1. Why were tenements such a problem in New York?
In the end of 18th century to 19th century, more and more people began moving into developed cities. Especially in New York City, thousands of new immigrants were seeking a better life than the one they had before. Tenements were built as a way to accommodate this growing population, and the majority people who lived in tenements were working-class, cause back to that time most tenements were located near factories, tenements were highly concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods of the city. A typical tenement building had four to five stories, in order to maximize the number of renters and to maximize their profits, builders wasted little space and buildings that had been single-family residence were divided into multiple living spaces to fit in more people, early tenements might dwell in almost 90 percent of their lots. There were no housing laws to protect the rights for people who lived in tenements until they stated The First
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Why do you think it took so long to address slum living and improve the lives of slum dwellers?
I think how quickly to address slum living and improve the lives of slum dwellers depends largely on how fast a city’s economy grows and how successful the city policies and housing laws are. I don't think it takes long to set up municipal services like a gas line or electricity supply systems. But it may take years to growing local economy and turning a poor place into a more developed and integrated city.
5. What were the findings of Jacob Riis in relation to the slums? Why do you think his writing was so influential?
Jacob Riis documented the slums of New York. He photographed the tenement apartments and people. he thinks people who live in slums are living in the world of "the other half", which is under poor conditions with disease, immigrants and violence. He used his powerful photos and influential text brought public attention to the city's lower-class lives and living
The book The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century by Robert Roberts gives an honest account of a village in Manchester in the first 25 years of the 20th century. The title is a reference to a description used by Friedrich Engels to describe the area in his book Conditions of the Working Class. The University of Manchester Press first published Roberts' book in the year 1971. The more recent publication by Penguin Books contains 254 pages, including the appendices. The author gives a firsthand description of the extreme poverty that gripped the area in which he grew up. His unique perspective allows him to accurately describe the self-imposed caste system, the causes and effects of widespread poverty, and the impact of World War I as someone who is truly a member of a proletarian family. His main contention is that prior to the War, the working class inhabiting the industrial slums in England "lay outside the mainstream of that society and possessed within their own ranks a system of social stratification that enclosed them in their own provincial social world and gave them little hope of going beyond it. " After the War, the working class found new economic prosperity and a better way of life, never returning to the lifestyle prevalent prior to the War.
...ll. The inner city has many complications the fact that most are African American is a mere coincidence. If we as a nation are capable of fixing all institutions and structural issues we could bring the slums out of poverty. The cycle of unemployment and poverty is a terrible cycle that cannot only be judged by race and cultural values. When reading this book keep in mind the difficulties, any family or person could go through these tribulations. There are many arguments and sides to each problem; this is another one of those. The battle for inner city poverty, and the factors that go along with it, has not been finished. Wilson brings out a different aspect which could help people expand horizons and come up with better solutions.
Jacob Riis’ book How the Other Half Lives is a detailed description on the poor and the destitute in the inner realms of New York City. Riis tries to portray the living conditions through the ‘eyes’ of his camera. He sneaks up on the people flashes a picture and then tells the rest of the city how the ‘other half’ is living. As shocking as the truth was without seeing such poverty and horrible conditions with their own eyes or taking in the experience with all their senses it still seemed like a million miles away or even just a fairy tale.
In the Late nineteenth century the population was growing at a rapid pace. The country had people flooding the biggest cities in the country such as New York City and Chicago. These populations were gaining more and more people every single year and the country has to do something to make places for these people to live. The government would go on to create urban housing programs. These programs were created to make homes for these people to live in. At the time it provided a place for people to live but as the populations grew it became a more cramped and rundown area because of the large populations in one place. These reforms eventually led to these areas becoming dangerous, they were rundown, and it created a hole that was difficult for people to get out of.
With his book How the Other Half Lives, Riis offers the audience a glimpse into the unsettling and unnoticed reality of the urban poverty in America at the turn of the 19th century. Not only he revealed the dark side of the society, he also showed the urgent need for change. Riis used emotional as well as logical appeal to support his argument in favor of the need for a social reform. By combining powerful pictures and detailed annotations accounting the conditions of life in the New York, Riis made How the Other Half Lives unique and very effective in delivering his message and initiating a change.
The urban poor are often put out of view because of the need for an industrialized society, yet the consequences of both an elite and middle class directly influence the people who cannot support that type of lifestyle. The gaps created need to be looked upon and treated, as Mike Davis believes this planet will become so dependent on slum life that urban life will disappear.
In these episodes of Slumming It, you experience the horror of the urban environments on earth. Kevin McCloud decides to go to Dharavi, Mumbai where you see how the water is contaminated, the sanitation isn’t the best, and you’ll notice how diseases are easily prevalent. Dharavi has a population of 16 million people and almost half of them live in slums. Slums are usually located in over populated areas. Regardless of the obstacles these people face, they maintain a sense of spirit and have high hopes that things will be changed. You can see how religion plays a huge part in their spirit. The fact that the city wants to tear down these slums is sad and selfish, they should be helping the community sanitize and reconstruct these slums for these
The publication served as a double edged sword, while he was urging landlords and officials to take an interest in the lives of those within the tenements, he was also condemning the futility of many of the tenets who were content to stay in an unhealthy, dangerous, living situation. This book was to many upper class citizens the first time of hearing and seeing the abject poverty that many lower class citizens were subjected to. Riis used strong literary and physical imagery to erect pathos to his audience. Armed with a bright flash camera and a barrage of adjectives he traversed the slums to capture “That strip of smoke-colored sky up there is the heaven of these people. Which makes him…wonder the name does not attract them to the churches?” (Belmonte 3) Riis Lutheran background made him a perfect activist for this cause, even though the church wouldn’t be directly involved with his work due to the controversy surrounding his image. Even many news publications rejected his work completely, but it was able to stand the test of time even receiving many
Riis, Jacob A. How the Other Half Lives; Studies among the Tenements of New York. New York: Dover, 1971. Print.
In my experience as a real estate sales representative, I have looked at many rental properties that are owned by people that are commonly known as slum lords. These units are in disrepair with leaks, mold, mildew, holes in walls, ceiling and poor floor coverings. Many people are afraid of pushing these issues to have repairs done as they might lose their shelter or their rent could be increased. There are people living in a rooms in a house, that are also at risk as they don’t realize they are not protected under the tenant act so the owners can remove them from their shelter without notice. I have also experienced people living in abandoned commercial buildings ...
economy transitioned from an agrarian society to an industrial society. This transformation, known as urbanization, had a high demand for cheap labor which in turn demanded that relatively poor families lived in close proximity to factories and supply access points. Between 1840 and 1960 59.1% of the U.S. population moved into urban areas. This massive shift lead to overcrowding and bleak living conditions in urban centers (US Summary). These conditions can be described in accounts of the era such as Hard Times (1854) by Charles Dickson and How the Other Half Lives (1890) by Jacob Rils which both brought about considerable attention to the issue of housing conditions. In addition to morbid accounts of living conditions in low income neighborhoods, a philosophical revolution was also underway. A combination of ideas from the Third Great Awakening and the socialist ideas from Europe in the mid-19th century lead to an increased effort in private philanthropic efforts. This in turn lead to the New York Tenement Act of 1901, one of the first legal reforms regarding low income housing in the U.S. The act demanded certain living conditions in the construction of new tenement buildings (Lubove 1974). Reforms like the New York Tenement Act were replicated in many other U.S. cities. In 1910 housing awareness was brought to the national spotlight with the creation of the National Housing Association. Lawrence Veiller and Robert de Forest created the National Housing Association out of a need for an organization to unite many of the nation's city and state housing organizations. A private association, it nevertheless helped pave the way for cities interested in improving housing, but with little experience in doing
From the reviewed literature, it can be seen that housing is affected by four major factors and these factors defines the type of housing and housing conditions of a settlement. High incomes bring about good housing whiles low income brings about poor housing. Low incomes and inadequate housing has a direct relationship with the emergence of slums in many countries. In this aspect, we are going to look at the types of slums, relationship between slums and housing taking into consideration the housing characteristics of slums using Nima as the reference point in Ghana.
In How the Other Half Lives, the author Jacob Riis sheds light on the darker side of tenant housing and urban dwellers. He goes to several different parts of the city of New York witnessing first hand the hardships that many immigrants faced when coming to America. His journalism and photographs of the conditions of the tenant housing helped led the way of reformation in the slums of New York. His research opened the eyes of many Americans to the darker side of the nation's lower class. Though it seems that he blamed both the victims and the board forces of society, I believe that he placed more of the blame on the board forces for the conditions that many immigrants faced.
In Invisible Child there are mentions of bad housing for the homeless and little to no protection for them. There were no mentions on how to fix or reduce the problem. It was just stories of what happened such as, "There is the 12-year-old boy who writes on Oct. 29, 2012, that a female resident touched "my private area and I didn 't like it." His mother also files a complaint, saying the woman was showing pornography to children. The police were never notified," (Elliott, 2). These families are already struggling to eat and find a place of their own, and now they have to worry about theft, sexual assault, rape and unlivable temporary housing. In the article there should be some mention of how those things could be better. Such as better employees, cleaner housing, and higher
In my opinion a much more effective way of solving the problems relating to slums, would be to prevent the endless waves of migration of landless laborers into the cities by providing them with job opportunities in the villages they come from. With a better setup of facilities within rural areas, people would be less enticed to venture towards urban capitals. Alarmingly, by 2030, an estimated 5 billion of the worlds 8 billion people will live in cities. With 40% of these living in slums. It is a problem that will never go away as the global population increases and therefore deserves the attention of Architects, Urban planners and Developers around the globe. One thing for sure is that the slum dwellers will demand for absolute social justice. They will not settle for anything less.