Development, an Impetus to Urbanization Essay

New ways of thinking about government, science, economics, and religion had brought many changes to America by the eighteenth century. Concern for individual freedoms became so strong that it led to revolution in many lands. In Britain’s American colonies, revolution brought the establishment of a new nation, the United States. In the spring of 1775 few Americans, angry as they were, favored separation from Britain. Support for independence grew over the next six months as fighting continued and the colonists debated the issue. The Americans had declared their independence but still had to win it. They had capable leaders and were strengthened by their dedication to the cause of liberty. The Americans emerged victorious from the Revolutionary War and adopted a plan of government that became a model for other nations (Hinkle, 1994). Since then, modernization and urbanization became the twin paradigms of â€Å"pop culture† from that point on in America. For approximately two hundred years, people in the United States have been wandering towards the fringes in the hunt for reasonably priced domestic shelter, rural community conviviality, and well-preserved and intact nature only to learn that their verdant new neighborhoods are a component of the emergent metropolitan stretch. Modernization describes the process by which a society moves from traditional or pre-industrial social and economic arrangements to those characteristics of industrial societies. Implicit in the notion of modernization is the assumption that there is basically one predominant course of development, namely industrialization and urbanization which were followed by America (Todaro, 1981). This capitalistic and industrially advanced commerce became the impetus of urbanization in America. The relocation of the new technologies furnished the United States its first manufacturing plants, large-scale mills that incorporated spinning and knitting technology in a single factory. As workers drifted into the metropolis in the hunt for employment in the factories, the factory scheme was mainly accountable for the materialization of the urbanized city (Harris and Todaro, 1970). The development of dramatic socioeconomic modifications brought about when wide-ranging automation of assembly systems led to a swing from domestic hand manufacturing to across-the-board factory manufacture. The Industrial Revolution has transformed the visage of nations, creating metropolitan centers involving substantial urban services (Brody, 1989). Viewed in this manner, modernization entails a pattern of convergence as societies become increasingly and inevitably urban, industry comes to overshadow agriculture, the division of capitalistic labor becomes more specialized, colonialism gained a new meaning, and the size and density of the population increase with immigrants coming in from every point in the world (Cohen, 2004). Initially, inhabitants have sought commune, dwelling, and conserved environment in suburbia. People have continuously hankered after sighting their conurbations as human constructions built as one piece. Developers have taken pleasure in a range of imaginings, aiming for revenues from economies of scale and enlarged suburban crowdedness, while swaying opinion on municipal and federal administration to diminish the peril of real estate conjecture (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). Enclosing all environmental hullabaloos in addition to the intricacies of social stratum, ethnicity, and sexual category, several speculate how we mull over the communes Americans construct and make their homes in (Newman, 2006). It is apparent that population size and composition have a great composition have a great many ramifications for all phases of social life. The distribution of a population in space also assumes critical significance. The â€Å"where† may be an area as large as a continent or as small as a city block. Between these extremes are world regions, nations, national regions, states, cities and rural areas. Changes in the number and proportion of people living in various areas are the cumulative effect of differences in fertility, mortality, and net migration (Walls, 2004). One of the most significant developments in human history has been the development of cities. Although many of us take cities for granted, they are one of the most striking features of our modern era. A city is a relatively dense and permanent concentration of people who secure their livelihood chiefly through non-agricultural activities. The influence of the urban mode of life extends far beyond the immediate confines of a city’s boundaries. Many of the characteristics of modern societies, including problems, derive from an urban existence (Cohen, 2004). Urbanization has proceeded quite rapidly during the past two centuries. In 1800 there were fewer than fifty cities in the world with 100,000 or more population. And by 1900, only one in twenty earthlings lived in a city with a population of at least 100,000. Today. One in five people lives in a center with at least 100,000 people (Montgomery, et al. , 2004). Several of the spatial standards and social prospects of the 1800s and early 1900s hang about up till now, layers entwined in protocols, recollection, and experience, in addition to the metaphors of popular culture and the proclamations of draftsmen and urban developers. In the first part of the 1800s, inhabitants, pattern book authors, and engineers created long-term principles of quixotic houses established in picturesque landscape peopled by elite, private neighborhoods (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). Prevalent since the 1840s, the philosophy of female domesticity was married to a trend of mannish home occupancy, stretched out to subsume plebeian males three decades later. Communitarian activities started to have some bearing on draftsmen, landscapers, and engineers, a class of reformers on the up understood they may possibly fashion a transformative societal construction at the outer reaches of the metropolis (Kivisto, 2001). Picturesque enclaves began round about 1850. All over this time, the American suburban abode had turned out to be a private utopia, taking the place of the archetypal town which had taken on a range of Americans’ hopes a thousand years earlier (Satterthwaite, 2005). Nevertheless, it is time to revamp every layer in the discrete metropolitan terrain, and contemplate how to take in hand each variety, keeping in mind that property holder subsidies, developer subventions, and metropolitan services have been dispersed disproportionately over the decades and certain greater impartiality is looked-for. The long-standing enclaves may necessitate conservation, but aid should be rendered in exchange for communal access and construal of their privileged parks and natural terrains (Harris and Fabricius, 1996). New-fangled proposals for picturesque enclaves, such as Llewellyn Park, New Jersey, laid emphasis to communal open area and advanced joint public life (Satterthwaite, 2005). One communitarian community in Mount Vernon, New York, exerted a pull on roughly three-hundred families by putting forward fortification against the biased power and weight of capital; others urbanized model settlements to advance women’s repute through collective services and industrial sustenance (Alexander, et al. , 2004). Most early urban communities were city-states, and many modern nations have evolved from them. Even where the nation became large in both size and land area, the city has remained the focus for political and economic activities, and the core and magnet of much social life. To people of other nations, the city often represents the nation, and this tradition survives in the modern use of a city, such as Washington, London, and Moscow, as a synonym for a nation (Beauchemin and Bocquier, 2004). Industrial-urban centers typically been geographically scattered, and although dominating their hinterlands, have had only tenuous economic and social relations with them. More recently, metropolitan cities have emerged. This phase in urban development does not represent a sharp break with the industrial-urban tradition, but rather a widening and deepening of urban influences in every area of social life. Increasingly cities have become woven into an integrated network (Cohen, 2004). The technological base for the metropolitan phase of urbanism is found in the tremendous increase in the application of science to industry, the widespread use of electric power (freeing industry from the limitations associated with steam and belt-and-pulley modes of power), and the advent of modern forms of transportation (the automobile and rapid transit systems have released cities from the limitations associated with foot and hoof travel, which had more or less restricted growth to a radius of 3 miles from the center) (Todaro, 1981). Steam and belt-and-pulley power techniques had produced great congestion in urban areas by the beginning of the twentieth century. But a number of factors have increasingly come to the foreground and bucked earlier centripetal pressures, including rising city taxes, increased land values, traffic and transportation problems, and decaying and obsolescent inner zones. These and other forces have accelerated the centrifugal movement made technologically possible by electric power, rapid transit, the automobile, and the telephone (Harris, 1988). The result has been the development of satellite and suburban areas, broad, ballooning urban lands linked by beltways that constitute cities in their own right. In population, jobs, investment, construction, and chopping facilities, they rival the old inner cities. They are the sites of industrial plants, corporate offices and office towers, fine stores, independent newspapers, theaters, restaurants, superhotels, and big-league stadiums (Montgomery, et al. , 2004). A good deal of the sociological enterprise is directed toward identifying recurrent and stable patterns in people’s social interactions and relationships. In like fashion, sociologists are interested in understanding how people order their relationship and conduct their activities in space. They provide a number of models that attempt to capture the ecological patterns and structures of city growth (Newman, 2006). In the period between World Wars I and II, sociologists at the University of Chicago viewed Chicago as a social laboratory and subjected it to intensive study. The concentric circle model enjoyed a prominent place in much of this work. The Chicago group held that the modern city assumes a pattern of concentric circles, each with distinctive characteristics. At the center of the city, the central business district, are retail stores, financial institutions, hotels, theaters, and businesses that cater to the needs of downtown shoppers. Surrounding the central business district is an area of residential deterioration caused by the encroachment of business and industry, the zone in transition (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). In earlier days, thee neighborhoods had contained the pretentious homes of wealthy and prominent citizens. In later years they became slum areas and havens for marginal business establishments (pawnshops, secondhand stores, and modest taverns and restaurants). The zone in transition shades into the zone of workingmen’s homes that contain two-flats, old single dwellings, and inexpensive apartments inhabited largely by blue-collar workers. Beyond the zone occupied by the working class are residential zones composed primarily of small business proprietors, professional people, and managerial personnel. Finally, out beyond the area containing the more affluent neighborhoods is a ring of encircling small cities, towns, and hamlets, the commuters’ zone (Harris and Fabricius, 1996). The Chicago group viewed these zones as ideal types, since in practice no city conforms entirely to the scheme. For instance, Chicago borders on Lake Michigan, so that a concentric semicircular rather than a circular arrangement holds. Moreover, critics point out that the approach is less descriptive of today’s cities than cities at the turn of the twentieth century. And apparently some cities such as New Haven have never approximated the concentric circle patterns. Likewise, cities in Latin America, Asia, and Africa exhibit less specialization in land use than do those in the United States (Montgomery, et al. , 2004). Homer Hoyt has portrayed large cities as made up of a number of sectors rather than concentric circles, the sector model. Low-rent districts often assume a wedge shape and extend from the center of the city to its periphery. In contrast, as a city grows, high-rent areas move outward, although remaining in the same sector. Districts within a sector that are abandoned by upper-income groups become obsolete and deteriorate (Satterthwaite, 2005). Thus, rather than forming a concentric zone around the periphery of the city, Hoyt contends that the high-rent areas typically locate on the outer edge of a few sectors. Furthermore, industrial areas evolve along river valleys, watercourses, and railroad lines, rather than forming a concentric circle around the central business district. But like the concentric circle model, the sector model does not fit a good many urban communities, including Boston (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). Another model, the multiple nuclei model, depicts the city as having not one center, but several. Each center specializes in some activity and gives its distinctive cast to the surrounding area. For example, the downtown business district has as its focus commercial and financial activities. Other centers include the bright lights (theater and recreation) area, automobile row, a government center, a whole-sailing center, a heavy manufacturing district, and a medical complex. Multiple centers evolve for a number of reasons (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). First, certain activities require specialized facilities, for instance, the retail district needs to be accessible to all parts of the city; the port district requires suitable waterfront; and a manufacturing district dictates that a large block of land be available near water or rail connections. Second, similar activities often benefit from being clustered together. For instance, a retail district profits by drawing customers for a variety of shops. Third, dissimilar activities are often antagonistic to one another. For example, affluent residential development tends to be incompatible with industrial development (Dentler, 2002). And finally, some activities cannot afford high-rent areas and hence locate in low-rent districts; for instance, bulk wholesaling and storage. The multiple nuclei model is less helpful in discovering universal spatial patterns in all cities than in describing the unique patterns peculiar to particular communities (Todaro, 1981). Structure-function approaches help us to partition social life into discrete structures, including statuses and neighborhoods. They allow us to place a handle on the fluid quality of life so that we may grasp, describe, and analyze it, making it understandable and intelligible. But as many conflict and symbolic interactionist theorists emphasize, the dichotomy between structure and process gives birth to problems that are frequently unnecessary. For one thing, the dichotomy produces difficulty in handling change. Indeed, the word change itself is saturated with certain non-process connotations, implying a shift from one static and relatively stable to another (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). Most of the some of the United States are not necessarily one hundred per cent Americans. This is the result of the continuous social change that has taken place in the metropolitan cities over the past decades. Some cities have especially undergone a vivid transition from rural community to a modern suburb. Language, culture, religion, and ethnic heritage reinforce people’s sense of belonging. These are the bonds out of which will be created new communities. Some people insist that the forces that are making the world into a single economy have separated people from longstanding identities and have, at the same time, weakened nation-state (Davies, 2005). The everyday life of the rural people is uncomplicated and less complex than that of the urban inhabitants, and the rural resident are inclined to keep more of the speech patterns and traditions of their characteristic racial backgrounds (Cohen, 2004). A foremost setback in living in a highly developed city is the high cost of living, owing largely to the continent’s empowered economy (Dentler, 2002). Once, most part of the continent had heavily relied on imports. Transportation expenses were incorporated in the prices of the majority of consumer merchandise. As the residents number rise, housing grows more and more hard to obtain, and it is excessively high-priced when proportionate to housing costs in several of the mainland states. Building materials, nearly all of which are brought in from outside the country, are costly. Residential settlement is limited and expensive, given that much of the land is in possession of corporations and trusts (Harris and Todaro, 1970). Pains have been taken through legislation to correct this state of affairs. Thoroughly-designed housing situated in communities, in which the single-family home yield to high-rise, high-density houses and townhouses and apartment complexes, has become one solution to the lack and cost related to urban housing (Hayden, 2004). Urban settlement some time ago comprised more or less completely of single-family quarters, individual business buildings and stores, small bazaars, and three- or four-story inns. With the upsurge of inhabitants and vacationers since the early part of the 20th century, on the other hand, American states have built increasingly high-rise apartment building houses, hotels, and commercial establishments, with the conventional individual shopkeepers becoming wrapped up into the sets of buildings of shopping centers and supermarkets (Loomis and Beegle, 1950). Urban cities are where the majority of Americans reside at the present. It is the governing American edifying landscape, amalgamating esteemed natural and manufactured ecosystems, lots and single domestic houses. Urban cities are where a massive space of profit-making and residential landed property are bankrolled and erected. It is the locality of most of the charitable toil of fostering and parenting, mirroring both societal and ecological customs. Lastly, urbanized cities are where the large American body of voters live today (Alexander, et al. , 2004). References Alexander, Jeffrey C. , Gary T. Marx, and Christine L. Williams. (2004). Self, Social Structure, and Beliefs: Explorations in Sociology. University of California Press. Beauchemin, Cris and Philippe Bocquier, 2004, â€Å"Migration and Urbanization in Francophone West. Brody, David, 1989, â€Å"Labor History, Industrial Relations, and the Crisis of American Labor. † Industrial & Labor Relations Review. 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