College aantekeningen Urban Places and Social Problems
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Course
Urban Places and Social Problems
Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
Notes (lectures 1 to 5) from the Urban Places and Social Problems course of year 2 sociology. The notes provide a good overview and basis for the exam!
Main questions of the course
1) What is the city?
2) How can cities be improved?
3) Which cities count for urban theorising
4) What does inequality look like in contemporary societies?
Sociology as a response to and critique of a new urban industrial order
- New urban places, and with that, new urban problems
- Solutions and developments → urban planning, infrastructure, etc
Simmel’s key question → how does modern urban reality impact one’s personality? Who is
the modern urban self, the urbanite?
Main characteristics of the metropolis (Simmel)
● Intensification of nervous stimulation
● Response → reserved, blasé, cold, lonely but also extravagant (to stand out, be
noticed or seen)
● Money economy
- Rational matter-of-fact, calculating, superficial, indifferent
● Larger social circle, broader horizon
- Freer, cosmopolitan
Wirth → interest in modern urban self and ‘’urbanism’’
● Ideal types (theoretical construction) of personality and ways of life → ‘’urban
industrial’’ vs. ‘’rural folk’’
● The self can no longer rely on the ‘’traditional basis of social solidarity’’, the city
comes with a more fragmented self
● How can we sociologically define the city?
- Relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous
individuals (size, density, heterogeneity → specialisation and segregation)
Lefebvre → the city as oeuvre
● The city’s essence versus industrialisation and urban planning (threats)
- Collection of artwork, place of encounter, meeting difference versus trading of
products becomes central, functions and social classes are isolated
- Use value versus exchange value
- Political and social life where wealth, knowledge and skills are accumulated
- The oeuvre is use value and the product is exchange value
Main takeaways
● Lefebvre is critical of how modern cities are transformed by the dictates of the state
and capitalism
- Oeuvre vs product
- Use value vs exchange value
- To inhabit vs habitat
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