INDIVIDUAL QUESTIONS FOR THE FINAL EXAM

You all did very well in coming up with questions for the final exam, so you earned some bonus points and will have the benefit of knowing many questions going into it. Of course, there was a lot of material from which to make these questions. So, without further ado, here they are:

HANNAH: earn 20 points, plus one bonus point.

1. As I noted in my summary comments on Chapter 3, Fabric of Enterprise, Rae identifies 3 factors that would later help unravel this "fabric of enterprise." Identify any TWO of them. (2)

ANSWER: Any TWO of the following: (a) Retailing depends on export industries that feed the cycle of exchange, but as exports decline, the richness of retail circulation is curtailed. (b) Small, very decentralized retail operations are vulnerable to competition from larger operations that can achieve economies of scale and undercut prices, which is exactly what began to happen by the 1950s. (c)The richness of the fabric depended on a permissive treatment of mixed-use neighborhoods by government, but zoning ordinances across the country set out to homogenize land uses and drive a wedge between residential and commercial areas.

2. In my summary comments on Chapter 8 of "City:" Race, Place, and the Emergence of Spatial Hierarchy, what did I highlight were TWO of the three actions which reinforced municipal inequality? (2)

ANSWER: Any TWO of the following: (a) municipal zoning, (b) neighborhood security studies of the HOLC (Home Owners Loan Corp.), (c) initial phases of public housing.

3. In the video, "Taken For a Ride," Lewis Mumford poses what interesting question about transportation and cities, and how does he answer that question? (2)

ANSWER: Does the city exist for people or for cars? For cars.

4. In Chapter 3 of "The Geography of Nowhere," what did Lewis Mumford say about industrialism in the 19th century? (1)

ANSWER: that it produced the most degraded human environment the world had yet seen.


FRANCES: earns 20 points, plus one bonus point.

1. In terms of the emergence of cities and human civilization in general, what was the single most influential step in human history? (1)

ANSWER: the development of AGRICULTURE, which creates a surplus that allows craft, trade and the development of an intellectual life beyond survival needs; it facilitates the later stages of development -- i.e., villages and cities.

2. In "Heat Wave," what analogy does the author use (one used by Durkheim and other classic sociologists) to examine the events that unfolded in the city of Chicago? (1)

ANSWER: the organic or organismic analogy, as evidenced by his term, "social autopsy."

3. Identify ONE of the two theoretical principles Klinenberg brings out in "Heat Wave" that can be used to approach a broader inquiry into the life of the city. (1)

ANSWER: ONE of the following: (a) the first deriving from Marcel Mauss and Emile Durkheim, "is that extreme events such as the Chicago catastrophe are marked by 'an excessiveness which allows us better to perceive the facts than in those places where...they still remain small'scale and involuted.'" (b) The second, is that institutions have a tendency to reveal themselves (and not-so-obvious flaws in these systems) when they are stressed and under pressure -- in how they react or respond to such crises.

4. Define Rae's term "useful inefficiency," as used in "City." (2)

ANSWER: In essence, that urbanism was constructed out of several "useful inefficiencies," i.e., mom-and-pop groceries, smaller streets which played important roles in the community and civic fabric, despite being "inefficient" or outdated, in a sense, from a market or economic standpoint.


MIYA: earns 20 points, plus one bonus point.

1. Identify any TWO of the four major themes of the city that I introduced at the very beginning of the course. (2)

ANSWER: Any TWO of the following: (a) cities and urban life vary according to the time and place, (b) cities reflect and intensify a society and culture, (c) cities reflect the best/worst about the human condition, (d) cities offer the promise, but not always the reality, of a better life.

2. Define and contrast URBAN IMPLOSION and URBAN EXPLOSION. (2)

ANSWER: Urban implosion -- centripetal forces were dominant and people were drawn into the city. Cities are compact, densely populated, polluted due to industry -- characteristic of the 19th century. Urban explosion -- centrifugal forces draw people out of the cities into surrounding suburbs. Forces include auto/highway system -- characteristic of the 20th century.

3. In my summary comments on Chapter 2 of "City," what comment did I make about Rae's noting the inaccurate growth assumptions for New Haven circa 1910? (2)

ANSWER: "To make more accurate predictions...we must understand these larger technological/economic/ecological factors which have proven to be the real keys to urbanization, not necessarily political decisions of local officials."

4. Describe GM's "motorization campaign," as presented in the video, "Taken For A Ride." (2)

ANSWER: This involved replacing sttreet cars with diesel buses and eventually cars. National City Lines Bus Co., which was financed by GM, bought up trolley systems all across the country and made these trolley systems more expensive, less accessible, and less attractive, which eventually led to their dismantlement.
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That's it. See you Friday morning in Main 122, as my email note indicated.

Abbreviated Notes: The Geography of Nowhere

Below are some abbreviated notes on Chapters 7, 8, & 9 in "The Geography of Nowhere." So, after your presentations tomorrow we'll pick up with Chapter 10 in the book, and should be able to finish it by the end of next week.

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE EVIL EMPIRE

A. The "evil empire" being the automobile-suburb. Kunstler focuses on the considerable social, ecological, and aesthetic shortcomings of this evil empire.

1. Although suburbs are generally regarded as better places to rear children, Kunstler highlights the impediments to children moving about safely in the modern suburb. Roads are often too wide, giving rise to higher traffic speeds, and many suburban streets lack sidewalks which are very expensive for homeowners with large lots. And in shopping areas with huge parking lots, larger arterial roads almost never have sidewalks, which makes it difficult for children, the elderly, even adults to negociate on foot.

2. He talks about the extreme separation of uses and vast distances between things as another significant contributor to our over-reliance on the auotmobile. This grew out of the first zoning ordinances which sought to separate residential from commercial from noisy, smelly factories. It once may have served a valid purpose, but not so much anymore, and today it is taken to extremes -- separating high-income areas from low-income areas.

3. Kunstler says the least understood, and most difficult to measure, consequence of this is the loss of a SENSE OF PLACE (i.e., "the geography of nowhere").

a.) Notes the general impoverishment of public building.

b.) He challenges the claim made by some that the mall is an adequate substitute for the traditional Main Street (see, pp. 119-120).

c.) Criticizes the typical strip development on major highways coming into a city as gaudy and ugly.

d.) He notes the failure of academics who should have been more critical and foresighted with respect to this destructive pattern of suburban development.

B. He closes the chapter by highlighting some urban areas that have managed to maintain neighborhoods and roads that are more human scale and aesthetically pleasing, such as Charleston, SC. And from an economic standpoint, he notes how such areas have maintained their real estate value as well, if not better, than the artificial, isolated subdivisions of McMansions.

C. Finally, the "geography of nowhere" theme is captured well in the last paragraph of the chapter, p. 131.


CHAPTER EIGHT: HOW TO MESS UP A TOWN

A. Kunstler uses his hometown of Saratoga Springs, NY as a case study of how to mess up a town. It could just as easily be Spartanburg, SC or any small or medium-sized town in America.

1. Especially telling is the development of a commercial strip on the way into town -- South Broadway (think West Main or Asheville Highway in Spartanburg).

2. A good, insightful, observation: "The unwillingness to think about the public realm of the street in any other terms besides traffic (or commercial exploitation, I would add), shows how little value Americans confer on the public realm in general." (p. 138)

3. Also notes that after WWII there was little interest in fixing up the old. We wanted new things. And since gas was plentiful and cheap, why not build with the car in mind.


CHAPTER NINE: A PLACE CALLED HOME

A. Kunstler provides a critical history of architectural styles of houses, which culminates in the mass-produced home of the post-WWII period. "These housing 'products' represent a triumph of mass merchandising over regional building traditions, of salesmanship over civilization." (p. 166) -- and he goes on to make some further critical observations on this same page.

B. Again, the final paragraph of this chapter (p. 173) captures well this "geography of nowhere" theme as it relates to housing in particular.
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Again, that brings us up to Chapter Ten. DON'T FORGET, YOUR CITY PAPERS ARE DUE TOMORROW (THURS. 12/2) AND AFTER YOUR PRESENTATIONS WE WILL GET BACK TO "THE GEOGRAPHY OF NOWHERE."

Individual Activity: Making Up Questions for the Final Exam

Going all the way back to the beginning of the semester, I want each of you to come up with SIX short-answer questions and answers on anything we've covered over the course of the semester, including our last book, "The Geography of Nowhere" (see outline below of the material we've covered). Please submit your questions and answers to me in writing (or via email, but NOT on this blog) NO LATER THAN FRIDAY, DEC. 10TH BY NOON. I will, then, consider your submissions and try to accept at least THREE questions from each of you. For each additional question I accept, you will earn a bonus point for this exercise and have the benefit of knowing more of the questions on the final exxam. I will post the questions and answers I accepted by MONDAY, DEC. 13TH, which is the first day of final exam week. This exercise is worth 20 activity points (which is more than I usually give for such an exercise because you have only had one other activity for 5 points and in the course outline I stipulated that you would have a chance to earn 25 activity points, not counting extra credit points).

OUTLINE OF MATERIAL COVERED:
(1) Opening couple of lectures on 4 major themes on the city and an overview of the origin, development, and significance of the city in human history.
(2) Comments on two classic essays in urban sociology: "Metropolis and Mental Life," by Georg Simmel and "Urbanism as a Way of Life," by Louis Wirth (comments on Wirth's essay, including critical analysis, posted on the blog).
(3) Summary Comments on the book, "City" (Preface thru Chap. 12) -- all posted on the blog.
(4) Lecture/commentary on the book, "Heat Wave."
(5) Notes on video presentation, "Understanding Urban Sprawl," -- posted on the blog.
(6) Notes on video presentation, "Taken for a Ride," -- posted on the blog.
(7) Lecture/commentary on book, "The Geography of Nowhere."
(8) Notes on relevance of final video presentation, "The End of Suburbia," (Tues. 12/7) for argument in "The Geography of Nowhere."
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Notes on "Taken for a Ride"

You are introduced early on to Bradford Snell who has been working on a history of GM for over 16 years (and if he is still working on that project, it would be 26 years). He wrote the original article "American Ground Transport" (50pp), which detailed the role of GM and several other corporations in buying up and then dismantling electric trolleys in cities across the country.

He noted that in 1922 only 1 in 10 Americans owned a car. Alfred P. Sloan of GM recognized the obvious -- that there was a huge potential market for cars. But that meant you needed roads and access to them, and you'd have to get rid of the street cars. So, GM launched a motorization campaign, which at first involved replacing street cars with diesel buses, and eventually cars. National City Lines Bus Co. (which was financed by GM) bought up these electric trolley systems across the U.S. and started to cut back service and did not maintain tracks and cars, raised fares, made them less attractive. Eventually, they were simply dismantled. And remember that GM, among some other major corporations, was convicted in federal court in the late 1940s of criminal conspiracy in buying up and dismantling these trolley systems. GM was fined a neglible $5,000.

1. Despite some of these moves, people overwhelmingly supported trolleys -- in L.A. 88% wanted rail service retained and improved. But that was not enough.

Perhaps what clinched the deal for the car was building sprawling suburbs which could only be served by private automobiles

That scene of burning street cars is a graphic illustration of the forces of creative destruction.

Note the occasional propaganda film clips, such as "Diesel and Dollars," and that nice school teacher talking about building more roads for the sake of the children (which in my humble opinion is enough to make you gag because of the adverse consequences of those roads and cars for the health and well-being of those children).

Charles Wilson, who had been GM CEO, was the Secretary of Defense in 1953, and was a moving force behind the Eisenhower Adm.'s decision to build the Interstate Highway system. DuPont family was also behind it. This was the largest public works project in American history.

"Trouble in Paradise" Shows scenes of growing traffic congestion. Roads that did not work such as I-93 thru Boston (which has been put underground at a cost of some $12 billion!!). Mayor Alioto of San Francisco opposing a downtown expressway.

1. Early 1970s hearings in Congress over how to divide up the highway trust funds. Senator clearly voicing interest of the auto companies. But Alioto says, at one point, that: "What was good for GM was not good for American cities."

2. Lewis Mumford poses an intersting question about transportation and cities -- does the city exist for people or cars? By the 1960s the answer was clear -- for cars.

"Back to the Future" -- some efforts to restore light rail systems have been successful (such as Baltimore, Portland, Oregon). But the big bucks are still behind the automobile and raod system, as in the Intelligent Highway Vehicle System (or IHVS) -- futuristic computer operated roadways.

(A final note about what happened to those bus systems -- many went bankrupt and are now managed by cities, often at a loss and inadequately.)
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That's it. Please incorporate these comments in your notes. If I ask anything on the final exam about this video, it will come from these posted comments. Next Tuesday I'll be talking about The Geography of Nowhere, hopefully get through Chapter 8. AND DON'T FORGET ABOUT ESSAY II, WHICH IS DUE THEN.

Notes on "Understanding Urban Sprawl"

The opening interviews with young couples moving to suburban Toronto captures well the dreams and aspirations of many people. No doubt such desires have been a big factor fueling the suburban housing boom of the latter half of the 20th century.

BUT IT IS A DREAM BUILT UPON AN ILLUSION

Sprawling suburbs cost a lot more than just the price of the homes, however high they may be these days. Billions are spent in public subsidies for infrastructure development -- roads, water, sewers, etc. The market is a bit "squiffy" in that it does not reflect the actual costs. That Toronto economist suggested $700 million to $1 billion a year could be saved if housing did not expand outward in the typical sprawling fashion. The savings would be in infrastructure costs.

Surburban sprawl's pressure on rich farmland in the Central Valley of California.

L.A. county, which is now the "ultimate suburban wasteland" of asphalt and concrete used to be a highly productive agricultural area. Now cities like Fresno and Modesto are growing and eating up arable land where over 200 different crops are grown, some of the richest soil anywhere in the world. Perhaps the federal government should do more to protect its multi-billion dollar investment in irrigation which basically created that highly productive farmland.

In reality, cars drive sprawl. Car especially suited to low-density sprawl. Of course, the government builds and maintains roads which is a huge subsidy favoring this mode of transportation. One economist estimated govt. subsidizes the car to the tune of $2,700 per vehicle. It is hard for government to keep up with the number of cars the auto makers can sell. In Vancouver, 84 cars a day are sold, 30,000 a year, yet over the last decade only a few more kilometers of roads have been built. Increasing traffic congestion is the obvious result.

Sprawl in Mexico City is different -- people flooding into the city tend to reside in shantytowns on the outskirts. Tremendous stress on natural systems, such as water. Have to use 10% of the entire country's electrical output to bring water into the city! And yet they continue to exhaust the acquifer that lies underneath and the city continues to sink.

Portland, Oregon is a kind of poster child for a city which has resisted these trends (but not entirely, of course). The state of Oregon decided in the early 1970s to impose "growth boundaries" (or greenbelts) around cities, which did not stop growth but re-directed it back into the downtown area. City official noted criticism of some of their efforts in transportation as a "crazy socialist conspiracy to get people out of their cars", but as he went on to note, no one talks about the "crazy (capitalist) conspiracy to get them into cars" (which we will be focusing on next Tuesday). Portland is different basically because they have spent 25 years working on this. And I would say, clearly, most other cities have not devoted such time and effort to this issue.
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That's it. Remember, next week Tuesday (11/16) we'll be seeing a video on the conspiracy to take over and dismantle the trolley systems throughout the country (a la Judge Doom). WE'll meet in Main 122 again. Please read through at least Chapter 6 in the Geography of Nowhere.

CHAPTER 12: A CITY AFTER URBANISM - SUMMARY COMMENTS

So, for all of mayor Lee's efforts, New Haven had obviously not become the slumless city it aspired to become. Just the opposite, slums continued and crime got much worse.

How to respond to this failure? (1) Obviously, politics had not worked, so (2) a market approach took hold, the ultimate market solution to the end of urbanism being the suburban exodus, an exit strategy which obviously further weakened the central city. (And I would add here, that suburbs really did not attempt to re-create "urbanism" -- it was more of a privatized solution.)

Rae comes back to Joe and Hope Perfetto's story. Their move to the suburbs in 1950, although they continued to operate their business in New Haven until they retired. Notes how the FHA, tax advantages helped democratize the suburbs, open them up to people like the Perfettos. Their mortgage was $7,000 and monthly payment a mere $52.50.

In terms of CULTURAL SUPPORT for escaping the city, Rae notes that historically, before industrialization, people in the city had green space, gardens. But industrialization, with its noise, pollution, demand for cheap housing for workers (tenements) pretty much wiped this out.

"The Perfettos' suburban home, built after many decades of centered urbanism, can be understood in part as an attempt to recapture these same features from the collective memory, with all their "healthfulness" and openness." (p. 399)

Robert Fishman gives a nice description of the characteristic traits of suburbia. See, top p. 400.

Suburban development seems to wed what was good for humanity with greed -- a marriage that sold like hotcakes in mid-20th century America. Bottom pp. 400-401 identifies all the private interests that backed this suburban venture, even enlisting the support of government. This should give us pause, that something so wildly popular would, as we will see especially in "The Geography of Nowhere," be so destructive in the long run energy-wise, envirnomentally, even socially.

Rae talks about class divisions among suburbs and between the suburbs collectively and New Haven. New Haven being left behind in many repects with concentrated black poverty. (See, bottom p. 405)

Politics After Urbanism: Decline of the G.O.P., many Republicans moving to the suburbs. Dominance of the Democrats. But as the Democrats take over, New Haven diminishes in terms of population, political clout, etc. Have the MARGINALIZATION of city politics. Pluralist government becomes limited in what it can do. But Rae does not agree with the Domhoff thesis that the well-to-do take over, a conspiracy of who rules. Dahl (Rae's mentor on politics) concludes that currently New Haven politics can be characterized more as a "street-fighting pluralism," pitting neighborhoods against each other.

The old urbanism and the forces which created it are largely gone. Is there "another urbanism?" we can build in its place?

Rae suggests there are steps that can be taken to encourage the "soft" side of urbanism, mainly steps concerned citizens themselves can take to re-build social capital, restore civility, etc. (See, pp. 422-426 for specifics)
(As beneficial and "warm and fuzzy" as these recommendations sound, I was disappointed in this as his main proposals to deal with the decline of urbanism. None of these recommendations seems anywhere near adequate to deal with the problems of New Haven highlighted in Chapter 11, especially crime, unemployment, etc. I can't help but think that New Haven and most other cities are still largely at the mercy of the capitalist forces of "creative destruction.")

Finally, Rae deals with the emergence of Yale University as the major player in New Haven, perhaps New Haven's salvation. Yet there are problems in terms of Yale's proposals for expansion and city government dragging its feet, and one can also argue that Yale is a somewhat detached institution, not rooted in New Haven as it once was.

So, that leaves us with this big question: what can be done to restore cities such as New Haven "after urbanism?"
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That's it. Remember that I certainly may make up some final exam questions based on these summary comments on all the Chapters of "City." See you next week.

Chapter 11: The End of Urbanism - Summary Comments

Below are my summary comments on Chapter 11. The previous blog post contains a description of what I want you to do for extra credit, if you attend the talk by former Austin,TX mayor Will Wynn tomorrow (Thurs. 10/28) at 11AM in Leonard Aud.

CHAPTER 11: THE END OF URBANISM

Rae opens by describing the precipitous drop in manufacturing in New Haven -- the closing of factories and even more rapid decline in factory employment.

1. The Lee administration thought the new Interstate highways (I-95 & I-91) intersecting in the center of New Haven would encourage manufacturers to locate there. Instead, "...the highways decentralized everything they touched."

2. There was a 60% decline in factory jobs during the Lee redevelopment era.

3. Two larger historical trends contributed to this as well: (a) competition from the Sunbelt. Sunbelt cities having the advantages of lower taxes, lower energy costs, lower labor costs, etc. Not to mention global competition. (b) regional competition opened up by interstate highways: more land to build on, lower taxes, fewer security concerns (crime), etc.

All told: "The impact was immense -- fewer good jobs, especially fewer good working class jobs, fewer opportunities for high school graduates without academic pretentions, fewer households in the city, fewer taxable properties, fewer dollars flowing from wage earners to neighborhood merchants, decreasing leverage for city government in regulating central-place land use." (p. 363)

Then, the strike at the Winchester plant added insult to injury. See top, p. 367. Cites catastrophic job loss over 40+ years (1954-1997) - 90%!

The "fabric of enterprise" was torn to pieces. Neighborhood grocery store decline (although Rae also notes that larger stores were more efficient, cheaper).

Notes that Lee's redevelopment policies did contribute to this decline -- many stores closed due to urban renewal. But, again, larger forces at play contributed more to this. Seems like a long, irresistible trend, helped along by zoning regulations which separated commercial and residential space.

"What eventually emerged, and prevails today, was utterly different from the fabric of enterprise described in Chapter 3."

Rae observes the "dispersion of the grand list," p. 373f -- that is, the grand list of taxable property which gets dispersed to suburban areas. Table 11.3, p. 374, tells this dramatic story in dollars.

Another aspect of the end of urbanism is the decline of voluntary organizations. And here again we clearly see larger forces at work such as the rise of television and the growth of technology which catered to individuals more than the general public, as that long passage from Robert Putnam ("Bowling Alone") brings out. pp. 377-8.

You have the "professionalization of civic fauna" -- that is organizations that used to involve city residents, now being managed by professional staff. And those professionals had less connection with the communities they served.

Mainstream, institutionalized religions decline, such as the Catholics, and are replaced by smaller, storefront churches. They become dominant influences in many working-class, ghetto neighborhoods.

Public housing declines as these areas become areas of concentrated poverty and crime. They tie poor people to an inner city that offers few amenities and opportunities. New Haven makes the top ten list in pecentage of city residents living below the poverty line. (see p. 385)

Perhaps most telling of the end of urbanism is the tremendous increase in crime, especially violent crime -- see graph p. 387 and Table 11-4 at bottom. In this context, Rae reminds us of one of the benefits of a vibrant urbanism -- effectiveness at controlling crime which no police department can accomplish on its own. "A major part of what I mean by urbanism is the effectiveness of these extragovernmental mechanisms for the most fundamental task of governance -- preventing criminal aggression in the city's streets and homes. These informal mechanisms had become ineffective, at great cost to the livability of the city." (p. 389)

Rae introduces an interesting term in the last section, "useful ineffciency" -- that urbanism had a massive collection of useful inefficiencies, from mom-and-pop grocery stores to smaller streets, etc. which served important purposes even if they were inefficient from the point of view of the market. He also stresses that those pushing technological change, market efficiency are not villains.

But this raises a big question in my mind: SHOULD WE NECESSARILY ASPIRE TO MARKET EFFICIENCY AT THE EXPENSE OF URBANISM?
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That's all for now. I'll post summary comments for Chapter 12 by the end of the week. And remember, we are going to get into "Heat Wave" on Thursday (11/28) and be meeting in our old place, Main 122.