City and Urban Environments
Defining a “City”
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Webster defines a city as “an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a
town or village”
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To the geographer it is a specific location where large number of people are concentrated in a
small space
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To a sociologist the city is a particular set of institutions and social organizations
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The cultural anthropologist sees it as a place with certain cultural features and dominant values
Urbanized Area (U.S. Census) - A UA is a continuously built-up area with a population of 50,000 or more.
It comprises one or more places—central place(s)—and the adjacent densely settled surrounding area—
urban fringe— consisting of other places and nonplace territory.
79% of Americans live in Urban areas based on 2000 census data
51% of rural population live within a metropolitan area based on Census definitions
Rural Places - Territory, population, and housing units that the Census Bureau does not classify as urban
are classified as rural.
A rural place is any incorporated place with fewer than 2,500 inhabitants that is located outside of an
Urban Area.
Proshansky defined a city as a “set of human activities concentrated in a geographical area”
Bell defines a city as a “large numbers of people and activities concentrated in a given geographical area
for the purpose of providing the dimensions of life we call organizing society.”
Environ. Psychology and Cities
Krupat (1985) suggest that environmental psychology can contribute to knowledge of the city by
focusing on the city as an environment and the city as a setting for behavior
Krupat's book “People in Cities” 1985 focused on the behavior of individuals in cities or urban env.
Are Cities Good or Bad Places?
“City” rarely evokes a neutral reaction from people.
Krupat (1985) proposed that the city is a place of multiple and contrasting realities. (Good and bad)
John Helmer & Neil Eddington (1973) edited a book called: Urbanman: The Psychology of Urban survivial
Took a both positive and negative look at how urban dwellers organize their behaviors to deal with the
problems of daily life:
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getting to work (commuting),
waiting in lines for good or services,
avoiding stress, threats, and physical dangers
and communicating with others.
The authors include: Milgram, Leon Mann, Bibb Latane, John Darley, and Philip Zimbardo.
Why the Negative view of Cities?
Negativity Bias - We tend to weight negative information more heavily than positive information
Krupat suggests the mere volume of people and interactions almost guarantees that the absolute
number of negative encounters will be higher than in a small town
People in cities tend to take for granted services, cultural and educational opportunities until they have
to do without them
Urban Descriptions
One of the ways psychologists have been involved in studying people in cities involves urban
descriptions.
Urban descriptions may involve objective approaches or subjective approaches to describe difference
between cities and towns
Objective approaches measures objective data on events and objects that can be counted and require
little personal evaluation from the reporting individuals
Subjective approaches rely directly upon the perceptions, evaluations and opinions of people concerned
with the conditions of life in their communities
Pew Survey
Early Objective Approach
E.L. Thorndike wrote 2 books based on the question: What makes a city a good place to live?
Used 37 objective items to develop a overall “G” or Goodness score
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Educational opportunities for the public
Healthfulness of the city
Public recreational opportunities
Creature of comforts
Literacy
14 misc. items
Placed Rated Almanac - Rick Boyer developed a “Quality of Life” rating in the 1980’s
Published in books and online as the “Places Rated Almanac”
Based on 9 key factors
Cost of living, jobs, crime, health care, transportation, education, arts, recreation, climate
Subject Measures of Quality of Life
Research, planners and policy makers have focused on objective measures of the city
Objective measures do not always correspond to our subjective experience or satisfaction with a city
Michael Schneider (1975) compared a wide variety of objective and subjective measures that should
reflect the quality of life in 15 major American cities.
Found that many differences in objective conditions across cities were not reflected in resident's
feelings