Urbanism as a Way of Life

Wirth, Louis

doi:10.1007/978-3-663-02922-9_30

Cited by 742 publications

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“…This finding is consistent with classic (Simmel, 1903;Wirth, 1938) and more recent arguments that in large macrostructures such as major cities, the "superficial" and "transitory" nature of social relations contributes to higher rates of criminal violence (Mayhew and Levinger, 1976: 86). But why does this pattern not hold for 1950 and 1960? At the bivariate level, city population and homicides are only slightly associated for 1960 (r = .053) and 1950 (.012), and these weak associations are not a result of a suppressor effect caused by any of the sociodemographic variables considered.…”

Section: Results For the Control Variablessupporting

confidence: 89%

Poverty, Inequality, and City Homicide Rates

1984

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Messner's recent investigation of homicide and relative and absolute economic deprivation is replicated here, but cities rather than SMSA's and three years (1950, 1960, 1970) rather than one (1970) are considered. Because of tremendous intra‐unit variation for SMSAs with respect to homicides and sociodemographic characteristics (an important variation that is masked when data are aggregated on a SMSA level), cities are a preferable unit of analysis in cross‐sectional investigations of homicide. Where M e s m found a significant negative relationship between percentage of poverty (absolute deprivation) and homicides, I consistently find the opposite pattern as predicted. In both studies, however, there is only a slight and nonsignificant relationship between relative economic deprivation (income inequality) and homicides. Unlike Messner, however, I do not consider this finding surprising. At best, there is only a weak theoretical linkage between homicide and relative economic deprivation. Accordingly, the results of this investigation for both absolute and relative deprivation are neither “perplexing” nor do they warrant the “serious reconsideration of the linkages between poverty, inequality and the homicide rate” that Messner (1982: 112) calls for.

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Section: Results For the Control Variablessupporting

confidence: 89%

Poverty, Inequality, and City Homicide Rates

1984

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“…This paper has argued that approaches that inherently link violence to urban contexts solely on the basis of the territorial morphology of cities, such as Wirth's (1938) famous 'Urbanism as a Way of Life' framework, are critically flawed. Urban violence is clearly not an intrinsic feature of cities, as the literature on gang violence, considered a paradigmatic form of urban violence by the Chicago School of Sociology of which Wirth was a member, shows well.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The basic axioms underpinning this viewpoint were rigorously synthesized by the Chicago sociologist Louis Wirth in a famous article entitled 'Urbanism as a Way of Life', first published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1938, although reprinted many times since and still an extremely frequently cited article today. Building implicitly on previous Chicago School research output, Wirth (1938: 3) sought to lay out the basic dynamics of what he called 'the urban mode of living', or urbanism. As Hannerz (1980: 72) notes, the emphasis of Wirth's essay can thus be said to have been literally on a particular urban 'way of life' rather than any empirically specific phenomenon.…”

Section: Urban Violence As a Way Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Urban Violence Is Not (Necessarily) a Way of Life: Towards a Political Economy of Conflict in Cities

Rodgers¹

2010

Urbanization and Development

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Cities generally … comprise a motley of peoples and cultures, of highly differentiated modes of life between which there often is only the faintest communication, the greatest indifference, … occasionally bitter strife, but always the sharpest contrast. (Wirth 1938: 20) As the world moves towards its so-called urban 'tipping point', urbanization in the global South has increasingly come to be portrayed as the portent of a dystopian future characterized by ever-mounting levels of anarchy and brutality. The association between cities, violence, and disorder is not new, however. In a classic article on…/

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“…In the work of Tönnies (1887), Durkheim (1893) and Simmel (1908) we already find the argument that urbanization, specialization, and bureaucratization lead to socially more heterogeneous and physically more mobile societies in which the sense of community and solidarity is lost. 1 A few decades later, Wirth (1938) predicted that with larger shares of the population living in metropolitan than in rural areas and with rural lifestyles increasingly mirroring urban lifestyles, the larger and more heterogeneous urban populations will make it possible for people to choose their social contacts based on common interests rather than common locality, undermining social interactions among neighbours. More recently, access to public transportation and telecommunications have been argued to make distance less of a constraint in maintaining contacts to like minded people who may not live next door (Aronson, 1971;Wellman, 1979Wellman, , 2001a.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Mobility on Neighbourhood Social Ties

Knies¹

2009

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW BerlinThis series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science.The decision to publish a submission in SOEPpapers is made by a board of editors chosen by the DIW Berlin to represent the wide range of disciplines covered by SOEP. There is no external referee process and papers are either accepted or rejected without revision. Papers appear in this series as works in progress and may also appear elsewhere. They often represent preliminary studies and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be requested from the author directly. Gundi Knies ISER University of Essex AbstractThis research examines the strength of people's ties with close neighbours and the sensitivity thereof to changes in residential mobility, access to modes of public and private transport, and changes in the availability of modern communications technologies using the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP). All forms of mobility have increased over time and are negatively associated with visiting neighbours. With further increases in mobility, close neighbours may become less relevant. Nevertheless, presently the incidence of visits with neighbours is sizeable; in contrast to the frequent assertion in the literature that the neighbourhood is of no importance.JEL Classification: J19, R29, Y8, Z13

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Urbanism as a Way of Life

Cited by 742 publications

References 0 publications

Poverty, Inequality, and City Homicide Rates

Poverty, Inequality, and City Homicide Rates

Urban Violence Is Not (Necessarily) a Way of Life: Towards a Political Economy of Conflict in Cities

The Effects of Mobility on Neighbourhood Social Ties

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