Chapter 4: Ecology and Political Economy Perspectives

Prediction is difficult. Especially about the future.  -Casey Stengle

INTRODUCTION 

Much has been written of the American city: its internal structure, its forms of social organization, its peoples and lifestyles, and its problems. The sociologist Louis Wirth suggested that these various topics could be viewed empirically from three interrelated perspectives: (1) as a physical structure comprising a population base, a technology, and an ecological order, (2) as a system of social organization involving a characteristic social structure, a series of social institutions, and a typical pattern of social relationships, and (3) as a set of attitudes and ideas, and a constellation of personalities engaging in typical forms of collective behavior, and subject to the characteristic mechanisms of social control¹. In this chapter we shall be concerned with the first two of these perspectives: the spatial and social structure of the city and how it affects and is affected by the city as a system of social organization. We will aslo examine how those espousing political economy or world systems theories of urban development see sociospatial patterns as the outcome not of ecological forces but as a result of the contradictions and conflicts in capitalist society. Wirth's third area of focus, urbanism as a system of lifestyles and values, will be discussed in Chapter 7: Urban Lifestyles.

Development of the Urban Ecology 

The classical urbanization model, urban ecology (sometimes called "human ecology"), developed out of a concern with the form and development of modern American city, and particularly with the relationship between the community's social and physical structure. Early urban ecology is associated with the so-called Chicago School of scholars working at the University of Chicago in the first half of the 20th century. Members of the Chicago School were concerned with systematically documenting both the patterns of urban change and the consequences of these changes for social institutions such as the family. Led by researchers such as Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, and Roderick McKenzie, the Chicago School produced  a prodigious number of studies.

The interest of the Chicago sociologists was not simply in mapping where groups and institutions were located, but also in discovering how the sociological, psychological, and moral experiences of city life were reflected in spatial relationships. As expressed by McKenzie, human ecology "deals with the spatial aspects of symbiotic relationships of human beings and human institutions."² Park was interested in how changes in the physical and spatial structure shaped social behavior. He felt that "most if not all cultural changes in society will be correlated with changes in its territorial organization, and every change in the territorial and occupational distribution of the population will effect changes in the existing culture."³ This postulate of "an intimate congruity between the social and physical space, between the social and physical distance, and between social equality and residential proximity is the crucial hypothetical framework supporting urban ecological theories."⁴ 

Ecology in its broadest sense is the study of the relationships among organisms within an environment. It is the study not of the creatures and objects themselves but rather of the relationships among them. The community together with its physical habitat form an "ecosystem." Park and Burgess gave particular importance to the role played by competition, especially economic competition, in shaping the city's physical and social organization. The Chicago School's emphasis on competition came not from Marx's analysis of capitalism so much as from the ecological models being used to study the then-new subjects of plant and animal ecology. Ecological reasoning thus traces its theoretical underpinnings to Charles Darwin's research on evolution.

Urban ecology is concerned with examining the independence and interdependence of specialized roles and functions (recurrent patterns of behavior) within the society. In examining the relationship between people and their environment and people within their environment, the level of analysis focuses on the aggregate level. The issue is the properties of populations rather than the properties of the individuals who constitute them. Thus, it is based on the study of groups rather than individuals - and this focus on the group or aggregate is basic to sociology, as opposed to disciplines such as psychology in which the focus is on the individual. Urban ecology does not – and cannot – explain the beliefs, values, and attitudes of individuals while they are performing certain activities.⁵ The term function, as used by by ecologists, means recurrent patterns of activities that depend on other activities. Structure, to the ecologist, is the orderly arrangement of the parts that make up a whole, the loci within the functions or activities that are performed.

Classical ecological theories of the human community were consciously based on evolutionary theories explaining plant and animal development. Just as a person driving from the desert into the mountains finds that different soil, water, and temperature affect the bands of growth of the plants; by analogy, in a drive from a city’s business district to its outlying suburbs, there are differing zones of development. In all these theories, competition – the Darwinian struggle for existence – played a core role. In the city, as a consequence of economic competition for prime space, there emerged distinct spatial and social zones. The internal structure of the city thus evolved not as a consequence of direct planning, but through competition, which changed areas through the ecological processes of invasion, succession, and segregation of new groups (e.g., immigrants) and land uses (e.g., commercial use displacing residential use). Economic competition was thus seen as the engine driving the spatial and social organization of the city.

Ecologically oriented sociologists stressed the social as well as the economic aspects of competition for urban space. They also stated that within the city individuals and groups also compete for power and for control of particular neighborhoods or space. In their study of ethnic and racial neighborhoods, they examined the relationship between residential proximity and social equality. They found that in the large city, where one’s social position is not widely known to everyone, spatial distance was often substituted for social distance – thus the importance of a fashionable address in the “right” neighborhood.  

Note that ecological models place emphasis on competition and changing technology. By comparison, neo-Marxist and political economy models emphasize the deliberate planned actions of government officials and economic elites in shaping urban patterns. Both ecological and political economy models have in common the belief that change occurs through conflict. They differ in whether the source of that conflict comes more from economic competition or from deliberate planned political and economic decisions.

Invasion and succession 

The history of the American city is the story of the invasion of one land use by another. Chicago ecologists were concerned with how change in community areas comes about. The end result when one group or function finally takes the place of another is called succession.⁶ None of the patterns of land use within a city are permanently fixed, although sometimes zoning laws attempt to fix them. Areas once characterized by single-family houses have been converted to apartment, commercial, or industrial use –  and sometimes today back to residential use; this is succession. Viable communities always are in the process of changing. Ecological patterns are dynamic. Cities that do not change become historical tourist attractions or stagnant backwaters. 

Today one of the most spectacular instances of invasion and eventual succession is found in urban ethnic changes. Today, the new ethnic group “invading” an area is often Latino or Asian. Another example of population invasion is the flow of limited numbers of affluent young whites to inner sections of the central city. This in-migration is not to areas of new housing, but rather to older neighborhoods in a state of some decline. This rehabilitation, or “gentrification,” of the central city neighborhoods is discussed in Chapter 11: Cities and Change. 

Early sociologists of the Chicago school were particularly interested in the segregated areas. The Chicago sociologists called these areas natural areas, since they were supposedly the results of ecological processes rather than the planning or conscious creation by any government unit. When zoning laws were established, the regulations generally recognized such natural areas of apartment houses, single-family neighborhoods, commercial areas, warehouse districts and the like so as to maintain existing land-use patterns. A number of minor sociological classics, such as Wirth’s book The Ghetto and Zorbaugh’s book The Gold Coast and the Slum, deal with so-called natural areas.⁷ (The so-called defended neighborhoods discussed in Chapter 7: Urban Lifestyles might be considered a contemporary version of natural areas.) 

Criticisms of Ecology 

As noted earlier, the heavy emphasis on competition in traditional human ecology, plus the nonsocial nature of some of the variables, disturbs contemporary political economy critics.  Those taking a political economy approach see the city shaped more by deliberate political decisions than do ecologists who emphasize economic competition more. Political economy scholars argue that spatial patterns are the result of deliberate actions taken by capitalists, or that they are the outcome of the contradictions in capitalist development.⁸

A less valid criticism of ecology was that it borrowed concepts from other disciplines. As one critic put it, “As the ecologists have admitted, practically all their basic hypotheses have been derived from natural science sources – and the influence of certain geographers and economists is apparent.”⁹ To such critics the multidisciplinary base of human ecology was a weakness rather than a source of strength. However, as expressed by Leo Schnore, “the central role given to organization – both as dependent or independent variable – places ecology clearly within the sphere of activities in which sociologists claim distinctive competence, i.e., analysis of social organization.”¹⁰ 

Not everyone has agreed with ecology's macro-level focus.  The “sociocultural” school of ecology renewed emphasis on cultural and motivational factors in explaining urban land-use patterns. Sociocultural ecologists tend believe that early human ecology overemphasized economic factors while ignoring social-psychological variables. Walter Firey demonstrated in a study of land use in central Boston, for example, that many acres of valuable land in the central business district had been allowed to remain in uneconomic use, such as, for example, parks and cemeteries.¹¹ He suggested that “sentiment” and “symbolism” play an important part in determining spatial distributions, as in maintaining Boston Common. 
 

BURGESS’S GROWTH HYPOTHESIS 

The most famous early product of the spatial-organizational concerns of the Chicago school was Burgess’s concentric-zone hypothesis, first presented in 1924.¹² We discuss the Burgess hypothesis today because it provides a good model of American urban growth up until roughly 1970, and the patterns set in that earlier time still influence how how most cities look today. Later models of urban growth all use the Burgess model as a point of departure. Burgess suggested that city growth was not random or haphazard but the consequence of ecological factors. The Burgess hypothesis suggests that cities grow radially through a series of concentric zones: from the valuable land of the central business district (CBD), through the zone of transition, the zone of workingmen’s homes, and the zone of better residences to the commuter’s zone (see Figure 4-1). Competition for prime space, plus demographic considerations such as population growth and social factors such as social power and prestige (used to explain elites' move to the suburbs), were the factors that drove this model.

When introductory sociology students are exposed to the concentric-zone hypothesis it is all too frequently as a static picture of city structure. This is unfortunate, for what Burgess was positing was a growth model, not a model of how things are as much as a model of how things change- changes such as from the simpler preindustrial model in which there is no clear segregation of city land for specific functional purposes, to the more complex industrial city pattern of segregated land usages (e.g., central business district, manufacturing, and different residential zones). Burgess's hypothesis is a model or "ideal type," of how industrial cities evolve spatially as a result of competition for prime space.

Burgess suggested that the most valuable property goes to those functions that can use space intensively and are willing to pay the costs. Thus the ecologist would expect the land located at the center of the transportation network to be occupied by intensive space users such as department stores, major business headquarters, and financial institutions. An economic model of land use developed by William Alfonso points out that only those who can pay the most can occupy CBD land.¹³ Costs include not only price, but also taxes and nuisance factors (congestion, noise, pollution, etc.) from other nearby land users. In the industrial city of the first half of the twentieth century, centrally located land was taken by economic units, such as department stores, which could effectively use space and required heavy pedestrian traffic. Consumption-oriented commercial activities still tend to be the most centrally located; production-oriented activities are in the next ring out; and residences are the least centralized.  

Residential users cannot pay the high cost of central location and do not want the pollution, noise, and congestion of trucks rumbling down the street and a factory next door. Consequently, there is a tendency toward an inverse relationship between the value of land and the economic status of those who occupy it. In inner areas higher land costs are compensated for by density of use. Through crowding, a slumlord can compensate for higher costs by density of use. Since land in outer suburban areas is less valuable, less intensive use, such as single-family houses on large lots, becomes economically feasible. Thus, as you move out from the center of the city to the periphery, land values and rental per acre tend to grade downward, while the rental housing per unit grades upward. Where people live spatially reflects their position socially.  

Concentric Zones 

So that they can serve as a baseline form from which to examine more recent patterns of change, zones are presented here essentially as they existed during the first half of the twentieth century.  

Zone 1 was the central business district: the economic and (usually) the geographical center of the city. The heart of the zone was the retail shopping district, with its major department stores, theaters, hotels, banks, and central offices of economic, political, legal, and civic leaders. Consumption-oriented commercial activities tended to locate at the very core of the CBD, while the outer fringes, with lower rents, contained the wholesale business district: markets, warehouses, and storage buildings. Today the old warehouse districts are often the site of trendy restaurants and apartments. At the same time, most American cities, such as Baltimore, Detroit, and Omaha lack even a single downtown department store.¹⁴ Meanwhile, the function of providing downtown office space and convention centers is increasing.¹⁵  

 Until the inner city deindustrialization of the 1970s, Zone 2 – the zone in transition – contained both older factory complexes, many from the last century, and an outer ring of deteriorating neighborhoods of tenements. The zone in transition was the area where immigrants received their first view of the city. Immigrants settled in the cheap housing near the factories because they could not compete economically for the more desirable residential locations. The zone in transition was known as an area of high crime rates and social disorganization.

As the immigrants moved up in socioeconomic status, they moved out spatially and were in turn replaced by newer immigrants. Thus, a nonrandom spatial structure or pattern emerged, with groups of lower socioeconomic status most centrally located. Today most of the warehouses and slums have been destroyed by urban renewel or have been turned into gentrified neighborhoods prized for their central location.

Zone 3 was the zone of “working people’s homes.” This was the area settled by second-generation families, the children of the immigrants; it was the place where one moved to from the inner core. Typically, the father of the family had a blue-collar job, while the children planned to move out of the old neighborhood, perhaps to live in the suburbs (See Chapter 9, Changing Suburbanization Patterns). Blue-collar families shown in TV sitcoms invariably resided in Zone 2.

Zone 4 was called the “zone of better residences.” This was the outer city zone of the great middle class – small business owners, professional people, sales workers, and those holding white-collar jobs. However, even in the 1920s this zone was in the process of changing from a community of single-family houses to one of apartment buildings (that is, there was an invasion of new land-use patterns). 

Burgess's final zone was the “commuter zone” or suburbs. Before World War II the commuter zone was comprised of the upper-middle-class and upper-class dormitory suburbs. Here were found the classic suburban life patterns – the husband leaving in the morning for the city and returning in the evening; the wife raising the children, maintaining the house, and participating in civic affairs. Chapter 6: The Suburban Era discusses changes in suburban lifestyles. 

Burgess's model has had considerable practical consequences. For example, while few real estate agents realize it, the Burgess-based filtering-down housing model, which suggests that housing and neighborhoods inevitably filter from higher-status to lower-status populations, was used to determine housing values. As Chapter 11: Cities and Change details, this led to policies of disinvestment in the central city. Urban gentrification, by contrast, turns Burgess’s pattern inside out. Not only older residences, but also central commercial property and warehouses are now being converted into housing. 

Limitations

Over the years Burgess’s hypothesis has come under severe criticism on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Burgess’s zonal boundaries “do not serve as demarcations in respect to the ecological or social phenomena they circumscribe, but are arbitrary divisions.”¹⁶ This is an overstatement, but it is clear that Burgess’s zones are not totally homogenous units. When evaluating Burgess’s hypothesis, we have to keep in mind that he was proposing a "model" or "ideal type" of what American cities would look like if other factors did not intervene – but, of course, other factors do intervene. Burgess’s own statements make it clear that he recognized the effects of distorting factors. He said:

If radial extension were the only factor affecting the growth of American cities, every city in this country would exhibit a perfect exemplification of these five urban zones. But since other factors affect urban development (including) situation, site, natural and artificial barriers, survival of an earlier use of a district, prevailing city plan and its system of transportation, many distortions and modifications of this pattern are actually found.¹⁷

The question, then, is not whether the zonal pattern is an exact description, for is obviously is not. The question is whether the growth patterns of American cities were well described by Burgess’s model. To date, empirical tests have both supported and failed to support Burgess’s hypothesis.¹⁸ Research shows that a rough version of Burgess's model does appear to have held up, at least for larger and older American cities, until the suburban era of the last 30 years or so.¹⁹ Schwirian and Matre, on the other hand, found a more mixed pattern in their study of Canada's 11 largest cties.²⁰ As later chapters will demonstrate, for more recent decades population growth, job growth, and office growth have concentrated heavily in the suburbs.  

SECTOR AND MULTIPLE-NUCLEI MODELS 
 

Based on his study of 142 cities, Homer Hoyt proposed what has become known as the “sector theory.”²¹ Hoyt said that rather than growth through rings, growth took place in homogenous pie-shaped sectors that extended radially from the center toward the periphery of the city. His research indicated that residential areas extended rapidly along established lines of travel where economic resistance was least. A pattern of land use was said to develop in which each use – industrial, commercial, high-income residential, or low-income residential – tended to push out from the city core in specific sectors or wedges that cut across concentric zones. 

Thus, high-income housing could radiate from the core in one wedge, a racial ghetto in a second, industrial firms in a third, and working-class residences in a fourth. The sector theory focuses attention on the role of transportation arteries. Although originally developed to explain city patterns, the sector theory easily explains development out along interstate and other major highways. Thus it is a particularly useful modification of the Burgess hypothesis when discussing the postwar development of suburbs. 

AThe multiple-nuclei theory of spatial growth rejects the idea of a unicentered city altogether and instead holds that as a city grows it develops distinct centers of activity, and that in contemporary cities these different land uses have different centers. Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman argued that land-use patterns developed around what were originally independent nuclei.²² Four factors were said to account for the rise of the different nuclei:

1. Certain activities require specialized facilities. Retailing, for example, requires a high degree of accessibility, while manufacturing needs ample land and railroad service.
2. Like activities group together for mutual advantages, as in the case of the central business district.
3. Some unlike activities are mutually detrimental or incompatible with each other. For example, it is unlikely that high-income or high-status residential areas will locate close to heavy industry.
4. Some users, such as storage and warehousing facilities, which have a relatively lower competitive capacity to purchase good locations, are able to afford only low-rental areas.²³

In many respects the multiple-nuclei hypothesis better describes the entire metropolitan area than it does the central city. Contemporary suburbia, with its mixture of outlying shopping malls, office and industrial parks, and residential areas, does indeed exhibit a multinucleated pattern when seen from the air.  

Amos Hawley stressed the importance of the transportation net in a multinucleated theory of growth.²⁴ He notes that within metropolitan areas there is not one retail business district, but a hierarchical, multinucleated system of districts. Second- and third-rank business districts particularly develop at transportation intersections where traffic converges from four directions. Greater specialization of both services and products is found at the CBD, while outlying centers offer more standardized services and items. We will explore this further in Chapter 5: Metro and Edge City Growth. 

URBAN GROWTH OUTSIDE NORTH AMERICA  

The Burgess concentric-zone pattern of urban growth, which suggest an increasing status gradient as one goes from the city core to the periphery, has never been very satisfactory model of patterns of urban growth outside North America.²⁵  

In cities with a nonindustrial heritage, there appears to be an inverse zonal hypothesis. That is, instead of the poor in the inner core and the elite farther out, the central core is occupied by the elite, whereas the disadvantaged fan out toward the periphery.²⁶ In such cities, it is common to find a pattern in which upper-class and upper-middle-class groups occupy the city proper and poor in-migrants settle on the “suburban” periphery in squatter shantytowns. These favelas, barriadas, gecekondulas, or bustees can be found on the periphery of almost every major city in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. 

There is good reason to question just how applicable Burgess’s theory is to older European cities.²⁷ In the older cities the elites preempted the prestigious central locations and the poor were forced to live in more peripheral locations. Manufacturing and commerce, when located within the city, were restricted to specific areas. Thus, in London the central districts of Westminster, Marylebone, and Kensington have continued to retain their upper-class airs for two centuries. Moscow, before the Russian Revolution, clearly had the urban structure of a preindustrial city with its inverse zonal pattern.²⁸

As European cities industrialized during the 19th century, central land was already filled, so heavy industry was confined to “suburban” areas where there was sufficient land. Thus, Paris has a concentration of automobile and aircraft factories to the south and east of the city. The poorest areas of Paris are not in the city, but in the government-built high-rise suburbs where North African newcomers live. Thus in France protesters are routinely bussed in from the suburbs. By contrast, the inner-city middle-class districts vote for the more conservative candidates – exactly the opposite of the American stereotype.

Gideon Sjoberg sees this pattern of identification of high-status groups with central-city location as a persistence of a “feudal tradition” that is not present in American cities. In his view, “In many European cities, including those in Russia, the persistence of the feudal tradition has inhibited suburbanization because high status has attached itself to residence in the central city.”²⁹ 

However, New York doesn’t have a feudal tradition, but it still has a pattern of the well-to-do locating in certain areas of Manhattan. Cosmopolites, whether in London, Paris, or New York, simply prefer to live where they can easily get to work, where they can find a full cultural life, and where they can easily get a cappuchino or find a deli open at 2 A.M. It can be argued that, particularly in Europe, upper-class urban populations live in the city because they feel it is an exciting and attractive place to live. 

THE POSTMODERN CITY: THE LOS ANGELES SCHOOL 

Probably the most discussed new way of looking at cities is provided by the so-called Los Angeles School of urban scholars. Scholars of the Los Angeles School such as Michael Dear, Michael Davis, and Edward Soja set themselves up in direct opposition to the Chicago School.³⁰ What they suggest is that Los Angeles, with its fragmented spatial and social pattern, rather than Chicago with its dominant central core, is the model for the future. The culturally and socially diverse Los Angeles metro area is not an exception to the pattern, they argue; it is the new pattern. That is, L.A. and southern California are a "polygot, polycentric, polycultural pastiche that is deeply involved in rewriting American urbanism."³¹ 

Thus, the L.A. School turns the older Chicago School on its head by arguing that the multicultural way of life is the new postmodern norm in which the periphery is now the core. As Charles Jencks writes, "Los Angeles, like all cities, is unique, but in one way it may typify the world city of the future: there are only minorities. No single ethnic group, nor way of life, nor industrial sector dominates the scene. Pluralism has gone further here than in any city in the world and for this reason it may characterize the global metropolis of the future."³² Los Angeles is not an exception to the rule; it is the rule.

The assertion  that Los Angeles represents the new paradigm for the city has not been without critics. Robert Beauregard suggests, for instance, that the overuse of superlatives and the suggestions that Los Angeles is the "first" on one or another measure slips from science into an academic boosterism that is at odds with empirical research and critical theory.³³ This problem emerges when the writers lose the critical mind-set in which a city illuminates some important urban trend in the making, replacing it with superlatives to suggest the city in question is the prototype of a new pattern.³⁴   

We now go on to examine political economy models, for just as the Chicago zonal hypothesis was part of a larger ecological model, the Los Angeles School is usually seen as being subsumed under the heading of political economy models.

POLITICAL ECONOMY MODELS

With its premise that economic competition for space produces the spatial order of cities, urban ecology remained the dominant model of urban change until the 1970s, when it was challenged by the emergence of political economy paradigms. Political economy advocates argue that you have to look beyond the city to national (and possibly world) patterns to understand massive changes such as city declines, suburbanization, or deindustrialization. Some argue that such neo-Marxist conflict-based models now have become the dominant paradigm.³⁵

A note on terminology: In the 1970s, models critical of capitalist patterns were commonly identified by their advocates as neo-Marxist, in the 1980s they were referred to as the "new urban sociology," and since the 1990s they have commonly  been referred to as "urban political economy." These name changes often (but not always) reflect real theoretical changes. Today there is some difficulty making statements that cover all political economy adherents. While most of those using the political economy identification remain Marxist or neo-Marxist, some others are clearly not. For example, Manuel Castells, whose seminal Marxist analysis, The Urban Question, provided a basic critique of existing sociology and the theoretical underpinning for Marxit urbanism, in later works revised his thinking away from his earlier class conflict-based Marxist approach.³⁶ What is common to the political economy perspective is that it focuses on the role played by human agency, and especially the actions of the corporate economic elites and political institutions that do their bidding. Political economy emphasizes not impersonal economic forces producing uniform ecological patterns but how urban systems are structured to give advantage to some groups and disadvantage to others.

  "Like urban ecology, political economy is concerned with systems of dominance and subordination operating across spatial boundaries. Unlike urban ecology, these systems are seen as driven by the actions (or inactions) of particular groups pursuing their particular interests, sometimes with a vengeance. The focus is on how various political economic systems usually operate, which groups tend to hold more power, and who tends to benefit and who is likely to lose from 'the way things are' in cities."³⁷ Urban political economy thus looks at social power and how urban decisions favor the powerful at the expense of others. Also, while the Chicago School researchers initially was (sic) on cities of North America and the developed world, urban political economy has given considerable attention to cities in the developing world, especially cities in Latin America.

Figure 4-2, prepared by David Smith and Michael Timberlake, presents a schematic description of key elements in the political economy perspective. The figure shows how macrostructures establish ever-narrower parameters for urban outcomes and infrastructures going from the global world system down to the specific infrastructure of a city. The city's (or nation's) role is seen as being shaped and constrained by the particular historical period or particular economic specialization required during times of economic expansion or contraction. Thus, while ecological approaches are likely to rely on the statistical analysis of large data sets, political economy is more likely to look to case studies of particular cities emphasizing how political struggles and decisions shape the urban social and built environment.

POLITICAL ECONOMY ASSUMPTIONS

All theoretical models are built on a number of assumptions underlying the work and analysis. The following five assumptions are taken from the work of Joe Feagan and have been modified and simplified somewhat by David Smith and Michael Timberlake.³⁸

        1. Cities are situated in a hierarchical global system, and global linkages among cities help define the structure of the world system. Cities and urban life in both developed and developing countries are largely shaped by their specific location and involvement in the world system. Groups in some areas, both historically and in the present day, "exploit" groups and resources in other regions. As a result, major social differences (e.g., patterns of urbanization) across the globe have much to do with how the region fits into the international; division of labor and with how local systems of class, race/ethnicity, and gender relations have developed in connection with the operation of the world system.

        2. The world system is one of competitive capitalism. The world system is drive, to a significant degree, by the logic of capitalism and is, therefore, competitive. Locally based actors (e.g., local politicians and business people) attempt to outbid one another for access to capital, cheap labor, and resources. Competitive capitalism when transmitted to geographical space involves the creation and destruction of the land and built environment we term "cities." It also leads to the concentration and shifts of populations within urban space into neighborhoods, slums, and suburbs.

        3. Capital is easily moved; locations of cities are fixed. Gains and losses are usually calculated within corporations. Owners and managers of companies act to maximize the profitability and ensure the survival of their firms. Actions to do this often include moving capital (in the form of factories and production facilities, corporate offices, etc.) from one location to another to attempt to improve the "bottom line." Investments and disinvestments often have profound effects on the locals and localities, many of which are cities. This can lead to "capital drain" and "deindustrialization" in these places.

        4. Politics and government matter. The state in modern capitalist states is linked to the economic processes that form cities. Both local and national politics play a major role in setting the rules and "greasing the skids" for business profitability. Contrary to the assumption that capitalist economies are driven by free market, states fundamentally help determine the flow of capital over the globe, including from one city or region to another. The policies of political jurisdictions - on corporate taxes, road building, the regulation of workers, and so on - help define the local business climate, which in turn strongly influences patterns of urban growth or decline.

        5. People and circumstances differ according to time and place, and these differences matter. Specific economic and state forms do not develop automatically or inevitably. They develop as the results of conscious actions taken by social classes, acting together or singly, in particular historical or structural circumstances. In other words, cities are shaped by real flesh-and-blood people making decisions in particular situations. Decisions are made by people, not "variables" or "social forces." People may support or oppose the existing system, or they may support alternatives.

EXAMPLES OF THE POLITICAL ECONOMY APPROACH

Now that the major characteristics of the political economy approach have been defined, we will look at some example of how it is applied.

The Baltimore Study

David Harvey, a Marxist geographer, in a well-known study analyzed the real estate market in Baltimore as an example of how capitalists, motivated by profit, use government programs to change the spatial use of the city.³⁹ Harvey discussed that the city was not one housing market but a number of different markets. The poor lives in public housing or used government housing programs, the middle class often used FHA (Federal Housing Authroity) or VA (Veterans Administration) government-backed home loans, and the upper-middle class used savings or commercial bank loans. Harvey suggested that the capitalist economy builds the city it needs, and it uses government policies and programs to protect its profits and investments. Real estate investors see little financial sense in putting capital into decaying and poorer neighborhoods. Profits are greater in high-rent neighborhoods and outer suburbs. Thus, they deliberately disinvest in the central city. In effect, they create blight.

Government urban renewal programs using public funds are then used to physically restore blighted areas and put in infrastructure improvements so that real estate investors can again make a profit. According to Harvey, financial capital (investment capital) rather than industrial capital (business or manufacturing capital) determines the future of the cit y. Urban growth or urban blight are not some sort of automatic processes. Rather, they are consequences of directed actions by financial capitalists seeking to maximize profit without regard to the needs of the urban population.

Harvery also argued that capitalism consistently produces more surplus investment than can be used (chronic over accumulation) and that changes in the built environment such as suburbanization, gentrification, and urban renewal are ways of using surplus capital.⁴⁰ Private mass-market housing is also used as a means of preventing population unrest and providing social stabilization.

Urban Growth Machines

John Logan and Harvey Molotch present a conflict, but non-Marxist, analysis of urban growth. They say that an "urban growth machine" ideology influences American urban growth.⁴¹ Pushed by bankers, developers, corporate officials, and real estate investors, the growth machine ideology influences local governments to view cities not as places where people live, work, and have social relationships, but solely as a place where it is necessary to create a "good business climate." A good business climate means that a growth machine is created in which increasing the value of commercial property comes ahead of community values, neighborhood needs, or a livable city. In their terms, "Cities become organized enterprises devoted to (raising) the aggregate rent levels through the intensification of land usage."⁴² Municipal officials broadcast the advantages of growth, such as a larger tax base and more jobs, while ignoring problems of growth, such as greater traffic congestion, environmental damage, higher home costs, and loss of community.

Local residents, in contrast to business and local government officials, see their neighborhoods as places for living and often wish to maintain their character through controlling traffic flows, restricting building heights, and keeping open spaces. Their communities are social space to them, not just economic sites. Conflict comes when local populations seek to limit negative impacts of growth on their community while the growth machine defines all growth that raises property values as good growth.

Local governments are largely in the pockets of major economic interests. Thus, revitalizing the city means downtown improvements for business, not assistance to local communities. Inner-city poverty is ignored unless it affects business. The global economy means that local groups have less political influence. Business interests are less tied to local areas and concerned with local needs. Industrial capital goes where the profits are greatest. The sole question in urban land use thus becomes "Will it make money?" rather than "Is it good for the city?" The assumption of the political economy model is that profit shapes the city.

World Systems Theory

When taken to the level of the global economy, urban political economy is often associated with world systems theory. World systems theory suggests that what happens to individual cities is not a result so much of what happens in their own region as to where these cities fit into the world hierarchy of cities. Capitalism organizes cities around the globe into overarching geopolitical and economic systems.⁴³ Cities of the economically developed "core" of North America, Europe, and Japan are home to multinational corporations that dominate the world economy. The professionals working for the corporations make good livings, and the urban areas in which they live have a wide range of housing and social choices. The core region is seen as exploiting the rest of the globe.

Counties in the "peripheral" underdeveloped Third World provide raw materials and raw labor. Their cities have small elites living in luxury and large numbers living in slums in poverty. As of 2001 the average worker in the developing world makes less than $2 a day. Third world cities offer few social amenities to their residents. Cities in "semi-peripheral" counties such as Brazil, Argentina, and most of eastern Europe fall in between. They are tied to the core, but lack the control and resource base of core cities.

World systems theory, then, emphasizes that there is a hierarchy of cites in the world, and this hierarchy is based upon the economic power the city commands. The ability of a city to attract global investments ultimately determines its rank order among world cities.⁴⁴ Major core global cities manage the global economy and offer the most advanced financial, service, and production operations. This global hierarchy produces inequalities among world cities.

World systems theory implicitly assumes that so long as world capitalism continues to dominate the globe the existing core-periphery system of inequality will persist. On the other hand, critics point out that recent history suggests countries can change their economic position. South Korea and Taiwan, for example, have moved from underdeveloped to economically developed in a generation. The strength of political economy and world systems models is that they focus attention on the historical context and political issues. Contemporary political economy faces the challenge of continuing to develop as the urban world changes. Michael Smith argues that it is necessary to move beyond global cities to thinking of transnational urbanism.⁴⁵   

Challenges

The challenge of the political economy model is to adapt what began as a neo-Marxist model to a world that has largely abandoned Marxism.⁴⁶ Since 1989 most "socialist" regimes have collapsed, and even China, while retaining the socialist title, has largely adopted a capitalist economic model. However, the political economy model need not be wedded to a neo-Marxist perspective. Works such as John Logan's on urban growth machines point out how local political action becomes less effective in an era of transnational capital and an international division of labor.⁴⁷ Local people have little power and leverage when confronting international corporations quite willing to move jobs abroad to save money, even if it destroys local communities. Such scholarship expands the political economy model.

Similarly, ecologists need to develop models that focus more on the social patterns and economic structure of the early 21st century than on those of the early 20th century. The challenge for urban theorists is to move beyond old issues and revise both the current ecological and political economy models so that they speak to a 21st century world.

SUMMARY

Cities can be viewed as (1) a physical structure, (2) a system of social organization, or (3) a set of attitudes and ideas. This chapter is concerned with the first two: the relationship between the spatial and social organizational aspects of urban places. The two major models describing how this occurs are the ecological model and the political economy model.

Urban (or human) ecology traces its underpinnings to Darwin's research on evolution and stresses the role played by competition within the urban environment. The history of the American city tells of the invasion and succession of one group or land use by another. The most famous product of the Chicago ecological school is Burgess's "concentric zonal" urban growth model. Ernest Burgess suggested cities grow radially through a series of concentric zones. Occupancy of prime land goes through competition to the users willing to pay the highest cost, either economic or in terms of congestion and pollution. Zone 1 was the central business district (CBD), Zone 2 a factory and tenement zone of transition, Zone 3 an area of working people's homes, Zone 4 an area of middle-class residences, and Zone 5 the suburbs. Homer Hoyt suggested an alternative "sector theory" model in which growth proceeds out from the center not through rings but in fairly homogeneous pie-shaped wedges. The Burgess hypothesis reasonably describes American urban growth prior to the 1970s. It does not prove a particularly useful model for non-American cities.

The Los Angeles School suggests that L.A., with its multicultural population and its dispersed noncore spatial organization, is the model of the postmodern city of the future. Political economy models challenge the economic competition emphasis of ecological models. Since the 1970s conflict-oriented political economy models - often Marxist based - have stressed the importance of power. Conflit models emphasize the crucial role played worldwide by capitalist economic systems. Political economy models look to issues of power and how corporate economic elites and political institutions make decisions that favor global corporate interests at the cost of individuals.

John Logan and Harvey Molotch provide a conflict-based, but non-Marxist, analysis of urban growth. They suggest that an "urban growth machine" ideology influences local governments to view cities not as places where people live and work but solely as a place where it is necessary to create a "good business climate." This means that increasing the value of land comes ahead of community values, neighborhood needs, or the livability of the city.

When applied to the global economy, political economy is commonly associated with "world systems theory" which suggests cities' economic viability depends on where they fit into the world hierarchy of cities. Cities at the economically developed "core" of North America, Europe, and Japan contain the multinational corporations that control the world economy. Peripheral third world countries are permanently relegated to marginal status and expoited for their raw materials and cheap labor. Traditional world systems theory suggests that as long as capitalism persists, the core-periphery inequality will continue and countries can't change from one status to the other. However, recent history indicates that some countries such as South Korea and Taiwan have moved from periphery to core status. World systems theory is changing as economic realities change.  

ENDNOTES

¹ Louis Wirth, “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” American Journal of Sociology: 44: 18-19, July, 1938.

² Roderick Duncan McKenzie, The Metropolitan Community, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1933

³ Robert Park, Human Communities: The City and Human Ecology, free press, New York, 1952, p. 14.

⁴ Ralph Thomlinson, Urban Structure: The Social and Spatial Character of Cities, Random House, New York, 1969, p. 9.

⁵ Some members of the "sociocultural" school of human ecology would dispute this statement.

⁶ The term function as used by ecologists means recurrent patterns of activities that depend on other activities. Structure is the orderly arrangements of the parts that make up the whole, the loci within which the functions or activities are performed.

⁷ Louis Wirth, The Ghetto, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1928; and Harvey W. Zorbaugh, The Gold Coast and the Slum, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1929.

⁸ Mark Gottdiener, The Social Production of Urban Space, University of Texas, Austin, 1985.

⁹ Warner E. Gettys, “Human Ecology and Social Theory,” in George A. Theodorson (ed.), Studies in Human Ecology, Harper & Row, New York, 1961, p. 99.

¹⁰ Leo Schnore, “The Myth of Human Ecology,” Sociological Inquiry, 31: 139, 1961.

¹¹ Walter Firey, “Sentiment and Symbolism as Ecological Variables,” American Sociological Review, 10: 140-148, 1945.

¹² Ernest W. Burgess, “The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project,” Publications of the American Sociological Society, 18: 85-97, 1924.

¹³ William Alonso, “A Theory of Urban Land Market,” in Larry Bourne (ed.), Internal Structure of the City: Readings on Space and the Environment, Oxford University Press, New York, 1971, pp. 154-159.

¹⁴  J. John Palen, The Suburbs, McGraw-Hill, New York, p. 182.

¹⁵ For a detailed analysis of CBD changes in Baltimore and Hapsburg, Germany, see Jurgen Friedrichs and Allen C. Goodman, The Changing Downtown: A Comparative Study of Baltimore and Hapsburg, Walter de Gruyter, New York, 1987.

¹⁶ Milla R. Alihan, Social Ecology, Columbia University Press, New York, 1938, p. 225.

¹⁷ Ernest W. Burgess, “Residential Segregation in American Cities,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 140: 108, November, 1928.

¹⁸ Leo F. Schnore and Joy K.O. Jones, “The Evolution of City-Suburban Types in the Course of a Decade,” Urban Affairs Quarterly, 4: 421-422, June, 1969; Joel Smith, “Another Look at Socioeconomic Status Distributions in Urbanized Areas,” Urban Affairs Quarterly, 5: 423-453, June, 1970; and Lee J. Haggerty, “Another Look at the Burgess Hypothesis: Time as an Important Variable,” American Journal of Sociology, 76: 1084-1093, May, 1971.

¹⁹ J. John Palen and Leo F. Schnore, “Color Composition and City-Suburban Differences,” Land Economics, 41: 87-91, February, 1965.

²⁰ Kent P. Schwiran and Marc D. Matre, “The Ecological Structure of Canadian Cities,” in Kent P. Schwiran (ed.), Comparative Urban Structure, Heath, Lexington, Mass., 1974.

²¹ Homer Hoyt, “The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities,” U.S. Federal Housing Administration, Washington, D.C., 1939.

²² Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman, “The Nature of Cities,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 252: 7-17, 1945.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Amos H. Hawley, Urban Society: An Ecological Approach, Wiley, New York, 1981.

²⁵ Bruce London and William G. Flannagan, “Comparative Urban Ecology: A Summary of the Field,” in John Walton and Louis H. Masotti (eds.), The City in the Comparative Perspective: Cross National Research and New Directions in Theory, Sage, Bevery Hills, Calif., 1979, pp. 41-66.

²⁶ Gideon Sjoberg, The Preindustrial City, Free Press, New York, 1960, pp. 97-98.

²⁷ London and Flanagan, op. cit., p. 56.

²⁸  Walter F. Abbot, “Moscow in 1897 as a Preindustrial City: A test of the Inverse Burgess Zonal Hypothesis,” American Sociological Review, 39: 542-550, August, 1974.

²⁹  Gideon Sjoberg, “Cities in Developing and in Industrial Societies: A Cross-Cultural Analysis,” in Philip Hauser and Leo F. Schnore, The Study of Urbanization, Wiley, New York, 1965, p. 230.

³⁰ See, for example, Michael Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, Verso, New York, 1990; Michael Dear,  The Postmodern Urban Condition, Blackwell, Oxford, 2000; Michael Dear, ed. From Chicago To L.A.:Making Sense of Urban Theory, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2001; and Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographics: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, Verso, New York, 1989.

³¹ Michael Dear, "Los Angeles and the Chicago School: Invitation to a Debate," City and Community 1(1):6, 2002.

³² Charles Jenks, Hetropolis: Los Angeles, the Riots and the Strange Beauty of Hetro-Architecture, St. Martins, New York, 1993, p. 7.

³³ Robert A. Beauregard, "City of Superlatives," City and Community 2(3):179, 2003.

³⁴ Anthony M. Orum, "Editorial Introduction," City and Community 2(3):179, 2003.

³⁵ Mark Godinnier and Joe Feagin, "The Paradigm Shift in Urban Sociology," Urban Affairs Quarterly 24(2):163-187, 1998; David A. Smith, "The New Urban Sociology Meets the Old: Rereading Some Classical Human Ecology," Urban Affairs Review 30(3):432-457, 1995.

³⁶  Manuel Castells, The Urban Question, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1977 and The City and the Grassroots, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1983.

³⁷ David A. Smith and Michael F. Timberlake, "Urban Political Economy," in J. John Palen, The Urban World, 5th ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 1997, p. 110.

³⁸ Joe Feagin, The Free Enterprise Citym Rutgers, New Brunswick, N.J., 1988, chap. 2; David A. Smith and Michael F. Timberlake, op. cit., 1997, p. 116.

³⁹ David Harvey, Social Justice and the City, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1985.

⁴⁰ David Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the Theory and History of Capitalist Urbanization, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1985.

⁴¹ John Logan and Harvey Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Urban Economy of Place, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987.  

⁴² Ibid., p. 13.

⁴³ Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1979.

⁴⁴ I am indebted to Mila Zlatic for stressing this point.

⁴⁵ Michael Peter Smith, Urban Theory, Blackwell, Malden, Mass.,

⁴⁶ David A. Smith and Michael F. Timberlake, p. 127.

⁴⁷ John Logan and Harvey Molotch, op. cit.

 

 

BOX 4.1: Ecology of the City: The Barbary Coast of San Francisco  

The Chicago School spoke of "natural areas" by which they meant social areas that developed without the aid of planning or design. During the 19th and early 20th centuries the most notorious of the natural areas were the vice areas, commonly located just outside the central business district. Among the most famous of these districts were Storyville in New Orleans, the Levee in Chicago, Five Points in New York, and the "Barbary Coast" in San Francisco. Such districts were eventually put out of business more by technological change than by the famous Societies for the Suppression of Vice. The automobile and the telephone, for example, made possible the "call-girl," which put fixed-location brothels out of business. Similarly, today availability of X-rated videos at suburban video stores, X-rated cable channels, and over 100,000 porno websites has put most central area porno theaters out of business. What follows is a 19th century writer's view of vice in San Francisco.* Like many "reformers," he seems to enjoy lingering over the sins of the city.

        "Barbary Coast," proper, is in the northerly part of the city, comprising both sides of Broadway and Pacific streets, and the cross streets between them from Stockton streets to the water front... In the early days of San Francisco, Barbary Coast was the place of refuge and security for the hundreds of criminals that infected the city. When they passed within its boundary, they were strongly fortified against any assault that the officers of the law might lead against them... Then villains of every nationality held high carnival there. The jabber of the Orient, the soft-flowing tone of the South Sea Islander, the guttural gabbing of the Dutch, the Gallic accent, the round full tone of the son of Africa, the melodious voice of the Mexicano, and the harsh, sharp utterances of the Yankee, all mingled in the boisterous revels.

        It was the grand theatre of crime. The glittering stiletto, the long blade bowie knife, the bottle containing the deadly drug, and the audacious navy revolver were much-used implements in the plays that were enacted...

        Were the constraining power of the law and public sentiment removed, Barbary Coast to-day could soon develop the same kind of outlawry that made it notorious in the primitive days... Barbary Coast is the haunt of the low and the vile of every kind, The petty thief, the house burglar, the tramp, the whoremonger, lewd women, cut-throats and murders, all are found there. Dance-houses and concert saloons, where bleary-eyed men and faded women drink vile liquor, smoke offensive tobacco, engage in vulgar conduct, sing obscene songs, and say and do everything to heap upon themselves more degradation, unrest and misery are numerous. Low gambling houses thronged with riot-loving rowdies in all stages of intoxification are there. Opium dens, where heathen Chinese and Godforsaken women and men are sprawled in miscellaneous confusion, disgustingly drowsy, or completely overcome by inhaling the vapors of the naseous narcotic are there. Licentiousness, debauchery, pollution, loathsome disease, insanity from dissipation, misery, poverty, wealth, profanity, blasphemy, and death are there. And Hell, yawning to receive the putrid mass, is there also.

*B.E. Lloyd,  Lights and Shade in San Francisco, San Francisco, 1876, pp. 78-79.   

BOX 4.2: A Note on Urbanization and Environment 

Our discussion of the ecology of the city would be incomplete without the mention of the effect of cities on the physical environment. The actual physical shape of cities has been modified by human design. Much of contemporary Boston, for instance, was under water at the time of the American Revolution. One of the former underwater zones is known today as Back Bay. Chicago in a similar fashion created an Outer Drive and lakefront park system out of filled land, as did New Orleans. In other cases the pumping out of subsurface ground water and other fluids has led, as in parts of Houston and in Long Beach, California, to subsidence. In the latter case, from 1937 through 1962 some 913 million barrels of oil, 482 million barrel of water, and 832 billion cubic feet of gas were extracted, causing parts of this heavily urbanized area to sink as much as 27 feet.*  

Cities also create atmospheric changes. Buildings and paved streets retain heat, and urban areas become heat islands, as anyone who has spent a hot summer day in the central city knows. What is less well known is that the condensation nuclei produced by activities in cities increase cloudiness and precipitation over cities.**  

Also, by covering the ground with buildings, paved roads, and parking lots, urban development in effect waterproofs the land surface. Rainfall cannot be normally absorbed into the soil; instead, storm runoff must be handled by massive systems of storm sewers. The paving over of city and suburban areas, by preventing water absorption, actually increases the risk of severe flooding.*** The relationship between urban residents and their physical environment is much closer than most city dwellers or suburbanites recognize. Those living in coastal areas subject to hurricanes, or in localities that flood, or on earthquake-prone fault lines, are particularly sensitive to the extent to which we are subject to the laws of nature and the environment. During the 1990s both San Francisco and Los Angeles suffered earthquake damage. 

Cities, of course, are notorious for their effect on air pollution. One of the worst cases occurred in London in 1952 when a disastrous temperature inversion kept a deadly smog over the city for a week, and some 4,000 Londoners dies of smog-related causes before the smog lifted. Today London has strict air pollution controls; the air is actually getting cleaner, and the city’s sooty fogs are a thing of the past. 

In the United States, a nationwide study tracking the health histories of 552,138 adults in 151 metropolitan areas was released in 1995.**** The good news is that due to the Clean Air Act air quality has improved dramatically since 1982. The bad news is that after factoring in each subject’s age, sex, occupational exposure to pollution, obesity, and alcohol use, living in a city having high sulfate and fine particle levels raised the risk of premature death by 15 and 17 percent, respectively. Living in high-pollution cities such as Los Angeles, Denver, or Salt Lake City can substantially shorten life. 

Today, with Texas's weak environmental controls, Houston has the nation's most polluted air. California, by contrast, has passed laws mandating the use of some zero-pollution vehicles (i.e., electric vehicles) in order to attempt to clean its air. However, by far the most serious air and other pollution now occurs in the cities of the developing world. The air in Bangkok is often so dirty is can be seen, and just breathing the air in Mexico City is equivalent to smoking two packages of cigarettes a day.  

*Donald Eachman and Melvin Marcus, “The Geologic and Topographic Setting of Cities,” in Thomas Detwyler and Melvin Marcus (eds.), Urbanization and Environment: The Physical Geography of the City, Duxbury Press, Belmont, Calif., 1972, p. 46.

**Rid Bryson and John Ross, in Dewtyler and Marcus, Urbanization and Environment, p. 63.

***Robert Kates, Ian Burton, and Gilbert F. White, The Environment as Hazard, Oxford University Press, New York, 1978; and Stanley A. Changon et al., Summary of Mertomex, Vol. 1: Weather Abnormalities and Impacts, Illinois State Water Survey, Urbana, 1977.

****Curt Suplee, “Dirty Air Can Shorten Your Life, Study Says: Death Rate Much Higher in Worst Cities,” Washington Post, Mar. 10, 1995, pp. A1 and A15.  

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