4.1 De stad als woonmilieu | Master GVB 2022-2023
Literatuur
De stad als woonmilieu
Inhoud
Week 1 – Verstedelijking en ontstedelijking in heden en verleden........................................................2
Week 2 – Stadssociologische theorieën: van Chicago naar Los Angeles.................................................5
Week 3 – De verdeelde stad: rijkdom versus stedelijke armoede (Wilson & Wacquant).....................18
Week 4 – Sociale en etnische segregatie & buurteffecten....................................................................27
Week 5 – Gentrificatie: oorzaken en gevolgen.....................................................................................40
Week 6 – Steden/buurten en sociale cohesie: de aloude gemeenschapsvraag (van Tönnies naar
Blokland)...............................................................................................................................................56
Week 7 – Etnische diversiteit en gevolgen voor steden.......................................................................73
Week 8 – Steden, criminaliteit en sociale veerkracht (Sampson).........................................................84
Oefenvragen.........................................................................................................................................91
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,4.1 De stad als woonmilieu | Master GVB 2022-2023
Week 1 – Verstedelijking en ontstedelijking in heden en verleden
Richtvragen
Op welke wijze hangen processen van verstedelijking en ontstedelijking in de afgelopen
eeuwen samen met dominante economische en technologische ontwikkelingen?
Welke rol spelen transportkosten in vroegere processen van verstedelijking en
ontstedelijking? Wat betekent dit voor de huidige ontwikkelingen?
Wat maakt steden volgens stadssociologen als Glaeser en Castells tot aantrekkelijke plek
voor hedendaagse middengroepen om te wonen en te werken?
Bediscussieer de stelling: ‘Steden zijn een bron van innovatie’. Bespreek bijvoorbeeld:
- Wat zijn voorbeelden van innovatieve steden (Nederlands en/of internationaal)?
- Waarom ontstaan innovaties vaak in steden? Onder welke voorwaarden ontstaan ze?
- Wat zou de huidige trend van thuiswerken betekenen voor steden als bron van
innovatie?
Edward Glaeser (2011). Triumph of the City. Excerpt from Triumph Of The City published by
arrangement with The Penguin Press, (Source:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/glaeser-triumph-of-the-city-excerpt/ )
Harding & Blokland (Urban Theory), H. 3: pp. 60-65 (‘Economic change versus the city’) en
pp. 70-74 (‘The much exaggerated death of the city’)
Glaeser
Artikel
‘That population explosion was partly due to changes in transportation technology. At the
start of the nineteenth century, ships were generally small— three hundred tons was a
normal size—and, like smaller airplanes today, ideal for point-to-point trips. Between 1800
and 1850, improvements in technology and finance brought forth larger ships that could
carry bigger loads at faster speeds and lower cost.’ (hub-and-spoke shipping system)
- Inwoners in bedrijven werken die zich rond die haven hebben gevestigd voor snel
transport.
‘In the twentieth century, however, the death of distance destroyed the transport-cost
advantages that had made New York a manufacturing mammoth. Globalization brought
fierce competition to the companies and cities that made anything that could be easily
shipped across the Pacific.’
‘Just as globalization killed off New York’s advantages as a manufacturing hub, it increased
the city’s edge in producing ideas. While there isn’t much sewing left in New York, there are
still plenty of Calvin Kleins and Donna Karans, producing designs that will often be made on
the other side of the planet.’
- ‘New York reinvented itself during the bleak years of the 1970s when a cluster of
financial innovators learned from each other and produced a chain of interconnected
ideas.’
- ‘Many of the biggest innovators acquired their knowledge not through formal training
but by being close to the action.’
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‘The rise and fall and rise of New York introduces us to the central paradox of the modern
metropolis—proximity has become ever more valuable as the cost of connecting across long
distances has fallen.’
‘Cities are the absence of physical space between people and companies. They are proximity,
density, closeness. They enable us to work and play together, and their success depends on
the demand for physical connection. During the middle years of the twentieth century, many
cities, like New York, declined as improvements in transportation reduced the advantages of
locating factories in dense urban areas. And during the last thirty years, some of these cities
have come back, while other, newer cities have grown because technological change has
increased the returns to the knowledge that is best produced by people in close proximity to
other people.’
Lonen liggen hoger in steden, maar stedelingen blijken ook productiever te zijn dan
dorpelingen, ‘by connecting their smart inhabitants to each other. But cities play an even
more critical role in the developing world: they are gateways between markets and cultures.’
- ‘Cities thrive when they have many small firms and skilled citizens.’
‘Ultimately, the job of urban government isn’t to fund buildings or rail lines that can’t
possibly cover their costs, but to care for the city’s citizens. A mayor who can better educate
a city’s children so that they can find opportunity on the other side of the globe is
succeeding, even if his city is getting smaller.’
‘Cities don’t make people poor; they attract poor people. The flow of less advantaged people
into cities from Rio to Rotterdam demonstrates urban strength, not weakness.’
- ‘Urban poverty should be judged not relative to urban wealth but relative to rural
poverty.’
‘Historically, most people were far too poor to let their tastes in entertainment guide where
they chose to live, and cities were hardly pleasure zones. Yet as people have become richer,
they have increasingly chosen cities based on lifestyle—and the consumer city was born.’
- ‘The rise of reverse commuting may be the most striking consequence of successful
consumer cities.’ Maar veel steden stoppen met bijbouwen (o.a. om uiterlijk te
behouden zoals Parijs en London) waardoor de prijzen stijgen en alleen de rijken in de
steden kunnen wonen.
- ‘This self-destructive behavior practically ensures prices that are too high, apartments
that are too small, and congestion, sprawl, slums, and corruption.’
‘Transportation technologies have always determined urban form.’ (Auto’s, lopend, OV)
- ‘The environmental costs of sprawl should move government to put the brakes on car-
based living, but American policies push people to the urban fringe.’
- Maar: ‘Now we know that the suburban environmentalists had it backward. If the
environmental footprint of the average suburban home is a size 15 hiking boot, the
environmental footprint of a New York apartment is a stiletto-heel size 6 Jimmy Choo.
Traditional cities have fewer carbon emissions because they don’t require vast amounts
of driving. Fewer than a third of New Yorkers drive to work, while 86 percent of American
commuters drive.’
‘Few slogans are as silly as the environmental mantra “Think globally, act locally.” Good
environmentalism requires a worldwide perspective and global action, not the narrow
outlook of a single neighborhood trying to keep out builders. We must recognize that if we
try to make one neighborhood greener by stopping new buildings, we can easily make the
world browner, by pushing new development to someplace far less environmentally friendly.
The environmentalists of coastal California may have made their own region more pleasant,
but they are harming the environment by pushing new building away from Berkeley suburbs,
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which have a temperate climate and ready access to public transportation, to suburban Las
Vegas, which is all about cars and air-conditioning.’
- ‘If ideas are the currency of our age, then building the right homes for those ideas will
determine our collective fate.’
‘The strength that comes from human collaboration is the central truth behind civilization’s
success and the primary reason why cities exist. To understand our cities and what to do
about them, we must hold on to those truths and dispatch harmful myths. We must discard
the view that environmentalism means living around trees and that urbanites should always
fight to preserve a city’s physical past. We must stop idolizing home ownership, which favors
suburban tract homes over high-rise apartments, and stop romanticizing rural villages. We
should eschew the simplistic view that better long-distance communication will reduce our
desire and need to be near one another. Above all, we must free ourselves from our
tendency to see cities as their buildings, and remember that the real city is made of flesh, not
concrete.’
Harding & Blokland
Chicago School
Twee assumpties Chicago School:
1. ‘Urban populations would continue to grow as new immigrants arrived, from rural areas
or other countries, and the gap between birth and death rates grew, and life expectancy
expanded, in line with growing affluence.’
2. ‘Employment opportunities for city residents would expand at a pace that would enable
the absorption of economically active people into the urban labour market,
notwithstanding periodic fluctuations in the economic cycle and temporary hikes in the
level of unemployment.’
The combination of population growth and agglomeration (the tendency for productive
activities to group themselves together in those places which provide an environment
wherein the things producers need – good communications infrastructures, a large and
varied workforce, an extensive market for company products, a wide array of suppliers and
business services – are in greatest supply), it was generally argued, had resulted in two main
phases of urban expansion.
(…)
Castells
Informatietechnologie is voor deze revolutie wat nieuwe energiebronnen waren voor de
opeenvolgende industriële revoluties.
- Treinsporen zijn nu internetverbindingen.
- Input van energie is nu input van informatie.
In andere woorden: het nieuwe tijdperk met technologieën zoals internet, computers etc. is
niet het verval van de stad (thuis werken, niet meer verbonden), maar een nieuwe revolutie
die nog wereldwijder is, nog sneller, nog groter.
- Dit vindt wel alleen plaats op specifieke plekken die al een bepaalde sociale en
economische context/ontwikkeling hebben.
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