As metropolitan areas across the America have grown overtime, it has become the home of very diverse social and ethnic groups. However, when analyzing the communities that make up these metropolitan areas, most remain consistently homogeneous, particularly on the basis of race and socioeconomic status. The combinations of many of these segregated communities have created metropolitan areas that are socially, economically and politically fragmented. As a result, rather than metropolitan areas working together for the wellbeing of nuclear cities, select suburbs have flourished while main cities have become less prosperous. Cities such as Detroit, that in many respects exemplified the American dream, suffered extreme consequences due to fragmentation. In an effort to recover and, specific strategies must be used to combat fragmentation. By working with other local governments and in some instances state government to create resolutions that benefits nuclear cities and metropolitan area; the social, economic and political cohesion of municipalities will increase the wellbeing of metropolitan areas across the nation.
Fragmentation and furthermore the separation of cities was accentuated due to suburbanization, but to a lesser
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The federal government made many attempts to combat discriminatory practices, stop segregation and promote integration. However, local governments and the autonomy they so desired and possessed allowed them to create laws that disadvantaged the poor and minority, and regulated housing in ways they deemed appropriate. Fragmentation and segregation was reinforced through local governmental legislation, such as zoning laws and incorporation. Fragmentation also had adverse effects fiscally as the overlap in governmental services from different municipalities, or lack thereof, often resulted into wasted money and
Most of the suburbs were built as small communities with strip malls. This meant that all families had to have at least one car if not two for a second job. Families with a two-income household had it much easier than those with one. This caused an explosion of the middle ...
In the book The Great Inversion, author Alan Ehrenhalt reveals the changes that are happing in urban and suburban areas. Alan Ehrenhalt the former editor of Governing Magazine leads us to acknowledge that there is a shift in urban and suburban areas. This revelation comes as the poorer, diverse, city dwellers opt for the cookie cutter, shanty towns at the periphery of American cities known as the suburbs. In similar fashion the suburbanites, whom are socioeconomic advantaged, are looking to migrate into the concrete jungles, of America, to live an urban lifestyle. Also, there is a comparison drawn that recognizes the similarities of cities and their newer, more affluent, residents, and those cities of Europe a century ago and their residents. In essence this book is about the demographic shifts in Urban and Suburban areas and how these changes are occurring.
“Could suburbs prosper independently of central cities? Probably. But would they prosper even more if they were a part of a better-integrated metropolis? The answer is almost certainly yes.” (p. 66)
According to Lehrer, U., & Wieditz, T. (2009), Toronto saw a massive population growth in a period of thirty years due to the extensive construction of high-rise condominium towers which led to the city being divided into three distinct cities: “city of the rich, the shrinking city of middle-income households, and the growing city of concentrated poverty.” According to the article the division is caused by the development of condominiums as the new form of gentrification which displaces the poor people and focuses to attract the higher-income people to the area.
In this means, what is suburbanization? As indicated by my exploration and studies around there of history I can without a doubt recognize that suburbanization is on an extremely fundamental level the term used to depict the physical advancement of the city at the urban-commonplace fringe, or basically the edges of the city. This in
Furthermore, the consolidations of ghettos in the inner city, as well as the rise of suburbs, are just two of the characteristics and problems that consequently arose for U.S. cities following the culmination of the Second World War. Ghettos in the inner cities were not as successful as they were envisioned to be, because in practice they suffered from overcrowdings, poverty, racial tensions, and violence and drugs. Additionally, public housing projects (created to solve problems with poverty and vagrants caused by the rapid growth of cities) ultimately also suffered from the same fate. As for the emergence of suburbs, they also proved not to be quite as successful as envisioned either, because in practice they created segregated cities and communities.
Herbert Gans piece on the mass production of suburban styled homes like Levittown with its homes on the outskirts of the city and mixed land uses closer within the core “ analyzes the suburbs and makes it evident that they are not a utopia” no matter the societal segregation they represent (Herbert Gans). These areas have their burdens resulting in physical and social isolation, no access to transportation, the start of gender roles, and inadequate decision making. In comparison, Pleasantville was a society of segregation due to the land constraints and urban planning of the society. Its visible that there is an increase in segregation between the suburban population and inner city. The higher class living in the suburbs would remain in that area unless it was for work.
Despite increased diversity across the country, America’s neighborhoods remain highly segregated along racial and ethnic lines. Residential segregation, particularly between African-Americans and whites, persists in metropolitan areas where minorities make up a large share of the population. This paper will examine residential segregation imposed upon African-Americans and the enormous costs it bears. Furthermore, the role of government will be discussed as having an important role in carrying out efforts towards residential desegregation. By developing an understanding of residential segregation and its destructive effects, parallels may be drawn between efforts aimed at combating such a grave societal problem and furthering social justice.
The spatial isolation present in Detroit deepened anti-integration sentiment, and the resulting shift of whites out of the Rust Belt led to conditions conducive to deindustrialization. However, Sugrue notes that “[racial prejudices] are the result of the actions of federal and local governments, real estate agents, individual home buyers and sellers, and community organizations” (11). That is to say white flight is a phenomenon dependent on political climate rather than being an entirely intrinsic, prejudiced practice of whites. This is an important distinction to make, as it helps reinforce the idea that systems such as poverty and racism are exactly that—systems, and not a result of individual immorality. The same can be said for the urban crisis in Detroit: as opposed to being purely an issue of deindustrialization or poverty, Sugrue argues that the circumstances of Detroit may be in part an institutional problem. “The shape of the postwar city, I contend, is the result of political and economic decisions, of choices made and not made by various institutions, groups and
There are many examples of cities reforming itself over time, one significant example is Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. More than a hundred years after the discovery of gold that drew thousands of migrants to Vancouver, the city has changed a lot, and so does one of its oldest community: Downtown Eastside. Began as a small town for workers that migrants frequently, after these workers moved away with all the money they have made, Downtown Eastside faced many hardships and changes. As a city, Vancouver gave much support to improve the area’s living quality and economics, known as a process called gentrification. But is this process really benefiting everyone living in Downtown Eastside? The answer is no. Gentrification towards DTES(Downtown Eastside) did not benefit the all the inhabitants of the area. Reasons are the new rent price of the area is much higher than before the gentrification, new businesses are not community-minded, and the old culture and lifestyle of the DTES is getting erased by the new residents.
This is known as de jure segregation which essentially states that the segregation was implemented by public policy and law instead of private discrimination practices held by individuals (Rothstein). Thus, “racial segregation in housing was not merely a project of southerners in the former slaveholding confederacy [but instead] it was a nation-wide project of the federal government in the twentieth century, designed and implemented by its most liberal leaders” (Rothstein). With this nation-wide project, numerous racially explicit laws and government practices were combined in order to develop a system of urban ghettos where African Americans were designated to live (Rothstein). Moreover, highlighting that while privately held discrimination did play some role on the residential segregation of African Americans, the government primarily played a crucial part in reinforcing the racially explicit laws that inevitably led to racial discrimination in
Creation of highway networks outside the city and subsequent growth of suburban communities transformed the way citizens worked lived and spent their leisure time. Downtown businesses closed or moved to malls inducing a reduction in downtown shopping and overall downtown commercial traffic.
In Jane Jacobs’s acclaimed The Life and Death of Great American Cities, she intricately articulates urban blight and the ills of metropolitan society by addressing several binaries throughout the course of the text. One of the more culturally significant binaries that Jacobs relies on in her narrative is the effectively paradoxical relationship between diversity and homogeneity in urban environments at the time. In particular, beginning in Chapter 12 throughout Chapter 13, Jacobs is concerned greatly with debunking widely held misconceptions about urban diversity.
Los Angeles: A Diverse Metropolis. People always wonder why the City of Angels is different from other cities. This paper will answer this question and explain the uniqueness that makes L.A., “L.A.” Los Angeles, since its birth as an embryonic city, has become one of the most diverse metropolises, offering to the public what no other city can. This paper will emphasize the relationship between the federal government and the western United States.
American cities in the 1900’s were the prime place to be. Cities were clean, industries were booming and education was a priority. “The city, not the farm, had become the locus of national experience” (Chudacoff and Smith 255). Everyone wanted to live their dreams in the city until they shortly realized the cities became overpopulated, hectic, and stressful. Streets became filled with garbage from people littering, traffic is always a problem, and there is no where to relax and enjoy yourself without the stress of work. The suburbs became the place of relaxation. Where people who had jobs in the city took a vacation to their house in the suburbs. To bring American cities back to life, people should focus on the way suburbs construct their ways