City Size and the Quality of Life
Social Consequences of Increasing City Size
It is difficult to generalize about the social attributes of large urban environments. The visceral predisposition of an individual often seems to be the final arbiter on this topic, no matter what empirical data and logical arguments might suggest. To many, our large urban places offer an amazing diversity of jobs, opportunities, goods and services, entertainment possibilities, and people types; to others, there is an underlying homogeneity yielding only a superficial variety. Some people view the larger city as the culmination of our industrial culture; to others, our larger cities are the places where the “breakdown of society” is most evident. To some, our larger cities offer anonymity and free expression of diverse lifestyles; to others they offer alienation. To some, they provide opportunities for personal achievement: for others, they seem too competitive, too cold, and lacking in love.
We do not attempt to dispute this spectrum of opinion. However, returning to the basic purposes of this study, we believe the current population distribution trends are strongly in favor of those who prefer larger urban environments—the fundamental question then arises: for those who prefer smaller scales of living (and this may well be an absolute majority of the American people if we are to trust their stated preferences), is there compelling evidence which would support policies designed to redistribute some proportion of the total population in favor of smaller places? We turn to that question.
The Economic Character of the Modem City
Our urban areas are first and foremost economic entities. John K. Galbraith (1971) notes that after the industrial revolution began:
“… the city ceased to be a reflection of individual, dynastic or collective personality; it became both the instrument, and the result, of industrial development. Land use was no longer subordinate, even imperfectly, to overall design. It was either that which served economic performance or what resulted from economic development. It was not what best served amenity or beauty but what best served economic efficiency.”
Since no species encounters in any given habitat the optimum conditions for all of its functions, it would seem plausible that the social-psychological aspects of urban existence could be less than well served. Indeed, it would be surprising to find many non-economic needs being well met in our large industrial cities that are economic creatures both in their primary functions and in the market processes that structure the development of those cities. This is not to say that many social needs are not fulfilled in our cities—we know that they are. However, the fulfillment of those needs seems to be as much in spite of rather than because of the way in which our urban places have been created; and, as such, the fulfillment is perhaps greater testimony to the adaptability of man than to the creative/social design of our urban places.
To explore the mismatch between the economic character of our urban environments and the non-economic needs of individuals, it is useful to recall that the individual has been paramount in the explicit statements of the American tradition. This is reflected, for example, in the report of the Eisenhower Commission on National Goals (1960):
“The paramount goal of the United States was set long ago. It is to guard the rights of the individual, to ensure his development, and to enlarge his opportunity . . . Our enduring aim is to build a nation … in which every human being shall be free to develop his capacities to the fullest . . . The status of the individual must remain our primary concern. All our institutions—political, social, and economic—must further enhance the dignity of the citizen, promote the maximum development of his capabilities, stimulate their responsible exercise and widen the range and effectiveness of opportunities for individual choice.”
Furthermore, the needs of the individual are not constant but, rather, are fluid and dynamic. The social-psychologist, Clare Graves (1970), states that the growing human being engages in an “unfolding process” marked by:
“…the progressive subordination of older behavioral systems to newer, higher order behavior systems. The mature man tends normally to change his psychology as the conditions of his existence change. Each successive stage or level is a state of equilibrium. When a person is in one of the states of equilibrium, he has a psychology which is particular to that state.”
Thus, individuals seem to have a dynamic hierarchy of needs, values, and beliefs such that “lower-level” (more basic) needs take precedence over “higher-level” needs. For example, frustration of lower-level needs, such as hunger, reduces the importance of higher level needs. However, conversely, when lower level needs are relatively well satisfied, higher level needs become more important. The implications of this hierarchical structure of needs are of profound importance. This implies, for example, that government programs which successfully erase poverty and hunger in a given population will result in the emergence of higher level needs rather than in a general reduction of needs. It further implies that with increasing affluence, people will move from needs which are primarily economically based (security/survival) to needs with substantial noneconomic components (belongingness/esteem/self-actualization).
If our urban areas are primarily economic entities, and if the need levels of urban dwellers have risen to a point where non-economic concerns are becoming increasingly important, then it would seem plausible to suggest that there is a real and growing mismatch between the continuing economic character of urban living environments and the increasingly non-economic needs of the people who inhabit those environments. The consequences of such mismatch are described by Lang and Moleski (1973):
” …if the environment is unresponsive to human needs, then it will be unused if potential users have a choice. If no choice is available, then a stressful situation will be created. This stress can be either physiological or psychological, depending on the need being frustrated.”
If a primary cause of contemporary social unease with our urban environments is their creation largely as a by-product of the economic imperatives of industrialization, what then is the plausible remedy? We have, for too long, trusted the control of our urban form to the workings of the free market. Only now are we learning the central weakness of the market system: the market has no inherent direction, no internal goal other than to satisfy the forces of supply and demand. With increasing abundance, the urban dweller tends to be forced by the market system to direct his activities into accustomed economic channels. Robert Heilbroner (1968) notes that “…the danger exists that the market system, in an environment of genuine abundance, may become an instrument which liberates man from real want only to enslave him to purposes for which it is increasingly difficult to find social and moral justification.” To cope with the problem of urban form it appears that we must create a new relationship between the economic aspects of existence and human life in its totality.
A Digression—Population Density
Before addressing the social-psychological attributes of large-scale urban environments, it is useful to consider the issue of population density, which is oftentimes confused with scale or size. Large scales and high density need not be correlated. For example, New York and Los Angeles—both of large scale—have much different levels of population density and distinct social differences. Nonetheless, since scale and density are often related in the minds of many policy-makers, it seems useful to note representative literature dealing with the issue of density.
To date, most analytical studies of the social-psychological effects of different population densities have been largely inconclusive in establishing any significant causal relationship between the incidence of pathology and density. Schmitt (1966) found that overcrowding had no substantial impact on various measures of mortality and morbidity once socioeconomic variables were statistically controlled. When some correlations between density and social pathology (e.g., health, divorce, crime) were found, the analysis could be discounted for policy relevance since correlation does not ensure causality. Zlutnick (1971) concluded that, “we cannot be confident about the effects of crowding on social and psychological behavior in humans.” Mitchell (1971), in a study of Hong Kong, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, concluded that high density living situations seem to have a negligible effect on individuals and families. Freedman (1972), in a study of density as correlated with delinquency and mental illness in New York City, concluded that when other variables are controlled (e.g., income and race), density explains virtually no additional variance in juvenile delinquency and a small but appreciable amount in mental illness.
Contrasting with these studies which attribute little social significance to crowding are others which strongly suggest that density is an important variable in considering the pattern of social behavior in urban places. For example, Schmid (1960) found correlations between high population density areas and high crime rates for both juveniles and adults. Calhoun (1962) has presented experimental data which link population density and aggressive, conflict-oriented behavior in rats: The inference is that humans may respond in a similar fashion. Studies by Lansing, et al (1970) suggest that as density increases, the need for social insulation increases correspondingly. There is a striking inverse relationship between density and knowing one’s neighbors by name: “…it may be that the state of anonymity in the denser micro-neighborhoods reflects a desire for insulation from one’s neighbors…” Galle, et al. (1972), in a study of Chicago, found that four different components of population density (e.g., the number of persons per room, the number of rooms per housing unit) were significantly correlated with asocial, aggressive behavior, even when ethnicity and social class were controlled. They concluded that: “. . . overcrowding may have a serious impact on human behavior and social scientists should consider overcrowding when attempting to explain a wide range of pathological behaviors.”
The conflicting conclusions from these studies suggest an overall inconclusiveness which may be due, in part, to the crudeness of the measurement processes. For example, the quality and character of a living environment is dependent upon much more than the square feet of floor space per person. Density measures extract much of the richness, diversity, and complexity out of the life experience, leaving only the variable of spatial dimension as a crude approximation. Metaphorically, the use of density measures to study social pathology may be like inferring the personality of a person from his telephone number. Given the imprecision of such measures, it is not surprising that significant results have not emerged.
Social Pathology
An important indicator of the quality of life within an urban area is the incidence of social pathologies, e.g., violent crime, divorce, mental illness, suicide, and alcoholism. Although some suggest these pathological manifestations of cultural disintegration are increasing exponentially in our major cities, there are few data to confirm or deny this contention. Perhaps the most extensive data available relate to the incidence of violent crime as a function of city size. The recent HEW report, Social Indicators (1974), found that violent crime increases strikingly as city size increases. Although it is clear that the reported rates for violent crimes are increasing dramatically for communities of all sizes, the highest incidence of violent crime is in the metropolitan areas of more than 250,000 people. Indeed, in 1972, the rate of violent crimes in cities of over 250,000 people was nearly five times the prevailing rate within rural areas. Even these data may substantially understate the actual differences in crime rates between large and small communities. A recent study conducted by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (1974) found that crime in the nation’s five largest cities is two to five times as high as police figures show.
An admittedly partial but nonetheless plausible explanation of these differential crime rates may be that as an urban place expands in size, order depends increasingly upon external and formal controls (e.g., laws, the threat of criminal prosecution) rather than upon more internal and informal controls such as conformity exacted by adherence to custom. In our larger urban environments, many people seem to have lost the powerful internal/informal sanctions of personal contact (due in part to high rates of population mobility) and custom (due in part to the rapid rates of social change associated with economic changes that have torn us loose from more traditional social moorings). A price we are paying for our economic progress seems to be social systems that do not effectively socialize their members—and when the enculturation process weakens, criminal acts may be a primary manifestation: by causing the disintegration of a society, by overloading the social system with too many people, or by increasing mobility so as to prevent their proper socialization, one is reducing the power of public opinion, and thereby the society’s capacity for self-regulation. We are introducing asystemic controls in ever greater quantities: more politicians, more bureaucrats, more laws, more tribunals, so one is rendering the systemic controls ever more redundant, and further reducing a society’s capacity for self-regulation.
It is interesting to consider Aristotle’s dictum that “men come together in cities for security; they stay together for the good life.” These crime statistics show that our larger cities are no longer a place to come together for purposes of finding security. Further, if people are to be taken at their word in the opinion pools, then a majority of the American people do not perceive the “good life” as being found in the larger cities. Perhaps the compelling attribute of urban living for many people is that large cities are good places for making a living. Since there can be no life without the material means of life, people choose to exist where they can ensure their material existence. Perhaps many people are trading their preferences for security and the good life for their necessity to make a living. If so, and if the American economic ethic begins to wane, there could well be a dramatic and spontaneous reversal in population distribution trends.
Perceptual/Aesthetic Aspects
Our urban environments are media which daily communicate messages to us. After living in such environments—many people for entire lifetimes—we may become hardened and oblivious to the messages they communicate. Yet the messages are still there, creating a perceptual gestalt which influences our view of the world much more than we might realize. Parr (1965) states that:
“Every thought and feeling we experience leaves its traces on our personality. If enduring features of our surroundings provoke steadily predominant moods or frequently repeated emotional responses, the conclusion seems inescapable that the environment itself may be a major determinant of personality.”
Rene Dubos (1968) pursues a similar theme:
The environment men create through their wants becomes a mirror that reflects their civilization; more importantly it also constitutes a book in which is written the formula of life that they communicate to others and transmit to succeeding generations. The characteristics of the environment are therefore of importance not only because they affect the comfort and quality of present-day life, but even more because they condition the development of young people and thereby of society.
In the countryside, a farmhouse is only one object in a much larger landscape. “In an urban environment all spaces are enclosed, and the exterior aspects of the buildings form the interiors of the cityscape.” What we see and interact with is that which man has created—and our massive artificial living environments become both the figurative and literal concretizing of our reality perceptions. We mentally organize reality into “meaning frameworks” which in turn form the basis for the physical construction of reality which, in turn, provides the basis for perceiving reality. Given the extent to which our constructed environments can influence our perceptions, it would seem wise to enquire as to the perceptual appropriateness of our creations.
As noted earlier, the form of our urban environments has been premised largely upon economic criteria:
It was not what best served amenity or beauty but what best served economic efficiency… The aesthetic consequences of this conception of the city were uniformly disastrous.
Although the resulting environment is well suited for economic pursuits, it seems plausible that it is poorly suited for realizing aesthetic dimensions. At a minimum, the aesthetics of an urban place are dependent upon at least two factors:
Different qualities of work—in the rural setting, work brings immediate, personal contact with the objective world; in the urban setting, work brings little contact with the objective world, the experience of which gained in large part through secondary sources of information (television, newspapers, books).
A different sense of personal significance—in the rural environment, a person is one among a relatively few whereas in the large urban environment, a person is one among many. In subtle but significant ways, these different proportionalities seem to alter a person’s perception of his significance.
This partial description of perceptual differences between large and small scale settings is not meant to validate the goodness of one or the other. Rather, its utility is in recognizing the relative uniqueness of “rural” perceptual attributes in a society that is becoming increasingly urban—particularly since these are qualities that the American people have not relinquished willingly:
Whatever changes the American people seem to be seeking, they are not directed toward the enhancement of the facilities that lead to an urban or citified life, but rather to the introduction into the city of qualities associated with the rural life—whether trees, cleaner air and water, larger parks, or new family style dwelling to reduce the overall density of population.
By changing the perceptual attributes of our living environments, we are profoundly changing the way in which man views the world and, thereby we are surely changing man himself. Since it is doubtful that these perceptual qualities were given up with full consciousness and intention, it would seem wise to remember them in our planning processes before we are too distant from our rural origins. With such remembrance, we can then consciously integrate those perceptual characteristics we value into future living environments.
Finally, increases in urban scale decrease the proximity to the rural and natural environment. Much greater distances must be travelled from city to countryside. Experience of the more natural environment is thus for many not a daily event but, at best, an infrequent experience. The energy crisis and ensuing travel restrictions made real the possibility that our urban regions could become perceptual islands of stranded people. Simultaneously, many city people are trying to “get away from it all” and in doing so create an urban microcosm in the wilds—with traffic jams and air pollution on the way, and once there, with flush toilets, running water, power hook-ups, a concrete slab for your camper (which has many of the conveniences of the urban home) and sufficient crowding to enjoy—perhaps unwillingly—your neighbor’s television if you forgot to bring the portable model along.
Alienation
The creation of a radically artificial living environment may be associated with man’s present alienation from traditional sources of meaning, e.g., a keen sense of natural environment and the universe. In the urban setting of the scales that are now emerging, there is the pervasive sense that all around himself, there is only that which man has created. Perhaps this could yield an arrogance of power which explains some of the current despoilation of the natural environment. It could also yield a sense of lost connections with significant roots of existence.
The intricate and complex processes of industrialization which led to a segmentation, specialization and “rationalization” of institutions also eroded the beliefs in a cosmological order of traditional societies . . . Contemporary man no longer “naturally” sees himself as a useful and necessary member of a social whole geared into a meaningful plan of existence within the totality of a cosmic or divine order.
The isolated components of the urban place—the single residence or single office building has often been designed in a way consistent with an economic rationale. The stylistic criteria of such modern architecture is “simplicity, economy, and efficiency.” Many laymen miss an aesthetic quality about such architecture, which may reflect a true organic need for perceptual stimulation beyond the repetitive sterility of building design consistently translated through an economic calculus. The apparent “diversity” of our structures seems primarily a diversity of quantity, specialization, and differentiation of economic function rather than any substantial qualitative diversity. The collection of these components into an organic whole—this aspect of cities has also been subjected to the dictates of the market place. It is difficult to conceive of an aesthetically pleasing result being the consequence:
…it is as idle to expect a well-planned town to result from the independent activities of isolated speculators as it would be to expect a satisfactory picture to result if each separate square inch were painted by an independent artist. No “invisible hand” can be relied on to produce a good arrangement of the whole from a combination of separate treatment of the parts.
As we become an increasingly urban nation with future generations destined to be the products of our urban environments, we need be concerned as to the consequences of this perceptual/aesthetic impoverishment:
It would seem logical to assume that just as our bodies need food and exercise to grow strong and healthy, so does our brain need an adequate sensory intake and stimulation for its optimum development. And the measure of our perceptual diet is obviously not how much we perceive, but how many significantly different images our senses transmit to our minds—in other words, the diversity rather than the repetitive quantity of our experiences.
The lack of perceptual diversity is magnified by the loss of “imported” diversity to our urban places. Whereas in the past our urban places have grown with a substantial influx of people with rural origins, this migration stream is now a relative trickle. To the extent we cannot maintain an element of perceptual diversity in our urban places by drawing upon those people with rural origins, our future generations will derive from those who have been urban-bred and urban-born. Some of the perceptual attributes more common to the rural and semi-rural resident that might be lost in this demographic revolution are:
A sense of proportion and perspective—in a relatively rural setting, where one has proximity to and identification with the natural environment, there is not the sense that man has created all; rather, man is more a co-equal agent in the biosphere and views himself in a more cooperative rather than mastering role.
A different sense of time—given the attention to seasonality, planting, and harvest, time is more cyclical in the rural environment whereas in the more open-ended extension of activities in the urban environment, time is more linear.
If a person has few criteria for giving meaning to life beyond the secular rules of the industrial dynamic, then it would seem increasingly difficult for him to find meaning in the urban environment—to sort out the durable from the ephemeral, the significant from the trivial. There are many “signs” of significance and meaning (e.g., if it’s large and complex, then it must be significant), but there are few contemporary “symbols” which give a deeper sense of relative importance to the various components of our complex environment. Under such circumstances, it would seem rational for people to fall back upon “smaller life worlds” which are less imposing, less complex, less extensive, and thereby more comprehensive. Thus, to make our life worlds comprehensive (particularly in the context of large urban environments), we must make our life worlds small—and in making them small we may further sever our connection of congruence and “wholeness” with the world in which we live.
This logic suggests that the emergence of massive urban environments may have substantially increased human alienation. Although “alienation” is a fluid and much abused term, the essential notion has been remarkably durable and thus must have some degree of experiential validity even if its definition lacks empirical rigor. Alienation may be defined as some combination of the following characteristics (Seeman, 1972):
A sense of powerlessness;
A sense of meaninglessness;
A sense of normlessness;
A sense of self-estrangement; and
A sense of social isolation.
That the notion of alienation has some basis in the real world seems confirmed, for example, by a recent Louis-Harris poll. As Table B-2 shows, disturbingly large proportions of Americans are distrustful of the men and institutions that shape our society and feel disconnected from the political process through which they might be able to change things.
Seeman (1972) postulates five historical trends which may form the causal basis for the emergence of alienation. It is useful to note that all of these trends are directly or indirectly tied to the emergence of very large urban environments:
(1) The enlargement of scale, referring to the fact that the bases of action and the stage of existence has become massive: big cities which embrace big governments, big corporations, big unions, etc.
(2) The decline of kinship as an important criterion of place, with consequent increase of anonymity and impersonality in social relations.
(3) Increased mobility, both spatial and social, which implies the waning of locality ties and immediate interpersonal bonds.
(4) Increased social differentiation involving increasing specialization of persons and institutions, with increased division of labor and increasing interdependence (along with increased homogeneity implied by standardization in a mass culture based upon mass consumption).
(5) Decline of traditional social forms and the rise of secularized, rationalized social forms.
There is, then, a plausible and rather direct linkage between alienation and the emergence of large urban environments. Some of the behavioral consequences attributed to alienation (Seeman, ibid) include a variety of ills common to our era:
Political passivity
Mental disorder
School and work absenteeism
School and work vandalism
Wildcat strikes.
Scale and the Limits to Social Elasticity
At small levels of social organization, such as the village in more traditional societies, extended family bonds provide much of the “glue” that makes the social system cohesive. Identification, status, patterns of association grow from basic family ties and bonds. The development of larger social organizations, such as a city, must rely upon more than family bonds for social cohesion. In part this is true because our high rates of population mobility have broken down extended family structures. It also seems true because social organization does not proceed in a linear fashion—at some critical mass of aggregation, the cohesive possibilities of one form of social organization are exhausted. In modern society in general, and large urban environments in particular, we seem to rely increasingly upon “social elasticity” to provide the necessary “glue” to hold our society together:
This involves “criss-cross” bonds that permit the establishment of a veritable cobweb of associations of one sort or another, all of which transcend each other in such a way that each individual is linked to each other member of the society in at least one and preferably more ways.
These webs of association include our roles as: citizens, worker, husband or wife, student, sports fan, church goer, voter, hobbyist, etc. Ideally, all people will be included and linked together in the social structure through one form of association or another. Maintenance
of social elasticity is a precondition to self-regulating social organization at larger scales. Yet, we may be approaching another critical mass of aggregation in our scales of urban places which are once again exhausting the cohesive power of this form of social organization.
Without social elasticity there would be no bonds, no organization; in fact no real society. Yet social elasticity can only be maintained in special conditions. Thus it is likely that if the society grows too big, the bonds holding it together become of an ever more precarious nature and eventually incapable of holding it together.
Adaptation to the Urban Setting
In using intolerability measures of social-psychological well-being (e.g., excesses of violent crime, mental illness, suicide), we may implicitly assume that if these forms of pathological behavior are not substantially present, then our living environments must be desirable. However, this reasoning confuses what is desirable with what is tolerable. This confusion is demonstrated, for example, by a study (Gulick, et al., 1962), which found that people could lead a “reasonably contented existence” in a particular city. The nature of that contended existence is described in a summary sentence of the study: “In general, they have made a happy adjustment to the relatively superficial urban neighborhood social patterns and to the necessity of dealing impersonally with many people.” This seems to say more about the adaptability of man and his capacity to tolerate any environment than it says about the desirability of that environment. Just because a condition is tolerable—and man’s adaptive potential greatly increases his spectrum of tolerability—it does not mean that the living environment is therefore desirable. Further, the gap between what may be tolerable and what may be desirable is not necessarily constant. Over time the gap may widen, given the dynamic character of man’s adaptability. This is graphically illustrated in Figure B-l and finds an allegory in the laboratory demonstration in which a frog was placed in a beaker of nearly boiling water and jumped out. However, when the frog was placed in a beaker of cold water that was slowly warmed to boiling temperature, the temperature change was sufficiently gradual that the frog adapted in increments, making no attempt to escape until he finally died. Analogously, the mere fact that a society can generate urban environments, and for a time adapt to them, does not necessarily ensure that it is a desirable thing to do. We can make errors and inadvertently accept living environments which may prove lethal to both our social-psychological existence as beings seeking to unfold our potentials, and to our physical existence.
The nature of the adaptive process, that can allow us to tolerate even extremely undesirable conditions without exhibiting the warning signals of overt pathological behavior is discussed by Rene Dubos:
Paradoxically, the dangers of over-population will be increased by the extreme adaptability of the human race. Human beings can become adapted to almost anything—polluted air, treeless avenues, starless skies, aggressive behavior, the rat race of over-competitive societies, even life in concentration camps.
Man’s physiological and psychological endowments thus give him a wide range of adaptive potentialities and enable him to survive and function even under extremely unfavorable conditions; however, the fact that all subsequent aspects of his life are affected by his past makes such adaptability a double-edged sword.
Beyond simple physical adaptation, man’s social adaptation takes the form of modifying belief structures to conform with the seemingly inescapable and unmodifiable reality of life experience:
He changes the true physical world when he is able to: when he cannot satisfy his wants by engineering, he changes what he believes.
However, there are limits to this adaptive process. Unless we employ our technological abilities, which have been so successful in altering the external world, to alter ourselves, there do seem to be emerging limits to human adaptation:
Every change causes a reorganization of personality during which anxiety is generated and persists while the individual’s coping mechanism, and the supportive mechanisms provided by society, facilitate final readjustment. Here lies the basic issue of current times. Cultural changes, induced by the interaction of an ever more rapid pace of technological change with the increasing population, are now demanding an ever- increasing rate of change in personality structure … we have entered an era of the lagging psyche and sustained anxiety.
Increased anxiety, alienation, disorder, and mistrust seem to be part of the price we must pay for the adaptation of our individual and collective social arrangements to an economic system which brings us such great material benefits.
Society is limited in its capacity to adapt to environmental change, not only by its inability to comprehend it, but also, among other things, by the social disruption that must be caused by attempting to adapt too rapidly to such change. Science may facilitate comprehension, and may provide the technology for ensuring partial short-term adaptation to change, but by failing to provide the means for ensuring the corresponding adaptation of social structures, it must there by determine their disintegration.
And yet there is ample reason to think that we may extend ourselves beyond the limits of human adaptation. We tend to respond only to immediate crises that are sufficiently specific to allow ready identification; e.g., the energy crisis, the environmental crisis in its physical dimensions, etc. We are slow to search out or even recognize the existence of what may be much more significant social crises—leading to an intolerability condition whose dimensions are so amorphous and so intertwined with the whole social fabric that we can hardly stand back enough to establish even its skeletal form. These are essentially qualitative crises such as alienation, aesthetic deprivation, continuing mismatches between the character of the living environment and the altered need levels of people, overextension of social elasticity, etc. Unless a problem has a substantial physical manifestation which immediately threatens us, it is unlikely to get attention in an era plagued with crises. Yet the more subtle, qualitative problems, though they may manifest themselves only little by little in the short run, are of profound long-run importance to our society.
But the technological conditions of production are not chosen with a view to enhancing man’s experience of life. Nor has any social science the least say in their determination. They evolve solely in response to the requirements of industrial efficiency. Thus, the predominant influences bearing on man’s welfare are generated accidentally; simply as a byproduct of technological advance. It may well be suspected that the human frame and the human psyche are ill-adjusted to the style of living that technology is thrusting upon us, but willy-nilly technology marches on, leaving to the medical profession the unenviable task of dealing with an increasing number of casualties that are unable to cope with the strains and stresses of a rapidly changing world.
Thus, adaptation—despite its limits—allows dangerous understatement of the significance of social disease by masking the warning signals of social pathology. Analogously, it is like cancer that does not manifest itself with any substantial pain or discomfort until a week before the person reaches a terminal stage. To compound matters, where pathologies do emerge in our society, they often seem to be discounted as isolated phenomena which reveal little about the larger social condition. In the past, adaptation was perhaps the key to our success as a species. In the future it may be a source of our demise.
Conclusions
Summarizing briefly, the following conclusions emerge with respect to the social consequences of increasing urban scale.
Large urban environments offer desirable social attributes for many people: economic diversity, cultural experience, anonymity, free expression of diverse life-styles, opportunities for personal achievement. For others, these same environments have undesirable attributes along similar dimensions: an underlying homogeneity yielding superficial diversity, cultural breakdown, alienation, too much competition. Clearly, no easy generalizations are possible.
Our urban places are primarily economic entities whose function and structure can be largely explained through economic efficiency variables. The “law of the inoptimum” states that no species encounters in any given habitat the optimum conditions for all of its functions. Therefore, to see our urban habitat maximizing economic functions to such a degree, there is implicit confirmation that the social aspects of existence are not being simultaneously maximized, and possibly cannot be. Our larger urban places are where the economic articulation of function and structure is greatest.
The issue of density is only of peripheral importance to this study since it is only modestly correlated with scale. In any event, the findings which relate crowding to social pathology are generally inconclusive although there does seem to be a slight increase in some pathologies as density increases. The ambiguity of the findings may be largely attributable to the crudeness of the measuring processes. There is relatively little information correlating social pathology with changing city size. Perhaps the most extensive data, which relate the rate of violent crime to city size, reveal a striking correlation between increasing scale and increasing rates of violent crime.
The perceptual and aesthetic attributes of our living environments are of tremendous importance in creating our sense of self and, consequently, in shaping our patterns of behavior. The aesthetics of our urban places—premised upon simplicity, economy, and efficiency—have diminished perceptual diversity. This built-in perceptual poverty cannot help but simultaneously impoverish their inhabitants. Another source of loss of diversity has been in the diminution of rural to urban migration. The loss of rural migrants, with their significantly different perceptual patterns, constitutes a significant loss in “imported” perceptual diversity. Further, urban scale makes access to the natural environment inherently more difficult since much greater distances must be traveled to escape the urban region.
Alienation is difficult to define empirically but includes a sense of powerlessness, normlessness, meaninglessness. and social isolation. All contemporary trends associated with the
emergence of alienation are directly or indirectly tied to the growth of very large urban environments, e.g., the enlargement of living scale beyond human comprehension, the decline of kinship ties, increased geographic mobility, increased social differentiation, decline of more traditional social forms and the rise of secularized, rationalized social forms. Alienation is given a causal role for a variety of contemporary social ills including: political passivity, mental disorder, school and work absenteeism, school and work vandalism.
Social elasticity is a term for the cobweb of personal associations which relate diverse people to one another. This is a critically important cohesive force in our society which has transcended scales of social organization based on family ties. With the emergence of even larger scales of social organization—the megalopolis—even this form of social organization
may not maintain social cohesion. Larger scales, then, may be a socially disruptive factor that demands unknown forms of social cohesion, perhaps highly formalized and rationalized external controls—as a replacement for social elasticity.
Man is highly adaptable. Our adaptability allows us to tolerate—and thereby mask warning signals of social pathology—even undesirable living environments. In our construction of social policy, we often seem to confuse the tolerability of an environment with its desirability.”