The Urban World,
J. John Palen
th
9
Ed.
Chapter 8: The Social Environment of
Metro Areas: Strangers, Crowding,
Homelessness, and Crime
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Introduction
Dealing with Strangers
Codes of Urban Behavior
Defining Community
Categories of Local Communities
Density and Crowding
Homelessness
Urban Crime
Summary
Introduction
• How do people outside their own defended
neighborhood of “turf” cope with large
numbers of other people whom they do not
know?
• How do we learn to operate in an urban world
of strangers in which we are largely
anonymous?
Dealing With Strangers
• We cope by identifying strangers on the basis
of two factors
– Appearance
– Spatial location
Codes of Urban Behavior
• Neighboring
– Large-city dwellers know fewer of their neighbors
than do residents of smaller place
– Persons who neighbor are likely to be:
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Raising a family
Home during the day
Older and more settled
Homogenous
• Neighbors and Just Neighbors
– Three conditions encourage “real” neighboring
• Functional interdependence
• Preexistence of other relationships and bonds
• Because they have fewer alternatives
– Robert Putnam suggests that recent decades have
witnessed declining membership in civic and
social organizations, and an erosion of social
capital
– Satisfaction with neighborhood life cuts across
owners and renters in all regions
Defining Community
• Community has become an elastic social and
theoretical concept holding diverse meanings
• For the Chicago School, community was often
a synonym for urban neighborhood
• There is currently no consensus on the
significance of community in modern social
life
Categories of Local Communities
• Defended neighborhood is an area that residents feel
is their turf
• The community of limited liability emphasizes the
voluntary and limited involvement of residents in the
local community
• The expanded community of limited liability is more
fragmented and diffuse than the community of
limited liability. It is a larger area composed of
multiple communities
• The contrived or conscious community is an area
consciously set up to create a community image
Density and Crowding
• Crowding Research
– High density and crowding produce a long list of
physical and behavioral pathologies
– One’s social background and experience play a
major role in how “high density” is defined
– Contrary to the common assumption, density or
crowding does not necessarily have either a
negative of positive impact on urban life
• Practical Implications
– Rather than trying to escape crowds, people move
toward areas of highest per-person density
– Use of findings to produce more livable spaces in
New York City’s commercial zoning practices
Homelessness
• Characteristics of the Homeless
– 66 percent of the homeless are single
– 68 percent are male
– 80 percent are aged 25 to 54
– 28 percent have less than a high school education
– 23 percent are veterans
– 41 percent white, 40 percent black, 11 percent
Hispanic, and 9 percent other
– One-third are children
• Social Problems
– The saying that the homeless are “just like you
and me” is not accurate
– Most homeless have high levels of social
disabilities
– Four out of 10 street people admit to having spent
time in jail
– 62 percent have problems with alcohol
– 58 percent have drug abuse problems
– 57 percent have mental-health problems
– There is a decreasing tolerance for street people,
especially those seen as a public nuisance
• Disappearing SRO Housing
– The number of single-room-occupancy (SRO)
unites has sharply decreased by over 80 percent in
the last two decades
– During the Reagan and senior Bush years (19801992), federally subsidized programs were cut a
massive 70 percent
– Some homeless have created their own
alternative social communities
Urban Crime
• Crime and Perceptions of Crime
• People’s perceptions of what is happening and the reality
of what is actually happening differ considerably
• Urban crime between 1993 and 2010 experienced not
increases but sharp declines
• Crime and cities do not necessarily go together
• Broken Windows Theory
• Suggest that the best way to control crime is to prevent it,
and the best way to prevent crime is not by concentrating
police efforts on solving major crimes, but focusing on
preventing minor quality-of-life offenses
• Argues that people fear a sense of disorder, and by
creating a sense of order in a neighborhood crime can be
prevented
• Crime and City Size
• The belief that the larger the city, the higher the
crime rate is an urban myth
• The United States’ homicide rate is higher than
that of other developed countries
• The highest crime rates by a good margin are
found in cities of 250,000 to 500,000 population
• Crime and Male Youth
• 45 percent of all crimes, except murder, are
committed by people under 18, and threequarters are committed by those under 25
• Crime is also still largely a male activity
• Crime and Race
– Historically, poor newcomer groups to the city
have used crime as an alternate route to social
mobility
– Whites mostly commit crimes against whites and
blacks against blacks
– Blacks are more than five times as likely to be
homicide victims as are whites; today, one of
every 68 black males can expect to be murdered
during the course of a lifetime
– African males also have the highest probability of
being an offender
– This often leads to racial profiling
• Crime Variations within Cities
• Crime rates tend to be highest in central-city
neighborhoods and to decrease as one moves
toward the periphery
• Inner-city areas that have not been invaded by
disadvantaged newcomers are often among the
most stable, low-crime areas in the city
• Crime in the Suburbs
– Crime rates in the suburbs are increasing
– Suburban crime rates tend to be less violent than
city crime
– Affluent suburbs keep crime rates down by
restricting certain economic activities and
populations