Introducing Urban Social Science 1

Reading

• Flanagan Ch 1 esp. pp. 1-12

• Course website:– www.yorku.ca/anderson– Last week’s class & handout

Enrollment

• Course is full

• Able to enroll 1 extra person

• Rest: on waiting list

What is Urban?

• A place of human multitudes

• anonymity among strangers

• exposure to Others

• multiple meanings ...

Urban and Social

• How the urban shapes the social

• How the social shapes the urban

Enacted vs Crescive

• Roland Warren’s terms

• Not widely used

Enacted

• Formally organized and designed

Leavittown 1950s

Crescive

• Essentially undesigned

• Informally-organized

• Subject to attempts at bringing formal order

Paris, of course

Wall St Bull: Formal

Wall St Bull: Informal

Urban Areas

• Informally organized, with attempts at formal order

• Don’t have to use Warren’s terms

Urban Areas

• Arenas for social “games”

Urban Areas

• Lack physical or spatial closure– rural becomes a dormitory for commuters– Chinese cities: significant urban farming

• Where does the “urban” end/begin?

Sod Farm, Chicago suburbs

Urban Areas

• Vary over historic time– ancient cities: small– modern cities: huge

Sienna

Chicago 1892

Urban Areas

• Vary over cultural space– Cameroon

Amsterdam

Aukland NZ

Urban Areas

• Mean different things to different people

"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

-- Vroomfondel (in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams)

Public Spaces

• Peopled by strangers

• Involve exposure to Others

Cities as Culture (Sharon Zukin)

• Urban tastes influence everyone

• Cities generate new cultural trends

• Cities are innovative social environments

• Dangers and opportunities

Personal Experience of Cities

• How people interpret and use urban space for social purposes

Kevin Lynch

• City dwellers use the urban landscape to build a mental image of the city– nodes, pathways, edges, districts, landmarks

• Some cities more easily “imaged” than others

Vaughan 2000

“I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.”

-- Woody Allen

William Whyte

• How a part of an urban space is actually used by people

• Implications for urban design

Washington Sq, NYC 10 am

1:33 p.m.

4:55 p.m.

6:59 p.m.

7:03 p.m.

Waikiki Beach 7 a.m.

Waikiki Beach noon

Lyn Lofland

• People gradually take over urban public space and use it for their own purposes

• bring public space under private control– claiming space on the beach,

bench

Victoria BC

Forest Hill, mid 1990s

• Local homeowners campaign to stop commuters from driving through the neighbourhood

• Homeowners: they are just commuters, outsiders, don’t belong here

• City: the streets are public spaces

Christie Pits, 2003

• Toronto’s Christie Pits park attracts lots of children playing in sports leagues

• Creates pressure on parking

• Local homeowners object to “outsiders” parking for sporting activities

"Time's fun when you're having flies."

-- Kermit the Frog