Aswer_Midterm2_Q7.doc

7. Describe the forces that contributed to greater spatial segregation according to class, race, and religion during the late nineteenth century in American cities. Pay particular attention to immigration, migration, changes in the organization of industrial and commercial activity, patterns of spatial development in the built urban environment, and transportation access. Use diagrams if you wish. Transportation Access: ?omnibus lines have been established, which run constantly, day and evening, thus enabling residents to transact business in the city of Philadelphia and adjoining districts without inconvenience? ? (Miller and Siry) -Railroads moved out radially from the central business district of the city. This allowed growth of the industrial satellite and suburbs. The rail lines stopped at stations spread out some miles apart in a ?bead-pattern strings? fashion. At these stations, suburbs were created, housing upper-class citizens, these included doctors, lawyers, judges, and businessmen. The train fare was too expensive for the middle to lower/working classes. -Steam trains were relatively cheaper for passengers than omnibuses. -The city took a planetary structure with a focus on ?port, capital, market town or strongpoint? and around it satellites and suburbs. -An increase in transportation access, such as cross-town lines and the invention of cheaper, mass transport lead to an increase in movement for the middle and working classes. -Horsecar lines replaced the omnibus line in 1858 in philadelphia. ?The existing neighborhood north of the horsecar line on 40th street included small rows, streets that housed laborers, service workers, and local shopkeepers? ?(Miller and Siry) ?New York City added the horse drawn streetcar, which in 1852 broadened the class utilization of transport, demonstrating the wide geographical field open for development.? ?(Vance) -Steam trains were invented and relatively cheaper than the omnibus. Also the opening of suburban trolley lines expanded suburbanization to the working class. -More land connected by transportation lowered the cost of lots and encouraged workers to move outward. -As transportation became cheaper and more widespread, the land around the city became cheaper because the market of potential landowners began to rise significantly. This allowed the poorer population to afford living farther out. As the middle class moved into suburb areas, the upper-class continued to move outwards as well. -The middle-class was primarily located near quick transportation or near industrial satellites, where they might find employment. ?Ferries made better use of primitive steam engines, lowering cost of travel and allowing masses of people to be carried? ?(Vance) Immigration: -There was a large scale immigration of Europeans into the U.S., flooding into the port cities. -?Between 1890 and 1910, the U.S. experienced a tidal wave of new arrivals? ?(Hall) -The immigrants primarily stayed in the city and lived in similar areas. -?National groups gravitated to precisely defined and densely packed ghettos in the heart of Manhattan? ?(Hall) -?In the ghettos immigrants could live with similar people, speak their language, follow their religious rules, buy familiar food, and be free from racial abuse.? ?(Hall) -Conditions were extremely poor for immigrants in the city. They began a mass movement into the suburbs. Mainly Jewish immigrants at first and they concentrated in completely Jewish areas, such as Brownsville in Brooklyn. Migration -Upper-class originally migrated out of the cities because they could afford the transportation and the lots and conditions were much better outside of the city. -As transportation became cheaper, first the middle-class began to move outward and then as immigrants overcrowded the city the working class began to move out as well. -Before immigration, in an 1870 census in Philadelphia, ?All of the families were white, and all heads of the household were born in the United States.? ?(Miller and Siry) -The upper-class would not associate themselves with those under them and therefore continued to move outward as people of lower-class migrated outward. This also provided them with more land in order to build larger houses. -?Rich and poor did not usually live on the same block? ?(Miller and Siry) -?Rich moved outward each generation? ?(Vance) -?Generational shift and the handing down process have been the most widespread forces at work in the shaping of American cities.? ?(Vance) -?A uniformity of appearance, of price, and of situation, attracted startlingly similar groups of households, corresponding to the acutely felt gradations in social class recognized by nineteenth century society at large? ?(Miller and Siry) -?Appearance of social homogeneity along the block front ensured the status of those individuals living within the residences.? ?(Miller and Siry) -People chose where to live by who else lived there. Those that had the same social status. Patterns of the Spatial Development in the Built Urban Environment -As the upper-class moved outward due to crowding the larger lots were subdivided into smaller lots, so that they could be more affordable to the lower classes and also more people could live in one area. -Apartments were created on these lots, which created a working class area. This cause even more class segregation in cities. -There was a boarding house system of housing until immigration hit. Row houses were built to accommodate for the influx of population and the immigrants lived in these. -Tradesmen?s homes were clustered near the main street and wealthy estates were farther away. -?Choices of location and density for speculative housing?began to transform the image of the suburb into an urban neighborhood. -?Boston suburbs, originally low-density developments and represented by single-family homes on large plots, was ultimately replaced by much denser growth? ?(Miller and Siry) -Early suburban development only partially relieved crowding in the traditional American city. -Eventually, as the suburbs began to become more crowded, the city was drained of the working class residents and the land was put to non-residential use. Changes in organization of industrial and commercial activity -The Upper class suburbs were located where environmental amenities were perceived the highest. -In the beginning, the industrial satellites could not very effectively make use of the central city institutions, stores, or housing and the suburb could not provide housing for the lower economic classes working in the core of the city because of expensive travel costs. This changed as travel became cheaper suburbs became more affordable for the lower class. The working class could also find work in these industrial satellites because the influx of immigrants created a strain on available jobs. This caused more working class citizen to live near these industrial satellites. -Immigrants also brought about the push cart in the city streets, which sold good for much less money. Some immigrants would live above and below the stores.