Urban Sociology - Evolution of Urban Sociology

Evolution of Urban Sociology

The evolution and transition of sociological theory from the Chicago School began to emerge in the 1970s with the publication of Claude Fischer's (1975) "Toward a Theory of Subculture Urbanism" which incorporated Bourdieu's theories on social capital and symbolic capital within the invasion and succession framework of the Chicago School in explaining how cultural groups form, expand and solidify a neighbourhood. The theme of transition by subcultures and groups within the city was further expanded by Barry Wellman's (1979) "The Community Question: The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers" which determined the function and position of the individual, institution and community in the urban landscape in relation to their community. Wellman's categorization and incorporation of community focused theories as "Community Lost", "Community Saved", and "Community Liberated" which center around the structure of the urban community in shaping interactions between individuals and facilitating active participation in the local community are explained in detail below:

Community Lost: The earliest of the three theories, this concept was developed in the late 19th century to account for the rapid development of industrial patterns that seemingly caused rifts between the individual and their local community. Urbanites were claimed to hold networks that were “impersonal, transitory and segmental”, maintaining ties in multiple social networks while at the same time lacking the strong ties that bound them to any specific group. This disorganization in turn caused members of urban communities to subsist almost solely on secondary affiliations with others, and rarely allowed them to rely on other members of the community for assistance with their needs.

Community Saved: A critical response to the community lost theory that developed during the 1960s, the community saved argument suggests that multistranded ties often emerge in sparsely-knit communities as time goes on, and that urban communities often possess these strong ties, albeit in different forms. Especially among low-income communities, individuals have a tendency to adapt to their environment and pool resources in order to protect themselves collectively against structural changes. Over time urban communities have tendencies to become “urban villages”, where individuals possess strong ties with only a few individuals that connect them to an intricate web of other urbanities within the same local environment.

Community Liberated: A cross-section of the community lost and community saved arguments, the community liberated theory suggests that the separation of workplace, residence and familial kinship groups has caused urbanites to maintain weak ties in multiple community groups that are further weakened by high rates of residential mobility. However, the concentrated number of environments present in the city for interaction increase the likelihood of individuals developing secondary ties, even if they simultaneously maintain distance from tightly-knit communities. Primary ties that offer the individual assistance in everyday life form out of sparsely-knit and spatially dispersed interactions, with the individual's access to resources dependent on the quality of the ties they maintain within their community.

Along with the development of these theories, urban sociologists have increasingly begun to study the differences between the urban, rural and suburban environment within the last half-century. Consistent with the community liberated argument, researchers have in large part found that urban residents tend to maintain more spatially-dispersed networks of ties than rural or suburban residents. Among lower-income urban residents, the lack of mobility and communal space within the city often disrupts the formation of social ties and lends itself to creating an unintegrated and distant community space. While the high density of networks within the city weakens relations between individuals, it increases the likelihood that at least one individual within a network can provide the primary support found among smaller and more tightly-knit networks. Since the 1970s, research into social networks has focused primarily on the types of ties developed within residential environments. Bonding ties, common of tightly-knit neighborhoods, consist of connections that provide an individual with primary support, such as access to income or upward mobility among a neighborhood organization. Bridging ties, in contrast, are the ties that weakly connect strong networks of individuals together. A group of communities concerned about the placement of a nearby highway may only be connected through a few individuals that represent their views at a community board meeting, for instance.

However, as theory surrounding social networks has developed, sociologists such as Alejandro Portes and the Wisconsin model of sociological research began placing increased leverage on the importance of these weak ties. While strong ties are necessary for providing residents with primary services and a sense of community, weak ties bring together elements of different cultural and economic landscapes in solving problems affecting a great number of individuals. As theorist Eric Oliver notes, neighborhoods with vast social networks are also those that most commonly rely on heterogeneous support in problem solving, and are also the most politically active.

As the suburban landscape developed during the 20th century and the outer city became a refuge for the wealthy and, later, the burgeoning middle class, sociologists and urban geographers such as Harvey Molotch, David Harvey and Neil Smith began to study the structure and revitalization of the most impoverished areas of the inner city. In their research, impoverished neighborhoods, which often rely on tightly-knit local ties for economic and social support, were found to be targeted by developers for gentrification which displaced residents living within these communities. Political experimentation in providing these residents with semi-permanent housing and structural support - ranging from Section 8 housing to Community Development Block Grant programs- have in many cases eased the transition of low-income residents into stable housing and employment. Yet research covering the social impact of forced movement among these residents has noted the difficulties individuals often have with maintaining a level of economic comfort, which is spurred by rising land values and inter-urban competition between cities in as a means to attract capital investment.