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THE PROXIMITY OF HETEROGENEITY
Morris Milgram, a developer of integrated neighborhoods, reviews what has been
accomplished in open housing and the difficulties that must be overcome by
continually vigilant organized action. Where integration has been most
successful, different groups have perceived important interests or characteristics that they have in common (1977:65).
"Dover Square" is a multi ethnic housing project in a large northeastern
American city. In 1975-76, about half of its resident families were
Chinese, one-quarter black, 12 percent white, and 6 percent Hispanic. In
1976, "it had the highest per capita rate of robberies and assaults in
the city. . . . Yet in a survey of 101 residents, 75 percent said they
did not think the project was dangerous" (Merry 1981:9). Nevertheless,
56 percent were afraid to walk around the neighborhood at night. Sally
Merry analyzes these and other apparent anomalies. The physical layout
of the project makes surveillance of distemic space difficult
(discouraging the self-policing of neighborhoods Jane Jacobs
emphasizes), and members of the four ethnic groups are scattered evenly
throughout the project (contrary to Gans's recommendation of block
homogeneity combined with community heterogeneity). Merry believes that
crime and fear of crime operate in Dover Square in a self-reinforcing
system that is fundamentally fear of strange and unknown "others" (p.
14). Dover Square residents have more otherness than, perhaps, they can
cope with, coupled with the neighborhood's being in a transitional area
where economic depression is a major problem. A variety of avoidance
strategies prevents residents from learning to interact with members of
other groups (p. 224).
Greater intergroup knowledge and recognition of common interests despite
differences are needed to reduce intergroup hostilities:
The two successful interethnic organizations in the project are an
infant care center and a day care program for older children, . . .
essential for working mothers. People who work long hours are probably
less inclined to devote time to organizations that satisfy only diffuse
community needs or purely social or recreational ends if these
organizations appear to be at all unsafe or uncomfortable.
The solution to urbanites' and suburbanites' fear of the city is not. . .
more locks, bars, and guard dogs, or an enhanced police presence, but
greater knowledge of the city and its residents
(p. 241).
Ignorance exacerbates fear of the unknown, which exacerbates intergroup fears and hostilities.
Annemarie Bleiker, comparing her own and another study among working-
class people in Cambridge, Mass., finds that close friendships and kin
ties are not necessarily localized, as formulated by the "proximity
model" others espouse. Members of the neighborhood she studied
established strong relation- ships among one another but retained kin
ties and friendships with more distant people. A sense of commitment to
the neighborhood was the bridge across ethnic and other differences such
as being old-timers or new-comers (1972: 172).
CROSS-CUTTING SUBCULTURAL BOUNDARIES
We have already cited several cases in which actors'
interests
and the characteristics they share with members of other groups override
subcultural boundaries. This situation seems most frequently to occur
when members of
different racial/ethnic subcultures realize that they belong to the same
social class subculture. Although this process may, one hopes, reduce
the virulence of intergroup prejudices, it would seem to extend and
augment social ties rather than replace one type with another as is
certainly the case in three cities of sub-Saharan Africa. Jos (Nigeria),
Kampala-Mengo (Uganda), and Nairobi (Kenya) are inhabited by a great
variety of tribal and regional groups, and all remain intact as support
and identity systems for their members. However, in each city some
people have also developed wider social ties. In Jos,
ethnic groups attempt to project a favorable image. Since they intend
to
stay, they want to remain on good terms. They may donate their assembly
hall for
some civic purpose or rent it to other ethnic, social, business, or
political
groups. Through fines or other sanctions, they attempt to control their
members'
behavior so as not to damage the tribe's reputation in the community.
Ethnic
groups express pride in their traditions by holding public performances
of plays, masquerades, and native dances. When they seek to raise money
by staging formal dances, they may court community good-will by inviting
prominent individuals of other ethnic groups to serve as
hosts or masters of ceremony (Plotnicov 1967:292).
Much of Leonard Plotnicov's presentation on Jos consists of interview
material with a small number of individuals, of whom he says:
Regardless of the strength of tribal loyalties and the depth of
parochial
village sentiments, even the most traditional men relate positively, as
individuals, to Jos' conditions. For example, the Yoruba informant could
express both humaneness and friendship when asked to intercede and help
settle the family disputes of his Hausa neighbors. The Tiv
shared the delightful pastime of African drafts [checkers] with Yoruba
men of his age, and had established a joking type of relationship with
an old Hausa woman who lived across the street and who was friendly with
his wife. The Ijaw informant's closest personal friends reflected a
variety of ethnic back- grounds, and he also demonstrated civic
responsibility when he occasionally gave (upon invitation) free
professional advice to the Township Advisory Council and to his church
congregation (p. 291).
In Nairobi, political participation since Kenya gained independence has
evolved into a complex interweaving of ethnic and social class
identities.
Social class and tribe are not necessarily incompatible with each other
as principles of social and political division. In fact, the two can
operate at the same time in producing political divisions in a society. .
. . [I]ndividuals tend not only to be associated with other people of
their own ethnic group but also with people from their own social
status. [The] . . . well educated tend to have friends who are also well
educated, while poor people also associate with other poor people. At
the same time, they also tend to associate with people from their own
tribe.
Class and ethnicity have a different importance in different areas of political life. . ..
.........[P]olitical participation and information are related to
class and not ethnicity,
. . .
attitudes toward the government since independence are a function of ethnicity,
. . .
assessments of living conditions since independence are determined by
both class and ethnicity, and. . . formal group membership and the
belief that politicians are overpaid are related to neither class nor
ethnicity (Ross 1975:135-36).
In Kampala-Mengo, residents have evolved a citywide political system,
including kinship modes of interaction, not identical with any
intratribal political system. At the same time, specific tribal patterns
of behavior continue to operate in the domestic sphere in two
structures: "a first-order one of the widest level concerning the
distribution of power, authority, and economic opportunity in the single
urban system of relations; and a second-order one of the urban domestic
life of individual ethnic groups whose rural home systems of land
tenure, marriage, residence and descent have great relevance" (Parkin
1969:192).
GATEKEEPERS AND BROKERS
Gatekeepers, and, especially, brokers, mediate between
minority individuals and bureaucratic agencies. Peter Snyder,
introducing his data on the gate- keepers of five ethnic neighborhoods
in Los Angeles, reviews the considerable cross-cultural literature on
the subject and makes a clear distinction between gatekeepers and
cultural brokers. Both provide links between members of a local ethnic
enclave and the larger society, but the broker has a greater role as an
innovator and mediator between the small subculture and large dominant
culture. The broker is able to function in both contexts. The gatekeeper
is more likely to be a member of the minority ethnic group and
facilitates adaptation rather than innovation.
Snyder interviewed Anglos, Arabs, blacks, Chicanos, and Native Americans
who had migrated to Los Angeles. The percentages of them who know of
gatekeepers in their midst are, respectively, 48, 52, 70, 43, and 61,
and actual use of them is, respectively, 10,40,40,30, and 10 0976:43).
The main services gatekeepers furnish are locating housing and
employment and providing legal, medical, and general advice including
economic counseling. The most frequently used service is giving medical
advice and aid. For example,
Ms. G. was born in a small village near Guadalajara, Mexico, and came to
the United States eight years ago. In Mexico she had some training as a
nurse's aid and as a midwife. People came to her for medical advice,
medical care, and mid-wifing services. Ms. G. on occasion dispenses
store-bought medicines, but usually sends her "clients" to one of two
Spanish-speaking doctors who she says are good and will charge only
nominal fees. When asked why she does not send people to the local
county public health agencies and clinics she responds, "They don't like
Mexicans there. They give bad treatment. They do not speak Spanish very
much and do not explain well to the people what is the matter with
them" (p. 46).
Snyder interviewed 18 gatekeepers. They have an average of l5
gate-keeping contacts a week, and about half of them also have full-time
jobs. So gate-keeping involves them in considerable extra work. When
asked why they do it, most indicate that they don't know or they want to
help their people. While some gatekeepers are busybodies or
status-seekers, others are truly altruistic (pp. 46-47).
Bernard Wong's monograph on New York City's Chinatown mentions the
increasing activity of cultural brokers in its behalf (l982:97). From a
population of 500 in the 1870s, Chinatown now has grown to 75 thousand
people, and newcomers continue to arrive, many by way of San Francisco
(p. 27). The community is highly organized and has formal associational
links with Chinese communities in a number of other North American
cities. Its inhabitants are highly diversified. They include people
whose families have been in America for generations and recent refugees
from Vietnam, a few upper- class people, and many middle- and
working-class ones (p. 35).
Chinese cultural brokers in New York have been motivated by several
developments
since the 1960s: availability of Affirmative Action and Community
Development
Program funds, the influence of black and Hispanic ethnic movements, and
realization that they are still a discriminated-against minority. The
brokers have a variety of occupations, but they are well educated, aged
20 to 40, mostly middle-class American born, and living outside
Chinatown. Knowledgeable about Chinese and American culture, they are
dissatisfied with the traditional leadership structure of Chinatown with
its patrons and coteries of poor clients (p. 97).
BUREAUCRATIC SUBCULTURES AND THE "OTHERS"
Whether individual bureaucrats do or can mediate between
their institutional rules and perceptions of reality, on the one hand,
and their clients, on the other, is a crucial question for the humanity
of cities. As yet, there
is no
definitive answer because there is very little reliable information
about it, only fragmentary glimpses. One such glimpse is a study of the
Boston Housing Authority (BHA) (Pynoos 1986).
Regarding processes of tenant selection, the BHA faced a situation in
which "over the years, family public housing has experienced a shift
from poor white tenants, either temporarily unemployed or working, to
primarily welfare- dependent minority tenants" (p. 190). This change
exacerbated a dilemma: whether to follow the first come-first served
rule and thus treat everyone evenhandedly or to break the rules and give
priority to applicants in the direst need. John Pynoos is concerned
with how a bureaucratic agency wrestled with this dilemma. That it did
so is a plus for the humanity of cities.
Nevertheless, gaps in empathy and understanding are enormous, and Lyle Shannon expresses this problem passionately:
Rather than to take the position that the culture of poverty must be
accepted as an explanation for the failure of programs supposedly
designed for the less fortunate, isn't it just as feasible to conclude
that these programs were planned by persons with too little
understanding, too little vision, too little scientific knowledge?
[H]ave we really planned for the movement of people from the South and
Southwest to urban industrial communities? Have we attempted to help
immigrants find a place in the community? Is the middle-class, suburban
Welcome Wagon or its equivalent found in the inner city? Are state
employment offices, the more or less official arm of the establishment
for workers who are in transition. . . , located in imposing edifices,
mainly staffed by middle-class, Anglo, English-speaking professionals,
or are they decentralized, even decentralized to storefronts adjacent to
bars and taverns? Are they staffed by persons who have the slightest
ability or interest in empathizing with the less fortunate?
. . .
Is the neighborhood or community school seen as a community center for
persons of all ages rather than an institution for children, a place to
have them deposited while adult Anglos, both male and female,
participate in the exciting world of professional and skilled work? . . .
Are ADC [Aid to Dependent Children] mothers seen as prolific leeches on
society or as loving, compassionate mothers, who, if given the
opportunity to learn, may show us that they are as responsible and as
capable of contributing to society as anyone else? (1979: 61).
DISTEMIC SPACE BEHAVIOR
Stressed Behavior and Its Remedies
Jonathan Freedman's landmark book, Crowding and Behavior (1975),
refutes some long-held notions, based on experiments with rats and human
beings under extremely artificial laboratory conditions, about the evil
effects of high- density living. Extrapolations from these findings to
everyday life in crowded cities fit neatly into the assumption that
cities are inherently unlivable. Freed- man's experiments and
observations led him to conclude that
crowding by itself has neither good effects nor bad effects on people but rather serves to intensify the individuals' typical reactions to the situation.
. . . Thus, people do not respond to density in a uniform way, they do
not find
it either always pleasant or always unpleasant. Rather, their response
to density depends almost entirely on their response to the situation
itself. Density acts primarily to make this response, whatever it is,
stronger (pp. 89-90).
Sitting in a doctor's waiting room, taking a test in a class,
waiting on line at an airport, or traveling in the New York subway are usually
unpleasant experiences, and most people would agree that crowding makes them
even more unpleasant. In contrast, watching a football game or a play, riding on
a cable car in San Francisco, spending a day at an amusement park, and attending
a cocktail party are pleasant experiences and for most people are made even more
exciting and enjoyable when the density of people is fairly high. Crowding
intensifies the normal reaction-making a bad experience worse and a good experience better (p. 93).
Freedman addresses his situational view of crowding stress to distemic
space in New York City. While recognizing (as have others) that having
to deal with too many anonymous people can have negative effects, he
points out that encouraging interaction among different people is very
important in connection with housing design (pp. 123-27). He also points
out the vicious circle that fear of danger in distemic space can
create. "[S]treets are dangerous. . . not because there are too many
people on them, but because there are too few. . . . There is a
self-fulfilling prophecy-you are afraid of the streets so you stay off
them, so they become dangerous, thus providing a reason to be afraid of
them" (pp. 132-33). Freedman makes the same point that Jane Jacobs and
Sally Merry do.
Their points are valid, but there are serious problems regarding
people's behavior in crowded distemic space. One reason may be that
"once crowding is believed to produce stress, it becomes a negative
influence and would be expected to have all sorts of bad effects"
(Freedman 1975:82) but there seem to be other reasons as well.
Criminal violence aside, public incivility is a serious problem in
Western industrial cities, and in all cities of the world (except for
the revolutionary industrial ones) as far as vehicular traffic behavior
is concerned.
A newspaper column notes Richard Valeriani's list in the New York Times
(Cooper 1985:B-l) of 100 reasons why, "although New York is a swell
place to
visit, you wouldn't want to live there." The items include some that
might well
deter visitors: rampant incivility, graffiti, crosstown traffic, honking
horns,
cabbies and bicycle riders who run red lights, refuse and animal
excrement on streets and sidewalks, diplomats who double park, obnoxious
cops, Central Park after dark, men urinating in public, the subway, box
radios, Times Square, potholes, and cabbies who tell you they don't
want to take you where you want to go. The tone is humorous, but there
is no question that the problems are real, and the distinction between
legal and illegal incivility has become blurred. The following excerpts
from an article in New York Magazine make the point forcibly:
Civility has begun to collapse just as surely as the city's services and
the FDR Drive. Drivers. . are breezing through red lights as never
before. Mass transit passengers, many of them middle class, have
suddenly begun smoking in subway trains and on platforms with impunity. .
. . Midtown- office-building plazas, once considered an amenity of
incentive zoning and a boon to strollers, have been so overrun by
vagrants, drunks, and dope dealers that their owners. . . have begun
closing them down or fencing them off. . . . The police department's 911
emergency number no longer automatically brings cops. When rookie
transit cop Victor Sims broke up an attempted bank robbery. . . last
July, the worst resistance he reported
came from the 911 operator, who needed five minutes of
persuasion
to believe that the call was not a joke. Subways are not only twice as
late and
twice as likely to break down but they seem twice as filthy. . . [and]
the
decay, stench, and filth that permeate the system are intensifying
passenger
anger and disgust. . . . Last year, the police issued more than 500,000
summonses for such incivilities as leaving garbage cans uncovered,
playing loud box radios, obstructing sidewalks, disorderly conduct,
unleashed dogs, harassing pedestrians, loitering, and drunkenness. Seven
out often people summoned never even bothered to show up in court.
Two-thirds of the city's parking violation summonses were also ignored
last year. Only 2 percent of the more than 29,000 fines assessed for
illegal peddling were actually paid. With fewer people feeling compelled
to obey the law, enforcement recedes. Cops turn their backs on petty
crimes and misdemeanors. . . . Police and court officials insist that
violent and major crimes have to take priority, but the price paid by
New Yorkers for trivializing minor crimes has been a tangible coarsening
of city life (Pileggi 1981:27-28).
This account comes from an article whose main theme is that the
deterioration of
life in New York City arises to a major degree from the city's budget
crisis and
its dire effects on all public services. However, Mayor Edward Koch is
quoted as
saying that the deterioration derives also from the general
permissiveness beginning in the 1960s in which values that did make
sense were indiscriminately flouted along with those that did not make
sense. Of course, the presence of a large, entrapped, poverty-stricken
component of the population is also a cause, but it does not account for
the middle-class misdemeanors.
It does seem clear that positive feedback is at work, that a system of
behavior
is in operation into which no corrective factors are being introduced,
and
therefore the behavior grows and intensifies. If the feedback metaphor
is valid, then the solution begins with introducing corrective factors
that induce negative feedback in which the behavior contracts and
diminishes. Roger Starr (1985) suggests a strategy focused on crimes
committed mostly by members of poor, minority families, but it should be
applicable to middle- class misbehavior, too. Starr recommends that
each city "must pick the area or activity important to its very life
that is most adversely affected by random crime. It must start by
attending to that sector. As part of what it does there, however, each
city must make basic changes in its police forces, courts and prisons
that will help battle crime throughout the city" (p. 25). Starr chooses
New York's subway system as an example of such a target sector, and
proposes nine priorities for corrective change. Some are very
far-reaching, such as "the whole population must support the efforts of
leaders in the current crime- prone population to strengthen family
structure and educate the young in the mores of an urban society, the
better to survive and prosper constructively" (p. 20). Such education
seems clearly to be needed, also, among other segments of the
population. More specifically, Starr proposes that "the public must see
that in the crime target area, no breach of law is so trivial that it
can be ignored" (p. 20). Starr ends on this note:
There will be times in the future, as
. . .
in the past, when the price of the
effort to repel the criminal threat to the traditional city will seem
too high. People will ask themselves why they should defer more humane
uses of public funds. . . to build jail cells, buy advanced technical
weapons for the police, and install bigger computers to keep track of
the repetitious crimes
of habitual offenders. Why not simply move to the
country, taking
what can be carried of the great achievements of urban civilization?
That's exactly the problem. What are the greatest achievements of urban
life? Surely one means the rewards of talking to many different kinds of
people, the ready presence of uncountable varieties of goods and
services, the treasure houses in which both the world's fine art and its
popular culture are displayed and performed, the parks, the
institutions of learning and health, the architectural landscape-to take
a few samples. They cannot simply be dispersed and yet remain the same.
If the city is to be deprived of them by loss of civil peace, love of
those same treasures demands that attention, ingenuity, and resources be
dedicated to restoring it (p. 60).
Neither Nicholas Pileggi nor Starr is nostalgic for some mythical,
non-urban past. On the contrary, both are concerned with vicissitudes,
though neither uses the term. They are concerned with on-going urban
evolution, using, as it happens, New York City as their example. The
points they make and the issues they raise are applicable to other
cities as well.
Colin Ward (1978) is also concerned about vicissitudes of urban distemic
space. His subject is the adaptation of children to life in cities, in
particular British industrial cities which have been suffering negative
vicissitudes since World War II. The violence and neglect featured in
the lives of many poor urban children come in part from lack of positive
adaptations to vicissitudes.
Watch the scrimmage at the bus stop when the city child comes out of
school, interview tenants on a housing estate
terrorized by its children, learn that the annual cost of vandalism in
England, Scotland and Wales is, at a minimum estimate, well over 114
million pounds, or read that one out of every eleven children in the
city of Atlanta will be murdered if he or she stays there, and you will
be in no doubt that the city has failed its children. It fails to awaken
their loyalty and pride. It fails to offer legitimate adventures (p.
203).
Citing a personal conversation with Roger Starr (then housing
administrator of New York), Ward shows his awareness that the city does
not do anything, but rather the people who inhabit it do things. Starr
told Ward that he was mystified by the way urban land values remain high
even when the land itself has become derelict (p. 203). Obviously, such
land should be reappraised at its real market value, and then it would
become available to poor people who can realize their "aspirations for
housing at human densities, for domestic and public open space, for
low-rent premises for small businesses, and for all those activities
which are the very essence of urban civilization but show a low rate of
return on capital invested" (p. 203). Ward discusses many ways in which
children's activities that allow them to discover their own skills have
been facilitated by using vacant city land. These projects include
vegetable gardens and raising chickens for the experience and earning
money.
Real involvement in the adult city world is another goal for children on
which experiments are being made in Great Britain. For example, a
school- teacher in the inner city of Sheffield arranged for her class to
visit an unusual house about which they were curious. Visits to the
elderly owner and the library revealed that the house was 200 years old
and scheduled for demolition to make room for a parking lot. "This
distressed the class because they had become involved with the old lady
and her husband and because they had come to see that it was valuable to
have one building that was in some way
special in their district" (p. 185). Against considerable odds and
setbacks, the children eventually saved the house. The headmaster of
their school said they had enjoyed their involvement and realized that
"democracy depends on 'us' being able to tackle 'them' about 'our'
heritage. . . . But to my mind the most important thing is their
realization that they can actively playa part in shaping their
surroundings, that what they say about where and how they live
will be listened to and that the key to their future lies in their own
awareness" (p. 185). Multiplied thousands of times, such new learning
might well be the corrective feedback factors that the urban distemic
space behavioral scene needs.
Ward sees a special problem in the restricted use of distemic space that
is the experience of most girls and women, and his view of this
restrictiveness has wide implications:
The problem of the girl in the city is a male problem. If she is
deprived of her fair share of environmental contact because she has
household tasks which her brothers are able to evade, the answer is a
more equitable sharing of these tasks in the family, especially since
her mother too probably feels oppressed by the same assumptions. lf it
is because of a patriarchal religious tradition, the patriarchs have to
change. If it's for fear of sexual exploitation, it is the exploiters
rather than the girls who have to change their ways. And if the
liberation of girls brings in its train an explosion of
female crime, it is the equation between anti-social acts and bravery
which has to be broken. The environmental liberation of girls, far from
implying that the girl in the city should become hard and tough in the
way that the city boy aims to be, demands that the boy too should pride
himself on those allegedly feminine qualities of care and tenderness.
One of the discoveries that Urie Bronfenbrenner made in Moscow, was that
the taboo on tenderness had not infected the children of that city: ".
. .
I recall an incident that occurred in a Moscow street. Our youngest
son-then four-was walking briskly a pace or two ahead of us when from
the opposite direction there came a company of teenage boys. The first
one no sooner spied Stevie than he opened his arms wide and, calling. . .
'hey little one!', scooped him up, hugged him, kissed him resoundingly,
and passed him on to the rest of the company who did likewise, and they
began a merry children's dance, as they caressed him with words and
gestures. Similar
behavior on the part of any American adolescent male would surely prompt
his parents to consult a psychiatrist."
The liberation of the city girl from the expected norms of passivity and
docility implies also the liberation of the city boy from the pressure
to be a predator (pp. 158-59,163).
The messages carried by our discussion of stressed distemic space
behavior are: its causes are many; the stress appears to be a
self-reinforcing process; a considerable variety of corrective inputs
must be made into the process; and much thought, care, and
experimentation has been devoted to the design of such inputs.
Public Space/Proxemic Space
Distemic space is usually, though not necessarily, publicly owned.
That ownership is one of the reasons why there are distemic space
behavior problems: too many people using the space ignore norms of
conduct that most would presumably follow under other circumstances.
Given the unprecedented size of cities in the world
today, crowded distemic space is here to stay. Therefore, new norms,
variously appropriate to each of the different cultures of the world,
are needed to make inhumane distemic behavior exceptional rather than
commonplace. Various conscious experimental efforts to achieve this goal
are discussed above.
There is also evidence of what is probably largely unconscious behavior
on the part of individuals and small groups to make distemic
space more manageable for themselves. The effects are not necessarily
benign or even neutral for others, and therefore the behavior in
question may not suggest solutions to the macroproblems of distemic
space. Indeed, some of them may be part of the problem.
Lyn Lofland, in A World of Strangers (1973), devotes two chapters to "privatizing public space." These chapters
focus on some of the devices that urbanites use to avoid the world of
strangers and thereby reduce the necessity to use or even acquire
complex urban know-how. . . . [E]ach transforms public space. . . into
private or semiprivate space. Each allows its user, for long or short
periods of time, to a greater or lesser degree, to avoid the difficulty
and the challenge that are the essence of the city as a world of
strangers (p. xi).
We have previously considered some of them, such as creating "home
territories" in bars, shops, and some open spaces and "concentrated
urban villages" (pp. 119-35). These are essentially transformations of
distemic into proxemic space, and we have said that a good portion of
the humanity of cities exists in them.
The same cannot be said, however, for the creation of "dispersed
villages," by which Lofland means the urbanites' use of the automobile
to move to various places where they are personally known in such a way
that they "almost never [have] to enter any truly public space" (p.
136). Lofland
does not connect this behavior with the traffic problems mentioned
above, but it
may well be connected, particularly if it is true that the .city of
strangers stimulates some actors to play fantasy roles (p. 158; Sennett
1974a:175). "Traveling in packs" is another device of urbanites for
taking their privacy along with them:
They use public space with abandon, in such a way that, for example, a
group of adolescents can choose to play running games in an air
terminal. They feel free to indulge in backstage behavior, calling each
other by name, yelling at one another across the expanse of the setting,
using obscene language and laughing loudly at private jokes. And they
express proprietary attitudes. If their numbers are plentiful enough,
they may even force others to depart, as when the overflow from a
convention invades a city's nightspots (Lofland 1973:139).
Lofland's chapters on defensive body management and adventuring in the
city are highly descriptive of actual behavior, and so are instructive,
but they do not move us much toward coping better with crowded distemic
space beyond' asserting that a desired goal is cosmopolitan persons'
"need to know a great deal more than the simple fact of common humanity
about the people who surround them" (p. 176).
John Ottensmann (1978) has reviewed a dozen published
studies
that indicate predictability in the presence of street life in social
class and density contexts. The clear conclusion is that street life and
neighboring are associated
with working-class, high-density areas; lack of street life is
associated with low-density, middle-class areas. In the former
situation, proxemic space ex- tends into public space; in the latter, it
does not. Ottensmann emphasizes that his study is preliminary and that
research in a greater variety of scenes is needed. Research on whether
people accustomed to street life at home are or are not better adapted
to problem-prone crowded distemic space would be valuable. Not all users
of crowded distemic space create problems there.
The development of more other-oriented caring in distemic space behavior
must not wait for some miraculous efflorescence of utopian mass
altruism, for such a miracle will probably never happen. Other-oriented
caring combined with individual self-interest is a real motivation; it
exists, and it can be put to use, as Raquel Ramati's How to Save Your Own Street (1981)
attests. Ramati describes streets that actually have been saved; hers
is not a visionary "how- to" book but a practical one based in part on
her own experiences in New York City. She says:
Streets take up about a third of the land area in our cities. Yet many
Americans think of streets as places to avoid or endure, not as places
to enjoy and remember.
The most obvious reason for this waste is that cars, buses, and trucks
dominate the street and often seem more important than people.
Fortunately, this is not a completely accurate image. Many streets. . .
have yet to be reduced to mere roads, and increasing numbers of people
are deter- mined to keep their streets from such a fate.
[T]he nation's urban policies have. . . begun to emphasize the
revitalization of existing neighborhoods. Streets are their core and
countenance. Making sure that streets take on a new life is basic to
this neighborhood strategy.
[N]eighborhoods and streets form existing resources. . . . [W]e all have
a stake in making the most of what exists-conserving and improving upon
and maintaining investments made over the years. Streets, not to
mention the buildings edging them, are a reflection of such past
expenditures. Caring for them, we conserve a reflection of ourselves, of
our fellow citizens, and of a shared cultural heritage.
[N]o one else is going to undertake and pay for this process unless you (
. . .
an owner of a building along the street, a community leader, a
government planner, a city commissioner, an architect, a real estate
developer seeking a zoning change, or any individual or group having an
interest in their street) take the lead, create a constituency, and
learn how to tap the resources of both government and the private sector
(pp. xi-xii).
Scattered in Ramati's book are references to open areas other than
streets- parks and derelict, vacant land (often resulting from the
abandonment and demolition of buildings). That parks are an urban
amenity is universally agreed, but it is not widely enough recognized
that many of them, such as Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and Central
Park in New York, exist only because of the foresight, courage, and
persistence of dedicated persons in the past, or, as in the case of
London and other European cities, the noblesse of bygone aristocracies.
Established parks have the same needs and problems as other distemic
areas, such as maintenance and control of crime and incivility. But the
expense of meeting these needs is not a sufficient reason for not
creating additional
parks to accompany the continuing growth of cities.
Joseph Shomon's book is primarily a practical guide on how to acquire
and maintain additional urban parklands. He is concerned with the loss
not only of undeveloped land to urbanization but also of already
existing city parkland to highways and other construction.
The deterioration of urban lands and watellS is part of the greater
problem of environmental deterioration in the United States. . . . When
urban design is dominated by the profit motive, some very sterile and
monotonous urban patterns are likely to result. . . . There is growing
recognition that if our cities and suburbs are to be livable and
pleasant, some semblance of open- ness and naturalness, even some
measure of wilderness, are essential (Shomon 1971:6-9).
Shomon (pp. 96-104) briefly describes two successes in New York City:
the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens and tiny Paley Park on East
53rd Street, Manhattan.
.
Paley Park also is featured, among many other "small urban spaces," in
William H. Whyte's richly illustrated book (1980). He leaves no doubt
that they are immensely enjoyed by many people, and he raises the
question of why there are not more of them:
The biggest single reason is [that]
. . .
many businessmen have an almost
obsessive fear that if a place is attractive to people it might be
attractive to undesirable people. So it is made unattractive. There is
to be no loitering- no eating, no sitting. . . . [B]enches are made too short to sleep on,
. . .
[and] spikes are put on ledges; most important, many needed spaces are not provided at all. . . .
Who are the undesirables? For most businessmen, curiously, it is not
truly dangerous people. It is the winos. . . [and others who are] a
symbol, perhaps, of what one might become but for the grace of events. .
. .
The preoccupation with undesirables is a symptom of another problem.
Many corporation executives who make key decisions about the city have
surprisingly little acquaintance with the life of its streets and open
spaces. From the train station, they may walk only a few blocks before
entering
their building;
. . .
some don't venture out until it's time to go home again.
To them, the unknown city is a place of danger. If their building has
a plaza, it is likely to be a defensive one that they will rarely
use themselves (pp. 60-61).
The best way to handle. . . undesirables is to make a
place
attractive to everyone else. The record is overwhelmingly positive on
this
score. . . . Seagram's management is pleased people like its plaza and
is quite
relaxed about what they do. It lets them stick their feet in the pool;
does not look to see if kids are smoking pot on the pool ledge;
tolerates oddballs, even allowing them to sleep the night on the ledge. .
. . The place is largely self-policing, and there is rarely trouble of
any kind (p. 63).
In nine years of studying New York City plazas and small parks, Whyte
found a serious problem in only one, and in well-used places, none
whatsoever.
The exception is a plaza on which pot dealers began operating. The management took away about half the benches [and]
. . .
constructed steel-bar
fences on the two open sides of the plaza. These moves effectively cut
down the number of ordinary people who used the place, to the delight of
the pot dealers. . . .
[I]t is characteristic of well-used places to have a "mayor,"
. . .
a building
guard, a newsstand operator, or a food vendor. . . . [Y]ou'll notice people checking in during the day-a cop, bus dispatcher,
. . .
street professionals, and office workers and shoppers who pause briefly
for a salutation or a bit of banter. Plaza mayors are great
communication centers, and very quick to spot any departure from normal.
. . .
One of the best. . . is Joe Hardy of the Exxon Building. . . . Joe is
very quick to spot real trouble. . . . Teenage groups are an especial
challenge. They like to test everybody-with the volume knob of their
portable radios as weapon. Joe's tactic is to go up to the
toughest-looking person in the group and ask his help in keeping things
cool. . . (pp. 63-64).
Whyte treats these small parks and plazas as extensions, if not parts
of, the streets and sidewalks they adjoin. And so, his observations and
critiques are concerned with street life, and it is very important to be
aware that this is not the street life of working-class, ethnic
subcultural residential areas, but of business district streets,
distemic space that is not the turf of any particular group. These
passages epitomize the humanity of cities, and its ramifications. Here
we have macroscale behavior (corporate decisions) affecting microscale
everyday life adversely and positively, and we catch a glimpse of the
corporation not as an anonymous mass but as an organization of fallible
individuals like the street-ignorant executive. Here we have the
self-fulfilling prophecy working for good and ill. Here we have caring,
or at least personal curiosity, humanizing an otherwise anonymous scene.
Probably most of the people frequenting
these midtown Manhattan open spaces on weekdays are office workers and
retail
business employees enjoying lunchtime and other break periods away from
nearby
buildings; many are regulars, and so the scene is not completely
anonymous.
William S. Paley, whose foundation created and maintains Paley Park,
expressed the hope that such parks would spread and multiply (Shomon
1972:104). The result would be more corrective factors introduced into
the feedback system of distemic space behavior. Another example besides
Paley Park is First National Plaza in downtown Chicago where people
sitting on benches and parapets can look at a large mosaic mural by Marc
Chagall, paid for by a private foundation.
Formal parks and plazas have always been typical amenities of
Mediterranean and Latin American cities, serving very much the same
functions as those noted above. A famous: example in North America is
Jackson Square in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The streets of the
quarter are laid out in a grid pattern, and the square is actually a
plaza surrounded on three sides by important buildings: the cathedral,
two ornate structures that once housed important government offices, and
two rows of elegant residential buildings once the homes of upper-class
families (all reminiscent of Latin American cities). The French Quarter
survives from pre-industrial, colonial times, thanks to the efforts of
many people, and it would be foolish and futile to try to reproduce it
elsewhere. But to create spaces and opportunities for the kind of public
sociability it provides is a necessity for the present and future
humanity of cities.
Elegance is nice, but it is not a necessity for the humanity of distemic
space. Three examples will suffice. One of them is the "adventure
playground" that originated in Copenhagen and has spread widely in
Europe and Great Britain
(Lambert and Pearson 1974). Instead of immobile
play
equipment set in concrete, the adventure playground provides natural
ground and shrubbery; lumber, bricks, and other construction materials;
and the appropriate tools. With these items the children can build, tear
down, and rebuild to the limit of their imaginations. The other two
examples consist of the conversion of derelict urban space to vegetable
gardens and small
livestock farms. The ultimate goal is enlarged community life, based on
productive work. The two examples are the Inter-Action Centre, Kentish
Town, Borough of Camden, London, and the Bronx Frontier Development
Corporation, New York City.
Ed Berman founded Inter-Action in 1968. City farms and self-help
gardening clubs are only some of its activities, the others being a wide
variety of educational programs and activities and community building
projects. These
creative efforts have produced positive humanity where it did not exist
before, using derelict land. "According to Berman, the caretakers of the
surrounding [housing projects] say that vandalism has plummeted since
the opening of this City Farm. That in itself
is surely recommendation enough" (McKean 1977:50). Charles McKean
describes many other organizations in Great Britain that use abandoned
land to create jobs for the unemployed and build multidimensional
community lives for participants.
The Bronx Frontier Development Corporation has been active in the South
Bronx since 1976. By 1984, it had reclaimed 80 abandoned lots and helped
convert them into garden plots by providing topsoil produced from
manure from the Bronx Zoo and various Bronx riding academies and
discarded vegetables from the Hunt's Point Terminal Market. The
corporation has other activities, including coordinating the many other
gardens in the South Bronx (Flanagan, c. 1984). Another such reclamation
organization is Glie Farms Inc., founded with corporate venture
capital; it grows herbs for New York restaurants (Agins 1985b:1, 25).
Planning
Many city and regional planners seem unconcerned with everyday life in
distemic space. The result can be that carefully made and well-meaning
plans may lead to unsatisfactory outcomes. A case in point is the South
Commons urban renewal project in Chicago. Designed with a mix of high-
and low-rise buildings intended for upper- and lower-income families
and, implicitly, a variety of racial/ethnic-groups, the project did not
facilitate social integration. On the contrary, various groups
segregated themselves from the others, partly because, of their
differing patterns of using distemic space. Furthermore, un- wanted
visits from youths living in the area surrounding the project became a
problem. They regarded the project as an intrusion on their territory.
Deborah Pellow raises these issues with respect to what was wrong with
the planning process. One possibility is that mistaken idealism led to
accommodating too much heterogeneity in a small space. Another is that
needs and interests of the surrounding population were disregarded.
Pellow argues for anticipatory research focused on the location and the
people who will live in a development. No social impact assessment or
cultural profile was made for South Commons (1981:23).
There is a problem with designer/user separation. . . . What an
architect views as kitsch, the masses, for whom the architect is
designing, may regardas perfection.
And what the architect regards as attractive and functional, the users
may find discordant to their needs and tastes. The public space at South
Commons, the mall, which few would use, is a case in point (p. 24).
The architectural profession is prone to fads, and when they are
followed on a large scale, as in housing projects, the result can be
highly adverse, particularly when the architects' priorities are set on
professional ambitions, rather than on livability of the buildings. The
LeCorbusier fad, for example, inspired the Pruitt-Igoe project and other
housing disasters (Fishman 1977; Kimmelman 1987). Architects' and
planners' ignorance of, or insensitivity to, their clients' cultural
patterns can reach almost unbelievable depths, as in the case of Indian
professionals' failure to design in terms of other Indians' housing
needs for accommodating extended family and gender-segregated res~
idential patterns in Bombay (Choldin 1976:312-13).
It would be inaccurate and unfair to convey the idea that all architects
and planners are deficient in such knowledge and sensitivity. For
example, there is an increasing amount of research on precisely what are
the impacts, positive and negative, of high-rise dwellings on various
categories of people (Conway et al. 1977; Gillis 1983). There are also
sophisticated, sensitive, and thorough studies of the interrelations
between people and the constructed environments in which they live
(Porteous 1977; Rapoport 1982). A section of Amos Rapo- port's first
chapter is called "users' meanings and designers' meanings"; in it he
shows how divergent they can be (pp. 15-19). Equally insightful is a
book- length critique of British urban planning policies and projects
which invokes the great need for openness, opportunities for choice,
listening to those who will use or live in the buildings, and
identifying the rights and needs of silent, as well as vocal, client
populations (Eversley 1973:324).
GRASS ROOTS
Grass-roots efforts involve the mobilization of ordinary people to
achieve group interests against more powerful organizations such as
corporations and government bureaucracies. In much of the literature,
grass-roots groups appear to be the good guys against the bad guys.
While this is frequently so, small groups also are quite capable of
pursuing selfish ends to the detriment of other small groups, and
bureaucracies are not always as monolithic as they appear to outsiders.
On the latter point, we have noted the dilemma the Boston Housing
Authority faced regarding two conflicting policies both of which were in
the public interest. Furthermore,
many governmental decisions involve ambiguous legal and moral
considerations . . . when the public interest and interests of organized
interest groups are in conflict. Often an administrator's personal
interest is involved. In these situations, the ethical considerations
are more hazy and complex, and the governmental administrator may have
to assess:
1. The impact of interference by politicians and pressure groups on the administrative process;
2. The waste of public resources and the degree of public accountability for actions affecting individuals and groups;
3. Provisions for equal citizen access to government services even to those who cannot afford them;
4. The impact of secrecy in governmental decision-making upon the public
and upon rational discussion of alternative public policies; and
5. The use of insider knowledge for private gain (Murphy 1977:33).
With these cautions in mind, we proceed to an overview of the
grass-roots dimension of the humanity of cities. We have previously
referred to grass- roots efforts in a number of contexts. One
of the most important of these references is squatter settlements in
Third World
cities. Connected with squatter settlements is the serious and
technically
pragmatic effort to rationalize the processes of self-built house
construction
using cheap, locally available materials and structural features that
are
pleasing and suited to the environment (Fathy 1973; Turner 1977). Such
efforts have been vigorously opposed by those who gain from corporately
built housing.
Manuel Castells's The City and the Grassroots (1983) gives
detailed accounts of citizens' struggles against urban power structures
from sixteenth-century Europe to twentieth-century America. An example
of the type of struggle Castells chronicles is the sustained tenants'
movement in New York City that has gone through many phases throughout
this century, seeking not only equitable rents but humanization of the
entire landlord/tenant relationship (Lawson et al. 1986). The protracted
nature of this struggle carries an important lesson: the quick fix is
not to be expected when the power structure remains intact.
Existing grass-roots movements can be inhibited by
factors
less obvious than direct opposition. For example, Bryan Roberts
(1973:281-85)
shows that consumer cooperative and neighborhood organizations in
Guatemala City, while providing opportunities for social support, are
too localized to have any impact on large-scale political issues that
affect the actors. Different reasons among the actors for participation
can also deter sustained action. Karl Hess, who for several years tried
to establish hydroponic gardening in the Adams-Morgan district of
Washington, D.C., attributes what he sees as the limited effective- ness
of the Adams-Morgan Organization to the conflicting motivations for
participation among early members.
The counterculture people were. . . looking for a new way to make social
decisions. . . without social exploitation of one group by another. The
idea of a town meeting-with people who make decisions being responsible
also for carrying them out, and not merely for getting someone else to
do it- was understandable and inspiring to them. . . . Blacks in the
neighborhood had a clearly different view. The rhetoric of participation
was accepted and so was the form. But the reality behind it was. . .
power. Blacks. . . wanted . . . to have the power to make those
decisions-to have power in, not power to change, the system. Whites who
do not understand this can make fear- some mistakes in assessing the
meaning of black-white alliances for social change (1979:41-42).
In 1985, the author was a member of a group that visited
Adams-Morgan and talked with a spokesperson for the Adams-Morgan
Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC). A brochure said there are 30
ANCs in the District of Columbia, established by Congress on the model
of the original Adams-Morgan Organization. Each ANC has an elected
council which can lobby for public issues. ANCs receive a 3D-day notice
on all district government actions that
may affect them and have 30 more days to react. The ANC coordinates
a
variety of community activities and services, and it has
direct access to the mayor and city council of Washington. Regardless of
motives for participation, these are much needed innovations in
bringing ordinary, mostly poor and disadvantaged, people into direct
communication with the government.
Lack of two-way communication between people's small-scale everyday
lives and the large-scale bureaucratic context of those lives
contributes greatly to inhumanity in cities. The Hatikva Quarter in Tel
Aviv, for instance, has a stigmatized reputation as a violent, lawless
slum. While it awaits government "rehabilitation," Hatikva is
"under-administered" (Marx 1982:39), meaning that government services
are supplied poorly and irregularly.
Authorities tend to know little about local
affairs, and occasionally treat the area as if it were foreign
territory. Thus the police from time to time raid the area, arrest a few
drug
peddlers, and then withdraw. Because they lack local contacts,
authorities
depend on local political brokers whose influence depends on the
patronage they can offer to clients. Few such people have a permanent
following, but the authorities often assume that they lead factions (p.
39).
A large proportion of Hatikva's population consists of Jews from Yemen,
Iraq, and other Middle Eastern countries (Deshen 1982:32), and the Jews
of European origin who dominate the society tend to look down on
Oriental Jews. Hatikva lacks a grass-roots movement such as the
Adams-Morgan ANC that emerged from a deteriorated socioeconomic
situation. Emanuel Marx tells us some of the reasons why:
The inhabitants do not perceive joint interests
and therefore do not join forces. Sources of employment, and even most
entertainment, are located outside the area, and people disperse daily
in all directions. Neighborhood networks are the potential basis of
political organization for the inhabitants. ,
But they engage in mutual aid and cannot unite because there is no
communal issue to rally around, and no single authority to oppose. The
rehabilitation project could have become a focus for local organization,
but its community workers quickly made the residents of each
neighborhood de- pendent on their assistance. Central government works
against voluntary associations that could represent the inhabitants.
While associations can be set up relatively easily, they are then
co-opted by the authorities and thus lose their power. Or if they
persist in remaining independent, the authorities fear them and put
obstacles in their way (p. 44).
The essentials of the Hatikva situation are not peculiar to Tel Aviv.
The seemingly benign
cooptation of bureaucrats that sabotage grass-roots movements are found
everywhere. Consider the case of Karl Hess and his associates when they
sought funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a
science center that would provide an infrastructure for their project to
develop local food production in Adams-Morgan. The NSF sent a
sociologist to look into the project and turned it down cold. Hess's
group "did not meet the government-approved definition of a neighborhood
self-help program" (1979:46). Even at NSF such programs focus on
enhancing neighborhood people's ability to obtain welfare assistance
more effectively, not to produce their own wealth
and future.. '
Government programs aim at getting money for poor
people. Our hope was that knowledge would in the long run be more
useful, provide more money, and eventually strike at the system-causes
of poverty. We felt, and continue
to feel, that poverty is actually a lack of skill, and a lack of the self-esteem
that comes with being able to take some part of one's life into one's own hands
and work with others toward shared---call them social-goals (p. 46).
In a quite different way, the efforts of Nora Harlow (1975) and her
colleagues
to establish and maintain a cooperative day-care center and school in
Morningside Heights, New York City, were continually obstructed, though
not killed, by a variety of bureaucratic maneuvers. The center was to be
in a
storefront owned by Columbia University which owns most of Morningside
Heights and (in conjunction with other large institutional owners) has
succeeded in evicting more than ten thousand residents to make way for
nonresidential buildings. Court suits and demonstrations held up total
demolition (p. 3). One example of the obstructing behavior they
encountered follows:
The district consultant for city daycare was the first. . . to pay us
an official visit. . . . A sweet middle-aged woman who sat on a tiny
nursery chair with her knees up to her chin and talked to us about
better ways to make play dough and about hiring professionals who really
knew about children and about applying for government funding. . . . We
would not learn anything from this woman or teach her anything. Her
group was hierarchical, written record-making, money-exchanging,
impersonal; our group was circular, verbal, work-exchanging, personal. .
. . Our district consultant was pleasant over the phone. She asked if
we were still opposed to hiring teachers and getting funded and she said
that most of the last fifty violations could be disregarded. The rules
were being changed. She said she would record our violations as "in the
process of correction." . . . (1975:144-48).
Harlow and Hess, and their associates, are well-educated,
sophisticated, middle-class people who, though they have no political
power, have political know-how and are not handicapped by racial/ethnic
discrimination. Try to imagine the countless unrecorded obstructions
experienced by people who lack the advantages of Hess and Harlow.
Harlow mentions mass evictions in Morningside
Heights, and we
have previously mentioned other such cases of urban inhumanity, notably
the demolition of Boston's West End. We should add two verifiable
nineteenth-century examples: massive demolitions of poor peoples'
neighborhoods to make way for railroad stations in London and Baron
Haussmann's boulevards in Paris, both now regarded as historical
treasures. The feelings of the nineteenth- century dispossessed are as
forgotten now as they were probably disregarded at the time. It is a
plus for the humanity of cities in the twentieth century that some large,
powerful organizations have exercised great care and com- passion in
the relocation of tenants from properties they wished to redevelop. One
case is the expansion of the campus of the Mother Church of Christ,
Scientist, in Boston. The church advised the tenants many months in
advance rather than 30 to 60 days, paid relocation expenses, and also
paid a reputable rental agent to help the tenants find new quarters.
Several hundred people living in 42 old buildings "found new
quarters-and did so without the rancor so often associated with
evictions brought on by 'urban renewal'" (Marlin 1973:39).
Local grass-roots movements are necessarily political. They
require leadership, organization, and persistence. Often, if not always, they are triggered by a crisis; in the
Green point-Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, in 1975, the
threat that the city would close the local firehouse, at a time of high
arson rates, resulted in its occupation for 18 months by an activist
family. An already existing network of politically active, working-class
women made this effort possible (Susser 1986:112-13). In Durham, N.C.,
in 1978-79, a coalition of blacks and middle-class whites (with somewhat
different goals) successfully prevented completion of an expressway
which would have destroyed a black neighborhood (Luebke 1981:256).
Subcultural homogeneity-be it social class or ethnic-is not a
prerequisite for effective local grass-roots political action. In fact,
some observers might argue the reverse. Matthew Crenson, for example, in
his study of politically active neighborhoods in Baltimore, found that
it is frequently the relatively rich people, living in relatively poor
neighborhoods, who provide the leadership (1983:301). Crenson also has
some hopes that sustained local political organizations may eventually
have various beneficial effects on governance of the city as a whole
(pp.296-97).
Lisa Redfield Peattie, an American city planner (and daughter of the
anthropologist Robert Redfield), lived for an extended period in La
Laja,
a working-class neighborhood in Ciudad Guyana, Venezuela, a new city
being built by American and Venezuelan engineers and bureaucrats to
produce steel from nearby iron mines. Peattie had roots in La Laja, but
she also had contacts with the city's power structure that people of the
barrio did not. And so she was able to play an important role in a grass-roots movement to prevent the pollution of the barrio's water supply by the construction of a sewer (1968:85-89).
Besides leadership, an essential element in organizing for local
livability is a well-defined locality in which some residents have pride
and where people are willing to look out for one another (Young
1981:30). How its inhabitants view the neighborhood is, however, a
complicated issue, as Roger Ahlbrandt (1984) has shown in connection
with the great diversity of neighborhood inhabitants' attitudes, social
statuses, and styles of political activism in Pitts- burgh.
Diversity, between and within neighborhoods, sometimes results in
conflict within the local community. Such was the case with the
Manhattan Valley Development Corporation (MVDC).
Manhattan Valley is a deteriorating working-class area south of Columbia
University between Central Park West and Broadway. Local citizens
formed the MVDC primarily to work for more low- cost housing in the
area. Nevertheless, it made local enemies, one charge being that it was
seeking power for its own sake (West 1981:29-32). Such conflicts may
inevitably accompany social action. The research of Tridib Banerjee and
William Baer among blacks, whites, and Hispanics in Los Angeles leads
them to believe that the familiar model of the homogeneous neighborhood
as the basic building block of urban social life may be insufficient
because it is too narrow and too static. They propose the design of
residential areas that consist of dwelling clusters for people of
different income classes, combined with public facilities, mixed private
and public facilities, and private commercial establishments. Such
arrangements, recognizing the reality of social heterogeneity, would
make better services available and make the area more adaptable to
change
Meanwhile, there is no scarcity of ideas on how to organize grass-roots
movements, particularly at the neighborhood level. Among the substantial
books on this subject are Robert Cassidy's Livable Cities (1980), Rolf Goetze's Building Neighborhood Confidence (1986), 8Jld Howard Hallman's Neighbor- hoods: Their Place in Urban Life (1984).
There are also surveys of neighborhood satisfaction and
dissatisfaction, such as one which covered the entire city of Flint,
Mich. (Charles Stewart Mott Foundation 1979).
Many of the sources cited in this section on grass roots mention
interactions between individuals, and so they help to counteract the
well-entrenched feeling that bureaucratic organizations are dehumanized,
anonymous monoliths. Four books that further reinforce this important
point are Mario Cuomo, Forest Hills Diary (1974); John Goering, Maynard Robison, and Knight Hoover, The Best Eight Blocks in Harlem (1977); Chester W. Hartman, YerbaBuena (1974); and Nick Wates, The Battle for Tolmers Square (1976).
In 1972, Cuomo (subsequently governor of New York) was an attorney in
private practice in New York City. Mayor John V. Lindsay asked Cuomo, an
experienced negotiator, to serve as the city's fact-finder among all
the disputing parties in a prolonged confrontation between citizens'
groups in Forest Hills and other parts of New York City. The city,
backed by the federal government, had made plans to build three 24-story
apartment buildings in Forest Hills for low-income, inner-city
families. The project was part of a "scatter-site" program based on the
theory that if poor people, previously heavily concentrated
in inner-city slums, were relocated in smaller concentrations in
different, more affluent areas of the city, they would enjoy beneficial
results. The Forest Hills people, mostly middle class, Jewish, and
politically liberal, op- posed the project primarily on the grounds that
a large influx of poor, black families would bring with it such an
increase in crime that their community would be destroyed. After much
bitter turmoil, a compromise was finally reached: three 12-story
buildings, one of which would be for elderly people.
Cuomo's book is in diary form, and although he labels many of the actors
with pseudonyms, he makes the Forest Hills affair come alive as a
dispute among real individuals, not as a war between impersonal forces.
His diary also includes numerous insightful observations and thoughts.
At about the same time, the Upper Park Avenue Community Association (UP
ACA) had been formed to build low-cost housing and rehabilitate older
buildings to restore East Harlem as a residential area for poor
families. UP ACA was locally controlled but also supported in various
ways by foundations and government agencies. It made a good start, but
eventually failed because the federal government's reduction of funds
for urban housing was a catalyst for the surfacing of insurmountable
differences in policy between local and externally interested
participants. Furthermore, the new housing was priced beyond the means
of poor people who were pushed elsewhere, as typically happens with such
projects (Goering et al. 1977:188). This book, like Cuomo's, takes the
reader step by step, and person by person, through the career of the
project and, in doing so, it is very informative about motivations, pure
and mixed.
Hartman chronicles the 20-year struggle (1953-73) between Tenants and
Owners in Opposition to Redevelopment (TO OR) and the San Francisco Re- development Authority (SFRA) over an SFRA
proposal to build a convention center on the south side of lower Market Street,
necessitating complete destruction of the area:
About 4,000 persons were living in the South of
Market area slated for destruction to make way for Yerba Buena Center.
Apart from about 300 families, residents of South of Market were for the
most part single, elderly, male and poor, surviving on the meager
proceeds of Social Security and small pensions. Some were alcoholics.
Most, however, were retired or dis- abled working men who had come to
the South of Market to spend the remaining days oftheir lives. The area
and its 48 residential hotels provided them with inexpensive housing and
eating places. It was sunny and flat, in a city where hills and fog
abound. It was downtown, near Market Street, the city's transportation
hub, and other facilities they needed. Most of all, it provided them
with a community of other single men with common back- grounds,
experience and problems. People looked out for each other and took care
of one another. Men gathered to talk, watch television, and just be with
other people in the hotel lobbies, streets, restaurants and bars. South
of Market was their family and their home (1974:96-97).
Hartman does not refer to single-room occupancy (SRO) in discussing the
48 residential hotels, but it is very likely that SRO was frequent in
them.
TOOR brought suit against SFRA to insure that relocated housing in other
parts
of the city be provided, but even with such provision, the social fabric
of
South of Market would be destroyed. Hartman is specific in delineating
who all
the major actors were. Knowing what kinds of people can organize
movements like TOOR and what other kinds of people can disregard the
humanity of South of Market in the interest of speculative profit is
valuable information for those who believe in the essential humanity of
cities. One of the causes of the great increase in the number of
homeless people in American cities in the 1980s is the reduction in the
amount of available low-cost housing, and the priorities that destroyed
South of Market are major factors in the increase in homelessness.
Like Hartman, Wates provides a chronology of events (1957 to 1976) in The Battle for Tolmers Square. Tolmers
Square is a neighborhood near the University of London campus. Already
crowded by high-rise office buildings (which have become a glut on the
London market), Tolmers
Square residents were, beginning in the 1950s, invaded by buy-outs and
evicted
by speculators planning to build more office buildings. They organized
and eventually succeeded in getting the government to buy back the land
from the speculators and make plans for a mix of office and residential
buildings, some new, some rehabilitated. Wates's account of events, in
which he was a participant, is notable not only for the interplay of
specific individuals, but also for the involvement of different levels
of government, including shifts in power between the Conservative and
Labour Parties..
All four of these books provide small-scale perspectives on large-scale
events, and thus humanize them. As to the effects of grass-roots
movements on the humanity of cities, we close with Cuomo's final
sentences:
I believe there is much to learn from this significant episode in the
history of urban government. Forest Hills tells us a great deal about
the true feelings of the people actually involved on both sides of the
issues. It points
up the huge gap between abstract sociological
propositions and
their efficacy-or lack of it-when nailed down to the Procrustean bed of
urban reality. It shows up dramatically the difficulty of attempting to
sell by means of homily-and the brandishing of moral obligations-social
cures that require sacrifice by some for the good of others. It shows,
painfully, the need for more effective devices of communication between
centralized urban government and the communities affected by
governmental projects. And it reminds us that one of the serious
impediments to the resolution of
complex confrontations is the tendency of the parties to maintain fixed
and extreme positions, the lack of subtlety in dialogue and
argumentation, the loss of reasonableness. . . . In the end, any
description of the Forest Hills experience will inevitably raise more
questions than it answers and will necessarily be in part depressing and
in part hopeful. But then, that will always be true: there will always
be more problems than solutions; more to be done than has been done;
more quests than conquests. The game is . only lost when we stop trying
(1974:150-51)
CONCLUSION
During the 1980s, the American people were bombarded by
political
rhetoric largely composed of mindless optimism and threats of
international
disaster. The optimism glossed over most of the social issues emphasized
in this
book, and the threats were used to justify the expenditure of more money
than
the federal budget could afford on military armaments. The point of view
under-
lying this book is that there will indeed be national and international
disaster
(including urban disaster) unless many people apply well-informed and
innovative optimism, backed by ample resources, to ameliorate the issues
we have discussed.
Greed for money and power and fear of others' greed are the prime movers
behind humankind's being in many ways its own worst enemy. Social
science, including anthropology, provides little insight into how these
powerful emotions are generated, and the religious explanation (original
sin) has no pragmatic
value in this world. Social science has, however, delineated the
complexities of
the effects of these emotions, and it has shown how those effects can be
combated, as for example, in the grass-roots movements we have
considered.
Throughout this book, we have referred to national, international, and
worldwide problems of humankind's own making that affect life in cities
but are not city specific. Effects of these megascale phenomena are felt
even at the receptive microscale level of the individual city dweller.
The least we can do is to face them, to accept their reality, in a
spirit quite different from that of mindless optimism. Only by facing
them can people combat them.
What's on humanity's agenda for the 21st century? In a series of interviews
. . .
leading thinkers have identified. . . the first-intensity items. . . to which
humanity must devote its full attention and its unstinting resources. . . .
(1) The threat of nuclear annihilation.
(2) The danger of overpopulation.
(3) The degradation of the global environment.
(4) The gap between the developing and the industrial worlds.
(5) The need for fundamental restructuring of educational systems. (6)
The breakdown in public and private morality (Kidder 1987:D-1).
The nuclear threat affects cities in two obvious ways. One is that the
arms industry diverts enormous amounts of money and brain power from
constructive
purposes including the needs of cities. One percent of the world's
annual
military expenditures amounts to about $6 billion. This sum spent each
year for
the next 15 years could improve world food production and health
measures so
that the widespread malnutrition among the world's poorest people
(including millions of urban squatters) could be alleviated by the year
2000 (Grant 1983: 49-50). One percent!
Ironically, arms manufacture provides millions of jobs in many cities of
the world, and there are vested interests in maintaining this situation
quite apart from strategic military ones.
Military expenditures include much more than arms manufacture, of
course, but nuclear arms manufacture is a major part of this entire
world scene in which power seeking, greed, and fear are prime movers.
Who can turn the situation toward different, more constructive goals?
Clearly, powerful people who are able to persist in innovative
leadership must be involved. James MacGregor Burns, the distinguished
historian and political scientist, has said:
I am trying. . . to develop a theory of leadership that embraces
power but is much more subtle and realistic than crude theories of
power. Leaders recognize common needs. As the leaders tap those
motivational bases. . . [and] reach down to the genuine and authentic
needs and wants of the people, then there is a transformation of leaders
as well as
. . . followers.
The great distinction between the power wielder and the leader is
that the power wielder is trying to achieve his own purpose, separate
from that of
the follower-to be a governor, to make a million, to lead a movement. . .
. The leader is leading-arousing, recognizing, and satisfying the
followers' fundamental needs. In turn, the followers are being raised up
to higher levels of self-fulfillment and self-realization and
self-actualization and the higher levels of moral judgment-and all this
rebounds back on the leaders and affects them (1981:9).
An example of power wielders, in Burns's terms, are the real estate
developers who were transforming the shape of Manhattan in the 1980s
solely for their own profit. "There are the bad guys, and then there are
the extraordinarily bad guys," Joe Klein quotes one of his respondents
as saying, "Some of these guys think that if they can't make $100
million on a building. . . it's not worth doing" (1986:32).
Ordinary people need not remain passive in the face of such power
wielding, and indeed there are growing efforts at resistance and the
bending, at least, of some priorities:
[C]ities are facing increasing pressure from community activists to
redistribute the spoils of booming downtown development. . . . [C]ity
planners are linking more new building permits to commitments from
developers and new businesses to provide jobs, open space, child-care
facilities and other amenities. San Antonio, for instance, pressured
builders of a Hyatt Regency Hotel into allowing a Mexican-American group
to invest $1 million in exchange for an equity stake in the project.
The District of Columbia is considering requiring outside banks that
want to acquire banks in the city to establish branches in poor
neighborhoods, provide up to $100 million in loans to city-sponsored
projects, create up to 200 jobs and sell food stamps. . . . Hartford,
Conn., Chicago and Seattle. . . are waging campaigns for. . . "linkage"
fees, that would be levied on downtown developers. The
taxes-already levied in San Francisco and Boston-would then be
used for projects designed to ameliorate the social and economic dislocation
[such as gentrification] that activists claim downtown growth causes throughout
a city (Waldman 1987:1).
This discussion has led from the nuclear threat to greed and fear to
urban power wielding, and at this point, we should
take note of the Marxist critique of Western industrial urban dynamics,
including its effects on Third World cities. This critique must be taken
seriously by anyone who cares about the humanity of cities, and one need
not be
an ideological Marxist to do so. Simply put, the Marxist critique is
that the
capitalist profit motive determines the morphology, growth, and social
relationships of cities, with social class exploitation as one of the
results;
in the form of international conglomerates, capitalism has contributed
to
lessening necessary, but unprofitable, food production in rural areas of
the world, resulting in massive migration of poor people to cities.
There is enough evidence supporting this argument that non- Marxists
should accept it as a serious and legitimate challenge, rather than
belligerently and thoughtlessly denying it. A very thorough presentation
of the Marxist critique as applied to cities is David Harvey's Social Justice and the City
(1975). The Marxist solution is revolutionary destruction of the
capitalist system. What alternatives are there? This chapter is
suggesting some that are actually being tried, but none of them is
perfect. Can they be improved?
Overpopulation is discussed at many points in this book. It directly
affects cities in various ways, the most conspicuous being growth rates
and magnitudes unprecedented in human history. The only humane solution
to the over- population problem is, obviously, drastic reduction in
worldwide birth rates, and that depends on most of the world's
child-producing couples' having no more than two children. So far, only a
small proportion of those couples have realized that reduced fertility
is in their own interest and that of their off- spring. Many of these
couples live in cities, but it is not true that city dwellers as a whole
have low fertility-as we have pointed out previously. Many people in
the world still believe they should have a large number of children-to
achieve social status among their peers, to maximize the family work
force to augment its income, to insure (they hope) support in old age,
or to please a deity. Finding effective ways to counteract these values
and behavioral pat- terns is one of the tasks of family planning
agencies and institutions in almost all parts of the world. Until these
efforts become noticeably successful, people must live as best they can
at the same time that expanded efforts are made to control the problem.
Chronic unemployment and its dire consequences, ultimately including
starvation, may lead to a much more widespread realization that low
fertility is in one's own self-interest, regardless of contrary
considerations. For example, in Mexico, if the average number of
children per couple were reduced from 4.61 to a projected 2.62, urban
growth would be reduced by 14 million people by the year 2010, and there
would be 200 thou- sand fewer job-seekers by the year 2000 (Nesmith
c.1985-86:23-24). Such abstractions do not influence behavior very much,
but the realities they rep- resent can do so.
One observer contributes an encouraging note that has megascale implications:
Now, quite unpredictably and unexpectedly, and in
just the last three or four years, out in most of our two million
villages, we are showing a startling capacity to change. Suddenly, human
fertility is falling; and agricultural productivity, rising, often
spectacularly. . . . One can date the change. . . to about 1974-1975.
Although I was given different local reasons in each country, the scope
of what is happening is too broad to be coincidental. . . . Yearly
population growth rates are plummeting, from 2.5-3 percent in the 1960s
to 1-1.5 percent now, in village regions as scattered as India's Kerala
and Mysore states, Sri Lanka, China and the Chinese-cultured countries
from South Korea to Taiwan and the islands of Java and Bali. Scientific
farming (high-yield, quick-maturing grain, multiple cropping, nitrogen-
fixing crops, year-round irrigation) is spreading very fast. . . . An
exodus of
villagers from cities and back to the land has begun, catching most
governments by surprise. India's Planning Commission has just ordered it
studied. In Djakarta, it is overwhelmingly evident; more food in
villages being the pull, fewer unskilled jobs in the modernizing city
being the push (Critchfield 1979:18).
Richard Critchfield's demographic data come from areas where, in many
cases,
family planning programs have been particularly intense, unlike other
areas
where population trends are not so encouraging; and costs, as well as
benefits,
of "scientific agriculture" are a matter of serious controversy.
Nevertheless, Critchfield's presentation suggests future developments
that could bode well for humanity, including the humanity of cities.
In the meantime, there is the worldwide problem of environmental
degradation, a problem many people, because of short-term self-interest,
choose to ignore. For millions of city dwellers, however, the problem
is coming closer and closer to home, and the necessity for remedial
action more and more obvious. Consider, for example, garbage disposal.
American cities are running out of space for landfills, and the most
feasible alternative disposal method is burning. The garbage-burning
business is profitable, for the process can be harnessed to generate
electricity. However, garbage-burning plants threaten the environments
of blue-collar neighborhoods in some cities. One of their byproducts is
toxic waste of various kinds, according to some experts (Paul 1986). If
harmless waste disposal were to become technically impossible, then
waste disposal itself might become an agent that, like permanently
diminished water supply, might stop further growth of cities.
Developers and politicians typically deny such a
prospect,
but despite such opposition, water planning is increasingly frequent. We
have
already mentioned the mandated 10 percent nationwide decrease in water
consumption in Israel, and cities as different as Phoenix and Atlanta
are making plans and taking steps to conserve water in the future. These
actions are, or will be, extremely expensive and do not predict
unlimited amounts of water in the future. The farsighted planning and
the expensive and probably widely un- popular measures needed to adapt
successfully to these vicissitudes will entail the kind of leadership
Burns describes, and the eventual results could be an enhancement of the
humanity of cities.
The gap between the industrial and developing worlds-basically a North/
South gap-refers to the problems inherent in the gross disproportion
between the wealth and power of industrial nations and the poverty of
Third World ones whose people constitute the majority of humankind. We
have seen how
this situation affects Third World cities, with their dual economies.
The formal
economy is tied in various ways to Western industrialism, while the
informal is
composed of the millions of efforts of poor people to survive by means
of
marginal jobs. Milton Santos (1979) refers to these two economies as the
upper
and lower circuits of Third World urban economies. We have noted the
resourcefulness and ingenuity of lower-circuit work and criticized its
denigration by some development economists. However, we have also noted
the concern expressed by observers like Peter Lloyd that the types of
informal work by which squatters have typically supported themselves
relatively well may diminish. Santos says that increases in productivity
and better life conditions of the people now in the lower circuit are
needed (p. 205). Virtually the same recommendation is made in a report
prepared by the Urban Development Department of the World Bank (1985:3).
Santos refers to several concepts and processes whose importance for the
humanity of cities we have frequently discussed: evolution,
vicissitudes, and the interactions between macroscale phenomena and the
microscale realities of everyday life.
Santos discusses needed changes in the "south." Erhard Eppler, minister
for development cooperation of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1968-74,
discusses needed changes in the "north":
It is not our job to make countries of the South self-reliant-that is
what they can only do for themselves-but it is up to us to give these
nations a basis for interdependence in the future. We have not yet done
so. . . . We have to change our model of development to give the
Southern countries a chance to change theirs. . . . (1) We have to stop
or even reverse [the arms race]. If we fail to do so . . . economic
mechanisms. . . will crush all the attempts at a new model of
development. Debt servitude and self-reliant development contradict each
other. (2) We have to overcome the obsession with growth, even. . .
with GNP. What matters is not the rate of growth but its direction and
quality. . . . It is not the consumption of energy or raw materials or
land that should grow, but every production or every service that can
help us to save energy, to save or re-cycle raw materials, to prevent
waste, to save or restore ecological cycles. . . . Changing our own
pattern of development can have three positive effects on the South: (1)
We are no longer forced to export destruction. (2) We liberate the
elites of the South from the compulsion to imitate our traditional model
and increase their chances of finding their own. (3) Once we are less
occupied with the disastrous
results of our development, there might be some resources left, material
as well as human, to help others (pp. 62-64).
The fifth and sixth high-priority twenty-first-century
issues Rushworth
Kidder lists-the need for fundamental restructuring of educational
systems and the breakdown in public and private morality-have clear
implications for city life. To mention only a few, Starr's and Pileggi's
discussions of misbehavior in distemic space include questions about
improvement. New methods and content of teaching livable urban behavior,
including on-the-spot law enforce- ment, are necessary. Fundamental
changes in education, for the sake of public and private morality, were
included, too, in the deliberations of a 1985 con- ference at which
violence in American culture was perceived as a public health problem
(Holden 1985:1257).
New kinds of learning-learning that directly affects behavior-are implied
in our last two examples involving misbehavior in distemic space. In March 1987, The Wall Street Journal ran
a front page article on the "rampant rude- ness" in American society.
The article is long on anecdotes by infuriated victims
of public rudeness and rather short on analysis. Nevertheless, it cites
materialistic preoccupation, high stress levels in a competitive "me
first" environment, and boorishness carried over from interethnic
conflicts of the past as contributing to the problem. Judith Martin (the
newspaper columnist, "Miss Manners") is quoted as saying, "We're a half
step above rock bottom"; the good news: "Only recently, we were at rock bottom." She adds: "I see some hope because the problem has been identified" (The Wall
street Journal 1987:22). A Roman taxi driver stated another
identification of the problem (a first step in finding solutions): " 'We
should do things more intelligently, less selfishly. People ought to be
better mannered,' he said at the end of a nerve-wracking but spirited
drive" (Eisner 1987:A-2).
Cities and their inhabitants are affected not only by worldwide
phenomena such as those Kidder reviews, but also, as we have repeatedly
seen, by national policies and cultural patterns. Two very different
discussions of urban growth policies in the face of economic problems
come from the World Bank (1987) on Third World cities and Marc Levine
(1984) on United States cities. Levine's article has a Marxist, but not
revolutionary, orientation.
Racism is clearly an issue involving profound moral concerns, but it is
more virulent in some societies than others, and it is still a very
serious issue in the United States and its cities despite all the real
progress toward integration that has been made. At the end of their book
on the Miami race riot of 1980, in which 18 people died, Bruce Porter
and Marvin Dunn say:
The lesson brought home most vividly by Miami seems to be the same one
offered up by the earlier riots. . . . That keeping blacks in a position
of economic and social isolation and of political disenfranchisement
and where they feel deprived of basic human justice can be allowed to
continue only at greater and greater peril to the health, safety and
peace of mind of every member of American society (1984:178).
Here, then, is part of the challenge. What present policies should be
rein- forced, and what new ones should be adopted, to meet the
challenge? David Schplz, in his Pruitt-Igoe housing project study, says:
Do away with the basic economic injustice and. . . the odds are that a
style of life more closely resembling that of the core culture will
emerge because there is no longer any need to adapt to isolation and
deprivation. . . . [A]s Andrew Buchanan put it, "Don't ask me why I eat
chittlins, I eat chittlins because I can't afford steak."
Project dwellers. . . want very much to be able to live like the average
American. However, because they cannot and because it is painful to
continue to
evaluate oneself by norms that are unattainable, they have accepted an
alternate set of norms that enables them to maintain some sense of
self-esteem in the midst of their isolation and deprivation. Chittlins
are now a significant part of what is called "soul food" in a further
attempt to make desirable what is most readily attainable and to provide
a concrete sacrament bestowing identity within a black brotherhood.
Some form of income maintenance that goes beyond providing a minimum
subsistence level of living for poor Americans seems. . . the most just.
. . and most likely. . . means of eliminating poverty and. . . its
culture.
. .
[I]f the black American is to benefit equally from such
reforms, racial dis- crimination must cease. . . . The most acceptable
form of such a program
. . .
is one that ties income as closely as possible to a job. The majority
of project dwellers would rather work than receive a dole and, in fact,
the majority of the poor do work and still remain in poverty.
American cities are in crisis, the need is pressing to rebuild the
American dream concretely in cities once more fit for human habitation.
The economic and technological resources necessary to meet the poverty
problem }lead- on are at hand. This problem must not be evaded any
longer (1969:193-95).
During the 1970s and 1980s, the problem continued to be evaded, partly
for
reasons of national-level political ideology. The need continues to be
as pressing as ever, if not more so. As far as the fiscal aspects of
national urban policy are concerned, Richard Morris (1978) blames the
Federal government and the national banking system for the fiscal
crisis, and the social science journal, Society,
devoted a whole section in one of its 1986 issues to "coping with
cutbacks." The
introduction to this section emphasizes the innovative responses that
have evolved (MacManus and Clark 1986:49). Martin Sable (1984:42-48)
lists and briefly describes a number of urban research and action
programs active in the United States.
Under the heading, "Partnerships for Urban Problem Solving," Gail Schwartz sets a positive tone:
American cities present rich and varied experiences
in
dealing with urban problems. The belief that diversity of problems
demands a
diversity of solutions has been translated into a number of creative
approaches.
Federally funded demonstration grants have supported diverse experiments
in
neighborhood preservation, economic development, [and] manpower
training. . . . Demonstration grant programs. . . use the community as a
social laboratory; their purpose is not necessarily to replicate
successful procedures but. . . to generate a variety of models. . . .
Private philanthropic foundations. . . have also played a pivotal role
in assisting community groups to implement programs and to leverage
public funds. Banks, insurance companies, retailers, and utility
companies are taking major parts in most restoration efforts. Voluntary
agencies. . . often initiate community action. Many cities. . . have
also taken steps to decentralize responsibility for planning,
programming, budgeting, and delivering services. But aspirations
toward self-help and self-management in neighborhoods and demands for
more direct citizen control of local government are sometimes at odds
with equally strong demands for increased efficiency in government. The
potential conflict between these objectives is very great. . . .
[C]onscious efforts must be made to achieve a balance in government
processes between negotiating (a bargaining process) and steering (a
directing process). . . .
Still a long way from evolving into primary vehicles of local
government, community groups do have a recognized role as intermediary
organizations. . . . [A]n inevitable tension exists between the
institutionalization of such organizations and the traditional
responsibilities of local government. Intermediary organizations are
extremely diverse in origin, objectives, com- position, organization and
accomplishments. . . . Some are national in scope and have their
origins in large social movements and organizations such as the Urban
League, which represents the interests of black Americans. Some are
limited in scope to a few blocks and focus on the welfare of the
immediate residents. . .. For simplicity, intermediary
organizations. . .
[are] categorized as neighborhood preservation groups, public-private
re-development organizations, human capital/human resource
organizations, comprehensive community development organizations, and
network organizations (1981:69-70).
Some organizations of the sort to which Schwartz alludes can, in time,
be- come static "establishments," and so it is important to be aware of
the ability of city dwellers to mobilize in response to new communal
needs~ often crises. For example, the earthquakes that struck Mexico
City in September 1986 killed more than four thousand people, injured
thousands more, and left about 300 thousand homeless.
The calamity occurred in a country. . . already in the "adjustment
process" imposed by its 100 billion dollar debt, and in a city in
permanent crisis- where the. . . "marginal people" account for more than
half the population and where pollution, traffic congestion, housing
and public services deficit
. . .
are growing continually (Esteva 1986:73).
And how did the citizens of this already beleaguered city respond?
On September 25, just 6 days after the first earthquake, more than 100
grass-roots organizations, encompassing both victims and support groups,
decided to constitute the Self-Help Network. . . to serve as the
liaison between those needing support and those who can and want to give
it. It . . . has already enabled the joint implementation of various
emergency actions (p.74).
A very different kind of crisis is the growing epidemic of acquired
immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). AIDS is affecting many people in
other parts of the world including heterosexual and homosexual persons,
infants and children, and blood transfusion recipients of both sexes and
all ages. One example of community mobilization in response to it comes
from Greenwich Village in New York City. Greenwich Village is an
affluent old Manhattan neighborhood with a population of about 61
thousand. It has long been famous as the residence
of artists, writers, and bohemians, and in the 1980s it was assumed to
have a
homosexual population of 25 to 30 percent, or about 18 thousand per-
sons. In
1987, at least seven hundred people with AIDS, out of more than nine
thousand
cases in the city as a whole, were concentrated in the Village. Ac-
companied by
the unprecedented frequency of young adults' deaths and incapacitation,
the
epidemic has had a powerful impact on the community. Sixty AIDS support
groups
meet each week in the Village: healing circles, bereavement groups, and
groups for parents of AIDS victims, for women with AIDS (one provides
baby-sitting), for veterans with AIDS, even a group conducted in Spanish
(Graham and Ricklefs 1987:1).
In conclusion, let us once again open up our
perspectives in space and time: [O]bdurate factors of the economy and
national policy work against cities. But there is a distinct danger in
being so mesmerized by the pathology of cities that one fails to see the
rich opportunities in them. . . . [C]ities have always had problems of
poverty, decay, exploitation, and sometimes, actual starvation and mass
death. Even in their most golden periods, appalling physical and social
conditions existed within cities. None of this is surprising;
cities embody the best and the worst of the human condition. Arts and
advanced
mercantilism often exist side by side with every evil of exploitation,
from addiction to alcohol and drugs to poverty. But somehow, cities have
survived through the centuries, with new social hierarchies,
new economic functions and new physical profiles (Peirce and Hagstrom 1981:144).
This sense of dynamism-of the ever-presence of vicissitudes-is one of
the essentials of urban life, and it is important that city dwellers
maintain a positive view of it.
To assert that the humanity of cities is real is not to claim that
cities ever were, are now, or ever will be, utopias. What is claimed is
that the humanity of cities requires the constant striving for the best
by and for all city dwellers, rich and poor, and that this striving, to
be successful, must be informed by knowledge and awareness of all the
options offered by life in the cities of the world.
SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL READING
Appleyard, Donald. Livable Streets. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1981.
Advocates planning and
activism in conjunction. Many photographs.
Breines, Simon, and William J. Dean. The Pedestrian Revolution: Streets with- out Cars. New
York: Vintage, 1974. Acknowledging Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs, among
others, for their inspiration, the authors write in the same spirit as
William H. Whyte (1980). Excellent photographs.
Fornos, Werner. Gaining People, Losing Ground: A Blueprint for Stabilizing World Population. Washington,
D.C.: The Population Institute; Ephrata, Pa.: Science Press, 1987. A
succinct, factual, and eloquent presentation of the magnitude of the
population problem; its various threats to the survival of humanity,
including city dwellers; and the political obstructions that make coping
with the problem more difficult than it would be otherwise.
Huth, Mary Jo. The Urban Habitat: Past, Present, and Future. Chicago:
Nelson- Hall, 1978. Discusses British "new towns" in some detail, as
well as other experiments in improving urban life. Photographs.
Perin, Constance. Everything in Its Place: Social Order and Land Use in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. Perin emphasizes the effects, for
good
and ill, of American cultural values on housing and urban land use,
consistent with a theme of this book that cities are parts of larger
systems of values.