Urbanism as a way of life
By Louis Wirth
Just
as the beginning of Western civilization is marked by the permanent settlement
of formerly nomadic peoples in the Mediterranean basin, so the beginning of
what is distinctively modern in our civilization is best signalized by the
growth of great cities...
Because
the city is the product of growth rather than of instantaneous creation, it is
to be expected that the influences which it exerts upon the modes of life
should not be able to wipe out completely the previously dominant modes of
human association. To a greater or lesser degree, therefore, our social life
bares the imprint of an earlier folk society, the characteristic modes of
settlement of which were the farm, the manor, and the village. This historic
influence is reinforced by the circumstances that the population of the city
itself is in large measure recruited from the countryside, where a mode of life
reminiscent of this earlier form of existence persists. Hence we should not
expect to find abrupt and discontinuous variation between urban and rural types
of personality. The city and the country may be regarded as two poles in
reference to one or the other of which all human settlements tend to arrange
themselves. In viewing urban-industrial and rural-folk society as ideal types
of communities, we may obtain a perspective for the analysis of the basic
models of human association as they appear in contemporary civilization.
...A
sociologically significant definition(1) of the city seeks to select those
elements of urbanism which mark it as a distinctive mode of human group life.
The
characterization of a community as urban on the basis of size alone is
obviously arbitrary...
As
long as we identify urbanism with the physical entity of the city, viewing it
merely as rigidly delimited in space, and proceed as if urban attributes
abruptly ceased to be manifested beyond an arbitrary boundary line, we are not
likely to arrive at any adequate conception of urbanism as a mode of life. The
technological developments in transportation and communication which virtually
mark a new epoch in human history have accentuated the role of cities as dominant
elements in our civilization and have enormously extended the urban mode of
living beyond the confines of the city itself. The dominance of the city,
especially of the great city, may be regarded as a consequence of the
concentration in cities of industrial, commercial, financial, and
administrative facilities and actvities, transportation and communication
lines, and cultural and recreational equipment such as the press, radio
stations, theaters, libraries, museums, concert halls, operas, hospitals,
colleges, research and publishing centers, professional organizations, and
religious and welfare institutions. Were it not for the attraction and
suggestions that the city exerts through these instrumentalities upon the rural
population, the differences between the rural and the urban modes of life2
would he even greater than they are. Urbanization no longer denotes merely the
process by which persons are attracted to a place called the city and
incorporated into its system of life. It refers also to that cumulative
accentuation of the characteristics distinctive of the mode of life which is
associated with the growth of cities, and finally to the changes in the
direction of modes of life recognized as urban which are apparent among people,
wherever they may be, who have come under the spell of the influences which the
city exerts by virtue of the power of its institutions and personalities
operating through the means of communication and transportation.
The
shortcomings which attach to number of inhabitants as a criterion of urbanism
apply for the most part to density of population as well... Since our census
enumerates the night rather than the day population of an area, the locale of
the most intensive urban life the city center generally has low population
density, and the industrial and commercial areas of the city, which contain the
most characteristic economic activities underlying urban society, would
scarcely anywhere be truly urban if density were literally interpreted as a
mark of urbanism. The fact that the urban community is distinguished by a large
aggregation and relatively3 dense concentration of population can scarcely be
left out of account in a definition of the city; nevertheless these criteria
must be seen as relative to the general cultural context in which cities arise
and exist...
A
sociological definition must obviously be inclusive enough to comprise whatever
essential characteristics these different types of cities have in common as social
entities, but it obviously cannot be so detailed as to take account of all the
variations implicit in the manifold classes sketched above. Presumably some of
the characteristics of cities are more significant in conditioning the nature
of urban life than others, and we may expect the outstanding features of the
urban-social scene to vary in accordance with size, density, and differences in
the functional type of cities. Moreover, we may infer that rural life will bear
the imprint of urbanism in the measure that through contact and communication
it comes under the influence of cities...
It
is particularly important to call attention to the danger of confusing urbanism
with industrialism and modern capitalism. The rise of cities in the modern
world is undoubtedly not independent of the emergence of modern power-driven
machine technology, mass production, and capitalistic enterprise; but different
as the cities of earlier epochs may have been by virtue of their development in
a preindustrial and precapitalistic order from the great cities of today, they
were also cities.
For
sociological purposes a city may be defined as a relatively large, dense, and
permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals. On the basis of the
postulates which this minimal definition suggests, a theory of urbanism may be
formulated in the light of existing knowledge concerning social groups.
A
Theory of Urbanism...
The
central problem of the sociologist of the city is to discover the forms of
social action and organization that typically emerge in relatively permanent,
compact settlements of large numbers of heterogeneous individuals. We must also
infer that urbanism will assume its most characteristic and extreme form in the
measure in which the conditions with which it is congruent are present. Thus
the larger, the more densely populated, and the more heterogeneous a community,
the more accentuated the characteristics associated with urbanism will be. It
should be recognized, however, that social institutions and practices may be
accepted and continued for reasons other than those that originally brought
them into existence, and that accordingly the urban mode of life may be
perpetuated under conditions quite foreign to those necessary for its origin...
The
city has thus historically been the melting-pot of races4, peoples, and
cultures, and a most favorable breeding-ground of new biological and cultural
hybrids. It has not only tolerated but rewarded individual differences. It has
brought together people from the ends of the earth because they are different
and thus useful to one another, rather than because they are homogeneous and
like-minded.
A
number of sociological propositions concerning the relationship between (A)
numbers of population, (B) density of settlement, (C) heterogeneity of
inhabitants and group life can be formulated on the basis of observation and
research.
Ever
since Aristotle's politics, it has been recognized that increasing the number
of inhabitants in a settlement beyond a certain limit will affect the
relationships between them and the character of the city. Large numbers
involve, as has been pointed out, a greater range of individual variation.
Furthermore, the greater the number of individuals participating in a process
of interaction, the greater is the potential differentiation between them. The
personal traits, the occupations, the cultural life, and the ideas of the
members of an urban community may, therefore, be expected to range between more
widely separated poles than those of rural inhabitants.
That
such variations should give rise to the spatial segregation of individuals
according to color, ethnic heritage, economic and social status, tastes and
preferences, may readily be inferred. The bonds of kinship, of neighborliness,
and the sentiments arising out of living together for generations under a
common folk tradition5 are likely to be absent or, at best, relatively weak in
an aggregate the members of which have such diverse origins and backgrounds.
Under such circumstances competition and formal control mechanisms furnish the
substitutes for the bonds of solidarity that are relied upon to hold a folk
society together...
Characteristically,
urbanites meet one another in highly segmental roles. They are, to be sure,
dependent upon more people for the satisfactions of their life-needs than are
rural people and thus are associated with a greater number of organized groups,
but they are less dependent upon particular persons, and their dependence upon
others is confined to a highly fractionalized aspect of the other's round of
activity. This is essentially what is meant by saying that the city is
characterized by secondary rather than primary contacts6. The contacts of the
city may indeed be face to face, but they are nevertheless impersonal,
superficial, transitory, and segmental. The reserve, the indifference, and the
blasé outlook which urbanites manifest in their relationships may thus be
regarded as devices for immunizing themselves against the personal claims and
expectations of others.
The
superficiality, the anonymity7, and the transitory character of urban social
relations make intelligible, also, the sophistication and the rationality
generally ascribed to city-dwellers. Our acquaintances tend to stand in a
relationship of utility to us in the sense that the role which each one plays
in our life is overwhelmingly regarded as a means for the achievement of our
own ends. Whereas the individual gains, on the one hand, a certain degree of emancipation
or freedom from the personal and emotional controls of intimate groups, he
loses, on the other hand, the spontancous self-expression, the morale, and the
sense of participation that comes with living in an integrated society. This
constitutes essentially the state of anomia, or the social void, to which
Durkheim alludes in attempting to account for the various forms of social
disorganization in technological society.
The
segmental character and utilitarian accent of interpersonal relations in the
city find their institutional expression in the proliferation of specialized
tasks which we see in their most developed form in the professions. The
operations of the pecuniary nexus lead to predatory relationships, which tend
to obstruct the efficient functioning of the social order unless checked by
professional codes and occupational etiquette. The premium put upon utility and
efficiency suggests the adaptability of the corporate device for the
organization of enterprises in which individuals can engage only in groups. The
advantage that the corporation has over the individual entrepreneur and the
partnership in the urban-industrial world derives not only from the possibility
it affords of centralizing the resources of thousands of individuals or from
the legal privilege of limited liability and perpetual succession, but from the
fact that the corporation has no soul.
The
specialization of individuals, particularly in their occupations, can proceed only,
as Adam Smith pointed out, upon the basis of an enlarged market, which in turn
accentuates the division of labor. This enlarged market is only in part
supplied by the city's hinterland; in large measure it is found among the large
numbers that the city itself contains. The dominance of the city over the
surrounding hinterland becomes explicable in terms of the division of labor
which urban life occasions and promotes. The extreme degree of interdependence
and the unstable equilibrium of urban life are closely associated with the
division of labor and the specialization of occupations. This interdependence
and this instability are increased by the tendency of each city to specialize
in those functions in which it has the greatest advantage.
In
a community composed of a larger number of individuals than can know one
another intimately and can be assembled in one spot, it becomes necessary to
communicate through indirect media and to articulate individual interests by a
process of delegation. Typically in the city, interests are made effective
through representation. The individual counts for little, but the voice of the
representative is heard with a deference roughly proportional to the numbers
for whom he speaks...
Density
as in the case of numbers, so in the case of concentration in limited space
certain consequences of relevance in sociological analysis of the city emerge.
Of these only a few can he indicated.
As
Darwin pointed out for flora and fauna and as Durkheim noted in the case of
human societies, an increase in numbers when area is held constant (i.e., an
increase in density) tends to produce differentiation and specialization, since
only in this way can the area support increased numbers8. Density thus
reinforces the effect of numbers in diversifying men and their activities and
in increasing the complexity of the social structure.
On
the subjective side, as Simmel has suggested, the close physical contact of
numerous individuals necessarily produces a shift in the media through which we
orient ourselves to the urban milieu, especially to our fellow-men. Typically,
our physical contacts are close but our social contacts are distant. The urban
world puts a premium on visual recognition. We see the uniform which denotes
the role of the functionaries, and are oblivious to the personal eccentricities
hidden behind the uniform. We tend to acquire and develop a sensitivity to a
world of artifacts, and become progressively farther removed from the world of
nature.
We
are exposed to glaring contrasts between splendor and squalor, between riches
and poverty, intelligence and ignorance, order and chaos. The competition for
space is great, so that each area generally tends to be put to the use which
yields the greatest economic return. Place of work tends to become dissociated
from place of residence, for the proximity of industrial and commercial
establishments makes an area both economicany and socially undesirable for
residential purposes.
Density,
land values, rentals, accessibility, healthfulness, prestige, aesthetic
consideration, absence of nuisances such as noise, smoke, and dirt determine
the desirability of various areas of the city as places of settlement for
different sections of the population. Place and nature of work, income, racial and
ethnic characteristics, social status, custom, habit, taste, preference, and
prejudice are among the significant factors in accordance with which the urban
population is selected and distributed into more or less distinct settlements.
Diverse population elements inhabiting a compact settlement thus become
segregated from one another in the degree in which their requirements and modes
of life are incompatible and in the measure in which they are antagonistic.
Similarly, persons of homogeneous status and needs unwittingly drift into,
consciously select, or are forced by circumstances into the same area. The
different parts of the city acquire specialized functions, and the city
consequently comes to resemble a mosaic of social worlds in which the transition
from one to the other is abrupt. The juxtaposition of divergent personalities
and modes of life tends to produce a relativistic perspective and a sense of
toleration of differences which may be regarded as prerequisites for
rationality and which lead toward the secularization of life.
The
close living together and working together of individuals who have no
sentimental and emotional ties foster a spirit of competition, aggrandizement,
and mutual exploitation. Formal controls are instituted to counteract irresponsibility
and potential disorder. Without rigid adherence to predictable routines a large
compact society would scarcely be able to maintain itself. The clock and the
traffic signal are symbolic of the basis of our social order in the urban
world. Frequent close physical contact, coupled with great social distance,
accentuates the reserve of unattached individuals toward one another and,
unless compensated by other opportunities for response, gives rise to
loneliness. The necessary frequent movement of great numbers of individuals in
a congested habitat causes friction and irritation. Nervous tensions which
derive from such personal frustrations are increased by the rapid tempo and the
complicated technology under which life in dense areas must be lived.
Heterogeneity
the social interaction among such a variety of personality types in the urban
milieu tends to break down the rigidity of caste lines and to complicate the
class structure; it thus induces a more ramified and differentiated framework
of social stratification than is found in more integrated societies. The
heightened mobility of the individual, which brings him within the range of
stimulation by a great number of diverse individuals and subjects him to
fluctuating status in the differentiated social groups that compose the social
structure of the city, brings him toward the acceptance of instability and
insecurity in the world at large as a norm. This fact helps to account too, for
the sophistication and cosmopolitanism of the urbanite. No single group has the
undivided allegiance of the individual. The groups with which he is affiliated
do not lend themselves readily to a simple hierarchical arrangement. By virtue
of his different interests arising out of different aspects of social life, the
individual acquires membership in widely divergent groups, each of which
functions only with reference to a single segment of his personality. Nor do
these groups easily permit of a concentric arrangement so that the narrower
ones fall within the circumference of the more inclusive ones, as is more
likely to be the case in the rural community or in primitive societies. Rather
the groups with which the person typically is affiliated are tangential to each
other or intersect in highly variable fashion.
On
the basis of the three variables, number, density of settlement, and degree of
heterogenity, of the urban population, it appears possible to explain the
characteristics of urban life and to account for the differences between cities
of various sizes and types.
Urbanism
as a characteristic mode of life may be approached empirically from three
interrelated perspectives: (1) as a physical structure comprising a population
base, a technology, and an ecological order; 9 (2) as a system of social
organization involving a characteristic social structure, a series of social
institutions, and a typical pattern of social relationships; and (3) as a set
of attitudes and ideas, and a constellation of personalities engaging in
typical forms of collective behavior and subject to characteristic mechanisms
of social control.
Urbanism
as a form of Social Organisation.
The
distinctive features of the urban mode of life have often been described
sociologically as consisting of the substitution of secondary for primary contacts,
the weakening of bonds of kinship, and the declining social significance of the
family, the disappearance of the neighborhood, and the undermining of the
traditional basis of social solidarity. All these phenomena can be
substantially verified through objective indices. Thus, for instance, the low
and declining urban-reproduction rates suggest that the city is not conducive
to the traditional type of family life, including the rearing of children and
the maintenance of the home as the locus of a whole round of vital activities.
The transfer of industrial, educational, and recreational activities to
specialized institutions outside the home has deprived the family of some of
its most characteristic historical functions. In cities mothers are more likely
to be employed, lodgers are more frequently part of the household, marriage
tends to be postponed, and the proportion of single and unattached people is
greater. Families are smaller and more frequently without children than in the
country. The family as a unit of social life is emancipated from the larger
kinship group characteristic of the country, and the individual members pursue
their own diverging interests in their vocational, educational, religious,
recreational, and political life.
Such
functions as the maintenance of health, the methods of alleviating the
hardships associated with personal and social insecurity, the provisions for
education, recreation, and cultural advancement have given rise to highly
specialized institutions on a community-wide, statewide, or even national
basis. The same factors which have brought about greater personal insecurity
also underlie the wider contrasts between individuals to be found in the urban
world. While the city has broken down the rigid caste lines of preindustrial
society, it has sharpened and differentiated income and status groups.
Generally, a larger proportion of the adult-urban population is gainfully
employed than is the case with the adult-rural population. The white-collar
class, comprising those employed in trade, in clerical, and in professional
work, are proportionately more numerous in large cities and in metropolitan
centers and in smaller towns than in the country...
Reduced
to a stage of virtual impotence as an individual, the urbanite is bound to
exert himself by joining with others of similar interest into groups organized
to obtain his ends. This results in the enormous multiplication of voluntary
organizations10 directed toward as great a variety of objectives as there are
human needs and interests. While, on the one hand, the traditional ties of
human association are weakened, urban existence involves a much greater degree
of interdependence between man and man and a more complicated, fragile, and
volatile form of mutual interrelations over many phases of which the individual
as such can exert scarcely any control. Frequently there is only the most
tenuous relationship between the economic position or other basic factors that
determine the individual's existence in the urban world and the voluntary
groups11 with which he is affiliated. In a primitive and in a rural society it
is generally possible to predict on the basis of a few known factors who will
belong to what and who will associate with whom in almost every relationship of
life, but in the city we can only project the general pattern of group
formation and affiliation, and this pattern will display many incongruities and
contradictions.
Urban
Personality and collective behaviour It is largely through the activities of
the voluntary groups, be their objectives economic, political, educational,
religious, recreational, or cultural, that the urbanite expresses and develops
his personality, acquires status, and is able to carry on the round of
activities that constitute his life career. It may easily be inferred, however,
that the organizational framework which these highly differentiated functions
call into being does not of itself insure the consistency and integrity of the
personalities whose interests it enlists. Personal disorganization, mental
breakdown, suicide, delinquency, crime, corruption, and disorder might be
expected under these circumstances to be more prevalent in the urban than in
the rural community. This has been confirmed in so far as comparable indexes
are available, but the mechanisms underlying these phenomena require further
analysis.
Since
for most group purposes it is impossible in the city to appeal individually to
the large number of discrete and differentiated citizens, and since it is only
through the organizations to which men belong that their interests and
resources can be enlisted for a collective cause, it may be inferred that
social control in the city should typically proceed through formally organized
groups. It follows, too, that the masses of men in the city are subject to
manipulation by symbols and stereotypes managed by individuals working from
afar or operating invisibly behind the scenes through their control of the
instruments of communication. Self-government either in the economic, or
political, or the cultural realm is under these circumstances reduced to a mere
figure of speech, or, at best, is subject to the unstable equilibrium of
pressure groups. In view of the ineffectiveness of actual kinship ties, we
create fictional kinship groups. In the face of the disappearance of the
territorial unit as a basis of social solidarity, we create interest units.
Meanwhile the city as a community resolves itself into a series of tenuous
segmental relationships superimposed upon a territorial base with a definite
center but without a definite periphery, and upon a division of labor which far
transcends the immediate locality and is world-wide in scope. The larger the
number of persons in a state of interaction with another, the lower is the level
of communication and the greater is the tendency for communication to proceed
on an elementary level, i.e., on the basis of those things which are assumed to
be common or to be of interest to all.
1 -
At one level Wirth definition of urban in terms of size, density and
heterogeneity is simply a statement of how he is going to use a word or
concept. The concept of the urban way of life becomes more controversial when
the features of size, density and heterogeneity are used to explain or to
infer. It is this which attracts the criticism of Abrams and others (link to
Abrams)
As
he himself suggests at several points, the notion of size, density and
heterogeneity is much more helpful if we include the word 'relative' in the
definition.
2 -
Wirth presents this contrast in several ways - as a dichotomy with two sharply
differentiated types of situation. - as a continuum with extremes such as inner
Chicago and Indian 'folk' society and intermediate situations such as the
residential suburb and small agricultural market town. - as a relationship
between town and country in which the urban influence is dominant.
3 -
At one level Wirth definition of urban in terms of size, density and
heterogeneity is simply a statement of how he is going to use a word or concept.
The concept of the urban way of life becomes more controversial when the
features of size, density and heterogeneity are used to explain or to infer. It
is this which attracts the criticism of Abrams and others (link to Abrams)
As
he himself suggests at several points, the notion of size, density and
heterogeneity is much more helpful if we include the word 'relative' in the
definition.
4 -
Wirth refers here to an important aspect of the ideology or self image of the
United States, namely that its culture and above all its cities were able to
merge and integrate a wide variety of European immigrant cultures. The work of
urban historians has shown that this was a myth and ethnic and racial groups
sustained their distinctive spatial and cultural identities.
see
Theodore Hershberg (editor), Philadelphia. Work, Space, Family and Group
Experience in the 19th century, Oxford University Press 1981
5 -
There was a tendency in the 1930s, which still exists to some extent, to define
and understand the city by contrast with what it was not. The concept of 'folk
society' arose from studies of Indian communities in Latin America. Urban
people were seen as less isolated, less dependent on kin, influenced by science
and professionals rather than by the sacred and priests. They experienced more
division of labour and more individual freedom. The danger here was the
tendency to confuse "urban" with other features of social
organization such as the expansion of the capitalist market, industrialization,
the growth of scientific knowledge and of improved communications. Wirth later
modifies this by suggesting that actual urban societies can be organized on a
continuum in which they experience the features of these ideal types to
different degrees .
see
below Primary and Secondary Relationships
see
also 'anonymity' for literature which challenges this view of urban society
6 -
This was another contrast devised early in the 20th century to help understand
the nature of urban industrial society. Primary relationships involved the
total person. They entailed commitment, face to face relationships and
emotional intensity. They were often prescriptive such as the family and most
involved the individual in a variety of overlapping social roles, such as
situations in which family, work and neighbourhood relationships overlapped
with each other. Secondary relationships involved the individual in one or
maybe two social roles. They were partial and often indirect and ephemeral. The
folk society was held to be one of primary relationships. The increased
dominance of secondary relationships was believed to be a feature of
urbanization.
7 -
The belief in urban anonymity has been widely challenged. Studies made in the
1950s in Britain and North America suggested that urban populations developed
close social networks based upon family, neighbourhood and work. Historical
studies made of Britain in the 1890s supported this view and emphasised that
women played a central role in the creation and support of these informal
networks.
8 -
Wirth was part of the Chicago school of sociology of the 1930s led by Robert
Park. They studied the city in terms of changing patterns of spatial
arrangements of population and institutions. They saw these patterns in terms
of the struggle for survival against impersonal forces. The analogy with the
Darwinian biological model of survival of the fittest was very strong and led
to the search for 'natural' processes of urbanisation. This tended to ignore
individual human motivation and the autonomy of human cultural influences.
Although Wirth's thinking originated in this ecological tradition, he is in
this extract going beyond it and trying to achieve a balance of 'ecological'
with individual and cultural factors.
9 -
Wirth was part of the Chicago school of sociology of the 1930s led by Robert
Park. They studied the city in terms of changing patterns of spatial
arrangements of population and institutions. They saw these patterns in terms
of the struggle for survival against impersonal forces. The analogy with the
Darwinian biological model of survival of the fittest was very strong and led
to the search for 'natural' processes of urbanisation. This tended to ignore
individual human motivation and the autonomy of human cultural influences.
Although Wirth's thinking originated in this ecological tradition, he is in
this extract going beyond it and trying to achieve a balance of 'ecological'
with individual and cultural factors.
10
- Many theorists saw voluntary associations as a key element of urban society
which integrated the individual with the wider social group. Such associations
have been identified as a means by which individuals and groups negotiated with
each other and experimented with and developed new values and sets of social
relationships. Thus they can be linked with the problems of anomie. In recent
years the associational culture of towns has been related to the notion of
civil society, - that is the area of social behaviour which mediates between
the individual and the prescriptive agencies of state and family.
11
- Many theorists saw voluntary associations as a key element of urban society
which integrated the individual with the wider social group. Such associations
have been identified as a means by which individuals and groups negotiated with
each other and experimented with and developed new values and sets of social
relationships. Thus they can be linked with the problems of anomie. In recent
years the associational culture of towns has been related to the notion of
civil society, - that is the area of social behaviour which mediates between
the individual and the prescriptive agencies of state and family.
Wirth, Louis. 1964. Urbanism as a Way of Life (Chicago: Chicago University Press), pp 60-83