Selected Works

These four readings are all short, terse articles that had profound influences on the course of the urban sociology and the study of urban development.

First, the Burgess article, which is an work in the tradition of the old "Chicago school", introduces some of the basic concepts of urban sociology that has been developed by the Chicago school. These concepts are further divided into those describing the physical aspects of urban growth, and those describing the social aspects of social organization and disorganization in the context of the urban landscape. On the side of the physical growth of the city, the central concept has been that of the expansion. The typical process of expansion in the American context, then, can be illustrated by a series of concentric circles, Burgess notes. Obviously, this idea of concentric circles is now all too famous as one of the principally renowned concept developed by the Chicago school. It represents the tendency of any town or city to expand radially from its central business district. Further, there is a tendency for each inner zone to extend to area by the invasion of the next outer zone, which Burgess calls the process of succession. Besides these processes of expansion and succession, there are complementary yet antagonistic processes of concentration and decentralization, Burgess also notes. These are complementary if somewhat antagonistic, for if there is a tendency for concentration in the sense that central business districts gain greater economic and political significance, there is also the process of decentralization in that some of those political and economic functions that had been formerly carried out in the central zone tend to be moved to the outer suburbs.

On the side of the social organization and disorganization of city life, the central unifying concept is that of metabolism - which seems to tacitly acknowledge the Chicago school's occasional tendency to draw an analogy between the urban development processes and biological processes. The city's metabolism is characterized by several notable features - disorganization, subsequent reorganization (which together, consist of one of the ongoing developmental processes that are continuously taking place), differentiation and segregation (according to economic, cultural or ethnic groups). In these ongoing processes, insofar as disorganization leads to subsequent reorganization then the former is a necessary step toward more efficient adjustment. On the other hand, there is also a concern shown here similar to that of Wirth's Urbanism as a Way of Life - rapid urban growth accompanied by excessive increases in disease, crime, disorder, vice, insanity, suicide, and the like. As far as the causes of these more negative aspects of city life are concerned, Burgess hints that rapid population growth, including those due to immigration, may be one key factor - which leads to his discussion of the measurement for mobility as an index for both the rate of metabolism and expansion.

Mobility is differentiated from the concept of movement, in that the former is defined as not just any type of movement but specifically those movements in response to a new stimulus or situation. In short, it involves change, new experience, stimulation. Mobility is particularly demoralizing and disruptive of one's personality and behavior under certain circumstances, for Burgess notes: Response to stimulation is wholesome so long as it is a correlated integral reaction of the entire personality. When the reaction is segmental, that is, detached from, and uncontrolled by, the organization of personality, it tends to become disorganizing or pathological (p. 40). It is important that for Burgess mobility is to be defined as a fully measurable quantitative variable, surrogated by such index measures as the change of movements (# of times traveling) and number of contacts.
 
 

Meanwhile, the Hoyt article gives some systematic consideration to what has been intuitively true about the pattern of American urban development: the continual outward movement from the center of the city to the outlying areas of high-rent residential areas. Hoyt in turn notes that this issue is of particular importance for urban sociology, as those living in these high-rent areas are the ones with the greatest political and economic clout and thus they tend to pull the growth of the entire city outward. The wealthiest segments of the city, those living in the high-rent areas, are ordinarily the pioneers in settling in any new residential areas, for to them there is no previously occupied residences deserted by higher segments of the society. In turn, the usual pattern is that those of the slightly lower segments of the society tend to move into areas vacated by the more wealthier people, once they move outward after some physical deterioration - also a pretty much inevitable occurrence to certain degree - takes place. Thus, the outward movement of the high-rent areas is seen as a natural and inevitable process ensuing out of the inherent nature of the settlement patterns of the wealthy - rarely is this pattern of outward migration reversed, in fact the only notable exception is the development of de luxe apartment areas in older residential areas.

Are there any systematic patterns in the process of outward movement of the high-rent areas that can be identified? In fact, Hoyt identifies nine of these typical patterns, which are listed on the pages 44-6. Many of them are intuitively rather appealing - how about the insight that high-rent areas tend to expand along the waterline, among others! Anyway, after that Hoyt also gives some consideration to the changing historical pattern in the development of high-rent areas. For instance, in the 19th century the axial type of upper -class residence in which they lined up along the main street of the central area of the city had been quite common. Increasingly, however, the upper class sought for quietude and seclusion. The development of isolated "rectangular" areas, as well as the fashionable suburban town, soon followed.
 
 

The central tenet of Duncan's "From Social System to Ecosystem" is really quite straightforward. Arguing against the division of scientific disciplines into those of "natural" and "social" sciences which is seen to be somewhat artificial, Duncan claims that in order to study urban development processes as an "ecosystem" an integrated viewpoint that incorporates insights from both natural and social sciences are necessary. The ecosystem, defined as the interaction of the environment and biotic system, thus embody elements of both natural, physical spheres and social, man-made spheres. It is a system that cut across levels, levels of artificially determined scientific disciplines. His illustration (pp. 125-7) on how physical and social worlds interact with each other to create one system of the "ecosystem" is quite interesting, and perhaps may even be considered a forerunner of the so-called "Gaja" theory of earth.
 
 

Finally, "Sentiment and Symbolism as Ecological Variables" by Firey is a form of an all too familiar argument registered by sociologists against the economists, albeit in this case in a context specifically focused on the question of urban land use. Against the economist's view of urban land use that posits the sole relation of space to locational activities is an impeding and cost-imposing one, and that locational activities are primarily "economizing", Firey argues for the effects of culture and values - namely that of sentiments and symbolic meanings associated with particular geographical locations - on the pattern of urban land use. In short, it is not the economic and material concern alone that determines which locational activities get placed where, and which land gets used for what purposes. More intangible factors of sentimental and symbolic values and meanings come into the play. To illustrate on this point, Firey mentions of three concrete examples, all from the Boston area - that of the Boston Common, Beacon Hill, and the North End. The bearing of the "sentimental" factors upon the locational processes is posited to take one of three forms: retentive, attractive, resistive. The first is the process of residents retaining residences in certain areas, the second about the "attraction" of certain locations due to symbolic meanings, and the third tendency to resist moving out to somewhere else - all of these processes result of the symbolic and sentimental values particular locations have, even if they would be considered "irrational" by purely economic criteria.