10.11: City Life

City Life

Where you live or grew up, is an element of your identity. “Where’s your hometown?” is a common question you might hear if you went on vacation or moved away. If you’re from a large city, what side of town, or what neighborhood you come from is another source of identity formation. Exactly what defines a “neighborhood” is open to debate. The US Census Bureau does not define “neighborhood” because they are vernacular regions. Each person has a sense of where neighborhood boundaries are, but those boundaries are largely in the imagination of individuals. Census tracts and ZIP codes sometimes function as proxies for neighborhoods, but they are often arbitrary as well. In some parts of the city, citizens have very specific ideas about neighborhood boundaries. Gangs often use graffiti to mark specific locations to notify others about their opinion on neighborhood boundaries – territories (see Politics Chapter). In some cities, like Los Angeles, the designation of unofficial neighborhood boundaries has been the source of angry debates because property values are greatly affected by the simple perceptions of where neighborhood boundaries exist.

Figure : Canoga Park, CA - Gang graffiti marks the edges of neighborhoods as gang members perceive the vernacular region – or neighborhood.

Neighborhoods

Most neighborhoods don’t have organized gangs, but still, people with long-term commitments to homes and neighbors do engage in numerous group behaviors to protect their “turf”, and indirectly, the value of their property. Most of the time, these behaviors are benign – things like keeping weeds out of the yard, ensuring that local authorities enforce zoning laws about signs, junk cars, or residency restrictions. Neighbors may work together to improve local schools, parks, and hospitals. Homeowners may band together to accomplish other goals that might be deemed unsavory. They might want to keep certain businesses, like liquor stores, payday lenders, factories or nightclubs from their neighborhoods. They may even work together to prevent specific individuals, like sex crime offenders or the homeless, from moving in the neighborhood. Because many of these same individuals are less concerned when factories, stores or homeless people come to other neighborhoods, the term “not in my backyard” or “NIMBY” was coined to characterize the militant protectionist attitude. Generally, neighborhoods with wealthier people who are politically active, and have long-term residency patterns exhibit NIMBYism. Wealthier neighborhoods may erect gates and hire guards to prevent easy access to homes. Some have even created small, gated towns to keep undesirables out. Geographer Mike Davis called this process “the militarization of space” in his well-received book City of Quartz.

Figure Calabasas, CA This wealthy suburb of Los Angeles has multiple gated areas, some of which encompass large recreation areas.

When residents in a neighborhood lack money, political organizational skills, or the motivation to protect themselves from disamenities, significant neighborhood degradation is possible. When that degradation affects the health of a local population of an ethnic minority, the term environmental racism is sometimes applied to describe the situation. What is racist is often hard to discern because cause and effect are not always obvious. Was a neighborhood polluted before minorities moved there, or did polluters move in after the minorities moved in? Did minorities populate a polluted neighborhood because that was all they could afford or were they forced to live there by law or precedent? Poverty is frequently at the root of these issues. Poor people of all ethnicities rarely can afford to live in neighborhoods that have outstanding schools, parks, air quality, etc., and so they are often able to afford to live only in the most dangerous, toxic, degraded neighborhoods.

Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New Edition). Verso Books, 2006

Neighborhood Life Cycle

How people come to occupy specific neighborhoods is a complex process that evolves over time and involves thousands of individual and institutional decisions. A number of these processes such as steering, blockbusting, etc. (see Ethnicity chapter) are rooted in systemic ethnic discrimination. However, economic decisions also factor prominently in the lifecycle of a neighborhood. As housing ages, it tends to become less desirable. People with enough money tend to move away and buy newer homes elsewhere. The lower classes move into the older homes, frequently as renters. Often poor people wind up occupying older, multi-family dwellings or apartments. Roofs and pipes leak, heating and cooling systems are often inefficient, neighborhoods are congested, etc. Sometimes, entire neighborhoods are abandoned. This process is known as the neighborhood life cycle. It’s very common, however, in the last 50 years or so, some neighborhoods’ life cycle is occasionally changed because wealthier people chose to move into older housing – or gentrification.

Map Urban Growth in the World’s Largest Cities:

Smithsonian.com

Suburbanization

Suburbs first appeared in the United States in the mid-1800s as trolleys and other types of light rail extended beyond the limits of the pre-industrial, pedestrian-oriented cities. Light rail allowed middle-class families to move out beyond the city limits into communities called streetcar suburbs. When automobiles became affordable in the 1920s, suburbanization expanded. The Great Depression and World War II slowed suburbanization in the US, but during the 1950s, suburbs exploded on the American Landscape. The rise of suburbs in the post WWII era brought profound changes to American cities. Many families found themselves able to exchange an old house in the crowded city for a new one with a bigger yard, near new schools, malls, parks, and hospitals. It was the culmination of the American dream for loads of people. The US and many local governments were eager to help people achieve those dreams, and created numerous financial incentives to make suburban dreams inexpensive, but government policies also created multiple unintended consequences.

Figure : Toronto, Canada - A street car alongside an early automobile in 1923. Note the dense housing development created by the public transport, but the car would undermine both the density and the streetcar. Source: Wikimedia.