Essay on Effects of Urbanization | | |[pic] | | |Urbanization is the process by which a large number of people over time | | |become concentrated in cities. However, cities, as permanent settlements | | |where heterogeneous groups of people live, have existed since time | | |immemorial.
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The existence of cities is extensively interrelated to the | | |expansion of an efficient agricultural system and technology that makes | | |possible surplus products beyond the immediate requirements of survival. This| | |condition, together with the existence of complex social organization and | | |favorable geographical environment, plays a critical role in the continued | | |existence of cities.
Yet due to, among other things, inadequate technology | | |and agricultural and transportation systems, premodern cities were relatively| | |undersized and few in number compared to modern cities. Hence, the true | | |development of urbanization is a recent phenomenon. Just 200 years ago, the | | |number of people living in urban areas throughout the world was under 4 | | |percent.
Currently, that number is 47 percent; soon it will hit the 50 | | |percent mark. By the year 2025, demographers predict that two thirds of the | | |world’s population will live in metropolitan areas. | | |The industrial revolution made a marked difference in the development of | | |modern cities.
The revolution played an important role in drawing people to | | |cities, where diverse nonagricultural occupations were available. Most | | |importantly, however, the industrial revolution laid the infrastructural | | |basis for the expansion of communication between distant areas and the | | |transportation of people and resources from one place to another.
Hence, | | |preindustrial cities and modern cities were dissimilar from one another not | | |only quantitatively but also qualitatively. Economically modern cities | | |allowed elaborate specialization together with an open system in which | | |achievement rather than ascription played an important role in social | | |mobility. | |Politically, modern cities became social spaces wherein the notion of | | |citizenship, replacing premodern subject hood, found full-fledged expression. | | |Culturally, modern cities not only served as centers of cultural intermixing | | |but acted as places wherein diverse subcultures flourished. These processes | | |allowed modern cities to grow exponentially.
Some modern cities evolved into | | |metropolises, central cities surrounded by towns and suburban areas with | | |relatively integrated economies. Sometimes continued urbanization created a | | |megalopolis, a continuous stretch of urban area forming a cluster of | | |metropolises, such as from Boston to Washington, D.
C. | | |Modern cities are also distinct from their premodern counterparts because of | | |a unique form of social behavior that emerged within them. Urban sociologist | | |Louis Wirth designated this emergent behavior as urbanism, a distinctive way | | |of life eventuated by the social patterns of modernity.
Because urbanites are| | |exposed to an increasing social differentiation of the urban environment, | | |they tend to be anonymous, superficial, and selectively sensitive to social | | |matters while at the same time exhibiting strong ties with their primary | | |groups.
Before Wirth, Georg Simmel also remarked on the inimitable features | | |of the urbanite. | | |Unlike some modern social thinkers who lamented the disappearance of | | |community life, Simmel underscored the positive dimensions of the urban | | |experience without glossing over its problems.
In place of excessive | | |parochialism and surveillance characteristics of the traditional way of life | | |a good deal of freedom is provided by urban centers to urban dwellers. | | |Anticipating David Harvey’s notion of “time-space compression,” Simmel was | | |able to describe the intense feeling that urbanites experience.
According to | | |Simmel, to the extent that they develop a unique attitude that protects them | | |from the overstimulation’s of urban life, urbanites experience an intense | | |crash of people and events hitherto unimagined. In their blase attitude, an | | |indifference to manifold but selective situations, urbanites might sound cold| | |and calculating.
Yet, the blase mind-set is nothing but a survival mechanism | | |through which urbanites focus on what is indispensable to the process of | | |coping with the encounters of city life. | | |Recently social scientists extended the process of overstimulation that takes| | |place in urban settings to its ultimate conclusion that a new type of self, | | the postmodern self, has emerged as a result. Postmodernists assert that this| | |new self is markedly different from the selves that preceded it. Unlike the | | |romantic and the modern selves–whose fundamental nature centered on passion | | |and reason, respectively–the postmodern self, despite the residues that it | | |inherited from the past, lacks essence and is decentered.
To the extent that | | |the self is at the verge of dissolution, social structures have lost their | | |constraining impact on the individual. | | |However, the self has not disappeared; it has become relational instead, | | |augmented by the opportunity for social connectedness. The proximate cause of| | |this development is technological.
In a postindustrial age in which | | |communication technologies dominate, the self is constantly bombarded by | | |signs, images, and varied experiences that knock at its door with no end in | | |sight. Consequently, individuals have a hard time committing themselves to a | | |single master identity.
With social saturation undermining “coherent circles | | |of accord,” as Kenneth J. Gergen calls them in The Saturated Self, | | |individuals have no option but to be skeptical of prevailing viewpoints. | | |Ironically, according to some analysts, the process of social saturation–far| | |from enfeebling communalism–reinforces amicable relationships among members | | |of society. | | | | |References: | | |1) Gottdiener, Mark and Ray Hutchison. 2006. The New Urban Sociology. 3rd ed. | | |Boulder, CO: Westview. | | |2) Macionis, John J. and Vincent N. Parrillo. 2007. Cities and Urban Life. | |4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. | | |3) Parker, Simon. 2004. Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering | | |the City. New York: Routledge. | | |EssayEmpire offers you the best custom essay writing services, along with | | |term paper, thesis paper, and research paper writing help.
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