19. Population and Urbanization

Functionalist Perspectives: The Concentric Zone Model

Burgess's concentric zone model is a description of the process of urban growth that views the city as a series of circular areas or zones, each characterized by a different type of land use, that developed from a central core.

Sex Ratio

the number of males for every hundred females in a given population. A sex ratio of 100 indicates an equal number of males and females in the population. If the number is greater than 100, there are more males than females; if it is less than 100, there are more females than males.

Zero Population Growth

the point at which no population increase occurs from year to year because the number of births plus immigrants is equal to the number of deaths plus emigrants.

Invasion

the process by which a new category of people or type of land use arrives in an area previously occupied by another group or type of land use.

Succession

the process by which a new category of people or type of land use gradually predominates in an area formerly dominated by another group or type of land use.

John D. Kasarda

who coined the term aerotropolis to describe a new urban pattern in which cities are built around airports rather than airports being built around cities. An aerotropolis is a combination of giant airport, planned city, shipping facility, and business hub. According to this approach, the pattern of the twentieth century was city in the center, airport on the periphery. However, this pattern has shifted, with the airport now in the center and the city on the periphery, because of extensive growth in jet travel, 24/7 workdays, overnight shipping, and global business networks. Aerotropoli are now found in Seoul, Amsterdam, Dallas, Memphis, Washington, D.C., and other cities where globalization has forever changed the nature of urban life.

Preindustiral Societies

Little population growth occurs because high birth rates are offset by high death rates. Food shortages, poor sanitation, and lack of adequate medical care contribute to high rates of infant and child mortality.

Peripheral Nations

Many African countries and some countries in South America and the Caribbean are peripheral nations, previously defined as nations that depend on core nations for capital, have little or no industrialization (other than what may be brought in by core nations), and have uneven patterns of urbanization.

Preventive Checks

are limits to fertility.

Positive Checks

are mortality risks, such as famine, disease, and war.

The Deprived

are poor individuals with dim future prospects; they have very limited education and few, if any, other resources.

Cosmopolites

are students, artists, writers, musicians, entertainers, and professionals who choose to live in the city because they want to be close to its cultural facilities.

The Trapped

are urban dwellers who can find no escape from the city; this group includes persons left behind by the process of invasion and succession, downwardly mobile individuals who have lost their former position in society, older persons who have nowhere else to go, and individuals addicted to alcohol or other drugs.

Rural Communities

as small, sparsely settled areas that have a relatively homogeneous population of people who primarily engage in agriculture. However, rural communities today are more diverse than this definition suggests.

Pull Factors

at the international level, such as a democratic government, religious freedom, employment opportunities, or a more temperate climate, may draw voluntary immigrants into a nation. Within nations, people from large cities may be pulled to rural areas by lower crime rates, more space, and a lower cost of living. Some people are drawn by pull factors such as greater economic opportunities at their destination and are pushed by factors such as low wages and few employment opportunities in their previous place of residence.

Mechanical Solidarity

characterized by a simple division of labor and shared religious beliefs such as are found in small, agrarian societies.

Organic Solidarity

characterized by interdependence based on the elaborate division of labor found in large, urban societies.

Zone 4

comprises homes for affluent families, single-family residences of white-collar workers, and shopping centers.

Ethnic Villagers

live in ethnically segregated neighborhoods; some are recent immigrants who feel most comfortable within their own group.

Unmarried people and childless couples

live in the city because they want to be close to work and entertainment.

Agency

refers to human actors, including developers, business elites, and activists protesting development, who are involved in decisions about land use.

Structure

refers to institutions such as state bureaucracies and capital investment circuits that are involved in the urban development process.

Capital Shortage

refers to the lack of adequate money or property to maintain a business; it is a problem because the physical capital of the past no longer meets the needs of modern economic development.

Distribution

refers to the physical location of people throughout a geographic area. In the United States, people are not evenly distributed throughout the country; many of us live in densely populated areas.

Exchange Value

refers to the profits that industrialists, developers, bankers, and others make from buying, selling, and developing land and buildings.

Amos Hawley (1950)

revitalized the ecological tradition by linking it more closely with functionalism. According to Hawley, urban areas are complex and expanding social systems in which growth patterns are based on advances in transportation and communication. For example, commuter railways and automobiles led to the decentralization of city life and the movement of industry from the central city to the suburbs.

Gated Communities

subdivisions or neighborhoods surrounded by barriers such as walls, fences, gates, or earth banks covered with bushes and shrubs, along with a secured entrance—is an example to many people of how developers, builders, and municipalities have encouraged an increasing division between public and private property in capitalist societies.

Herbert Gans (1982/1962)

suggested that not everyone experiences the city in the same way. Based on research in the west end of Boston in the late 1950s, Gans concluded that many residents develop strong loyalties and a sense of community in central-city areas that outsiders may view negatively. According to Gans, there are five major categories of adaptation among urban dwellers.

Louis Wirth (1938)

suggested that urbanism is a "way of life." Urbanism refers to the distinctive social and psychological patterns of life typically found in the city. According to Wirth, the size, density, and heterogeneity of urban populations typically result in an elaborate division of labor and in spatial segregation of people by race/ethnicity, social class, religion, and/or lifestyle.

Population Composition

the biological and social characteristics of a population, including age, sex, race, marital status, education, occupation, income, and size of household.

Mortality

the incidence of death in a population.

Emigration

the movement of people out of a geographic area to take up residency elsewhere.

Crude Death Rate

the number of deaths per 1,000 people in a population in a given year.

Crude Birth Rate

the number of live births per 1,000 people in a population in a given year. This measure is referred to as a "crude" birth rate because it is based on the entire population and is not "refined" to incorporate significant variables affecting fertility, such as age, marital status, religion, and race/ethnicity.

An Advanced Technology

(for that era) that could produce a social surplus in both agricultural and nonagricultural goods.

Three Preconditions to Develop a City

1. A favorable physical environment 2. An advanced technology 3. A well-developed social organization

Five Major Categories of Adaptaion

1. Cosmopolites 2. Unmarried people and childless couples 3. Ethnic villagers 4. The deprived 5. The trapped

Three Levels of Fertility

1. Low-Fertility Countries 2. Intermediate-Fertility Countries 3. High-Fertility Countries

Four Priorities of Immigration Bills

1. Securing the Border 2. Path to Citizenship 3. Interior Enforcement 4. Immigration Overhaul

Lynn M. Appleton (1995)

According to her, different kinds of cities have different gender regimes.

Setha Low (2003)

According her, gated communities do more than simply restrict access to the residents' homes: They also limit the use of public spaces, making it impossible for others to use the roads, parks, and open space contained within the enclosed community. Low (2003) refers to this phenomenon as the "fortressing of America."

Thomas J. Sugrue (2011)

According to him, many African Americans are moving into so-called second-hand suburbs in that city and others. Sugrue defines second-hand suburbs as "established communities with deteriorating housing stock that are falling out of favor with younger white homebuyers." He argues that if history holds true, these suburban areas will soon look like Detroit itself, with "resegregated schools, dwindling tax bases and decaying public services."

Edward Glaeser (2011)

According to him, the future of nations and the world relies on cities that bring people together in a setting that is "healthier, greener, and richer" than urban myths would have us believe. From this perspective, incomes are higher in metropolitan areas; cities are more energy efficient than suburban areas, where people commute great distances, often in heavy traffic congestion with stop-and-go traffic, between work and home.

Mark Gottdiener (1985: 214)

According to him, these costs are "intrinsic to the very core of capitalism, and those who profit the most from development are not called upon to remedy its side effects."

Gideon Sjoberg (1965)

According to him, three preconditions must be present in order for a city to develop.

Functionalist Perspectives: The Multiple Nuclei Model

According to the multiple nuclei model developed by urban ecologists Chauncey Harris and Edward Ullman (1945), cities do not have one center from which all growth radiates but rather have numerous centers of development based on specific urban needs or activities. As cities began to grow rapidly, they annexed formerly outlying and independent townships that had been communities in their own right. In addition to the central business district, other nuclei developed around entities such as an educational institution, a medical complex, or a government center. Residential neighborhoods may exist close to or far away from these nuclei. A wealthy residential enclave may be located near a high-priced shopping center, for instance, whereas less-expensive housing must locate closer to industrial and transitional areas of town. This model may be applicable to cities such as Boston. However, critics suggest that it does not provide insights about the uniformity of land-use patterns among cities and relies on an after-the-fact explanation of why certain entities are located where they are.

Joe R. Feagin and Robert Parker (2002)

According to them, three major themes prevail in political economy models of urban growth. First, both economic and political factors affect patterns of urban growth and decline. Second, urban space has both an exchange value and a use value. Third, both structure and agency are important in understanding how urban development takes place.

Post-Industrialization

Birth rates continue to decline as more women gain full-time employment and the cost of raising children continues to increase. The population grows very slowly, if at all, because the decrease in birth rates is coupled with a stable death rate.

Public Patriarchy

At the same time, cities may foster public patriarchy in the form of women's increasing dependence on paid work and the government for income and their decreasing emotional interdependence with men. At this point, gender often intersects with class and race as a form of oppression because lower-income women of color often reside in central cities. Public patriarchy may be perpetuated by cities through policies that limit women's access to paid work and public transportation. However, such cities may also be a forum for challenging patriarchy; all residents who differ in marital status, paternity, sexual orientation, class, and/or race/ethnicity tend to live close to one another and may hold a common belief that both public and private patriarchy should be eliminated.

Conflict Perspectives: Political Economy Models

Conflict theorists argue that cities do not grow or decline by chance. Rather, they are the product of specific decisions made by members of the capitalist class and political elites. These far-reaching decisions regarding land use and urban development benefit the members of some groups at the expense of others.

Functionalist Perspectives: Ecological Models

Functionalists examine the interrelations among the parts that make up the whole; therefore, in studying the growth of cities, they emphasize the life cycle of urban growth. Like the social philosophers and sociologists before him, the University of Chicago sociologist Robert Park (1915) based his analysis of the city on human ecology—the study of the relationship between people and their physical environment. According to Park (1936), economic competition produces certain regularities in land-use patterns and population distributions.

Functionalist Perspectives: The Sector Model

In an attempt to examine a wider range of settings, urban ecologist Homer Hoyt (1939) studied the configuration of 142 cities. Hoyt's sector model emphasizes the significance of terrain and the importance of transportation routes in the layout of cities. According to Hoyt, residences of a particular type and value tend to grow outward from the center of the city in wedge-shaped sectors, with the more-expensive residential neighborhoods located along the higher ground near lakes and rivers or along certain streets that stretch in one direction or another from the downtown area (see Figure 19.4b). By contrast, industrial areas tend to be located along river valleys and railroad lines. Middle-class residential zones exist on either side of the wealthier neighborhoods. Finally, lower-class residential areas occupy the remaining space, bordering the central business area and the industrial areas. Hoyt (1939) concluded that the sector model applied to cities such as Seattle, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Charleston (South Carolina), and Richmond (Virginia).

Preindustiral Cities

Preindustrial cities were limited in size by a number of factors. For one thing, crowded housing conditions and a lack of adequate sewage facilities increased the hazards from plagues and fires, and death rates were high.

Early Industialization

Significant population growth occurs because birth rates are relatively high whereas death rates decline. Improvements in health, sanitation, and nutrition produce a substantial decline in infant mortality rates. Overpopulation is likely to occur because more people are alive than the society has the ability to support.

Postindustrial Cities

Since the 1950s, postindustrial cities have emerged in nations such as the United States as their economies have gradually shifted from secondary (manufacturing) production to tertiary (service and information-processing) production. Postindustrial cities increasingly rely on an economic structure that is based on scientific knowledge rather than industrial production, and, as a result, a class of professionals and technicians grows in size and influence. Postindustrial cities are dominated by "light" industry, such as software manufacturing; information-processing services, such as airline and hotel reservation services; educational complexes; medical centers; convention and entertainment centers; and retail trade centers and shopping malls.

Four Stages of Economic Development

Stage 1: Preindustrial societies Stage 2: Early industrialization Stage 3: Advanced industrialization and urbanization Stage 4: Post-industrialization

Securing the Border

The Department of Homeland Security would be required to monitor 100 percent of the southwest border with Mexico and intercept 90 percent of people trying to illegally cross it.

Industrial Cities

The Industrial Revolution changed the nature of the city. Factories sprang up rapidly as production shifted from the primary, agricultural sector to the secondary, manufacturing sector. With the advent of factories came many new employment opportunities not available to people in rural areas. Emergent technology, including new forms of transportation and agricultural production, made it easier for people to leave the countryside and move to the city.

Immigration Overhaul

The legal immigration system is to be overhauled, reducing the percentage of visas that go to immigrants based on family ties from 75 percent to 50 percent, with the other 50 percent being based on occupational specializations in science, technology, math and engineering, or in low-skilled jobs.

Doubling Effect

Two parents can have four children, sixteen grandchildren, and so on, but food production increases by only one acre at a time. Thus, population growth inevitably surpasses the food supply, and the lack of food ultimately ends population growth and perhaps eliminates the existing population.

Interior Enforcement

U.S. business owners will be required, within five years, to verify the legal status of new employees to ensure that they are not hiring undocumented immigrants. Homeland Security must also track all immigrants each time they enter and exit the United States.

Path to Citizenship

Unauthorized immigrants who were in the United States before December 31, 2011, would be allowed to apply for temporary legal status. After ten years, they could apply for a green card (a visa for legal permanent residents), and three years later they could apply to become U.S. citizens.

Advanced Industrialization and Urbanization

Very little population growth occurs because both birth rates and death rates are low. The birth rate declines as couples control their fertility through contraceptives and become less likely to adhere to religious directives against their use. Children are not viewed as an economic asset; they consume income rather than produce it. Societies in this stage attain zero population growth, but the actual number of births per year may still rise due to an increased number of women of childbearing age.

Population Pyramid

a graphic representation of the distribution of a population by sex and age. Population pyramids are a series of bar graphs divided into five-year age cohorts; the left side of the pyramid shows the number or percentage of males in each age bracket; the right side provides the same information for females. The age/sex distribution in the United States and other high-income nations does not have the appearance of a classic pyramid, but rather is more rectangular or barrel-shaped.

Demography

a subfield of sociology that examines population size, composition, and distribution. Many sociological studies use demographic analysis as a component of the research design because all aspects of social life are affected by demography.

Zone 3

contains working-class residences and shops and ethnic enclaves.

Ferdinand Tönnies (1940/1887)

described such a community as Gemeinschaft—a society in which social relationships are based on personal bonds of friendship and kinship and on intergenerational stability, such that people have a commitment to the entire group and feel a sense of togetherness. By contrast, industrial cities were characterized by Tönnies as Gesellschaft—societies exhibiting impersonal and specialized relationships, with little long-term commitment to the group or consensus on values. In Gesellschaft societies, even neighbors are "strangers" who perceive that they have little in common with one another.

Social Area Analysis

examines urban populations in terms of economic status, family status, and ethnic classification. For example, middle- and upper-middle-class parents with school-age children tend to cluster together in "social areas" with a "good" school district; young single professionals may prefer to cluster in the central city for entertainment and nightlife.

Push Factors

factors at the international level, such as political unrest, violence, war, famine, plagues, and natural disasters, may encourage people to leave one area and relocate elsewhere. Push factors in regional U.S. migration include unemployment, harsh weather conditions, a high cost of living, inadequate school systems, and high crime rates.

A Well-Developed Social Organization

including a power structure, in order to provide social stability to the economic system.

A Favorable Physical Environment

including climate and soil favorable to the development of plant and animal life and an adequate water supply to sustain both.

Neo-Malthusians (or "NewMalthusians")

have reemphasized the dangers of overpopulation. To neo-Malthusians, Earth is "a dying planet" with too many people and too little food, compounded by environmental degradation and over consumption.

Zone 2

houses formerly occupied by wealthy families are divided into rooms and rented to recent immigrants and poor persons; this zone also contains light manufacturing and marginal businesses (such as second-hand stores, pawnshops, and taverns).

Economic Factors

include capitalistic investments in production, workers, workplaces, land, and buildings.

Political Factors

include governmental protection of the right to own and dispose of privately held property as owners see fit and the role of government officials in promoting the interests of business elites and large corporations.

Global Cities

interconnected urban areas that are centers of political, economic, and cultural activity. New York City, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Seoul, and Singapore are among the largest global cities today.

Zone 5

is a ring of small cities and towns populated by persons who commute to the central city to work and by wealthy people living on estates.

Urban Sociology

is a subfield of sociology that examines social relationships and political and economic structures in the city.

Private Patriarchy

is based on a strongly gendered division of labor in the home, gender-segregated paid employment, and women's dependence on men's income.

Urban Agglomeration

is defined as comprising the city or town proper and also the suburban fringe or thickly settled territory lying outside of, but adjacent to, the city boundaries, as a more accurate reflection of population composition and density in a given region.

Fertility

is the actual level of childbearing for an individual or a population. The level of fertility in a society is based on biological and social factors, the primary biological factor being the number of women of childbearing age (usually between ages 15 and 45). Other biological factors affecting fertility include the general health and level of nutrition of women of childbearing age. Social factors influencing the level of fertility include the roles available to women in a society and prevalent viewpoints regarding what constitutes the "ideal" family size.

Zone 1

is the central business district and cultural center.

Migration

is the movement of people from one geographic area to another for the purpose of changing residency. Migration affects the size and distribution of the population in a given area.

Immigration

is the movement of people into a geographic area to take up residency.

Density

is the number of people living in a specific geographic area. In urbanized areas, density may be measured by the number of people who live per room, per block, or per square mile.

Gentrification

is the process by which members of the middle and upper-middle classes, especially whites, move into a central-city area and renovate existing properties. Centrally located, naturally attractive areas are the most likely candidates for gentrification. To urban ecologists, gentrification is the solution to revitalizing the central city. To conflict theorists, however, gentrification creates additional hardships for the poor by depleting the amount of affordable housing available and by "pushing" them out of the area.

Demographic Transition

is the process by which some societies have moved from high birth and death rates to relatively low birth and death rates as a result of technological development. Demographic transition is linked to four stages of economic development.

Use Value

is the utility of space, land, and buildings for everyday life, family life, and neighborhood life. In other words, land has purposes other than simply for generating profits—for example, for homes, open spaces, and recreational areas.

Moral Restraint

people should practice sexual abstinence before marriage and postpone marriage as long as possible in order to have only a few children.

Gender Regimes

prevailing ideologies of how women and men should think, feel, and act; how access to social positions and control of resources should be managed; and how relationships between men and women should be conducted.

Uneven Development

the tendency of some neighborhoods, cities, or regions to grow and prosper whereas others stagnate and decline.

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)

was one of the first scholars to systematically study the effects of population. Displeased with societal changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution in England, Malthus (1965/1798: 7) anonymously published An Essay on the Principle of Population, As It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, in which he argued that "the power of population is infinitely greater than the power of the earth to produce subsistence [food] for man."

Intermediate-Fertility Countries

where each woman is having, on average, between 1 and 1.5 daughters. Forty percent of the world's population lives in intermediate-fertility countries, such as India, the United States, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Mexico, and Egypt.

High-Fertility Countries

where the average woman has more than 1.5 daughters. Eighteen percent of the world's population lives in high-fertility countries, such as Pakistan, Nigeria, the Philippines, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Republic of Tanzania, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ghana, Yemen, Mozambique, and Madagascar.

Low-Fertility Countries

where women are not having enough children to ensure that, on average, each woman is replaced by a daughter who survives to the age when she will be old enough to have children. Forty-two percent of the world's population lives in low-fertility countries, which include all countries in Europe except Iceland and Ireland; 19 out of 51 countries in Asia; 14 out of 39 in the Americas; Mauritius and Tunisia in Africa; and Australia in Oceania.