This dream of unity seemed especially urgent in the United States in the early decades of this century, when the destruction of traditional rural societies, the relocation of large numbers of people into industrial belts, and foreign immigration […] brought together vastly different population groups. […] And yet, in its depiction of the urban milieu, Manhatta seems intent on exorcizing heterogeneity in favor of a uniformity reminiscent of the flatness and geometry of skyscraper architecture. (Suárez, City Space, Technology, Popular Culture.)
The inhabitants of Manhattan were vastly diverse, and each contributing to and benefitting from industrialisation in their own way. New factories and apartment buildings couldn’t have existed without the labourers to build them and the workers to employ. While Manhatta sees the city as lacking an ecosystem, it is arguably the human inhabitants of Manhattan that are the ecosystem: “a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.” (Oxford Dictionaries)
Considering the humans of the city, in particular the large majority that were workers or seeking work, in an ecological context, as the source of diversity and capital in an industrialised age, brings to the fore questions of how the human ecology was to be
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Smoke blurs harsh boundaries and sharp lines, “soften[ing] the geometricized cityscape.” (Lucic, 53) Clouds of smoke and steam tiptoe the line between the organic and the machine. At around the four minute mark of the film, aerial shots look down upon city rooftops letting out long, continuous white trails, at times filling the entire field of view with their haze. It is as though the buildings are breathing, and while the absence of ecology from Manhatta has been noted the smoke creates ambiguity, a sense of something organic existing within the towers of steel and
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.
Several works we have read thus far have criticized the prosperity of American suburbia. Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, and an excerpt from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem "A Coney Island of the Mind" all pass judgement on the denizens of the middle-class and the materialism in which they surround themselves. However, each work does not make the same analysis, as the stories are told from different viewpoints.
Schaffer, Richard, and Neil Smith. "The Gentrification of Harlem?" Annals of the Association of American Geographers 76.3 (1986): 347-65.Department of Geography. Hunter College of the City of University of New York. Web. 25 May 2014. .
Another noteworthy urban sociologist that’s invested significant research and time into gentrification is Saskia Sassen, among other topical analysis including globalization. “Gentrification was initially understood as the rehabilitation of decaying and low-income housing by middle-class outsiders in central cities. In the late 1970s a broader conceptualization of the process began to emerge, and by the early 1980s new scholarship had developed a far broader meaning of gentrification, linking it with processes of spatial, economic and social restructuring.” (Sassen 1991: 255). This account is an extract from an influential book that extended beyond the field of gentrification and summarizes its basis proficiently. In more recent and localized media, the release the documentary-film ‘In Jackson Heights’ portrayed the devastation that gentrification is causing as it plagues through Jackson Heights, Queens. One of the local businessmen interviewed is shop owner Don Tobon, stating "We live in a
The island of Manhattan was consolidated into the greater New York City in 1898. Because of this the city was transformed from a nineteenth century seaport with cobblestone streets into a twentieth century metropolis of skyscrapers and subways. The artists of the Ashcan movement saw this changing society in human terms. They saw this in a light which depicted the interaction of so many different cultures which were being thrust together. They documented these changes on a level which the ordinary person could understand. Because of the Ashcan School we have a picture of society which one really cannot understand amidst the overpowering spectacle of overpowering buildings and increasing technology.4
“It got to be easy to look at New Yorkers as animals, especially looking down from some place like a balcony at Grand Central at the rush hour Friday afternoon.” (Tom Wolfe). “O Rotten Gotham” argues that New Yorkers are in a state of behavioral sink. It would not be long before a “population collapse” or a “massive die off”.
Dumenil, Lynn, ed. "New York City." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History. N.p.: Oxford UP, 2012. Oxford Reference. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
Gentrification is the keystone for the progression of the basic standards of living in urban environments. A prerequisite for the advancement of urban areas is an improvement of housing, dining, and general social services. One of the most revered and illustrious examples of gentrification in an urban setting is New York City. New York City’s gentrification projects are seen as a model for gentrification for not only America, but also the rest of the world. Gentrification in an urban setting is much more complex and has deeper ramifications than seen at face value. With changes in housing, modifications to the quality of life in the surrounding area must be considered as well. Constant lifestyle changes in a community can push out life-time
“gentrification as an ugly product of greed. Yet these perspectives miss the point. Gentrification is a byproduct of mankind 's continuing interest in advancing the notion that one group is more superior to another and worthy of capitalistic consumption with little regard to social consciousness. It is elitism of the utmost and exclusionary politics to the core. This has been a constant theme of mankind to take or deplete a space for personal gain. In other words, it 's very similar to the "great advantage" of European powers over Native Americans and westward expansion”(Wharton).
Noticing the influx of immigration and population boom in Manhattan at the end of the 19th century, a man named J. Clarence...
After World War II, the United States of America became a much wealthier nation. As America gained wealth and the populations in urban cities and transportation technology increased, many Americans spread out, away from the urban cities, to fulfill the common dream of having a piece of land to call their own. The landscape constructed became known as the suburbs, exclusive residential areas within commuting distance of a city. The popularity and success of the suburban landscape caused suburbs to sprawl across the United States, from the east coast to the west coast and along the borders between Canada and Mexico. By the 1990s, many suburbs surrounding major urban cities developed into being more than merely exclusive residential areas. The new kind of area developed out of suburbia, the post-suburban environment, has the characteristics of the suburbs and the characteristics of the central city, or what postmodern political geographer and urban planner, Edward Soja calls, ‘the city turned inside out' (Foster 1). The post-suburban environment, is “a fundamentally decentralized spatial arrangement in which a variety of commercial, recreational, shopping, arts, residential, and religious activities are conducted in different places and are linked primarily by private automobile transportation” (Kling 1). The multifaceted aspects of the post-suburban environment make it an attractive and dynamic space with opportunities of employment. Topanga Canyon, near Los Angeles, California, is such an example of a suburb space that's developed into a dynamic post-suburban space. Since the post-suburban space of Topanga Canyon is dynamic and filled with employment opportunities, it's attractive to Mexican immigrants who wish to have a better l...
The fancy American Dream has drawn people from all over the world to the United States to push for their upward social mobility. They have a dream and they want to make it come true. At this time Immigrants, into the major cities of the U.S, making them a melting pot. That melting pot has a different ethnic, social and cultural background, some of which contradict each other, while others are very harmonious. Race is often an obstacle to cultural communication and understanding. For this problem, Sherman Alexie his short story “Gentrification”, and Alex Tizon, with his story “Land of the Giants”, have a lot to say about how race is Obstacle to intercultural communication and understanding and that affect people misunderstand.
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.
In synthesis the three settings, represented by the residents, shows the stratification of the most American city. The city that amazed all and was a melting pot of class and culture.
New York City is the perfect setting for symbolizing the psychological mindset of America during the 1950s. Bellow describes New York City’s setting as “the great, great crowd, the exhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every