What is a City : Part one

What is a CITY?

 Part One

Much of the early classical research and theories on European, industrial,  urban cities is based on historic analysis of industrialised urban development,  with some  theory, relating to the urban citizen, personal, experience.  For both Marx  and Simmel,  the  urban city form, such as Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff , Birmingham so on and so forth, is structured and  functions along the lines of a ruling ideology. From this idea, a city form is only a structure that has been developed  through a  historical process. A city therefore,  is an entity that has been constructed through ‘ time’.  Capitalist time.  Cities, from this perspective  are open jails  that enclose working class people into an economic system.  That system  produces cities.

Marx argued that the city form and function did not appear by natural processes but by capitalist need. The city therefore is an enforced enclave, a box, a jail as such, constructed for capitalist interest that needs workers.

 A city therefore is a constructed structure that pushed and pulled and pushes and pulls working class people, into its centre to serve the rich people’s way of life.  Cities therefore are an open jail that encloses people into them, to work for and benefit capitalist and ‘ruling’ bourgeoisie ideology.  It does this by creating ‘work’ within its city centres and keeping the worker, living close to the work , so as not to lose time by travel into work. 

 Therefore  a city   just another form of a  working class jail!   

Marx and Simmel, argued that a City functions  to enclave  a mass number of ‘ working class’  people to  serve the ‘ Rich people.’  The  fact that we have cities in the first place is evidence enough of their statements. For example, why are ‘we’  the workers,  not  still living  on  farms,  herding goats and planting crops  or  living by the sea , fishing ?

What of cities? What of us?  Why?

Unlike Marx’s analysis of socio-political domination of rulers that create cities, where the working class people, live in and function like puppets within a city Simmel,  understood social differentiation.  Simmel,  did not see the city as just a play  ‘thing’  for the rich  to toy with the working classes.  Certainly, like Marx,  Simmel thought the ‘ people were puppets’,   within the city but Simmel thought about the emotions that individuals ‘felt’  living in a city. As far as I am aware Marx never asked anyone how they felt?

 Simmel, like Marx, viewed a city as a ‘place’  however , unlike Marx, Simmel,  argued that a city  was constructed and then  inhabited by a myriad of different individuals whose experiences are shaped by a priori categories and these then shape and are shaped by  capitalist systems.

Simmels,  theory is not as historically determined as Marx. Rather, Simmel,  views city place as  spaces. Cities therefore are  both a process of  structural environments   and community  spaces, dynamic  processes . Albeit dialectical .

The question remains : What is a City ?

The ‘ Chicago School’  developed,  I guess,  by long days and nights of  like minded mates arguing  with each other over this  question. Their debates developed into the original theory of   a  ‘ Concentric Zone’ model  of  a city structure . The city structure, these mates argued,  consists of zones around the city centre that can be broken into sections.   

To begin with The Chicago School argued that there is a city. Obvious but true!

 They then  state  that there  are concentric zones within that city. 

To begin with a city is a jail. It is a working class jail. Within that jail there are different zones. 

1.      The working class  zone is where the working class are to be placed, to work and then live in

2.      Then there is a ‘migrant zone’ , a zone of transition where the poorest members of  capitalist global society  migrate to get work and food.   

3.      The rich do not live in the city. They live in the suburbs. 

 By the way the city zones are also amongst the most under resourced  and over ‘ criminalised’  areas in  the economic world! Fact!

There are now many criticisms and opposing theoretical debates to the ‘Chicago School’ discussion on the mode and means of the production and design of a city, such as Hoyts sector model theory and Harris and Ullman multiple nuclei theory. However, The Chicago School theory show us that a city and its structure and function can be understood analysed as a means of social control ?