Nature Of City

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What makes a city a city? Why are there cities? Does a city change your values? Are questions that I thought before reading the 4 articles. Throughout this semester we were given 4 articles to read that pertained to city life. Which were The American journal of sociology, The Nature of cities, The City as a growth machine: Toward a political economy of place, and The Experience of living in cities. We had to read each article thoroughly so we can compare and contrast each one and write summaries about them.
The American journal of sociology by Robert E. Park is about “concept and structure” of the city and a city can enhance your human experience. Park talked about mainly how the people and the city go together, to make it what it is. Park mentioned how the city inhabits the customs of the people who inhabit it and how the people make the city. In the article it talks about how there is personal competition between people in cities, how in order to get a job you have to have skills, natural talent, its social solidarity in the city. School, family, and church is dissolved in cities. Park also mentioned how diverse the city and how it’s a “melting pot of races”. Park was very optimistic about the city.
The Nature of cities by Chauncy D. Harris and Edward L. Ullman is about urban development, the internal …show more content…

The city growth machine and land development can be quite contentious not everyone always in favor of growth issues. The govt. is in constant need of new revenue sources, cities are growth machines because they need to be. Molotch talks about land-based elite and how there is competition between other elites also urban politics has a lot to do with it. Molotch compared growth to unemployment, how the more growth the more unemployment. Molotch talked about growth consequences throughout the

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