Compare and Contrast the Chicago and Los Angeles Schools of Urbanism

The readings by Alba, Massey and Sampson discussed below all focus on the relationship between demographic living patterns and urban social and economic development. Cities as our author's explain are more than a homogenous center but rather an accumulation of various parts. One of the vital elements of a city is its people. People interact with cities in several manners, as workers, citizens, tourists, developers, each influencing and being influenced by the urban environment. The arguments provided by the author's this week stress the importance of understanding how a city interacts with its citizens in order to understand the larger, more general social and economic trends present.

The city is a nexus of social interaction. Humans originating from various locations all tangle together in the city. Louis Mumford characterizes the city as “a theater of social action,” where “man's more purposive activities are focused and work out…into more significant culminations.” The social actions occurring in a city connect and gradually culminate into a something that contributes to the fabric of the city. The interactions between people are no longer discrete events in isolation. Instead they come together to contribute something to the city, whether in the form of politics, architecture, or entertainment. The city provides a theater or playground for social action, and subsequently becomes a stage where the results of the social actions can be clearly viewed.

An urban environment can majorly effect on an individual itself or others around them. The effect on them can either be positive or negative depending on the environment. In the short story ‘The Pedestrian’ by Ray Bradbury, the urban environment has made a negative impact towards the individual, however in the poem ‘Homo Suburbanizes’ by Bruce Dawe the individual has found a happy place in a busy environment.

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. It will also illustrate how capitalism has flourished because of the prevalent 19th century Laissez Faire ideology. It will describe how the free market prevailed and expanded Los Angeles outward, while cultivating new public institutions and private enterprises.

This increase in the quantity and geographical sprawl of cities, as well as our dependence on them characterizes what we commonly know as urbanization. In his article, “Urbanization, Mental Health, and Social Deviancy,” Anthony Marsella provides a more comprehensive definition, claiming that urbanization causes an increase in population which impacts the way individuals in an area interact with one another, resulting in behavior changes among the population such as “differentiation, segmentalization, segregation, and marginalization” (625). Due to the implementation of “city limits,” and due to the link that exists between urbanization and the development of cities, the beginning and end of “urban” areas appears to be well

Cities are generators of economic life and source of changes in the world. Thereby, Jane Jacobs in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities puts into relief the role of cities on the social and economic levels, while denouncing the disastrous consequences of urban renewal programs. To that extent, in chapters 2 and 3, she discusses "The Uses of Sidewalks”, arguing that over all people need safety and trust in their city. Therefore, first she claims the necessity of keeping streets and sidewalks safe because they are the “vital organs” of cities (29). Secondly, she argues that the functioning of cities should be organized in order to foster human interaction in which “casual public

Chicago, Illinois is home of the Cubs, Oprah and most notably it has a skyline filled with amazing skyscrapers. It was in this city that stone masonry, due to its tendency to be very heavy and needing a strong foundation and also its low tensile strength, was enthusiastically replaced by the steel skeleton of the world’s first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building. This American city currently boasts of another feat, the world’s tallest building designed by a woman. Jeanne Gang designed the mixed-use high-rise, Aqua Tower (fig.1) for the urban setting of Chicago. Aqua Tower is the greenest and most appealing skyscraper in a place that has inspired some of the country’s greatest architecture. By using digital tools, Gang has fused traditional methods of building with an organic and sculptural façade that a few years ago would not have been achievable.

At the turn of the century the rise of the urban city began to take shape. The “New Metropolis” of industrial cities in America began to produce many innovations and creations both terrible and wonderful at the same time. With the advent of steam power replacing water power the scale of the amount of goods and materials produced vastly increased. The increase of products drew men and women away from farming communities and poor countries around the world into the blooming cities.

The Emergence of Urban America: The United States experienced urban transformation o Age of great cities, population boom more than half lived in urban areas by 1920. Distinctive urban culture created by rise of big cities. Heterogeneous population in cities. The prospect of Jobs, wealth, excitement had encouraged many to move into the big cities. New social problems had risen. Poverty, political corruption, quality of life issues. Also the increasing prevalence of segregation

The process of urbanization has been going on since pre-historic times, at least from the fourth millennium BC and perhaps from even earlier. Although until relatively recently the number of people living in urban areas increased slowly and formed only a small percentage of the total population from earliest times urban life brought profound social and economic changes to the areas where it was prevalent.

Before the 1940’s, the majority of the United States cities were zoned into walkable urbanism. In Christopher Leinberger’s book, The option of Urbanism, he describes walkable urbanism as the following, “[In walkable urbanism] you could satisfy most everyday needs, such as school, shopping, parks, friends, and even employment, within walking distance or transit of one’s home,” (Leinberger 3). For

What is an urban revolution? Why is it important for cities to have one? What are that factors that cause these revolutions? In the articles The Urban Revolution by V.Gordon Childe, The Right to The City by David Harvey and lastly, What Type of Public Transit for What Type of Public? by Kafui A. Attoh, displays the different ways the residents in a city react to the social inequality and human rights.

Academic thinking surrounding cities prior to the global recession of the early 1980s was somewhat limited in its understanding of international influences on the attributes and characteristics of said cities. Their analysis was limited by boundaries of national or regional boarders and the hierarchies that these dictate (Taylor, 2003). The national scale was at this point the principle scale on which cities where categorised and ranked. Brenner et al state that:

In Simmel’s essay, “The Metropolis and Mental life”, he sets up an comparative image of rural and urban life, “with each crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational and social life, the city sets up a deep contrast with small town and rural life with reference to the sensory foundations of psychic life” (2). The metropolis demands a different type of consciousness than does rural life. The metropolitan man’s life and continually speeding up with little time for emotional growth. The emphasis here rests highly on the intellect and developing a keen understanding of academics and societal regularities, such as art, literature, and fashion. The pace of rural living is much more lethargic. Consequently more time is spent developing deep meaningful relationships with people. As Simmel also points out, a person in the city could spend their whole life not knowing their neighbor, while in the rural areas that would be completely unheard of (6). In essence, individuals in the city rely heavily in the intellect while those in rural areas put a great deal of emphasis on relationships, both of these are means of survival.

Cities are places which have huge amount of gathering of people, collection of economic activities and complex infrastructure for people which all together are supported by transport systems.