Question

o Which of the three theories of who governs seems to explain urban politics best in Chicago (or some other big American city)? Why? o Consider the historical development of cities. ldentify one example of how this history shapes cities today (this can include challenges, opportunities, geographies or some other feature you find important)

Answer 1

The three theories are:-

1. Pluralism/Public Choice Theory

2. Marxism

3. Regime Theory

Pluralism and Marxism are both based on abstract models of the good society, but they have very different attitudes toward markets. A complete market system is the ideal for pluralists, with a minimal role for government, whereas a planned non-market economy is the ideal for Marxists because they believe that private capitalists will inevitably dominate a market system and exploit workers. Given these strong ideological roots, the two theories are very hard to dislodge despite the many empirical studies of urban power structures that contradict their assumptions and conclusions.

Regime theory comes closer to the mark because it draws on insights from both of these traditions. However, it does not take the systemic power held by landowners and developers seriously enough. It remains at the institutional level as a theory even while recognizing that local growth coalitions are usually the dominant partners in city regimes, except under the unusual circumstances when neighborhoods and activists can forge a progressive coalition that lasts beyond one or two issues and a few elections. The commodified nature of land in the United States, and the conflict between use values and exchange values, is therefore the best starting point for understanding urban power structures.

The earliest cities:-

Key Points

• The very first cities were founded in Mesopotamia after the Neolithic Revolution, around 7500 BCE.
• Agriculture is believed to be a pre-requisite for cities, which help preserve surplus production and create economies of scale.
• Cities reduced transport costs for goods, people, and ideas by bringing them all together in one spot.

Key Terms

• Old World: The known world before the discovery of the Americas.
• Neolithic Revolution: The Neolithic Revolution or Neolithic Demographic Transition, sometimes called the Agricultural Revolution, was the world’s first historically verifiable revolution in agriculture.
• urbanism: the study of cities, their geographic, economic, political, social, and cultural environment.

Models of Urban Growth:-

Key Points

• The growth machine theory of urban growth says urban growth is driven by a coalition of interest groups who all benefit from continuous growth and expansion. Thus, the growth of cities is a social phenomenon.
• Urban sprawl results when cities grow uncontrolled, expanding into rural land and making walking, public transit, or bicycling impractical.
• Critics of urban life often focus on urban decay, which may be self-perpetuating, according to the broken windows theory.
• Urban renewal attempts to counter urban decay and restore growth.
• The New Urbanism and smart growth movements both challenge the value of urban growth and expansion, and they try to improve urban life by keeping it on a human scale.

Key Terms

• smart growth: Smart growth programs draw urban growth boundaries to keep urban development dense and compact.
• urban renewal: Urban renewal refers to programs of land redevelopment in areas of moderate- to high-density urban land use.
• New Urbanism: New Urbanism is an urban design movement that promotes walkable neighborhoods that contain a range of housing and job types.

Urbanization occurred rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century in the United States for a number of reasons. The new technologies of the time led to a massive leap in industrialization, requiring large numbers of workers. New electric lights and powerful machinery allowed factories to run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Workers were forced into grueling twelve-hour shifts, requiring them to live close to the factories.

While the work was dangerous and difficult, many Americans were willing to leave behind the declining prospects of preindustrial agriculture in the hope of better wages in industrial labor. Furthermore, problems ranging from famine to religious persecution led a new wave of immigrants to arrive from central, eastern, and southern Europe, many of whom settled and found work near the cities where they first arrived. Immigrants sought solace and comfort among others who shared the same language and customs, and the nation’s cities became an invaluable economic and cultural resource.

Although cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, and New York sprang up from the initial days of colonial settlement, the explosion in urban population growth did not occur until the mid-nineteenth century. At this time, the attractions of city life, and in particular, employment opportunities, grew exponentially due to rapid changes in industrialization. Before the mid-1800s, factories, such as the early textile mills, had to be located near rivers and seaports, both for the transport of goods and the necessary water power. Production became dependent upon seasonal water flow, with cold, icy winters all but stopping river transportation entirely. The development of the steam engine transformed this need, allowing businesses to locate their factories near urban centers. These factories encouraged more and more people to move to urban areas where jobs were plentiful, but hourly wages were often low and the work was routine and grindingly monotonous.

THE IMMEDIATE CHALLENGES OF URBAN LIFE

Congestion, pollution, crime, and disease were prevalent problems in all urban centers; city planners and inhabitants alike sought new solutions to the problems caused by rapid urban growth. Living conditions for most working-class urban dwellers were atrocious. They lived in crowded tenement houses and cramped apartments with terrible ventilation and substandard plumbing and sanitation. As a result, disease ran rampant, with typhoid and cholera common. Memphis, Tennessee, experienced waves of cholera (1873) followed by yellow fever (1878 and 1879) that resulted in the loss of over ten thousand lives. By the late 1880s, New York City, Baltimore, Chicago, and New Orleans had all introduced sewage pumping systems to provide efficient waste management. Many cities were also serious fire hazards. An average working-class family of six, with two adults and four children, had at best a two-bedroom tenement. By one 1900 estimate, in the New York City borough of Manhattan alone, there were nearly fifty thousand tenement houses. The photographs of these tenement houses are seen in Jacob Riis’s book, How the Other Half Lives, discussed in the feature above. Citing a study by the New York State Assembly at this time, Riis found New York to be the most densely populated city in the world, with as many as eight hundred residents per square acre in the Lower East Side working-class slums, comprising the Eleventh and Thirteenth Wards.