Urbanisation: How has urbanisation shaped the modern selfhood and community ?

URBANISATION

How has urbanisation shaped the modern selfhood and community?

Generation Y – also called the millennials, is a generation known for being media and technology obsessed; it is also the first generation to have exclusively grown up in urban environments. Rural regions seem like a journey back in time. The opposition between an urban and a rural resident is greater than ever. It is relevant thus to wonder how the fact of living in a city changes a person in contrast to a rural life; this essay will try to define how the modern human being is shaped by his environment, in particular in the urban setting, by referring to a number of sociologists. Having no interest in claiming that urbanisation is either negative or positive, this is an attempt to sketch in what way the urbanisation process affected and still affects humans and their interaction with each other.

As one analyses society in its traditional and modern form, one can identify two major aspects which seem to have consistently changed throughout human history. On the one hand social interaction and on the other hand the individual behaviour. It is essential to distinguish both as not only the individual and his characteristics have changed, but also the community as a whole.

First of all urbanisation dramatically changed community life. Social inequality enhance the difference between rich and poor which dangerously increases and is considered to cause great social catastrophes in the next few decades. Tönnies links the decline of primary cities and community life to specialisation in the division of labour and social life (Tönnies 2001). In fact, the German sociologist witnessed a rapid urbanisation with the onrush industrialisation in cities in the late nineteenth century (Lin & Mele 2005:13) and exposed the mechanism influencing the human. The factory life created not only an automatism in work, but also in life and profoundly scarred human nature. Rising inequality has led to a climate of fear in cities which have become high-security fortresses (Lin & Mele 2005) due to changes in human behaviour .

Gender inequality remains an omnipresent issue even in modern cities. It is a central concern in group dynamics. A few sociologists analysed the position of women in relation to men in society. Ann Markusen goes as far as to say that women in suburbs are being segregated: their ‘spatial entrapment’ in their homes has consequences on their jobs. Indeed women having to go back home on a daily basis to take care of their family and home are being discriminated in relation to men who are rather free to stay in their work area. Plus men still are in majority the ones who work in the household.

The multiplicity of groups in a heterogeneous population does still benefit the individual: ‘But the very multiplicity of groups, instead of creating a culture of strangers, permits individuals to seek out people like themselves. Hence pockets of like-minded people, subcultures, form. It is within these subcultures that urbanities build their social networks. City people, as a result, are no more lonely or alienated than are people living in smaller places. They are, however, less dependent upon relatives and neighbours, and more tolerant of the values and practices of people different from themselves.’(Fischer 1983:112). This cultural diversity can be linked to the ‘mosaic of social worlds’ described by Park. Hereby Fischer objects to the very common assumption that urban life destroys social unity because it produces disoriented individuals which do not relate to each other in intimate relations but stay on a ‘superficial and secondary’ level (Fischer 1983:111).

Next to social inequality Jane Jacobs points out the ‘destruction of community by misguided urban renewal policies promoted by the bureaucratic-rational state in the period after World War II.’(Lin & Mele 2005: 2). This is closely related to the (post)industrial society of that period and the institutionalisation of life. People’s everyday lives are governed by administrative systems which classify, categorise and digitise their data. Instead of communication with his neighbours one distrustfully passes by each other. In comparison to traditional communities, one rather speaks of a society in urban regions, contrasting the difference in meaning between both terms. Tönnies originally made this distinction and claimed that the traditional rural community, the ‘Gemeinschaft’, was a natural, organic one, and the urban society called a ‘Gesellschaft’ people being mechanically solidary (Tönnies 2001). Bonds between urbanites are weaker, family becomes socially unimportant and interactions are based on profit relations. However human beings did not become completely disinterested in human contact.

It is indeed of great importance not to neglect the beneficial effects the urbanisation process on human society. Fischer pinpoints at the change in relations: ‘Initial relations are given to us,(…), but as we grow into adults, we select which ties are maintained and which are dropped’ (Lin & Mele 2005:43). To secondary contacts the urbanite substitutes the available choice of primary ones (Wirth 1938). Thus the urban citizen lives in a less dense network but has more interpersonal relations that involve exchanges with specific individuals. Fischer here asserts that social differentiation provides subcultural creativity. Interaction with a various number of different and diverse cultures enhances open-mindedness and tolerance, thus creativity.

Other advantages of urbanisation would be reduced costs of transport, sharing of natural resources and disappearance of social, even religious boundaries. Higher

...