Midterm

1. Urban Sociology

• Sociology
  • The scientific study of human social life, groups, and societies with emphasis on modern, industrialized systems.
  • Teaching us that givens of our life are strongly influenced by social and historical forces.
• Urban Sociology
  • What is going in in modern cities?
  • Socio-economic, political, and cultural changes in cities
  • How these changes shape urban landscape.
  • How space itself shapes our actions and thoughts
• Background of Urban Sociology
  • Industrialization and Urbanization
  • Please note several social issues derived by industrialization and urbanization: lifestyle, communication, population density, and class conflict.

2. Ferdinand Tönnies

• From Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft

3. Friedrich Engels

• The condition of the working class was poor
• Reducing whole population into two opposing elements
• Capitalists and workers (Bourgeoisie and Proletariat).

4. Jacob Riis

• Living conditions: working class and immigrants: Living alongside each other yet brutalized by poverty.
• Social reform
  • The upper-class’ response to slums?
    • The rise of crime and disease – directly influence to the upper class.
    • If it’s getting worse, workers will organize.
    • Build rational cities (modern cities)
    • Sanitation reform in order to protect themselves from disease and built infrastructure for better environment.
    • Remove slums and relocate people to the outskirt of the cities (in France)
    • And create new urban theories to support their plans.

5. Industrialization and World fair

• Why?
  • To promote global advancements in technology and industry
  • To show off their national achievement
• It shaped the understanding of metropolis among scholars.

6. Georg Simmel

• Money economy in metropolis
  • The metropolis as the seat of the money economy.
  • Money: all quality and individuality → quantity (how much?)
  • Modern mind → more calculating.
  • Value, space and time → standardized and rationalized under the money economy.
• How to protect yourself from money economy?
  • Blasé attitude, indifference and reserve →emotional distancing.

7. Thorstein Veblen

• The definition of leisure class
  • Not required to work
  • But appropriate a surplus produced by those who do work
• Conspicuous waste = Conspicuous leisure +Conspicuous consumption
• Why conspicuous consumption is important?

8. Louis Wirth

• Urbanism
• Sociological proposition – the basis of observation and research.
  • Size of population
  • Density
  • Heterogeneity

9. Jane Jacobs

• How do we maintain the public peace of cities?

10. suburbanization

• Definition
• Three factors
• Results