The United States Road System

The United States has become increasingly urban since its formal inception in 1776. Washington D.C. in 2000 was 100 percent urban while Vermont was only 38.2% (retrieved 14 April, 2009 see Table 28. Urban and rural Population by State from http://search.census.gov/search?q=percent+urban&entqr=0&output=xml_no_dtd&ud=1&ie=UTF-8&client=subsite&proxystylesheet=subsite&hq=inurl%3Awww.census.gov%2Fcompendia%2Fstatab%2F+-www.census.gov%2Fcompendia%2Fstatab%2F2006+-www.census.gov%2Fcompendia%2Fstatab%2F2007&subtitle=statab ). In Figure 1 you can see the increasing urbanization in the US (the blue line) and some of the factors that contributed so strongly to it after 1940. There were 2 key pieces of legislation that made the development of today's interstate and road system what it currently is. The 1925 and later 1956 Federal Highway Acts facilitated the federal control, organization, and funding of nation-wide road development. Prior to these acts many roads were impassable, or very poorly maintained.

A nationally coordinated numbering system was put into place and after 1956 billions of dollars were earmarked to fund the asphalt and concrete paving of a new highway system. Today we have over 4 million miles of roads that require tens of billions per year in construction and maintenance costs. You can also see that car ownership increased dramatically once the roads were built. The number of cars owned tripled between 1960-2000 and these cars facilitated the commuting trends into the suburbs. The availability of the internet facilitated working from home and telecommuting. For the wealthy elite, gentrification and Exurbanization was made possible by abandoned factories and apartment buildings, now desirable for purchase and renovation by the upper-middle class young couples.

By 1980s, many empty warehouses and many abandoned apartment buildings scarred certain sections of the city. Wealthy young couples began a trend called Gentrification, or the purchase of rundown buildings in the city center which were remodeled for upper class apartments. Inevitably, gentrification forced the poor inner city dwellers out of their neighborhoods, because city officials were persuaded to rezone these gentrified neighborhoods to keep the "undesirable elements" away. Around the 1990 another trend emerged called Exurbanization, where upper class city dwellers moved out of the city beyond the suburbs and lived in high-end housing in the countryside. Truly, the modern US urban experience has followed a semi-circular pattern in the last 150 years, following this pattern: Rural habitation _ Urban habitation _ Suburban habitation _Gentrification for wealthy _Exurbanization for wealthy. Figure 1 summarizes some of the key historical factors that brought current US urbanization to the point of over 7 out of 10 in the US living in urban areas, following this historical pattern: Industrial Revolution _ World War II _Transportation expansion _ Technological Revolution (computer chip).

Figure 1. Percentage of United States Population Urban and Rural*

* Retrieved 14 April, 2009 Statistical Abstracts of the US, No HS-2 Population Characteristics: 1900-2002; and Statistical Abstracts, 1991http://www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-02.pdf; and Table 1. Historical Data on Income, Vehicle Ownership and Population, 1960-2002 from http://www.econ.nyu.edu/dept/courses/gately/DGS_Vehicle%20Ownership_2007.pdf; and Table 1055. Highway Mileage--Urban and Rural by Ownership: 1980 TO 2005 http://search.census.gov/search?q=miles+of+roads&entqr=0&hq=inurl%3Awww.census.gov%2Fcompendia%2Fstatab%2F+-www.census.gov%2Fcompendia%2Fstatab%2F2006+-www.census.gov%2Fcompendia%2Fstatab%2F2007&sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&output=xml_no_dtd&client=subsite&ud=1&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&proxystylesheet=subsite&subtitle=statab

Why live in a city in the first place? One explanation goes back to the Push and Pull Factors we learned about in Chapter 17. Push factors back home might include: too many people and not enough jobs or food; too few opportunities; almost everyone is poor in rural areas; and there are often severe taxes in rural areas. Pull factors toward the city typically include hope of better jobs, opportunities, reunion with family members, and lifestyles. In general over the last 100 years the rural economy provided fewer and fewer opportunities, services, and culturally-desirable experiences in comparison to the urban one. People are literally pulled to the urban and suburban areas because the city offers more of these unmet needs. The Industrial Revolution brought many workers to live in and around the urban areas. Factories and inner-city concentrated housing units were very common up until World War II.

By the end of the war, people wanted their own homes, independence, and a daily reprieve from the grind of the big city. They didn't want to move too far away, just far enough to allow them a less hectic daily life with a more affordable cost of living. The suburbs came at a perfect time.

Suburban refers to smaller cities located on the edges of the larger city which often include residential neighborhoods for those working in the area. The suburbs in the US grew dramatically after World War II when the superhighways and freeways combined with the somewhat modest cost of automobiles, the movement out of the inner city and into the suburbs was on.

Look at Figure 2 below to see the characteristics of rural, suburban, and urban social structures. On the left side of this graphic notice that rural areas typically have high levels of homogeneous people (they are very similar), self-dependence, mechanical solidarity, and similarity in work. Urban areas have relatively low levels in each of these. On the right hand side, notice that urban has heterogeneous people (very diverse peoples), inter-dependence (the doctor needs the butcher, the butcher needs the accountant, the accountant needs the electrician, etc.), organic solidarity, diversity in work, higher cost of living, formalized rules, organizational complexity, numbers of people, and anomie. Rural areas have relatively low levels in each of these. Suburban areas have a relative mix of all of these traits, some higher and some lower depending on other structural, cultural, SES, and historical factors.

All of the definitions in this paragraph were discussed in other chapters, but for the sake of quick reference they are repeated here.

· Homogeneous implies similar types of people whereas Heterogeneous implies diverse types of people.

· Gemeinschaft (Guh-mine-shoft) means "intimate community" whereas Gesellschaft (Guh-zell-shoft) means" impersonal associations."

· Mechanical Solidarity is a shared conscious among society's members who each has a similar form of livelihood whereas Organic Solidarity is a sense of interdependence on the specializations of occupations in modern society.

· Anomie is a state of social normlessness which occurs when our lives or society has vague norms.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 927