George Simmel

Brooke Avery

There were many different influences that affected the idea of the tradition of urban sociology. Among many were George Simmel, a German influence, and Robert Park, Louis Wirth, and Herbert Gans, American influences. They looked at what and how things influence big groups in an industrial atmosphere.

George Simmel’s “Metropolis and Mental Life” looked at the effects on our psychological state, and looks at how a large scale affects our minds. He believed that a large society was such a complex entity, and that any human being is likely to feel over stimulated. He said that because of this, urbanites must have a blasé attitude. If not for this blasé attitude, urbanites will not have psychic liberty. He continued to say that the city is a cash nexus, and that the city is organized around money. This cash nexus keeps everyone speaking the same language, so to speak.

Robert Park’s “The Urban Community as a Spatial and Moral Order”, looked at the society in a slightly different way than the German influence of Simmel. Park studied the city of Chicago, because it was a typical portrait of America. He came to a conclusion that everyone in their own gemeinshafts followed its norms. Park said that these gemeinshafts provided liberty, but also provided a home where you would be able to be rooted when you come back from the central city. Simmel said that gemeinshafts can be alienating, but Park argued that instead, they give you a home to belong to. Park also said that people are afraid of the mass society; that there was no independence of thought and so people become followers. This causes people to be more easily swayed by charming leaders because they may lose all connection with family and the values and morals that family provides. Park continued to say that with the growth of the mass society, communities start overlapping, and an elimination of gemeinshafts starts to occur.

Louis Wirth, another American influence, wrote “Urbanism as a Way of Life” in 1938. Wirth argued that size, density, and heterogeneity affected the urban way of life. He said that these things affected behavioral patterns. Wirth argued that these three things caused not a primary-group relationship, but instead a second type of relationship that is impersonal and shallow. He said that urbanites start to feel isolated and in response, are forced to join impersonal, large groups. These groups replace the primary groups that are found in rural areas.

Herbert Gans looks at the urban tradition through a different perspective. He questioned mass society, early ideas of mass society, and urbanism. Gans studied an Italian slum from 1955-1958. Gans found that in urban gemeinshafts, people felt close to each other. He noticed a very intact village. He noticed that in contrast to a mass society, a society of people who were dependant on each other. Gans noticed this when he learned that people in the Italian ghetto didn’t want to move when they found out that there were plans to tear down the ghetto. Gans found that people in there gemeinshafts were content with where they lived because they felt so close to each other.

Gans findings were different from Simmel’s, Park’s and Wirth’s in that he found that these groups in the city were more homogeneous than anything. Their social and cultural roots were strong enough to protect them from the effects of number, density and heterogeneity.

Gans went on to explain that instead, social class affected them more than living in a place where number, density and heterogeneity may have an effect on a person. Put simply, Gans argued that location matters less than social class, or ones position in the life cycle. Gans argued that Wirth faltered in three different ways. Gans says that the first mistake Wirth made was that he only studied the inner city. The findings that Wirth had cannot be generalized for an entire area. Gans also said that there is not enough evidence to prove that number, density, and heterogeneity can result in isolation of a person. Thirdly, Gans argued that there is good reason to doubt that size, density, and heterogeneity produce alienation. According to Gans, class has more to do with alienation than these three things.