and still would) consider Chicago to be part of that backyard. I mean this in the most NON-literal sense, of course. I can’t see the skyline, hear air traffic, or even use public transportation to get downtown from my house. Yet being in relatively close proximity to a world class city has certainly impacted my life. Between weekend visits when we were kids, a past job, and even visitng a past girlfriend (TMI?), I’ve spent a lot of time in Chicago. I’ve learned to navigate CTA, always been a cubs fan, and have more friends who live there now than I do back home. But this relationship isn’t solely dictated by physical aspects of the city, and my experience with urban development certainly isn’t bound by the Chicago city limits. When delineating urban, suburban, and rural areas we mostly give consideration to physical boundaries. And yet it becomes clear when you examine the growth and development of cities and their surrounding areas that “the city” does not simply end at the finite line superimposed on a satellite image by Google Maps. City culture and its values rather, permeate this line and makes the city and its surroundings largely inextricable. Understanding this culture, how it has changed, and its interplay with infrastructure hinges upon an examination of urban history and development, a derivative of urbanism and urbanization.

                Going through the first three chapters of our text, it is obvious why the author’s see the content as the “new” urban sociology; equally as dynamic as urban life itself, our understanding of the forces shaping urban development is constantly changing, and yet examinations of urban areas has, in the past, been rather narrowly focused. Vastly different than the areas we consider to be urban today, early cities were commonly formed with the sacred in mind; religious structures or symbolic ideas were often at the heart of urban planning. As society has been secularized though, so too has urban development. This could first be seen in Athens which replaced the religious and cosmological ideas of its predecessors with an emphasis on its’ political structure. In both instances, cities often revolved around a central figure representative of the ideas upheld at that time. In the case of Greece, Rome, and Athens, urban development paid homage to the gods, reinforced power, and emphasized political structure respectively. Components of these earlier societal focuses can certainly be seen within our cities today yet they are no longer the focal point of their development.

As cities evolved and changed a new urban culture developed, one which made cities self-sustaining. A new economic structure was introduced as barter and trade for goods was replaced with monetary expenditure. Today the central figure of our cities is dominated by capitalism. Religious facilities or city halls are no longer considered the center of cities, rather spaces like the “The Miracle Mile” in the case of Chicago, or Times Square in New York seem to be the focal points. These capitalist shopping Meccas have characterized our cities for some time now. Like past focal points of urban development, they represent a cultural value upheld so strongly that, quite literally, they are the foundations for skyscrapers. However, something about these manifestations of cultural values appears different than earlier focuses of urbanization.  Early sociologists Marx and Weber both recognized the extent to which capitalism would pervade society and saw the complexities it would introduce to not only urban development but also to the surrounding areas (now both suburban and rural). Unlike past urban development, the expansion of urban areas today seems even more aggressive, parasitic and perpetual.

The modernity described by Simmel, which we easily liken with urbanism, has certainly escaped the limits of urbanization. The “blasé” attitude and emphasis on calculated rationality dominates so many aspects of our lives as to be institutionalized within our society and extend beyond the classical limits of traditional urbanism and urbanization. These lifestyle characteristics were once associated only with the city, but living in a predominantly rural area has shown me this is no longer the case. My friends and I often joke about a somewhat remote site within our town limits where in the past year we have acquired a Walmart, Aldi, two health care facilities, multiple fast food restaurants, and of course a Farm and Fleet (preserving our roots, I suppose) – “Urban Sprawl Rockton,” as we like to say. While mainly facetious, I can’t help but consider the truth behind our jokes. In my assertion that I am from Chicago I recognize that I can only be taking lightly, and yet in examining the new urban sociology and how urban limits are expanding and becoming ever more ambiguous, I wonder if someday, even in my current hometown, I might be.

A Quick Look: Suburban Inequality and Uneven Development.

  After watching “Requiem for Detroit,” I began to think about white flight and then the way that suburban communities potentially breathe inequality. One of the causal reasons we discussed in class on the current state of Detroit was the flight of whites, upper, and upper-middle classes. With many leaving, they also left with capital which supported Detroit. Of course, this is just one of the many possible causal reasons. However, where did many of these folks (who were able to leave) go? In the film, many people were leaving to suburban communities. The movie briefly talked about the reason many folks had to stay behind. One reason being because they heavily relied on public transportation in order to get to their jobs, run errands, and so forth. In suburban communities, public transportation is not as widely available as it is in cities and thus there is a need to have a car in suburbs.
 
Furthermore, the majority of people who live in suburbs tend to be wealthier and also the makeup tend to be white folks. But when taking a look at suburbia, how unequal are suburban communities? To what extent do other factors play into this inequality? In a fairly recent article on racial inequality in the suburbs, the article stated that:

  Blacks and Hispanics have moved into the suburbs, but they're still likely to live in
  neighborhoods there where they're isolated from whites, regardless of income. And
  those neighborhoods are likely to have more poverty and lower-performing public
  schools than the suburban neighborhoods where whites live, suggesting that old urban
  forms of inequality are replicating themselves in the suburbs. - The Oregonian 

It’s important to highlight the potential inequality that can exist in suburban communities because suburbs are an important aspect to urban life and development. For example, if many leave cities due to crime, insecurity, etc then that flight will negatively impact city life.
 
In chapter 4, the authors discuss uneven development. The beginning of this section begins with the authors writing “urban and suburban settlement spaces grow and develop because of capital investment.” They further discuss how people with money seek to invest in places and enterprises that bring to them the highest rate of return or profit. Thus, if cities are deteriorating (due to many different factors), these individuals will not want to invest in these locations. Additionally, they bring up that “well-being of a place depends not only on the amount of investment it can attract but also on the wealth of its residents.” Therefore, if residents of a location are particularly low-income then the likelihood of investment in that particular area will be low and thus create this idea of uneven development.

I think it’s also important to look at the different ways that investment can affect various areas. In an article called “Suburban Disequilibrium,” the author discusses:

  High property values support high-achieving schools, which in turn increase property
  values and personal wealth. Racial redlining holds property values down, limiting
  investment in schools and preventing families from building equity, disadvantages that
  pass to the next generation like a negative inheritance. - NY Times

Therefore, if there is constant investment in areas of high property values where there is high-achieving schools, this creates unequal development in areas where investment can truly be needed.

Uneven development creates inequality because there can be a select group of people and locations that are more successful and thriving surrounded by areas of poverty. An important aspect of uneven development is the idea that capital becomes more mobile and thus can easily be shifted. In this particular section, they discussed how in the Silicon Valley they began outsourcing many of their manufacturing operations and thus the capital that once existed in the Silicon Valley was no longer there. This outsourcing then left many without jobs and thus plagued the valley with poverty and inequality. It would be interesting to compare what occurred in the Silicon Valley to what occurred to Detroit.

The reading also mentions the spatial disparities that can occur and how this can lead to an increase in prices in the local grocery stores and thus cause residents to shop out of their community looking for cheaper prices. This reminded me of the idea of food deserts and how food deserts have become a huge concern in many communities. These communities, not surprisingly enough, are low-income communities.  These different readings raise important questions on the ways that inequality may exist in suburbs and the uneven development that can exist. I know that we will dig deeper into suburbia and also look at different factors in city life. These, after all, are premature thoughts on these different relationships.

Small Town to City, City to Small Town, Culture Shock Will Always Occur

In the past few weeks, we have been going over urbanization, how different societies react in their environment, rise of cities and more. I grew up in a small town; I would say about 6,000 people. My graduation class was only about 250 students and we all knew each other. I grew up in a type of town where everyone know who everyone was and what purpose they had to the town. I enjoyed living this lifestyle because I feel that it brings you close to the people you surround yourself with, and to have a society run and work efficiently, you need that bond.

            When I went to college, I meet many different types of people. People who have been in towns much smaller than mine, one of my closet friends actually to this day actually grew up in a town where he had only about 500 people living in. But I also met a lot of people who grew up in the city where the population is well over 2.5 million people. When you are in college, you realized the many different types of people there are out there in the world and also start to notice how all of their lifestyles are completely different than one another’s. When the book brings up culture shock and how people in different urban/rural areas live, you can definite

ly see how there could be culture shock.

In small towns, the population isn’t that big. You have the group of people who work for your public works, the teachers, law enforcement/safety teams and etc. With a small town, there are a lot of opportunities to have a purpose in your town. People live to have purpose and that’s what they strive for. In large cities, such as Chicago, the population is extremely large and the opportunities to have a purpose in your city is much more difficult. But, people in the city could live a life, without any purpose to their city or people and they would be perfectly happy with that. When you’re in a large city you tend be a follower and follow everyone else than in small towns where you have to take charge in order to get things done.

When thinking about culture shock and how people living in cities can survive if they moved to a small town or if a small town person moves to a large city, which one would have more of a culture shock? In my opinion, culture shock will always happen regardless of what culture you lived in before.  When living in a small town, you have a sense or order and leadership due to the lack of other resources in people you can rely on. When moving to the city, your responsibility to the city goes down due to the amount of people resources increasing. You are more pushed to becoming a follower than a leader. Am I saying you can’t become a leader in a large city, no but the opportunities to become one are a lot harder. Also, what I haven’t really mentioned but the geography and the architecture would be a drastic different as well. From small town to having personal business shops and easy transportation access to large cities where you have extremely large buildings with multi million dollar businesses. Also the transportation is a lot more difficult in large cities than it is in small towns. The city does have more options to transportation such as taxis, subways, and personal ride carts but still with the amount of people, its difficult. Now looking into when a person moving from a large city to a small town, they still experience some culture shock as well. People, who live in the city, rely on the mass amount of transportation available like I mentioned earlier to get around to different places due to how large it is. In small towns you don’t have the luxury of public transportation so you would have to adapt and either get a car or find other transportation ways. Also, going from a city where you don’t have to have a purpose to a small town where your town relies on you to et jobs done could be a culture shock as well. 

In my opinion, culture shock happens everywhere and it will always happen. People in society are raised to live a certain way and when you move away from that, there’s going to be some culture shock.  Moving from a small town to a large city I feel will have the most culture shock because of the mass amounts of things that are available than a small town would have. I was very interested in reading about these topics over the past few weeks and am excited to see what more I learn.

 Chicago's More Similar to Ancient Rome Than you Think

          A city in present day American can be similar to one in ancient Greece but at the same time has vast differences. After all, people living in 50 B.C. have many of the same desires and instincts as individuals living in the modern world. However the relationship of how the city is run is quite complex. And government must help the city while not enforcing to much of a hands-on approach.

          Society is always going to need food, water and places to work. One downfall of ancient Rome was that the ruler of the time put so much devotion to pleasure that basic necessities that a city needs to provide such as trash collection began to pile up and the city became a cesspool. A contemporary example would be when a New Jersey highway closed lanes at a toll plaza, resulting in mass traffic jams. Both examples show that in order for cities to be successful, services must be provided for the inhabitants. So cities are similar in the aspect that they must provide basic services for their inhabitants but at the same time Chicago and Detroit are vastly different. Both cities provided basic services for their inhabitants but the reason for growth is where differences emerge. Chicago is adjacent to Lake Michigan and the road to the West naturally traveled through the city. Because of this Chicago was able to obtain huge stockyards leading the city to be dubbed, “Hog butcher for the World.” The stockyards were able to attract the masses to move to Chicago to obtain employment. Similarly Detroit was able to grow in part due to the flux of the Auto industry. These employment services are in contrast to rural areas. Individuals migrate to cities to find work. Chicago though was not completely depended upon the stockyards. Chicago had be able to attract many major companies to invest in Chicago. The World’s Fair of 1893 

 being held in Chicago is a perfect example of how Chicago was able to not be solely dependent upon on service (stockyards). This is in contrast to Detroit where the Great Recession caused the auto industry to take a massive hit. Detroit didn’t have the necessary services to provide to its’ inhabitants and this resulted in an exodus from the city. The point is Cities need to provide a multitude of services. The more the services often directly results in that city’s continual growth. However this isn't always the case. The growth of services must occur naturally. China provides a great example. While China has been experiencing massive economic growth cities have tried to continual provide more and more services. The largest mall in the world based upon gross leaseable area, the New South China Mall is 99% vacant since opening in 2005 (Forbes.com).

So despite providing a plethora of services the city was not ready for the mall. The takeaway is that the government and the private sector can't just throw money at providing new nonbasic services if the city isn't ready.

          But how to build cities successfully is the subject of much debate. As already described, all cities need basic services such as drinkable water in order to function. But the development of the city is the subject of great interest and debate. A downfall of many ancient cities is that they failed to provide many services, often resulting from poor decisions by the government. The level of government interaction though needs to be a balance. If you take Chicago you can go from one neighborhood such as Chinatown and walk less than a mile and and enter a neighborhood vastly different. What makes up these neighborhoods is the subject of great interest. Why does Chicago have the level of diversity as opposed to say London in the 17^th century is a difficult question that, like an onion, has multiple layers of explanation. No doubt the government plays a crucial role in how services are provided to the city.

          So, to sum up cities are complex. In order for a village to become a city employment services are needed. In order for the city to sustain the population basic human services such as waste management needs to be provided. Then for a city to grow it needs to provide diversity, have multiple employment options, as well as entertainment options, in order for individuals to stay in the city. So, it seems that governmental interference, is needed to some degree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9yfZBZdQaM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/chris-christie-bridge-scandal/

The extreme cost of earning a living

While reading chapter 3 in The new Urban Sociology George Simmel’s story about Hans the farmer caught my attention. Hans moved from a small farming town into a major city. He has some issues adjusting to the city lifestyle but in the end becomes assimilated with the norms of city life. The aspect of this story that really stood out was how Simmel attributes the change in Hans’ lifestyle to the pursuit of capital. Hans essentially is no longer a person but rather a tool for producing income. Hans eventually categorizes his life in accordance with producing the maximum amount of income for himself. The rituals of his life that were done for survival in his home town no longer carried the same importance because survival in city life is based on having enough income to buy the goods needed to survive rather than producing them one’s self. I see this same transformation of values being taught in the secondary education system of our country. Individuals feel a pressure to attain a bachelors or associates degree at the minimum in order to live a successful life. The definition of being successful is the same driving force Hans faced in city. Being successful is directly linked to the amount of income one makes in our current society. So individuals are now attending college with the belief that they need a degree to earn enough income to survive. No longer are the institutions helping students learn how to better themselves as individuals. They are now focused mainly on preparing their students to seamlessly enter and contribute to their work place. As more and more individuals have access to a college education the new minimal standard to be considered for a well paying job is transitioning to some college education.

The issue with this rising standard is the cost of a college education in the modern world. College is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination and too often students need to take on government loans in order to pay for their schooling and this is where the problem begins. If individuals must have a degree to be considered for a job in the modern economy, they will often not think of the cost of attaining that degree because it is seen as a necessity. This cost then haunts them through the early years of their career because of the amount of debt that can accumulate over years of student loans. This means that when a student leaves college they begin to rationally calculate all of their habits in order to pay off their loan debt as soon as possible. Similar to the way Hans calculates all his actions in the hope to maximize his capital. This mentality is no longer specific to urban city life, but rather has become a trend seen in modern cities everywhere.

This vicious cycle of societal pressure can cause many individuals to peruse capital and nothing else. There is a need for income to attend school and then the name need for adequate income to pay for school after the fact. It would seem to me that one’s source of income becomes the main factor in their decision making process. The same thing happened to Hans when he finally became accustomed to life in a big city. According to a CNN article there are as many as 40 million Americans who live with student loan debts. The average amount of debt is between 23,000 and 29,000 dollars with the national amount of debt reaching as high as 1.2 trillion dollars. While this may be the highest student loan totals have ever reached the government still gives loans to any student that applies because they are confident that those debts will be repaid when students set out into the real world. The initial burden right as student finish school determines how they will begin the rest of their life. As illustrated in the cartoon above often students will move back into their parent’s house because they cannot afford to live on their own and pay off their student debts. There is then a pressure on their parents to support their children beyond the time frame they had initially planned for.

It seems that all life decisions in the modern era are based off the need to have income. This mentality may have started in urban city centers where everyday life is very impersonal, but it is now spreading to all communities rural or urban. That is a problem individuals should not have to base their life decisions on the pursuit of adequate income. Because too often that pursuit can cause individuals to feel inadequate in society based on their income. I believe that as long as an individual is happy and contributing to society in some way they should be viewed with positive attitudes even if they have a low level of income. Being able to make enough money to be viewed with high status in society may too often will put individuals in extreme amounts of debt. Without this debt they would be able to spend their money in ways they determine necessary rather than spending it on what society deems important.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/10/pf/college/student-loans/