City Lights Urban-Suburban Life in the Global Society

by Phillips, E. Barbara

• ISBN13: 9780195056891
• ISBN10: 0195056892
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-03-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The second edition of this successful urban studies text has been fully updated to highlight issues facing cities in an ever-shrinking global society. Skillfully blending perspectives from the social sciences with insights from the visual arts and humanities, this lively and imaginative textprovides a comprehensive introduction to cities and how they work. Focusing on the U.S. city, it covers the major traditional topics, including urbanization and suburbanization, the two faces of community, spatial and social structure, economic base, and decision-making. In addition, the revisededition treats such specialized topics as personal space, and the impact of new technologies on architecture and politics. Phillips takes the point of view that what you see depends on how you look at it and how you define an urban problem determines its solution. In systematic fashion, she shows how scholarly controversy and public debates over urban policy are rooted in deep-seated differences: differences inpolitical ideologies, research methods, theoretical orientations, academic disciplines, and/or levels of analysis. Phillips starts from several basic premises: no one has cornered the truth about cities (or anything else); even the loneliest town is linked in a worldwide system due to the urban-global interlock, and things urban-suburban are best understood in a broader context from an interdisciplinaryoutlook. The book offers numerous case studies, photoessays, examples, and firsthand accounts of such interesting and timely subjects as ethnic identity, ZIP codes as neighborhoods, big cities in poor countries, women's space, alternative urban-suburban futures, multiculturalism, temporary or contingentwork, the entanglement of race and class, gated communities, and local fiscal crisis, placing these issues in broad analytical contexts. Developed and tested in the classroom, this rich and highly readable text features a wide range of illustrative materials and learning aids. Projects in each chapter and the books evenhanded approach to a variety of perspectives encourage students to develop their personal acquaintance with andknowledge about urban life. Excerpts from classic works, lists of key terms, and suggestions for further learning make this book a valuable tool for students in urban studies and a variety of urban-oriented courses, particularly urban sociology, city planning, urban politics, and urbanhistory.

Table of Contents

I AN INVITATION TO THE CITY	3	(78)
1. The Knowing Eye and Ear	3	(25)
Two Paths to Understanding the City	7	(6)
"Acquaintance With" and "Knowledge About" Metropolitan Life
Rethinking the Two Paths
Understanding Chicago in Its Heyday, 1890s-1920s	13	(15)
Using Social Science and Literature as Paths to Knowledge
Labor Radicalism, Industrial Progress, and Social Reform
Urban Researches and Writers: Convergent Goals
The City Beautiful
Chicago: Microcosm of the New Industrial Order
2. Thinking About Cities	28	(28)
What You See Depends on How You Look at It	28	(4)
Different Modes of Understanding
Academic and Occupational Perspectives
Even Road Maps Contain a Point of View
Expanding Our Vision of the City	32	(1)
Fragmentation of the Social Sciences
Ways of Expanding Our Vision
Urban Studies
Disciplinary Perspectives: The Example of Slums	33	(16)
Economics
Geography
Sociology
Political Science
Anthropology
History
Psychology, Social Psychology, and Social Psychiatry
Public Administration
City Planning and Urban Design
Mass Communications
Environmental Studies
Literature and the Arts
Making Some Connections	49	(7)
3. Posing the Questions	56	(25)
Doing Science	56	(4)
Reasoning, Deductive and Inductive
Systematic Analysis
Facts, Hypotheses, and Value Judgments
Why Social Scientists Disagree	60	(14)
Theoretical Orientations
Disciplinary Perspectives
Research Methods
Levels of Analysis
Ideologies and Values
Subtle Influences on Researchers
Attitudes Toward Solving Social Problems
What Questions to Ask	74	(7)
II POLIS, METROPOLIS, MEGALOPOLIS	81	(120)
4. From Urban Specks to Global Cities	81	(36)
The First Cities	82	(8)
Digging into Urban History
What Is a City?
The First Urban Settlements: An Overview
The Childe Thesis: The Urban Revolution in Mesopotamia
Counterviews on the Origin of Cities: Trade, the Sacred, and the Spirit of the People
An Emerging Theory of Early City Making
Trying to Classify Cities	90	(2)
Preindustrial versus Industrial Cities (Sjoberg)
Varieties of Western Cities: A Sampler	92	(3)
The Glory That Was Greece
Medieval Cities
Manchester, England: Symbol of the New Industrial City
American Urban Roots	95	(3)
Specks in the Wilderness
Antiurbanism of the Intellectuals
From Walking City to Streetcar Suburb
Urbanization of the World's Population	98	(4)
The Process of Urbanization
Industrialization and Urbanization in Western Europe and North America
Urbanization in Poor Countries
Worldwide, the Future Is Urban
The World Urban System	102	(7)
Globalization of Cities
The International Division of Labor, Old and New
U.S. Cities in the World Urban System
Cities in the Global Environment
Another Look	109	(8)
5. The Ties That Bind	117	(28)
What Is a Community?	118	(2)
Communities Based on Territory
Communities Based on Common Culture
A Sense of Community
The Athenian Polis of Ancient Greece	120	(3)
A Communal Way of Life
Classical Urban Theory	123	(8)
Typologies of the Rural-Urban Shift
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (Tönnies)
Mechanical and Organic Social Solidarity (Durkheim)
Culture and Civilization (Spengler)
Urban Personality (Wirth)
Preindustrial and Industrial Cities (Sjoberg)
Adding a Third Type: Technoschaft
How Useful Are the Rural-Urban Typologies?	131	(7)
Untested Hypotheses
Contrary Evidence
Deterministic Assumptions
Contemporary Irrelevance
Jumbled Variables
Another Look	138	(7)
6. Metropolitan Community	145	(22)
Social Cement in the Metropolis	146	(1)
Metropolitan Community: Alive or Extinct?	147	(12)
One View: Metropolitan Division of Labor
Alternative View: New International Division of Labor ("Needle")
Urban Ecologists versus New Urban Theorists: A Case Study
Measuring Functional Interdependence
The Need for New Concepts
Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)
Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA) or Megalopolis
Rural and Micropolitan Areas
Where Are We Headed?
Population Shifts	159	(4)
From Rural to Urban
From Urban to Suburban and Postsuburban
Back to the Land?
From Frostbelt to Sunbelt
Interpreting the Population Trends
Another Look	163	(4)
7. Making Connections	167	(34)
Searching for Community, or New Houses	167	(22)
Diatribes Against "Suburbia"
The Myth of Suburbia
Levittown
Taking the Sub out of Suburban
The Transformation of Milpitas, California, 1954-1994
ZIP Codes as Neighborhoods
Placeless, Faceless Communities: Interconnectivities
Social Networks	189	(2)
A Structural Approach to Community
What Next?	191	(1)
Grand Dreams and Grandiose Schemes
Another Look	192	(9)
III PLURIBUS VERSUS UNUM	201	(60)
8. Movin' On	201	(27)
Migrant Experiences in the United States	202	(8)
The Old Migration
Internal Migration
The New Migration
Some Impacts of the Newcomers
From Ellis Island to LAX	210	(10)
Adjustments to Urban Life
Irish Catholics and East European Jews in New York City
Chicanos and Koreans in Los Angeles
The Need for New Models	220	(1)
Cubans in Miami
Another Look	221	(7)
9. Identity Crisis	228	(33)
Worldwide Ethnoscapes	228	(2)
Global Identity ...
... versus the Pull of "Lesser Loyalties"
Civics versus Ethnics
What Happened to the U.S. Melting Pot?	230	(7)
Race, Ethnicity, and Minority Groups
From Minority to Majority
A Clash of Values: White Ethnics versus WASP Superculture
Once Again, the Entanglement of Race/Ethnicity and Class
The Grand Canyon
Symbolic Ethnicity	237	(2)
Feelings and Food
The Stewpot	239	(11)
Native Americans: The Unassimilated
African-Americans and Hispanics: Permanent Underclass?
Making It: Japanese-Americans
Gays and Lesbians: An Ethnic-like Group?
Multiculturalism
Another Look	250	(11)
IV RULES OF THE GAME	261	(66)
10. Social Ladders	261	(37)
Two Ways of Looking at Social Stratification: Marx and Weber	262	(15)
Living on the Cusp
Marx and Weber: No Specifically Urban Theory
Marx and the Concept of Class
"Dream Up, Blame Down"
Marx, the Inescapable Critic
Weber's View of Social Stratification: Class, Status, Power
Conceptual Updates	277	(3)
The American Class Structure
Cultural Capital
Studies of Urban Social Stratification in the United States	280	(4)
Yankee City: Lifestyles in a New England Town
Jonesville: A Typical Town, and How Its People Justify Inequality
Studies of Particular Strata in the City
Other Variables Influencing Social Rank	284	(6)
Race and Religion
Ethnicity, Religion, and Region
Ethclass
Gender
Women in Cities
Age
Another Look	290	(8)
11. Discovering the Rules	298	(29)
Taking a Fresh Look at the Familiar	299	(8)
Pedestrian Behavior
Subway Behavior
Eavesdropping: Urbanites as Spies
Bar Behavior
ATM Behavior
Everyday Games and Dramas	307	(8)
Whose Games Do We Play?
"The Definition of the Situation" (Thomas)
Social Order Amid Multiple Realities
"The Presentation of Self" (Goffman)
Walking the Tightrope	315	(1)
Minimizing Involvement, Maximizing Social Order
Constructing Social Reality	316	(1)
The Public Definition of Reality
Combining Micro and Macro Analysis to Study Social Behavior	317	(1)
Case Study: Tally's Corner
Another Look	318	(9)
V WHO RUNS THIS TOWN?	327	(88)
12. The Skeleton of Power	327	(38)
The Scope of Government	328	(4)
Government's Limited Scope
Paradoxical Attitudes Toward Government
Public-Private Sector Relationships
The Proper Role of Local Government
Local Political Environments
Cities as Creatures of Their State	332	(1)
General Law Cities and Charter Cities
Dillon's Rule
Changing Relationships	333	(4)
State Legislatures and City Interests
Suburbs versus Cities
Local Governments in a Global Society: "Taking Responsibility for the Sky"
Forms of City Government	337	(3)
Mayor-Council Form
Council-Manager Form
Commission Form
Organization of City Governments	340	(3)
Mayors, Strong or Weak
Hyperpluralism and Government by Bureaucrats
The Context of Local Government	343	(3)
Fragmentation of the Metropolis
Special Districts
Counties (Including Urban Counties)
The State's Role in Urban Affairs
Areawide Planning Efforts
Changing Governmental Structures and Patterns	346	(5)
Broad Regional Government?
Traditional Responses and Minor Adaptations
Innovative Experiments
Privatization of Public Services
The Report Card
The Federal Role in Urban Affairs	351	(4)
Expansion of Federal Involvement in U.S. Life, 1930s-1950s
How Federal Policy Affected Postwar Housing and Transportation
From Federalism to the New Federalism, 1960s-1992
The Question Reconsidered: Who Runs This Town?	355	(2)
Case Study: What Bananas Learned About the Formal Structure of Government
Another Look	357	(8)
13. Bosses, Boodlers, and Reformers	365	(22)
The City Political Machine	367	(9)
A Bunch of Crooks or Friend of the Poor?
How City Machines Work
What Services Machines Provide(d)
Case Study: New York City's Tweed Ring, 1866-1871
Case Study: The Daley Machine in Chicago, 1955-1976 and Beyond
Why Machines Rise
Why Machines Fall
Local Government Reform	376	(3)
The Goo-Goos: A Disparate Lot
Thrusts of the Reform Movement
How Successful Were the Reformers?
Bosses and Machines: An Update	379	(3)
Robert Moses, Newer-style Boss
The Local-National Connection
Another Look	382	(5)
14. Getting Things Done	387	(28)
Coalition Politics	388	(4)
Case Study: The Fight over Yerba Buena
Community Power	392	(7)
The Elitist Model
The Pluralist Model
The City-as-a-Growth-Machine Model
Comparing the Models	399	(3)
Why the Theorists Disagree
Citizen Politics	402	(6)
Citizen Participation
Dark Shadows
Electronic Democracy?
Case Study Continued: How Bananas Learned Who Runs This Town and Got Some Things Done
Another Look	408	(7)
VI SPACE AND PLACE	415	(80)
15. Metropolitan Form and Space	415	(36)
Bringing Space Back In	416	(1)
Henri Lefebvre's Influence
The System of Cities	417	(6)
Central Place Theory
Does Central Place Theory Work?
Classifying Cities by Function
New Spatial Models
The Global Network of Cities
The Internal Structure of Cities	423	(9)
Classic Models of U.S. Cities
How Useful Are the Classic Models?
Social Area Analysis: A Method of Investigating Urban Growth and Differentiation
Computer Models of Urban Structure
New Perspectives on Metropolitan Space	432	(3)
The Political Economy Model or New Urban Paradigm
The Multinucleated Metropolitan Region Model
Where People Live	435	(6)
How Race and Ethnicity Affect Housing Patterns
What People Live In
How Age Affects Housing Patterns
Gentrification
Economic Activities in Metropolitan Space	441	(2)
Central Business District (CBD)
Decentralized and Multicentered Commercial Activities
Manufacturing
Another Look	443	(8)
16. A Sense of Place	451	(44)
Perception: Filtering Reality	452	(2)
Cultural Filters
Social Filters
Psychological Filters
Perceiving the Built Environment	454	(6)
Architecture as Symbolic Politics
Las Vegas, Nevada
Does Environment Determine Behavior?	460	(2)
Case Study: Pruitt-Igoe
The Spirit and Energy of Place	462	(1)
Genius loci
Feng shui
Experiencing Personal Space	463	(5)
Personal Space as Protective Bubble
Personalizing Our Space: Home Territories
Privatization of Domestic Public Space
Experiencing Social Space	468	(3)
Public Space as Symbol
Colonizing Social Space
Street People's Turf
Streets
Policy Implications
Environmental Psychology	471	(3)
Key Concepts and Research Thrusts
Rats, Chickens, and People
Shaping Space	474	(3)
Design Principles
Designing the Natural Environment
The Image of the City	477	(1)
Making the City Observable
The View from the Road
Grand Designers	477	(7)
Pierre-Charles L'Enfant's Washington, D.C.
Utopian Visionaries
Company Towns: Lowell, Massachusetts, and Pullman, Illinois
The City Beautiful Movement
Ebenezer Howard's Garden City
Megastructures or Ministructures?
Postnationalist Architecture
Another Look	484	(11)
VII PAYING THEIR WAY	495	(79)
17. Producing, Consuming, Exchanging	495	(25)
Political Economy: A Beginning Vocabulary	496	(5)
Supply, Demand, Price, and the Market Mechanism
Profit
Utility
Externalities
Equity
Efficiency
An Alternative Vocabulary	501	(3)
Capital
Surplus Value
Monopoly Capitalism
Late Capitalism
Social Structures of Accumulation
The Informational Mode of Development
An Emerging Vocabulary	504	(1)
Restorative Economy and Sustainability
The Economy of Metropolitan Areas	505	(8)
Cities and MSAs in the National and Global Economies
Basic and Nonbasic Sectors
The Underground Economy
Identifying Basic Sector Industries
Case Study: Caliente
Economics of the Future	513	(1)
International Trends and Policies
National, Regional, and State Trends and Policies
Another Look	514	(6)
18. Blue-Collar, White-Collar, Shirtless	520	(34)
The Post-work Society	521	(1)
The Human Dimension: Work and the Individual	521	(14)
Lowell, Massachusetts: Working Conditions of America's First Female Labor Force
New England to the New South to Offshore: More Hard Times in the Mill
Modern Times
Alienation
The Anomic Division of Labor
Worker Satisfaction, Overwork, and Stress
Brief Case Studies: Daily Journalists and Garbage Collectors
Local Occupational Structures	535	(1)
The Relationship of Jobs to Social Climate and Governance
Changing U.S. Employment Patterns	536	(3)
Contingent or Temporary Work
The Dual City
The Dual Nation
Poverty in Metropolitan Areas	539	(7)
Defining Poverty
Who Are the Metropolitan Poor?
Why Are They Poor?
Tally's Corner
What Should Be Done About Poverty?
Another Look	546	(8)
19. Raising and Spending Money	554	(20)
How Globalization Affects Local Finance	555	(1)
The System of Local Public Finance	556	(1)
The Multitiered Context
Where Local Government Revenue Originates: (1) Own Source Revenue	556	(5)
Types of Own Source Revenue
Competition Among Jurisdictions for Own Source Revenue
Central City versus Suburban Tax Bases
Are Central Cities Bankrupt?
O'Connor's Fiscal Crisis Theory
Do Suburbs Exploit Central Cities?
Where Local Government Revenue Originates: (2) Fiscal Federalism	561	(3)
State-Local Intergovernmental Transfers
Federal Transfers to State and Local Governments
The Intergovernmental City
Allocating the Public Budget	564	(6)
The Politics of the Budgetary Process
Where Local Government Revenue Goes
Another Look	570	(4)
Finale: To Be Continued	574	(4)
Brief Biographies	578	(5)
Index	583