This slide is on Urban studies in human geography. It's useful for second year university students.

1. Urban studies

2. Urbanism as a Way of Life
Ferdinand Töennies: Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.
•Gemeinschaft is a type of social organization by
which people are bound closely together by kinship
and tradition.
•Gesellschaft is a type of social organization by
which people have weak social ties and considerable
self-interest.
•Töennies saw the development of modern urban
society as a shift from Gemeinschaft to
Gesellschaft.
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3. Emile Durkheim: Mechanical and organic solidarity.
• Durkheim described traditional, rural life as mechanical
solidarity, social bonds based on common sentiments and
shared moral values.
• Organic solidarity refers to social bonds based on
specialization and interdependence.
• Durkheim optimistically pointed to a new kind of solidarity.
Where societies had been built on likeness, Durkheim now
saw social life based on differences.
• Georg Simmel: The blasé urbanite. To prevent being
overwhelmed by all the city stimulation, urbanites develop a
blasé attitude, tuning out much of what goes on around them.

4. Ecological Issues
• Urban ecology is the study of the link between the physical and
social dimensions of cities.
• This approach helps explain why cities are located where they are.
• It also generates theories concerning the physical design of cities
• Ernest Burgess’s concentric zone theory.
• Homer Hoyt’s wedge-shaped sector theory.
• Harris and Ullman’s focus on multicentered cities.
• Social area analysis studies how neighborhoods differ in terms of family patterns,
social class, and race or ethnicity.
• Critique :This approach helps explain why many U.S. cities are in crisis,
but both urban ecology and urban political economy are not easily applied
to cities in other societies or in different eras.
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5. Ecological Issues
Urbanization in Poor Societies.
• A third urban revolution is taking place because many
poor nations have entered the high-growth Stage 2 of
demographic transition theory.
• Cities do offer more opportunities than rural areas, but
they provide no quick fix for the massive problems of
escalating population and grinding poverty.
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6. Ecological Issues
Environment and Society.
Ecology is the study of the interaction of living
organisms and the natural environment.
Humans have transformed half of the world’s land
surface and use more than half of all the accessible
surface fresh water in the world.
© Copyright 2010 Alan S. Berger 6

7. Ecological Issues
• Humanity’s use of the environment has had a variety of debilitating
effects on the natural environment. Humans have the capability to
overexploit natural resources, but they can also restore and protect them.
• Functionalist theorists see the ecosystem as exhibiting a tendency toward
equilibrium in which its components maintain a delicately balanced
relationship.
• Some conflict theorists emphasize the reality of certain individuals and
groups securing a disproportionate share of what is available.
• Symbolic interactionists focus on “people behavior” related to
environmental issues.
• If a sustainable global society is to be created, some critics think that
humans will need to check increases in population and energy use. Other
observers believe that the free market will result in life improving
indefinitely.
© Copyright 2010 Alan S. Berger 7

8. Ecological Issues
The natural environment consists of the earth’s surface and
atmosphere, including various living organisms and the air,
water, soil, and other resources necessary to sustain life.
The global dimension.
Any study of the natural environment must necessarily be
global in scope because the planet constitutes a single
ecosystem, the system composed of the interaction of all
living organisms and their natural environment.
Technology and the environmental deficit.
Complex technologies generally pose more threats to the global
environment than did the simple technology of preindustrial
societies.
© Copyright 2010 Alan S. Berger 8

9. Ecological Issues
• The world is now facing an environmental deficit,
profound and negative harm to the natural
environment caused by humanity's focus on short-
term material affluence. This concept implies three
important ideas:
• The state of the environment is a social issue.
• Environmental damage is often unintended.
• Much environmental harm is reversible.
© Copyright 2010 Alan S. Berger 9

10. Ecological Issues
Culture: Growth and limits.
• The logic of growth thesis is a widely accepted cultural value which
suggests that growth is inherently good and that we can solve any
problems that might arise as a result of unrestrained expansion.
• The limits to growth thesis holds that humanity must implement policies
to control the growth of population, material production, and the use of
resources in order to avoid environmental collapse.
• Solid waste: The disposable society.
1.Why Grandmother Had No Trash.
2.Landfills pose several threats to the natural environment.
3.Recycling, reusing resources we would otherwise discard, is one
solution.
© Copyright 2010 Alan S. Berger 10

11. Ecological Issues
• Water and air.
• Water supply is problematic in many parts of the world.
• A special problem is acid rain, rain that is made acidic by
air pollution and destroys plant and animal life.
• Water Consumption in Global Perspective. Some
countries do not have an adequate supply of water.
• Polluted water is an increasingly serious concern as well.
• A deterioration of air quality was one of the
unanticipated consequences of the development of
industrial technology.
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12. Ecological Issues
• Rain forests are regions of dense forestation, most of
which circle the globe close to the equator.
• Global warming is apparently occurring as a result
of the greenhouse effect, a rise in the earth’s average
temperature due to increasing concentration of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting in part
from the decline of the rain forests.
• The shrinking of the rain forests reduces the earth’s
biodiversity.
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13. Ecological Issues
• Environmental racism is the pattern by which environmental hazards are
greatest in proximity to poor people, particularly poor minorities. In part, it
is a deliberate strategy by factory owners and powerful officials.
• Looking Ahead: Toward a Sustainable World.
• We need to develop an ecologically sustainable culture, a way of life that
meets the needs of the present generation without threatening the
environmental legacy of future generations.
• This calls for three basic strategies:
• We must bring world population growth under control.
• We must conserve finite resources.
• We must reduce waste.
• Will People Overwhelm the Earth?
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14. Urban problems
• By 2025 the vast majority of the world’s population will live in cities
• The rapid growth of cities creates a number of problems
• Crowding
• Housing
• Crime
• Strain on urban infrastructures
• Transportation
• Death rates is higher than in rural areas
• Inadequate supplies of water and systems of waste disposal

15. • Transport problems
• Urban decay
• Pollutions
• Social problems

16. Causes of urban problems in cities of
developing countries
• Rapid increase of population due to
• large scale rural-urban migration and
• high rates of natural increase
• Low level of industrialization and
slow economic development
• Poor governance

17. Government
• A major cause of the problem of cities is the inequitable
distribution of economic resources
• Urban problems often extend beyond city boundaries
• Air pollution
• Water pollution
• Non-city residents put a strain on city services

18. Shelter Poverty, Homelessness,
and Neighborhood Distress
• Poor live in substandard housing
• Problems have been related:
• Poverty
• Mass removal of slum housing
• Lack of affordable homes for low-income Americans

19. Shelter Poverty, Homelessness,
and Neighborhood Distress
• Homelessness
• Factors related to homelessness
• Displacement of poor families by gentrification and
urban renewal
• Deinstitutionalization of mental patients
• Increasing concentration of the poor in central cities
• Lack of low-cost housing

20. Shelter Poverty, Homelessness,
and Neighborhood Distress
• Neighborhood distress is measured on the basis of:
1. Rate of poverty in the tract
2. Joblessness
3. Female-headed households
4. Welfare resiliency
5. Teenage school dropouts

21. Shelter Poverty, Homelessness,
and Neighborhood Distress
• Distressed neighborhoods are not the same as
poverty tracts.
• Severely distressed neighborhoods are defined as
census tracts with at least three of the following four
characteristics:
• 27.4% or more living in poverty
• 37% or more of families with related children headed by women with no
husband present
• 23% or more of 16-19-year-olds who are not enrolled in school and not
high school graduates
• 34% or more civilian, non-institutionalized men ages 16-64 who are
unemployed or not in the labor force
• Growing up in distressed neighborhoods has lasting
effects on children

22. Social Policy
• Most social policies at all levels of government have
encouraged suburban sprawl
• Redevelopment and revitalization of the city will be a major
issue
• Housing - providing low cost housing for the poor will become a
concern
• Homelessness - solutions to the problems of the homeless will
be a concern

23. Nature of housing problems
• Shortage of accommodation
• Substandard houses made of any materials
• Unobtainable to basic facilities such as clean
water, electricity and sewage system
• Unobtainable to urban resources such as job
opportunities, transport, education, medical
and social services

24. Problems related to shortage of of
accommodation
• Growing squatter and slum population
• as most immigrants tend to build themselves a
shelter on land which does not belong to them.
• Or rent a single room in overcrowded and
deteriorated slums near the CBD.

25. Problems related to substandard
houses
• Risk of collapse,
• Risk of landslide
• Risk of fire
• overcrowding

26. Problems related to unobtainable to
basic facilities
• Poor sanitation
• Poor living environment
• Outbreak of diseases

27. Problems related to unobtainable to
urban resources
• Unemployment and underemployment
• Social problems such as family conflicts,
mental distresses
• High crime rate
• Social unrest

28. Solutions
• Site and service scheme
• Squatter improvement scheme
• Squatter and slum clearance and resettlement
scheme

29. Site and service scheme
• Self help scheme
• Provide squatter occupants with building
materials
• Provide with basic services(water and
electricity)

30. Advantages
• Require smaller capital amount
• Improve skill of local people
• Preserve community spirit for certain extent
• Improve housing conditions a lot

31. Disadvantages
• New sites are usually in suburbs
• Squatter occupants are reluctant to move in
due to poor accessibility

32. Squatter improvement scheme
• Provide basic services(water supply, electricity
and sewage system)
• Squatter remain at the places where they are
occupying

33. Advantages
• Its the cheapest and easiest way
• Improve living conditions for certain extent
• Entirely preserve community spirit

34. Disadvantages
• The unpleasant squatter settlement remains
unchanged in location and appearance
• The improvement attracts more incoming
occupants
• Overcrowding problems deteriorated

35. Squatter and slum clearance and
resettlement scheme
• Clearance of illegal and unsafe settlements
• Provide accommodation with standard basic
facilities for squatter inhabitants
• The most comprehensive scheme

36. Advantages
• A scheme thoroughly solve al the housing
problems
• Urban renewal becomes possible

37. Disadvantages
• Require large amount of capital
• Require high technology level
• Disputes related to resettlement
• Acts of rebellious and violence taken by
people being affected

38. Worksheet question 1.
• Squatter settlements

39. Question 2.
• Houses are constructed from any materials
available- wood, corrugated iron or cardboard.
• Houses are built on hill slopes without safe
foundations nor slope retaining walls.
• Houses are simply shelters of rain and
sunlight, do not meet basic health and safety
standards.

40. Question 3
• Lack of clean water supply
• Lack of properly installed electricity supply
• Lack of properly run waste disposal and
sewage system
• Lack of paved footpaths or vehicular roads
• Lack of open space or recreational facilities
• Lack of public lighting

41. Question 4
• Risks of collapse, fire and landslides
• Poor sanitation
• Poor ventilation
• Overcrowding
• Environmental pollution
• Outbreak of diseases
• Visual pollution
• Family conflict and mental distress
•

42. Question 5
• Rapid increase of urban population due to continuous influx of rural
immigrants
• Lack of financial resources to provide adequate accommodation due
to
• Slow economic growth
• Lack of town planning
• Inefficient government

43. Question 6
• Squatter improvement scheme or
• Site and service scheme
• Give comments on its effectiveness