Urbanization as a Social Problem
How is urbanization negatively effecting our society? The answer to this question is not a simple one. This essay will not only break down the problems of urbanization in the United States, but it will also tell you some of the attempts made to fix the problem and give some solutions as to how it could possibly be solved in the future. Also when answering this question one must understand that urbanization, can not be stopped, but only contained in a manner that will help the United States to function better as a country.
The more densely populated and more heterogeneous a community is, the more accentuated characteristics can be associated with urbanism. Urbanism causes decrease in per capita, and promotes urban violence, political instability, crime and aggressive behavior. Rapid population growth in urban areas also perpetuates poverty. Another major issue being created by this social problem is the breaking of the traditional family structure.
Our cities are not working well! Sanitation, safety, transportation, housing, education and even electricity are failing. These are all responsibilities of the government or it is at least their job to regulate these services deemed to be monopolies. And it is a known fact that monopolies deem toward inefficiency.
Functionalist look at our cities as a means to profit. Cities are a place where everybody visits, and therefor vendors can raise their prices and profit more on their products. For example, from my own personal experience, I bought a pack of cigarettes for $3.00 at my local gas station, and when I visited inner city Orlando, I bought the same brand of cigarettes for $4.00. This is just a minor example, and most of the residents in an urban area are in poverty and have trouble affording the $3.00 pack if they smoke much less adding a dollar to the already ridiculous cost.
In the United States, the breaking of the traditional family structure is an issue that has become increasingly noticeable in recent years, particularly in urbanized areas. The traditional, mom and dad, and children are rarely seen in the inner cities any more. There is a weakened bond of kinship, and declining social family significance as America has transferred industrial, educational and recreational activities to specialized institutions outside of the home. It is depriving families of their most characteristic, historical functions.
When I researched which sectors of the economy are monopolized, I had a lot of mixed feeling about each industry. For example, I like that our health care industry is monopolized by the government because ordinary Canadians pay less for health care and prescription drugs. However, I dislike the monopoly in the telecommunications sector because of the poor customer 's service and quality of the product i.e. network throttling. Although, I believe this type of monopoly is necessar·y to more our network infrastructure forward.
This investigation is based on the assumption that gentrification with all its troubles can’t be prevented and is an inherent part of every city. What are the negative impacts of gentrification? What are the underlying mechanisms that feed these impacts? What drives these mechanisms? What would be an alternative scenario?
Up until the 1960s, no one questioned the idea that the traditional family was the cornerstone of American society and essential to its very survival. A traditional family was a man and a woman, married to each other, who had children together and reared them in a community full of other such families. A family thirty plus years ago, meant Mom, Dad, the kids, and on holidays, Grandpa, Grandma, aunts, cousins, and in-laws. In those days, a man and a woman didn't just move into an apartment and live together. Occasionally it would occur, but the practice was not common, and in small town America it almost never happened.
The way urbanization impacts standards of living is more people have less jobs, there is no space for people to live. No space for people to live means no more housing. People would have to live on the streets. Since there are no jobs the income is lower and that means more poverty. Only the rich get to have the luxuries of jobs, houses, food, clothes,and education. Those who live in poverty have to work for the rich to get those luxuries. (body paragraph 1)
In contrast to the negatives of gentrification, some people view gentrification as a the only effective way to “revitalize” low-income urban communities. In the article, “Gentrification: A Positive Good For Communities” Turman situates the piece around the opinion that gentrification is not as awful as the negative connotation surrounding it. Furthermore, he attempts to dispel the negative aspects of gentrification by pointing out how some of them are nonexistent. To accomplish this, Turman exemplifies how gentrification could positively impact neighborhoods like Third Ward (a ‘dangerous’ neighborhood in Houston, Texas).Throughout the article, Turman provides copious examples of how gentrification can positively change urban communities, expressing that “gentrification can produce desirable effects upon a community such as a reduced crime rate, investment in the infrastructure of an area and increased economic activity in neighborhoods which gentrify”. Furthermore, he opportunistically uses the Third Ward as an example, which he describes as “the 15th most dangerous neighborhood in the country” and “synonymous with crime”, as an example of an area that could “need the change that gentrification provides”. Consequently, he argues with
While even medical facilities, like hospitals, might create localized monopolies because there may not be another alternative offering the same services they are. These monopolies can create economic carelessness due to social loss from retaining higher profits from personal gain. Which is why the government should be involved as a regulatory body to ensure that contracts are fair with facilities and
Gentrification does not follow traditional urban growth theory, which predicts ?the decline of inner city areas as monied classes move to the metropolitan fringe.? The traditional economic model of real estate says that wealthy people can choose their housing from the total city market (Schwirian 96). Once these people decide to live in the suburbs, the lower social classes move into the old homes of the upper class, essentially handing housing down the socioeconomic ladder. Gentrification is actually a reversal of this process. For a variety of reasons, many inner city areas are becoming more attractive to the wealthy, and they are selecting their housing in those areas (Schwirian 96). The problem is that now when the wealthy take over poor homes and renovate them, the poor cannot afford the housing that the wealthy have abandoned. Many researchers have argued whether gentrification has truly created problems in cities. I will analyze the arguments for and against gentrification by exploring the subject from both sides.
Of the many problems affecting urban communities, both locally and abroad, there is one issue in particular, that has been victimizing the impoverished within urban communities for nearly a century; that would be the problem of gentrification. Gentrification is a word used to describe the process by which urban communities are coerced into adopting improvements respective to housing, businesses, and general presentation. Usually hidden behind less abrasive, or less stigmatized terms such as; “urban renewal” or “community revitalization” what the process of gentrification attempts to do, is remove all undesirable elements from a particular community or neighborhood, in favor of commercial and residential enhancements designed to improve both the function and aesthetic appeal of that particular community. The purpose of this paper is to make the reader aware about the significance of process of gentrification and its underlying impact over the community and the community participation.
Urbanism and suburbanization clearly demonstrates the changing forces that impact society. New Haven was a perfect example that clearly describes how urbanism met its end. The way we employ technology, communication, electricity, water and other resources shape the way we live today and how we will live in future years. For many, the search for new discoveries creates excitement, and it could even trick us to believe cities are growing in the right direction, such as New Haven once believed. Today, we can appreciate how individualism has grown by the way cities are now organized. As a society, we now wish for open, peaceful, lonely spaces to live.
Suburbanization has been occurring for the last 150 years in this country and in Europe, although the Europeans haven=t had the change that the United States has witnessed. The causes of change on such a larger scale can be pointed at four aspects of metropolitan areas also pointed out in Jackson=s work on suburbanization. The first on is that Americans have such low density residential areas, and often their is not a distinction between urban and rural. Our cities were laid out over space, with even New York City and Philadelphia not as densely populated as some cities in Europe. The next distinguishing factor is a want to own a home. At least two-thirds of all Americans own their own home, with rates less than half of that present in cities in Europe. Next, is the average length that American travel to work, also being much higher than in other countries. Finally, the last distinguishing factor is that social status and income correlate with suburbs, the further away from the central business district...
Harvey, D. (1989). The Urban Process under Capitalism: A Framework for Analysis. In R.T. Legates, & F. Stout (Eds.). The City Reader (pp. 116-124). New York, NY: Routledge.
A number of these problems are explored in Chapter 4 of Edward Glaeser’s book Triumph of the City: How our Greatest Invention Makes us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier. While many cities in developed countries have been able to implement systems to reduce the incidence of such issues, they can still struggle with other challenges relating to the fast pace of urban growth present in the 21st century. Why do people live there? People live in cities as they are hubs of economic, social and creative activity, and they offer citizens a lot of choice.
Monopolies are when there is only one provider of a specific good, which has no alternatives. Monopolies can be either natural or artificial. Some of the natural monopolies a town will see are business such as utilities or for cities like Clarksville with only one, hospitals. With only one hospital and there not being another one for a two hour drive, Clarksville’s hospital has a monopoly on emergency care, because there is not another option for this type of service in the area. Artificial monopolies are created using a variety of means from allowing others to enter the market. Artificial monopolies are generally rare or absent because of anti-trust laws that were designed to prevent this in legitimate businesses. However, while these two are the ends of the spectrum, the majority of businesses wil...
With the development of urbanization, an increasing number of social problems have emerged. These problems will decelerate the urban development, however, there are many ways in which sustainable development can reduce the impact of these urbanization problems. “Sustainable development seeks to improve the quality of human life without undermining the quality of our natural environment” (Adams, W.M. 1999). Actually, sustainable development can partly solve the urbanization problems, for it can reduce the impact of the problems such as traffic jam, housing shortage and severe pollution, but it is difficult to completely solve these problems in a short time.
As the result of urbanization, cities have more problems to overcome such as pollution, overpopulation, drug abuse, congestion, crime, poverty, traffic jam, slum areas, and many more. There must be something to solve these problems. Government and citizens should be involved because taking care of city problems can’,t be done entirely by government. The community can be even more successful because it deals directly with problem areas.