Urbanization Of America Essay

From 1890 to 1920, cities in the United States experienced a rapid growth that was unprecedented in years previous. This growth was caused by a number of factors and resulted in both positive and negative consequences. Such factors included, industrialization, technological advances, migration and immigration. Although American cities greatly improved by the expeditious urbanization, these factors also developed numerous challenges including pollution, sanitation problems, a need for environmental reform, political corruption, overcrowding, high crime rates and segregation.

Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States is a book by Kenneth T. Jackson on the migration of many, primarily white, Americans to the suburbs during the mid-twentieth century and how many blacks were robbed of the opportunity to move elsewhere as well. From the chapter we read, we learn about the ways blacks were suppressed to worse parts of cities and how corporations and our government kept blacks from moving into different or better neighborhoods. The author argues that the lasting effects of the government have put a seal of approval on the racial discrimination in the housing market and these actions were picked up by private interests to deny mortgages to people, as they would say, based on geographical location of the property. Over the course of the book, Jackson gives evidence to how federal housing policies affected where Americans lived and how our government used it 's power to socially control racial minorities.

Urbanization of the United States in Late 1800s In the late 1800s, the United States experienced rapid urbanization, or growth, due to the massive amounts of immigrants from all over the world, who came over to America in search for work in the recent technological boom. Despite the hardships of the journey, they came, which strengthened the United States. With the massive amounts of immigrants, it led to many problems including lack of sanitation in large cities, transportation problems, housing predicaments, large fires which devastated thousands, crime, and lack of clean water in bulk for the public. To fix these problems, people such as Jane Addams started to find solutions to the multiple problems that came with urbanization, and some solutions by the government included the Social Gospel movement and the establishment of settlement houses.

Decades after the Civil War, the United States rose as a modern monster. Old ventures extended and numerous new ones, including petroleum refining, steel fabricating, cotton mills and electrical power. Railways extended altogether, bringing even remote parts of the nation into a national market economy. Although not paid well, people were given jobs due to the expansion of the Revolution. Mechanical development changed American culture. It delivered another class of well off industrialists and a prosperous white collar class. It also created tremendously extended manual common laborers. The work constrain that made industrialization conceivable was comprised of a huge number of recently arrived foreigners and considerably bigger quantities

1920s America was characterized by cultural diversification. A decade of remarkable change influenced both social and cultural development, triggering a major clash between rural and urban America. As rural elements were suffocated by rapid urbanization as a result of an influx of immigration, rural America remained traditionalist, outraged by apparent immorality illustrated in urban centers. Rural communities, resentful of urban prosperity and shocked by urban liberalism, frightfully saw the America as they knew on the verge of extinction. The challenge to traditional values thus prompted various efforts to revive values under the threat of urbanization, consequently deepening the gap between the two Americas even more.

What comes to mind when you think of terms like: suburbia, urban sprawl, NIMBY, sustainability? We will discuss some of them in further detail, but one thing is for certain, these are all concepts that will effect every single American Citizen in the near future; if they do not already. The documentary Suburban America: Problems & Promises explores some of the intricacies and roles that suburban development has played in the past and gives us insight as to what might be see moving forward in to the future. This fascinating documentary is just shy of one hour, but it covers a surprising amount of ground in that time.

As the nineteenth century progressed distinct geographical and cultural regions began to take shape within the country. The industrialized North, the agriculturally centered South, and the opening of Trans-Appalachia to settlement. At the start of the 1800s the Northeast was still primarily dominated by family farms, but the soil was losing fertility forcing the cultivation of marginal lands, which brought a decrease in productivity. (Nash, et al., 2007. , p. 249)

Urbanization in Great Britain was key to ushering in industrial capitalism to Great Britain, which brought an increased sum of money into the country. Urbanization was caused by the Enclosure movement and a decline of cottage industries. The Enclosure movement took away land from people that was once considered public land. Many people in rural areas needed land to make a living, and because they enclosed this land, many people had to move away from their cottage industries and move into urban areas to work at factories. Once there was an abundance of food and more population throughout Great Britain caused by the Agricultural Revolution, farmers began to move into cities to work in these factories. However, with more people working in

In 1892, The University of Chicago became the first university in the United States of America to establish a department of sociology (Panzarella & Vona, 2013). Within a couple of years, the University of Chicago would become the leading university in developing criminal theories. The top professors of the sociology department studied in France and Germany where there is an emphasis placed on the social influence in human behavior by using official records, such as court and welfare records, as well as individual case histories (Panzarella & Vona, 2013). During the early 1900s, researchers from the University of Chicago wanted to explore the effects of urbanization, industrialization, and immigration on patterns of social organization in Chicago neighborhoods (Kurbin, 2010). Many researchers, such as Ernest Burgess and Robert Park, had explored the effects of urbanization, industrialization and immigration in Chicago neighborhood; however, crime was not a main focus of study. This would later change when researchers Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay, from the University of Chicago, started their research on social organization. Clifford R. Shaw had earned a M.A in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1921(Panzarella & Vona, 2013). After he graduated from University of Chicago, he continued with his doctoral studies. However, Shaw did not complete the doctoral program. Shaw would later work as a parole officer for the Illinois State Training School for Boys. Following

This paper is a review of past and current research based on the cause and effect of urban sprawl in the United States with a case analysis of Fairfax County, Virginia. The motivation for this review is to shed light on issues that surround urban sprawl in large metropolitan areas and to discuss recommendations for research and ways to improve various effects of sprawl. The second motivation for this research is to show that there needs to be uniformity among researchers and urban planners, better data and analysis should be done to combat sprawl. My goal with this literature review is to define urban sprawl, define classic patterns in the United States, how we measure sprawl, the cause and effect of sprawl in the United States, give detailed background information on Fairfax County, future trends and implications of sprawl in Fairfax County, how to combat sprawl in the United States as well as in Fairfax County and key priorities in future research.

When the United States was founded as a nation after the Revolutionary War it was largely agrarian in nature. Even when people lived in the village, that town was made up fewer that ten houses on average and only occasionally had other buildings such as a school, church, or small store. The people lived together for protection, and traveled out to their farm land everyday to till, plant and harvest. With the advent of the industrial revolution staring in the early part of the nineteenth century and then even more so with the information revolution of the 1960's onward people began moving away from the country and into the city because that was where they worked. There were enough farms to support the

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss depicts a world ravaged by deforestation and suffering from other environmental crises. In the town of Thneedville, an aspiring capitalist begins to sell his new product and as a result of booming business, the cornerstone of his business pays the price. The trees, the only natural resource used in production, are harvested to the point of extinction. The lack of trees leads to soil erosion, air pollution, and species extinction. While this is a children’s tale and Dr. Seuss’s illustration may be quite extreme, it is a reality for future generations of our planet. Human involvement in ecosystems by clearing land for urban development, logging, and agriculture have all exacerbated the rate of decline in the region’s natural systems. The deforestation of rainforests for the cultivation of palm oil is causing the possible extinction of orangutans and exacerbating air quality issues in Indonesia.

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,

An emerging issue is that of urban sprawl. While some aspects of urban sprawl has been seen since ancient times, this phenomenon has started gaining the most momentum in the past century, aided by the advancement of technology, especially with the rise of mass produced automobiles, houses and highway systems. Many people unknowingly contribute to this environmental problem, as is the nature of it. Urban sprawl deals with the growth of the suburbs, the area between the urban and rural areas of a city. Most of America’s largest cities and states, in terms of population, are prime examples of urban sprawl. Opponents of urban sprawl usually cite the government as a major cause of sprawl. The government may be a major catalyst of

Mitigation, to the dismay of some, has become publicly synonymous with notions of preservation and conservation. Mitigation is neither the ‘preservation’ nor is it the ‘conservation’ of habitat. Mitigation is the creation of new habitat, or the guarding of an existing habitat to "make up" for the destruction of similar habitat somewhere else. It was the infamous environmental buzz word of the nineties, notorious for its criticism and praise by developers. Criticism because mitigation delays and obstructs their progress, and praise by those who take advantage of loopholes within the guidelines. All the while ecologists are accepting the mitigations like ill tasting medicine