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Rural to urban migration an impediment to rural development
Turner's Frontier Thesis APUSH
Turner's Frontier Thesis APUSH
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One of the biggest premises of Cronon’s argument is that the city and the country share a common history, therefore their stories are told together. The book begins with a discussion of Fredrick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis/argument. He stated that open land was the source of American advancement in terms of settlement and culture. Without it, he believed that dominant individualism that was created by expansion would be gone. Frontier is described as areas in the periphery of the metropolitan economy, therefore rural and unclaimed land. Turner believed that untamed land was slowly disappearing in stages due to increasing rural settlements. Instead, Cronon argues that western development of city and country occurs together and continuously. …show more content…
They believed that urban markets made rural development possible and that Chicago was important from the beginning. In this theory, regional resources, natural transportation routes and climatic forces (temperate zones) are what create this symbiotic relationship. The city needs the country and the country needs the city in order to thrive. In fact, the countryside needs the city in order to contrast. Without it, there would be no rural ideal for people to escape from the city to and romanticize living in. Suburbs grew from flight from cities and ties with the city. Finally, rural retreats would have no economic influx without their hinterland status. Then, Goodin’s gravitational theory states that cities had root in “natural phenomena”, but grew because people chose to migrate to them from rural areas. This could be for economic reasons, for better job opportunities and educational maximization, or to create better social networks with groups who share their identities. For Cronon, rural and urban landscapes created each other. They are not separate and depend on each other to survive socially, economically, and …show more content…
In the shift of what Cronon describes as “first nature” to “second nature”, there was a radical change from a local ecosystem to a regional and global economy. What he means by “first nature” is an original, unconstructed world, while “second nature” refers to artificial, manmade structures built on top of “first nature”. You could consider second nature as the commercialized in the processing of non-human resources into commodities. For example, the commodities of lumber and grain, or the transformation of natural terrain into railroads. This shift allowed for investors from far away cities to be interested in Chicago, as well as other cities. It also separated production and consumption in that products were no longer produced to be used mainly in the area it was created, but instead could be moved to other areas with greater ease. This allowed for a diversified economy where a city could focus on certain elements of industry instead of having to be able to provide all its citizens need. These ideas are summed up in the end of the seventh chapter, “The geography of capital was about connecting people to make new markets and remake old landscapes” (Cronon 339). In the end, though, Chicago became a victim in its own success because of the opening of a large market that created large levels of human migration, environmental changes, and economic development that created other big cities nearby. Each gateway city in
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)
A review of his methodology shows the time and energy that entering this book. He uses a variety of sources for his research and evidence of good sources such as newspapers; memoirs; diaries; census figures; real estate listings; private letters and documents; journals and memoirs; public records and statements; the federal and local
Through the period of 1865-1900, America’s agriculture underwent a series of changes .Changes that were a product of influential role that technology, government policy and economic conditions played. To extend on this idea, changes included the increase on exported goods, do the availability of products as well as the improved traveling system of rail roads. In the primate stages of these developing changes, farmers were able to benefit from the product, yet as time passed by, dissatisfaction grew within them. They no longer benefited from the changes (economy went bad), and therefore they no longer supported railroads. Moreover they were discontented with the approach that the government had taken towards the situation.
Alan Taylor has written the book, William Cooper's Town so affluent in texture and implicative insinuation that it is arduous to do it justice in any brief review. His work defies simple categorization as it moves in a seamless manner between William Cooper's world and that of his novelist son. Taylor deserves the highest accolade for availing us to rethink the nature of the historians art while conveying us to a particular frontier of the early American republic.
Now, a normal sized town contains fast-food joints, supermarkets, malls, and superstores, but a small town lacks that appeal. The small-town could be the most beautiful landscape known to man, but lack the necessary luxuries in life that a typical American would benefit from. Carr and Kefalas make this statement that emphasizes the town’s lack of appeal, “Indeed the most conspicuous aspects of the towns landscape may be the very things that are missing; malls, subdivisions, traffic and young people” (26). The authors clearly state that they realize that towns, such as the Heartland, are hurting because of the towns’ lack of modernization. For all intents and purposes, the town’s lack of being visually pleasing is driving away probable citizens, not only the native youth, and possible future employee’s away from a possible internship with the town. The citizens with a practice or business hurt from the towns inability to grow up and change along with the rest of the world, yet the town doesn’t realize what bringing in other businesses could potentially do for their small town. Creating more businesses such as malls, superstores and supermarkets would not only drive business up the roof, but it’ll also bring in revenue and draw the
Turner’s thesis was to a wide extent based on this belief. Turners tried to convince people that American uniqueness is as a result of the constant contact with an open frontier for about 300 years. Turner’s conclusion significantly builds up on the American exceptionalism or uniqueness. He summarized his thesis by saying the most relevant aspect of the frontier was promotion of individualistic democracy. The ubiquity of opportunity and significance of individual labor restrained monopoly of political power from developing and led to American Democratic
Beavan, C. (2013, July 20). America: The story of us - e07 - cities. Retrieved from
It was the joining of two worlds: East meets West. Before the railroad, Americans thought of the West as a wilderness populated mostly by Indians. On that day the fabric of American life changed forever…Settlers rushed west, and western cities grew up. America finally had the technological means to grow and thrive – and become the American that we know today…
Dorsett, Lyle W. Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Pub, 1991.
In the painting ‘American Progress’ by John Gast, you can see farmers in the front and waggons in the back all moving west. Farmers needed more land, because there were more and more immigrants coming from the east. The people needed more space and shelter, so they went deeper into the country. This supports Morgan’s idea of how normal citizens carried on the history of western expansion by moving west for different reasons. Resources often was a reason for people to move west, too.
It started with a governmental incentive of getting America out of the Great Depression. Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) was “signed into law by FDR, designed to serve urban needs” (Jackson, 196). This law protected homeownership, not only that, “it introduced, perfected, and proved in practice the feasibility of the long-term, self-amortizing mortgage with uniform payments spread over the whole life of the debt” (Jackson, 196). Because of this new law, it was cheaper to buy a house than rent. Then came the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) that encouraged citizens to reside in new residential developments and/or areas with FHA-approved features, like Levittown. Mass-produced cars and cheap gasoline made the option of moving to a suburban area more of a reality for many families because now they can think to live such a lifestyle. With cars, come commuters who needs accessible roads to drive to and from work, to go grocery shopping, etc. which mean that the government need to pave roads for such commute to happen. “The urban expressways led to lower marginal transport costs and greatly stimulated deconcentration,” (Jackson, 191). As Jackson expressed, “The appeal of low-density living over time and across regional, class, and ethnic lines was so powerful that some observers came to regard it as natural and inevitable,” (190). Urban areas were becoming too crowded, too heterogeneous, more and more crimes were breaking out everyday; this is not an ideal living condition for a lot of people so moving to a bigger, more spread out area is a great contestant. Therefore, some of the key factors that explains the growth of the suburbs are housing policy (FHA & HOLC), mass-produced houses, mass-produced cars, cheap fuel, and government funding
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.
3. Divine, Breen, Fredrickson, Williams, eds., America Past and Present Volume II: since 1865 sixth edition (New York: Longman 2002).
Jacobs, Jane. "12-13." The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961. N. pag. Print.