I’m Professor Charles Brown . This is anthropology 201, Urban Life and Culture ( CRN 63361). Syllabus Text : _Cities and Urban Life_ by Macionis and Parrillo. The text has several good characteristics. It has a number of different ways of looking at cities, giving all the main sociological theories , much data , facts , empirical evidence. It gives history and comparison of cities, the “roots and composition “; this is a scientific approach. Implicitly, cities are contrasted with the country , with rural areas , although there is little discussion and analysis of rural , sparsely populated areas . The discussion of populations moving to cities implies that people are coming to the cities from rural areas. Aim and purpose of class I presume all students live in Metro Detroit . My idealistic hope is that the class will teach some things about urban Southeast Michigan that will enhance and improve your daily life as a citizen and resident ! at home ,work, play , school . Perhaps it will develop your interest as a citizen, your civic engagement , your understanding of government and business by giving a bigger picture of your city , county and state . Maybe it will perk your intellectual- academic interest in the sociology-anthropology of cities and suburbs , even . My urban biography I have lived my whole life in cities ; never lived in the country and only visited rural areas briefly . The text on page 21 , question 3 says “Why do the authors suggest that we must not simply analyze statistics , but must also “go and visit to the city if we are to fully comprehend urban life ? “ This seems to imply that the authors don’t live in the city , because they “visit” cities. Perhaps they are in small college towns , classical academic, “ivory towers. Myself , and I expect everyone here , either lives in the Detroit metropolitan area , so we do more than visit, but witness city life daily . At any rate , we do the observation of city life that visits do , but even more than visitors. So, we can fulfill the authors’ suggestion that we observe directly, anecdotally urban life. I was born in Philadelphia, lived in Washington, DC, moved to Detroit in 1953 at the age 3, East Lansing , Michigan; back to Detroit ;high school in Philadelphia area ; college in Ann Arbor ; work in New Haven , Connecticut ; back to Detroit , where I have lived since 1984. I did legal reasesrch for land recovery work for the Yurok Native Americans on a very rural reservstion in Northwest California for a few weeks in 1979. I’ve also visited family often and lived for a summer in New York City . I visited Chicago often, Los Angeles a couple of times , San Francisco , Milwaukee, Cleveland, Atlanta, , Boston; Montreal, Paris, Rome, Switzerland, Madrid , Barcelona, London , Mexico City , Moscow and others . Flint and Lansing and most of Metro Detroit . My main life career has been as an attorney for Detroit City Council. I’m retired from that now after about 25 years . However , my knowledge about cities and urban life comes especially from that career. In this class , I will be integrating my knowledge about the City of Detroit, County of Wayne and State of Michigan with the knowledge from the text. ( copy City Council journal table of contents). I also worked as a Legal Services Attorney for the Low-Incomed . This gives me an understanding of urban poverty and economic struggles . I’m an athlete and sports fan , so I’m familiar with recreation in baseball, basketball, football, hockey in urban life. Also , popular music and dance , concerts and karaoke. I visit the museums and parks , including Belle Isle . A non- graded assignment for the class is for students to write their own residential and visiting biography . Test # 1 - take home test - due in 3 weeks - Thursday, June 9. Questions 1) page 1 of text : 1.2 “ Examine (Describe ) the four criteria for defining an urban area” 1.3 “Investigate ( Describe) the factors that lead to urban growth and development.” 1.5 “Enumerate the recent population percentage change of the 30 largest U.S. cities “ as reported in the text chapter 1. Note Detroit as a outlier with big population loss . Why has Detroit lost population in recent decades Questions 2) page 53 of text : 3.3 Recount historical events that led to growth development and then shrinking of Detroit 3.5 Evaluate the development of the megalopolis Questions 3) page 85 of text 4.1 Differentiate sprawl from other forms of urban growth. Does Metro Detroit have sprawl ? 4.2 Discuss how growth in population and land development are complementary to each other . Overlap of Anthropology and Sociology social scientific disciplines This is an anthropology class. Anthropology is the science of human beings in all times and places including , theoretically , human life in modern capitalist cities . Sociology ( defined below) is also the science of human beings , overlapping anthropology’s subject matter . The text book is written by sociologists. Wikipedia defines Sociology as follows : “ Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life.[1][2][3] It uses various methods of empirical investigationand critical analysis[4]: 3–5  to develop a body of knowledge about social order and social change.[4]: 32–40  While some sociologists conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes and phenomenological method. Subject matter can range from micro-level analyses of society (i.e. of individual interaction and agency) to macro-level analyses (i.e. of systems and the social structure).[5] Traditional focuses of sociology include social stratification, social class, social mobility, religion, secularization, law, sexuality, gender, and deviance. As all spheres of human activity are affected by the interplay between social structure and individual agency, sociology has gradually expanded its focus to other subjects and institutions, such as health and the institution of medicine; economy; military; punishment and systems of control; the Internet; education; social capital; and the role of social activity in the development of scientific knowledge. The range of social scientific methods has also expanded, as social researchers draw upon a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques. The linguistic and cultural turns of the mid-20th century, especially, have led to increasingly interpretative, hermeneutic, and philosophicalapproaches towards the analysis of society. Conversely, the turn of the 21st century has seen the rise of new analytically, mathematically, and computationally rigorous techniques, such as agent-based modelling and social networkanalysis.[6][7] Social research has influence throughout various industries and sectors of life, such as among politicians, policy makers, and legislators; educators; planners; administrators; developers; business magnates and managers; social workers; non-governmental organizations; and non-profit organizations, as well as individuals interested in resolving social issues in general. As such, there is often a great deal of crossover between social research, market research, and other statistical fields.[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology Anthropology is the study of human beings in all times and place; study that is historical , systematic and objective, that is to say scientific, based on logical consideration and testing of material evidence, and natural theories ;from 100's of thousands of years ago to the present; from Detroit tothe other ends of the Earth. This is in contrast with understanding humansbased on whims, superstition, untested intuition , uncritical faith or unquestioned authority or supernatural beings. It is an understanding of human societies and individuals biologically and historically, that is as they have changed and developed ,evolved ,over time and many generations of individual selves. It seeks to be truly holistic in approach and scope , looking for the _whole_ truth, nothing but the truth. It welcomes contributions to its understanding of people from all the other academic disciplines, natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. It even considers respectfully and sympathetically systems of thought and belief from cultures very different than our own. In fact , learning the culture or customs, beliefs , ideas, religions of foreign and other peoples is the original focus of anthropology in contrast to sociology, psychology and history , the other social sciences , and literature and the arts, which focus on Western and European society's ways of being. Many anthropologists today study American and European culture, with applied anthropology to practical problems "at home" a major section of the discipline today. There is a sense in which sociology is the anthropology of capitalist societies . Anthropology's special contribution to scientific understanding of humanity is the concept of _culture_, or the symbolic nature of human communication and social organization . Culture is behavior ruled by a mental system of shared customs, traditions, values, ideas and material products of a particular group of people. Culture and language , or symbolic communication , are unique and exclusive characteristics of human beings, the species Homo sapiens . No other animal species has them, despite the exaggerated claims of some primatologists for chimps and gorillas. Culture and language provided the human species with an enormous adaptive and Darwinian selective advantage in the hundreds of thousands of years that the human species came to be and inhabit the whole globe, again to a greater extent than any other animal species. This is because it made humans extremely socially interconnected both with living other humans so that human labor and methods of physical survival are very _social_, not individualistic; and perhaps more importantly, socially connected to dead generations of the species through , again, language and culture, as in ancestor "worship" ,myths, legends, stories, customs, historical accounts of past generations' experiences. Text title is _Cities and Urban Life_ What is Life ? What is a city ? What is urban ? Life here is , of course human life . Anthropology uses its unique concepts of _culture_ and language to define human life . Only humans have culture and language . Language is _symbolic _communication. Only we humans have symbolic communication or language or words . Culture is _behavior_ , activity , doing things guided by symbolic rules, pursuing values and ideals that are articulated in words . For purposes of this class please think of a city as _human behavior or culture_ . What is a city ? It is people doing things ; trillions of human acts in pursuit of their physical survival / self-preservation - getting enough to eat , enough sleep , air to breath , etc. , avoiding injury - and their cultural values and ideals ; acting to reproduce a next generation . A city is essentially human _activity_. Think of Buildings , roads , parks, commodities, goods , things _as products of human behavior-labor_ , in the present and from the past , from history . Wikipedia defines “city “ as follows: “A city is a large human settlement.[1][2][a] It can be defined as a permanent and densely settled place with administratively defined boundaries whose members work primarily on non-agricultural tasks.[3] Cities generally have extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, utilities, land use, production of goods, and communication. Their density facilitates interaction between people, government organisations and businesses, sometimes benefiting different parties in the process, such as improving efficiency of goods and service distribution. Historically, city-dwellers have been a small proportion of humanity overall, but following two centuries of unprecedented and rapid urbanization, more than half of the world population now lives in cities, which has had profound consequences for global sustainability.[4][5] Present-day cities usually form the core of larger metropolitan areas and urban areas—creating numerous commuters traveling towards city centres for employment, entertainment, and education. However, in a world of intensifying globalization, all cities are to varying degrees also connected globally beyond these regions. This increased influence means that cities also have significant influences on global issues, such as sustainable development, global warming, and global health. Because of these major influences on global issues, the international community has prioritized investment in sustainable citiesthrough Sustainable Development Goal 11. Due to the efficiency of transportation and the smaller land consumption, dense cities hold the potential to have a smaller ecological footprint per inhabitant than more sparsely populated areas.[6]Therefore, compact cities are often referred to as a crucial element of fighting climate change.[7]However, this concentration can also have significant negative consequences, such as forming urban heat islands, concentrating pollution, and stressing water supplies and other resources. Other important traits of cities besides population include the capital status and relative continued occupation of the city. For example, country capitals such as Beijing, London, Mexico City, Moscow, Nairobi, New Delhi, Paris, Rome, Athens, Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo, Manila, and Washington, D.C. reflect the identity and apex of their respective nations.[8] Some historic capitals, such as Kyoto and Xi'an, maintain their reflection of cultural identity even without modern capital status. Religious holy sites offer another example of capital status within a religion, Jerusalem, Mecca, Varanasi, Ayodhya, Haridwar and Allahabad each hold significance.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City Wikipedia definition of “urban “ ( as opposed to "rural"; see definition of rural below ): An urban area, or built-up area, is a human settlement with a high population density and infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas are created through urbanization and are categorized by urban morphology as cities, towns, conurbations or suburbs. In urbanism, the term contrasts to rural areas such as villages and hamlets; in urban sociology or urban anthropology it contrasts with natural environment. The creation of early predecessors of urban areas during the urban revolution led to the creation of human civilization with modern urban planning, which along with other human activities such as exploitation of natural resources led to a human impact on the environment. "Agglomeration effects" are in the list of the main consequences of increased rates of firm creation since. This is due to conditions created by a greater level of industrial activity in a given region. However, a favorable environment for human capital development would also be generated simultaneously.[1] Greater Tokyo Area , Japan, the world's most populated urban area, with about 38 million inhabitants The world's urban population in 1950 of just 746 million has increased to 3.9 billion in the decades since.[2] In 2009, the number of people living in urban areas (3.42 billion) surpassed the number living in rural areas (3.41 billion), and since then the world has become more urban than rural.[3]This was the first time that the majority of the world's population lived in a city.[4] In 2014 there were 7.3 billion people living on the planet,[5] of which the global urban population comprised 3.9 billion. The Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs at that time predicted the urban population would occupy 68% of the world population by 2050, with 90% of that growth coming from Africa and Asia.[6] Geographer Antonio Rangel is amongst the best researchers in this area. The UN publishes data on cities, urban areas and rural areas, but relies almost entirely on national definitions of these areas. The UN principles and recommendations state that due to different characteristics of urban and rural areas across the globe, a global definition is not possible.[7] Urban areas are created and further developed by the process of urbanization. Urban areas are measured for various purposes, including analyzing population density and urban sprawl. Unlike an urban area, a metropolitan areaincludes not only the urban area, but also satellite cities plus intervening rural land that is socio-economically connected to the urban corecity, typically by employment ties through commuting, with the urban core city being the primary labor market. The concept of an "urban area" as used in economic statistics should not be confused with the concept of the "urban area" used in road safety statistics. This term was first created by Geographer Brian Manning The last concept is also known as "built-up area in road safety". According to the definition by the Office for National Statistics, "Built-up areas are defined as land which is 'irreversibly urban in character', meaning that they are characteristic of a town or city. They include areas of built-up land with a minimum of 20 hectares (200,000 m2; 49 acres). Any areas [separated by] less than 200 metres [of non-urban space] are linked to become a single built-up area.[8] Wikipedia definition of RURAL: "In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities.[1] Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry typically are described as rural. Different countries have varying definitions of rural for statistical and administrative purposes. In rural areas, because of their unique economic and social dynamics, and relationship to land-based industry such as agriculture, forestry and resource extraction, the economics are very different from cities and can be subject to boom and bust cycles and vulnerability to extreme weather or natural disasters, such as droughts. These dynamics alongside larger economic forces encouraging to urbanization have led to significant demographic declines, called rural flight, where economic incentives encourage younger populations to go to cities for education and access to jobs, leaving older, less educated and less wealthy populations in the rural areas. Slower economic development results in poorer services like healthcare and education and rural infrastructure. This cycle of poverty in some rural areas, means that three quarters of the global population in poverty live in rural areas according to the Food and Agricultural Organization. Some communities have successfully encouraged economic development in rural areas, with some policies such as giving increased access to electricity or internet, proving very successful on encouraging economic activities in rural areas. Historically development policies have focused on larger extractive industries, such as mining and forestry. However, recent approaches more focused on sustainable development are more aware of economic diversification in these communities." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_area Economic -Business determinist approach My theorectical perspective is materialist or business-economics . That is , business decisions and competition are the dominate factors determining the day-to-day ,history , changes and developments of urban life . LECTURE 2 May 26, 2022 Cities and Urban Life ; Anthropology 201 I’d say the text’s use of “urbanization “ is synonymous with its use of “growth and development.” Lets say “growth” is defined as population growth – both absolute population and population density. “Development” is increase of businesses and jobs. In general, development changes determine changes in growth. Nationwide in the US (and worldwide), there is a long trend toward an increased percentage of the whole population to live in cities and suburbs . In the 1790 US first census, 5% of the national population was in cities (P. 55 of text). By 1920, more than 50% of the population was in urban areas (P. 60 of text). “ “ Across North America, more than four our out of five of us live in urban places” (P. 2 of the text) From 1870 to 1920 , the US urban population increased from less than 10 million to more than 54 million “ (P. 60 text). The overall US population grew from 38.5 million to 106 million in that time period. (Wikipedia “demographic history of the United States ‘). This was due mainly to immigration from Europe and from rural areas. This population explosion was due primarily to the origin and rapid development of industrial capitalism in the US. I threw you a bit of a curve ball with Test Question 3.3 as I modified the wording from the item 3.3 (P.53 of the text) to focus on Detroit . Lets make that Metropolitan Detroit. In question 1.5 I asked a similar question – Why has Detroit lost population in recent decades ? So , why has Detroit grown and then shrunk ? It will take some class discussion and internet searching to learn of the specific history of Detroit City, Motown . However, most people are already familiar with the origin and development of the US automobile industry at the beginning of the 20th Century as the engine of economic development and population growth. And naturally, The partial “deindustrialization” of Detroit beginning in the early 1950’s through the 1980’s is the main cause of Detroit’s population decline. This is business-economic determinism of the growth and development or shrinking and undevelopment of a city. It was part of a relative scattering of some main points of industrial production from a concentration in the city of Detroit ( and neighboring Dearborn) to the surrounding suburbs. It was a breaking up of the World War II era Arsenal of Democracy. It was a shifting of the location of basic industrial production from not only Detroit , but the Midwest to the South, from the U.S. to other countries, in what gets termed post-industrialism, post-Fordism, industrial restructuring. This was possible because of a revolution in transportation and communication ( just-in-time delivery, world cars, robots, containerization , satellite based communication )created by the microchip-computer-digital scientific and technological revolution the latest since the assembly line invented by Ford, and a general automation revolution. It is mainly business actions that determine changes in cities. But in Detroit there was an added factor of “white flight” from the Black population which began to move out of the confined segregated living in the Southeast section of the city (Black bottom). As Historian Thomas Sugrue teaches : The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit is the first book by historian and Detroit native Thomas J. Sugrue in which he examines the role race, housing, job discrimination, and capital flight played in the decline of Detroit. Sugrue argues that the decline of Detroit began long before the 1967 race riot. Sugrue argues that institutionalized and often legalized racism resulted in sharply limited opportunities for African Americans in Detroit for most of the 20th century. He also argues that the process of deindustrialization, the flight of investment and jobs from the city, began in the 1950s as employers moved to suburban areas and small towns and also introduced new labor-saving technologies. The book has won multiple awards including a Bancroft Prize in 1998.[1] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_the_Urban_Crisis#:~:text=The%20Origins%20of%20the%20Urban%20Crisis%3A%20Race%20and%20Inequality%20in,in%20the%20decline%20of%20Detroit.) By the 21st Century , all of Michigan, especially Detroit, fell into a “One State Recession”; before that national Great Recession ! ( https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2007/04/11/onestate-recession-hampers-michigan ). And was part of the following national Great Recession caused the Wall Street Crash of 2007-2009 especially as General Motors and Chrysler, major Detroit employers went bankrupt ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reorganization ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Chapter_11_reorganization ). These were major business causes of Detroit’s population further diminution on top of the loss of population that began in the early 1950’s. Population ( and business) loss means tax base loss. This led to Detroit’s City government bankruptcy about ten years ago. This was not good for the spirit of Detroiters. The State takeover was insulting to City government leaders, as the bankruptcy was not due to elected officials mismanaging, but loss of tax base from business and population flight since the early 1950’s. It began long before that urban riot of 1967; it was accelerated by that riot. The several articles I link at the end of this essay are NOT accurate that the economic and population decline of Detroit itself began in 1967 with the riot. And another interesting question is “is Detroit’s shrinking population- that accompanied loss of much manufacturing from Detroit city limits proper beginning in the early 1950’s - all bad ?”. The loss of businesses and jobs has created many social problems of course. And in general, urban population growth is portrayed, on balance , as a positive indication about a city. This is logical in that people are sort of “voting with their feet” in favor of city life over rural life ( or life in another country) by migrating to cities. A main motive for moving from the country to the city is to improve migrants’ material standard of living , participating in the material abundance of capitalism. On the other hand, some of cities’ problems are due to the very density of population ( relative to a periodic thinness of jobs in recessions ) that is a main part of the definition of the city. So, I’ve been thinking maybe Detroit’s much lamented big population loss over that last 70 years may have some upside to it. Mass unemployment leading to mass poverty and therefore the mass misery , crime, social and psychological problems caused by poverty ( in any city) are known to most of us without taking a sociology class. It is “mass” or bigger than in the rural areas, because of the trivial logic that there are more people to be unemployed and poor in cities than in the country. The “promise” of higher standard living that brings people to cities is often not fulfilled. Detroit is a _partial_ capitalist “ghost town” because of business decisions not riots. (“A ghost town or alternatively deserted city or abandoned city is an abandoned village, town, or city, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it (usually industrial or agricultural) has failed or ended for any reason (e.g. a host ore deposit exhausted by metal mining). The town could also have declined due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, prolonged droughts, extreme heat or extreme cold, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, pollution, or nuclear disasters. The term can sometimes refer to cities, towns, and neighbourhoods that are still populated, but significantly less so than in past years; for example, those affected by high levels of unemployment and dereliction.[1)Some ghost towns, especially those that preserve period-specific architecture, have become tourist attractions. Some examples are Bannack, Montana in the United States, Barkerville, British Columbia in Canada, Craco in Italy, Aghdam in Azerbaijan, Kolmanskop in Namibia, Pripyat in Ukraine, Dhanushkodi in India and Fordlândia in Brazil.( ]; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_town; Charles Brown are an example of business economic determinism of changes in a city) Dearborn, Michigan The Detroit adjacent suburb, Dearborn, presents a good example of business determinism in the form of a kind of Company City , augmented form of the classical “ Company town” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town; Flint , Michigan is General Motors City , substantially ghosted, however) ; a city dominate by the Ford Motor Company. It was thoroughly created under the power of the famous Henry Ford. Ford had a lot of influence in Detroit itself as well. He lived in the adjacent suburb of Grosse Pointe, which was high incomed.: “Stimulated by industrial development in Detroit and within its own limits, in 1927 Dearborn was established as a city. Its current borders result from a 1928 consolidation vote that merged Dearborn and neighboring Fordson (previously known as Springwells), which feared being absorbed into expanding Detroit. According to historian James W. Loewen, in his book Sundown Towns (2005), Dearborn discouraged African Americans from settling in the city. In the early 20th century, both whites and African Americans migrated to Detroit for industrial jobs. Over time, some city residents relocated in the suburbs. Many of Dearborn's residents "took pride in the saying, 'The sun never set on a Negro in Dearborn'". According to Orville Hubbard, the segregationist mayor of Dearborn from 1942 to 1978, "as far as he was concerned, it was against the law for a Negro to live in his suburb."[8] Hubbard told the Montgomery Advertiser in the mid-1950s, "Negroes can't get in here. Every time we hear of a Negro moving in, we respond quicker than you do to a fire."[9] The area between Dearborn and Fordson was undeveloped, and still remains so in part. Once farm land, much of this property was bought by Henry Ford for his estate, Fair Lane, and for the Ford Motor Company World Headquarters. Later developments in this corridor were the Ford airport (later converted to the Dearborn Proving Grounds), and other Ford administrative and development facilities. More recent additions are The Henry Ford (a reconstructed historic village and museum), the Henry Ford Centennial Library, the super-regional shopping mall Fairlane Town Center, and the Ford Performing Arts Center. The open land is planted with sunflowers and often with Ford's favorite crop of soybeans. The crops are never harvested. With the growth and achievements of the Arab-American community, they developed and in 2005 opened the Arab American National Museum (AANM), the first museum in the world devoted to Arab-American history and culture. Arab Americans in Dearborn include descendants of Lebanese Christians who immigrated in the early twentieth century to work in the auto industry, as well as more recent Arab immigrants and their descendants from other, primarily Muslim nations.[10] In January 2019, Dearborn Mayor John "Jack" O'Reilly, Jr., terminated the contract of Bill McGraw, new editor of the Dearborn Historian, a city publication. He refused to allow distribution of the Autumn 2018 issue to subscribers. That issue, on the 100th anniversary of Henry Ford's acquisition of the Dearborn Independent newspaper, discussed the influence that Ford exerted in expressing his anti-Semitism. The mayor's suppression of the issue received national publicity.[11][12] The Dearborn Historical Commission held an emergency meeting and passed a resolution calling for the mayor to reverse these actions.[13] The suppressed article was published in DeadlineDetroit and may be read here.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dearborn,_Michigan Charles Brown: In 2022, Ford is still in Dearborn; its headquarters and Ford Rouge Plant. It’s population is close to its peak: Historical population Census Pop. %± 1860 355 — 1870 530 49.3% 1880 410 −22.6% 1900 844 — 1910 911 7.9% 1920 2,470 171.1% 1930 50,358 1,938.8% 1940 63,589 26.3% 1950 94,994 49.4% 1960 112,007 17.9% 1970 104,199 −7.0% 1980 90,660 −13.0% 1990 89,286 −1.5% 2000 97,775 9.5% 2010 98,153 0.4% 2020 109,976 12.0% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dearborn,_Michigan Dearborn is part of the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn Metropolitan Statistical Area of the Census Bureau https://censusreporter.org/profiles/31000US19820-detroit-warren-dearborn-mi-metro-area/ -------------------------- https://theweek.com/articles/461968/rise-fall-detroit-timeline http://websites.umich.edu/~ac213/student_projects06/neerhdo/postwar.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Detroit (((((((((((((((((((((((((( LECTURE 3 _Cities and Urban Life_ - Ant 201- Lecture 3 Sprawl is relatively unplanned population growth away from and adjacent to large cities. It is suburbanization or decentralization dependent upon mass automobile transportation. “After 1870, North American cities, particularly in the North and the Midwest of the United States and in Lower Canada, exploded into metropolises of millions (with migration from rural areas and from Europe) …with this influx came great problems, particularly in the United States. Quality of life began to deteriorate, and poverty and exploitation became rampant. New technological advances enabled many to escape to streetcar suburbs. Consequently, cities began to spread over the countryside…After World War II, decentralization accelerated… People and businesses departed the central cities, leaving the innermost areas increasingly populated by the poor and minorities and by service-oriented or professional businesses. Huge metropolitan regions became the norm, replacing earlier central-city cores.” (page 83 text). This initiated a process called decentralization-suburbanization-sprawl. In a sense, suburbanization , decentralization and sprawl are reversals of the long term trends of urbanization on concentration of business and population from the 1800’s through the mid 20th Century. Sprawl is particularly dependent upon automobile transportation. Why sprawl ? 1) Deindustrialization of center cities ;2) Overcrowding and problems of urbanization such as mass unemployment and poverty causing increased crime, housing shortages, anti-Black racism, anti-immigrant prejudice , general quality of life problems (see pages 61,62 ,70,71,142, 143 , et al. of the text) spurred “escape’ to the suburbs. (read summary of chapter 3 , pages 82-84 of text) in most cities. Detroit had an especially strong case of decentralization and sprawl beginning in the post WWII period. Its population peaked in 1953 at about 1.8 million. Detroit had been the most industrially concentrated city. Wikipedia essays the Detroit developments post WWII: “ostwar era In economic terms, the postwar years 1945-70 brought high levels of prosperity as the automobile industry had its most prosperous quarter-century.[82] Although Detroit had a Rapid Transit Commission, it was not popular with the politicians or the public after the strikes of 1946 ended and automobile production resumed. People demanded cars so they could commute from work to spacious houses surrounded by grass instead of riding the trolley to cramped upstairs apartments.[83] During the war, three expressways were built to support the region's war industries. Furthermore, the wartime model of federal, state, and local governments jointly planning and funding expressways gave a successful model for planning and financing more highways. Progress was slow in 1945-47 because of inflation, steel shortages, and the difficulty of building in built-up areas. by the early 1950s highways were in place, and plans were underway to make Detroit a central hub in the forthcoming Interstate Highway System. The new highways had a funding advantage over mass transit because of the availability of federal highway monies coupled with the availability of matching state money. Ultimately, they were paid for by gasoline taxes, which commuters seldom grumbled about.[84] Other sources indicate the replacement of Detroit's large electric streetcar network with buses & highways was much more controversial. In 1930, Detroit had 30 electric streetcar lines over 534 miles of track. In 1941, a streetcar ran on Woodward Avenue every 60 seconds at peak times.[85] Wartime restrictions on vital war materials such as rubber and gasoline caused particularly heavy use of the streetcar system during the 1940s. However, between the end of the war and 1949, the city discontinued half of its 20 streetcar lines. Five more were discontinued in 1951 — three of them switched abruptly to bus lines during a DSR strike. More closings followed until August 1955, when Mayor Albert Cobo, who promoted freeway construction as the way of the future, urged City Council to sell the city's recently purchased fleet of modern streetcars to Mexico City. It was a controversial move. A newspaper poll showed that Detroiters, by a margin of 3-to-1, opposed the switch to buses. Some even jeered the sunken freeways Cobo championed, dubbing them "Cobo canals." "A lot of people were against the decision...A common complaint was about the sale of the [new] cars, that the city didn't get its money's worth. Of course, the city had an answer for anything." On April 8, 1956, the last streetcar in Detroit rolled down Woodward Avenue. After less than 10 years in service, Detroit's fleet of streamlined streetcars was loaded on railcars and shipped to Mexico City, where they ran for another 30 years.[86] The Hudson's department store, the second largest in the nation, realized that the limited parking space at its downtown skyscraper would increasingly be a problem for its customers. The solution in 1954 was to open the Northland Center in nearby Southfield, just beyond the city limits. It was the largest suburban shopping center in the world and quickly became the main shopping destination for northern and western Detroit, and for much of the suburbs. By 1961, the downtown skyscraper accounted for only half of Hudson's sales; it closed in 1986.[87] The Hudson's name would latter be discarded all together. The remaining Hudsons were first rebranded as branches of Chicago's flagship Marshall Field's State Street, and later rebranded again as branches of New York City's flagship Macy's Herald Square. Ethnic whites enjoyed high wages and suburban life styles. Blacks comprised 4% of the auto labor force in 1942, 15% by the war's end; they held their own and were at 16% by 1960. They started in unskilled jobs, making them susceptible to layoffs and to replacement when automation came. The powerful United Auto Workers union championed state and federal civil rights legislation, but was in no hurry to advance blacks in the union hierarchy. a large well-paid middle class black community emerged; like their white counterparts, they wanted to own single family homes, fought for respectability, and left the blight and crime of the slums as fast as possible for outlying districts and suburbs.[88] By 1945, Detroit was running out of space for new factories; tight-knit home-owning neighborhoods rejected the notion of tearing out housing to make room for factories. There was plenty of space in the suburbs, and that is where the factories had to locate. The proposals of liberal UAW leaders such as Walter Reuther for urban redevelopment did not please the UAW's largely white, conservative membership. The members repeatedly voted for conservative mayoral candidates, such as Republicans Albert Cobo (mayor 1950-57) and Louis Miriani (mayor 1957-62), for they protected white neighborhoods from residential integration.[89] Home ownership was not just a very large financial investment for individuals, it was also a source of identity for men who remembered the hardships and foreclosures of the Great Depression. Sugrue says, "Economically vulnerable homeowners feared, above all, that an influx of blacks would imperil their precarious investments."[90] As mayor in 1957–62, Louis Miriani was best known for completing many of the large-scale urban renewal projects initiated by the Cobo administration. These were largely financed by federal money, due to his rejection of implementing a city tax. Miriani also took strong measures to overcome the growing crime rate in Detroit. The United Automobile Workers (UAW), then at the height of its size and power, officially endorsed Miriani for re-election, stressing what they viewed as his conservative "law and order" position. However, while some African Americans praised Miriani for helping to break down racial divides, other disagreed with the UAW that Miriani did enough.[91] Historian David Maraniss cites milestones in 1962-64 that marked the city's sharp decline: the failure of a plan to host the Olympics; urban renewal uprooting black neighborhoods; urgently needed police reforms that stalled; and the failure to transform Detroit through the Model Cities and War on Poverty programs. Tensions started building that exploded in the 1967 riot, the most costly and violent in the country during a summer of numerous riots in cities.[92] The 1970s brought a worldwide energy crisis with high gasoline prices. For the first time, the American industry faced serious competition from imported automobiles, which were smaller and more fuel-efficient. German Volkswagens and Japanese Toyotas posed a growing threat.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Detroit#Postwar_era Charles Brown: Detroit had a large proportion of Black people. The Black population was required to live in a section of the city just east of downtown , nicknamed Black Bottom until the laws against race bias in housing opened up the whole city to Black residence. In response to this began what is termed “white flight” to the suburbs. Real estate agents carried on a practice termed “block busting” whereby they fomented “flight” to the suburbs`. This added to the impetus to suburbanization-decentralization-sprawl block·bust·ing /ˈbläkˌbəstiNG the practice of persuading owners to sell property cheaply because of the fear of people of another race or class moving into the neighborhood, and thus profiting by reselling at a higher price. ((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Test 2 will be on Chapters 6 and 7. CHAPTER 5 IS NOT ON THE TEST; YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ CHAPTER 5. _TEST 2_: Page 173 1) Do your nearest cities (Detroit or cities in Detroit-Warren-Dearborn Metro Area ; https://censusreporter.org/profiles/31000US19820-detroit-warren-dearborn-mi-metro-area/) fit the criteria in the book for their location ? How so ? 2) Which of the three spatial forms do your nearest cities fit ? How or how not ? 3) Are there clusters or natural areas in your nearest city ? What and where are they ? Page 198 1) Can you identify and describe your nearest themed urban environments ? 2) What impact has deindustrialization had on your nearby cities ? 3) How serious is homeless _and poverty_ in your nearby urban communities ? Answers Two and a half or three paragraphs per number: total of 15 to 18 paragraphs You should use the internet for research.