United Nations Human Settlements Programme

For those only weakly committed to city living, particularly middle-class people who have serious difficulty with social diversity and who have clear housing alternatives, the "problem-free" suburbs become tempting. After an incident such as a car break-in or a bicycle theft, a "last straw" can make them leave. (249)

Urban studies aims to develop an understanding the modern city metropolis. As Savage et al. have pointed out, the urban encompasses far more than just the physical city itself; understanding the city help us to understand many aspects of modern life (2003, pp.4). Many of its features, such as mass media and public transport systems have spread throughout society over the past century. Sociological studies of urban life began with the landmark publication of 'The City' in 1925 by sociologists Robert Park, Ernest Burgess and Louis Wirth from the University of Chicago, students of Georg Simmel who shared his belief that the urban environment changed man's

“The reality is that if you are poor in a fast, cold city like this, they don't care how you live so long as you are not out on the streets worrying people,? 83 year old Maria Pagan told The Times. Mrs. Pagan lived for a decade in a Bushwick building that was crumbling around her ?the landlord, the City of New York, only began making improvements when her bathroom ceiling collapsed. In comparison, Riis’s description of his photograph of Baxter Street in The New York Sun, “At 59 Baxter Street . . . is an alley. . . with tenements on either side ?so close as to almost shut out the light of day.?

Urbanization is inevitable, whether we want it or not. Opposers are constantly bickering about the political and moral consequences of gentrification. This topic is indeed mind boggling and complex. However, there is a need to observe this multi-faceted phenomenon in a different angle. Change is the force of diversity, safety and

It is no secret that homelessness is quickly becoming an epidemic in the United States, but the homeless population is not one secular demographic. For every person in the US living on the street, there is a unique story of how they got there; nonetheless, that is not to say that many of these stories are without some commonalities. Along with homelessness, there is another issue plaguing American cities, but this issue is much more covert, and exists under a guise of improvements like fancy apartments and trendy restaurants. Gentrification is defined as “the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste” (Erikson); but what that definition fails to mention is the discourse it has on the

In the passage, “Planet of Slums” by Mike Davis, the author has a dystopic view on urbanization and argues that urban poverty is increasing and has a negative impact on the world. His dystopic vision can be written off as a society with undesirable traits such as poverty, oppression, and overcrowding. Davis’s vision on these people’s lifestyle can be compared and contrasted with Robert Neuwirth’s view of this lifestyle in his passage, “Shadow Cities” and the film “Sleep Dealer” by Alex Rivera.

Opposed to some commonly held beliefs, European cities were not the paragons of development that they were written out to be. Stannard describes the squalid condition of the cities and the “poor’s holes” on the

“Gentrification” captures class disparities and injustices created by capitalist urban land markets and policies. This in turn can cause an increasing house expense encumbrance for low-income and working-class households, and the associated personal catastrophes of displacement, removal, and homelessness, are symptoms of a set of institutional arrangements (private property rights and a free market) that support the creation of urban environments to serve the needs of capital accumulation at the expense of the social needs of home, community, family. Displacement from home and neighbourhood can be a shattering experience. At worst it leads to homelessness, at best it impairs a sense of community. Public policy should, by general agreement,

“gentrification has been and still continues to be a critical task when it comes to urban geography of cities, such as New York City and cities around the world as well” (Smith, pg.129).

Human Geographer David Ley defines Gentrification as “the transition of inner-city neighborhoods from a status of relative property and limited property investment to a state of commodification and reinvestment.” (Ley Artists 1) In the past 50 years gentrification has swept over cities across the globe and has completely reshaped the way people think about why people live in certain neighborhoods. British sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification in 1964 to describe what was happening in the London borough of Islington, where Indian immigrants were being forced out in favor of creative young professionals. (Thomson). The term comes from the old english word gentry, which generally means wellborn well-bred and upper class people. For the most part of the last five decades gentrification has made large cities and downtown urban areas safer, more desirable for commercialization, more affluent, greener and more eco-friendly and has played a role in the vast change of demographics of many neighborhoods. This ‘urban renewal’ has been subject to many political debates, academic studies and research to figure out its positive and negative impacts on the socioeconomic nature of the cities it takes place in. Here on the eastern seaboard of the US we see gentrification in every city from Center City Philadelphia, to Chelsea, to Columbia Heights in DC. However this movement to gentrify is not reserved for the

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.

This report will focus on the text ‘The Metropolis & Mental life’ by Georg Simmel and the key arguments of this primary text. It will start off with a key biography of himself and the influences which he had then will go onto explaining the contribution this key author makes to social theory.

The process of people moving into cities, which is called urbanisation, was happening around the world in past decades. It causes cities to have more labourers and resources than before. This makes a big contribution to the social development of cities. Thanks to these social developments, public services are becoming better in these areas. Citizens can enjoy a better life by access these public services such as better medical care, more education resources and well-built transport. It means an equitable society can be created. An equitable society means citizens can have more opportunities to access social resources and to live a better life. This essay will argue that

The garden city idea emerged during a time when countries were beginning to urbanize (15% of the world’s population were urban, a rapidly growing figure). There, the living and working environments were squalid and the working

Wirth was more interested in urbanism as a way of life rather than trying to understand the shapes of cities. He argued that urbanism cannot be simply understood by measuring population of cities. Rather, it must be understood as a form of social existence. Wirth states that cities are the “initiating and controlling centre of economic, political and cultural life that has drawn the most remote communities of the world into its orbit and woven diverse areas, people and activities into a cosmos.” (Wirth, 1938, p.342). Although Wirth recognised that in the density of social life in cities led to formation of neighbourhoods that had distinct characteristics, he insisted that the more these city areas became affected by the wider patterns of city life, the less community characteristics would survive. (Giddens and Sutton, 2013, p.211). It is clear to see that Wirth believed that urbanism, alienated people from one another, and weakened close bonds and families. Although he still recognized the advantages of urbanism which created cities full of tolerance, freedom and