Robert Park’s The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the City Environment is a theory of human behavior within the city—an argument for the assimilation of good and evil human nature. The essay begins by defining the city as an institution—“corporate human nature plus the machinery and the instrumentalities through which that human nature operates” (577).
Park explains the city as an expression of the habits and customs of human nature. Humanity forms the city, but once formed, the city becomes its own manifestation of control, forming the citizenry as they had previously formed it. This is evident in the city’s organization, bound by private enterprise and transportation routes. As a city’s population grows, racial violence and segregation arise as groups of people congregate together through racial antagonism, class, and vocational interests.
Park explores the neighborhood, the market, and emergent crises. The neighborhood is the smallest local unit and foundation for political control. The city offers a market, which fosters competition within a framework of capitalism. Critical situations lead to news and are controlled by the mobility options in the communities which they occur.
Park explains that modernity has led to the proliferation of cities and that social control arises spontaneously. In our current cities bound by market systems, the rise of social control is directly correlated to class power. This differs from Park’s belief that social control is spontaneous. A closer look into the inequalities of our world prove that little that can be attributed to spontaneity.
Park explains that a large group of individuals in a city will never understand each other, leading to ever-so-complicated city government. The governmental system is controlled by the political boss and machine, independent voters’ leagues, taxpayers’ associations and bureaucratic organizations. This is in opposition to Park’s belief of spontaneity of control.
Park ends his essay arguing that the city offers each citizen a space to feel at ease, leading to full and free expression. Again, bound by our capitalist market, our world is controlled by the elite. This does not allow for the free and full expression of individuals. If it did, our cities would be places of justice and creative expression. While there may be some of the latter, the majority of voices are stifled by desire for power and profit by the upper class. Ending his essay, Park states that the city is a place of moral support among a citizen and their own ilk. This may be the case, but I do not think smaller societies lack moral support. Smaller social groups may instead lead to more empathetic support systems not bound by competition.
Louis Wirth’s Urbanism as a Way of Life is a more pessimistic view of the city. Wirth suggests that the rapid urbanization accounts for the “acuteness of our urban problems and lack of awareness of them” (1). He explains that an urban mode of life does not just exist in the city. The city is a large dense settlement of heterogenous individuals. This large grouping leads to individual variability, lack of intimacy, and anonymous, superficial, and short-lived relations. In essence, the density of cities has led to the fragmentation of society. This very heterogeneity increases instability. The individual gets lost in the mass and thus only able to contribute to their surrounding environment through organized social groups.
Wirth suggests that the urban area rewards individual differences and gathers people from the corners of the globe because they can be helpful to each other. But alas, the city has led to a loss of solidarity and mutual aid. The citizen living in the urban environment is dependent on many different people to meet their needs, limited by the commodification of craft. This urban specialization leads to secondary rather than primary contacts. Individuals develop no sentimental or emotional ties to one another and are thus subjugated to competition and mutual exploitation. To quell the rise of crisis, the city deploys law enforcement and the cycle of injustice begins. Despite the constant surrounding citizenry, the city is the epitome of loneliness. Even in the social organization, in which the citizen tries to speak their voice, or connect with their fellow citizenry, there is lack of community. Ultimately the urban area is the basis for commercialization of human needs and undue exploitation. Wirth’s ideas of urbanization are in opposition to Park’s, however from my own experience of living in the city, I tend to agree with Wirth.
Good! I’m a little less ready to attribute the ills of social life completely to capitalism OR to urbanization than either you or Wirth are, but I do think you, Park, and Wirth together make a fair point that the modern, urban way of life tends toward individuation, self-preservation, loneliness, and consumption. Do you think it’s even possible to disengage — or suspend your engagement between — capitalism and the city? Are there any “free spaces” as sociologist Francesca Polletta puts it, that allow for collective action in the city outside the social control of the market, “governance”, and government? What might such a space look like — maybe The Clemente? I’m also struck that while Park will later be known for his theories of the neighborhood and how it’s formed, he gives us little hope for the neighborhood as a counter-force to large-scale urban atomization. See Francesca Polletta, “Free Spaces” in Collective Action,” Theory and Society, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Feb., 1999), pp. 1-38