Three Big Themes for Studying Urban Environments

Image Credit: Philadelphia Foundation

In my Squidoo webpage on Human Behavior in the Urban Environment I have identified a series of questions under the sub-heading “What Type of Intervention in Urban Environments?” These questions identify some of the major themes for thinking and writing about the city. It could be useful to simplify these themes by clustering them together, creating three mega-categories: (1) Professionals and Institutions; (2) Deviancy, Tolerance and Social Integration; and (3) Demographics, Resources and Public Space.

Each cluster suggests a series of interrelated questions one can use as a guide, or to generate ideas, when writing about the urban environment.

Professionals and Institutions: What are some of the underlying ideas and assumptions behind different anti-poverty initiatives? What are some of the roles of professionals and non-professionals in community intervention and problem-solving? How do these roles come into conflict with each other? How might communities and social institutions be made more humane and responsive to human needs? What are some of images, in the public mind, concerning the intimacy or impersonality of social life in the city?

Deviancy, Tolerance and Social Integration: How are populations stigmatized in the social environment? What are the limits of tolerance for social deviancy, and how is tolerance and intolerance expressed? How do communities place formal or informal sanctions against deviant behavior? How do deviant populations cope with community sanctions? What are some of the images of the urban environment, in the public mind, concerning social deviance?

Demographics, Resources and Public Space: What are some of the tensions that arise concerning diversity and assimilation in urban environments? How might population diversity be correlated to increases or decreases in property value? How is public space used and contested by different demographic groups (this can be cultural, generational, racial/ethnic, gendered, etc.)? How does the diversity of a population affect, and how is it affected by, scarcity or abundance of social resources?

These clusters of themes, and associated questions, should help you to think about how you can observe and write about urban environments. You may think of your own clusters of themes that work better for you than the ones I have here. Give it a try and see what you come up with.