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Change and Diversity in American Community Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Richard A. Lamanna
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Extract

In any Discussion of American community life two beliefs are likely to quickly come to the fore. First, that we have over the last 50 years undergone a revolution in community settlement patterns and today we are an urban nation with more and more of our population crowding into our urban areas. Many now speak with disdain about the runaway urbanization and the emerging “ant-hill society.” A second theme that almost always accompanies the first is that the quality of life in our urban communities is deteriorating rapidly. One can hardly read a daily metropolitan newspaper without spotting a headline which sounds the alarm. Not long ago, for example, the New York Times had a front-page spread with the startling headline, “Eleven Mayors Warn Here of Collapse of U.S. Cities.” Stewart Alsop, in a Newsweek column with the foreboding title “The Cities Are Finished,” managed in the course of one page to inform his readers that the cities may be “finished” because they have become unlivable; that the net population of cities will continue to fall; that the future is statistically predictable—in another 10 years most of our cities will consist mostly of blacks; and that the cities will come to resemble reservations for the poor and the blacks surrounded by heavily guarded middle-class suburbs. More recently, Sol Linowitz, Chairman of the National Urban Coalition, declared, “We have abandoned our cities … [and while they] are not on fire today, most of the conditions that caused the civil disorders in recent years have worsened.”

Type
Society
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , October 1972 , pp. 26 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1972

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References

1 New York Times, April 22, 1971.

2 Newsweek, April 5, 1971.

3 “Saving the Cities,” New York Times, April 11, 1972.

4 HUD Newsletter, U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, Washington, D.C., 06 12, 1972Google Scholar.

5 Ylvisaker, Paul quoted in Silberman, Charles, “The City and the Negro,” Fortune, 03, 1962Google Scholar. This is, of course, by no means a universal view. Recent works by James Q. Wilson, Edward Banfield, Irving Kristol, Scott Greer, and Raymond Vernon have effectively challenged the apocalyptic view of the urban situation.

6 A related concept used by the Census Bureau is “urbanized area,” which refers to a city or twin cities of 50,000 or more plus its developed surrounding area (at least 1,000 people per square mile).

7 “Lindsay Stresses Mayoral Experience,” New York Times, March 27, 1972.

8 Metropolitan Social and Economic Disparities: Implications for Intergovernmental Relations in Central Cities and Suburbs (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965), pp. [11–12Google Scholar.

9 Population Bulletin, 27 (10, 1971), 9Google Scholar.

10 Report on National Growth, 1972 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972), pp. 19–20Google Scholar.

11 It is interesting to note that the reduction in densities at the communal level has been accompanied by a comparable change at the level of individual dwelling units. There were fewer people per housing unit in 1970 than 10 years earlier—the average declining to 3.1 from 3.3 in 1960. The average family's house is much better and larger. Fewer homes are crowded—the number of housing units with more than one person per room dropped by approximately 900,000 in 10 years from 6.1 million to 5.2 million. Our average of .54 persons per room is the lowest in the Western world.

12 Population and the American Future (New York: New American Library, 1972), pp. 35–36Google Scholar.

13 Downs, Anthony, “Alternative Forms of Future Urban Growth in the U.S.,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners (01, 1970), pp. 3–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Population Bulletin, op. cit., 14.

15 “Social and Economic Characteristics of the Population in Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Areas, 1970 and 1960,” Current Population Reports, P 23, No. 37, 06 24, 1971Google Scholar. See also The People Left Behind, Report of the President's National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967)Google Scholar; Urban and Rural America: Policies for Future Growth, Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965)Google Scholar; and Report on National Growth, 1972, op. cit., pp. 26–27.

16 Moynihan, Daniel P., “The Schism in Black America,” The Public Interest, 27 (Spring, 1972), 4–7Google Scholar.

17 Quoted in Morton, and White, Lucia, The Intellectual Versus the City (New York: New American Library, 1962), p. 201Google Scholar.

18 Greer, Scott, The Urbane View: Life and Politics in Metropolitan America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 2Google Scholar.

19 Toffler, Alvin, Future Shock (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), pp. 92–93Google Scholar; Webber, Melvin M., “Order in Diversity: Community Without Propinquity,” in Wingo, Lowdon Jr, ed., Cities and Space (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963), pp. 23–54Google Scholar.

20 Slater, Philip E., The Pursuit of Loneliness, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), p. 25Google Scholar.

21 Report on National Growth, 1972, op. cit., p. xi.

22 The movement is only beginning to be studied in an objective manner. Among the more helpful descriptions and studies are: Rudikoff, Sonya, “O Pioneers! Reflections on the Whole Earth People,” Commentary, 07, 1972, pp. 62–74Google Scholar; Roberts, Ron, The New Communes: Coming Together in America (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1971)Google Scholar; Melville, Keith, Communes in the Counter Culture: Origins, Theories, Styles of Life (New York: Morrow, 1972)Google Scholar; Bromwich, David, “Walden Is Alive Again,” Dissent (Spring, 1972), pp. 326–336Google Scholar; Zablocki, Benjamin, The Joyful Community (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971)Google Scholar, chap. 7, “A Model for Utopia,” pp. 286–326; Otto, Herbert A., “Communes: The Alternative Life Style,” Saturday Review, 05 15, 1971, pp. 16–21Google Scholar; French, David, “After the Fall: What This Country Needs Is a Good Counter Counterculture Culture,” New York Times Magazine, 10 3, 1971, pp. 20 ff.Google Scholar

23 Rudikoff, , op. cit., p. 69Google Scholar.

24 Wilson, James Q., “The Urban Unease: Community vs. City,” The Public Interest, 12 (Summer, 1968), 369–70Google Scholar.