The Challenges of Urbanization

Cities: Crowded; Noisy; and Exciting

Factors Contributing to Urbanization in the Late 19th Century

• In 1840; there were 131 cities in the nation. By 1900; the number had increased to 1700.

• Farm machines were replacing farm workers.

• Factories; mills; and other city business needed workers.

• Cities also attracted people because cities were exciting.

• Immigrants also contributed to the growth of cities.

• Cities were where the jobs could be found.

• The Americanization Movement was designed to assimilate people of wide-ranging cultures into the dominant culture.

• Schools & voluntary associations provided programs to teach immigrants skills needed for citizenship

Western Western Union Bldg,. Union Bldg,. NYC – 1875NYC – 1875

Cities grew not only in terms of

population but also in size, with

skyscrapers pushing cities upward

FlatironFlatironBuilding Building

NYC – NYC – 19021902

D. H. D. H. BurnhaBurnha

mm

Streetcars and trains allowed urban residents to live further from their jobs than walking distance.

Subways allow commuters to travel to the city via trains that go underground so as not to interfere with above ground transportation

With the rise of skyscrapers; electric elevators made it easy to get to the top; people no longer had to use the stairs

The Brooklyn Bridge

John A. Roebling:John A. Roebling:The Brooklyn Bridge, The Brooklyn Bridge,

18831883

Urban Living Conditions

• Immigrants often lived in buildings abandoned by middle-class residents and converted into multifamily units.

• These tenements soon became identified as “slums”.

• Many families would cram into spaces only meant for a few.

• Many immigrants tended to settle with others from the same country creating the ethnic neighborhoods and sections that can still be found in many big cities today.

Urban Living Conditions cont.

• Outside the tenements, raw sewage and garbage littered the streets.

• Contagious diseases raged in such conditions.

• Babies were especially susceptible.

• In NYC, in one district of tenements, six out of ten babies died before their first birthday.

Problems in the Cities

Transportation

• Cities developed mass transit-transportation systems designed to move large number of people along fixed routes.

• Cities struggled to repair old transit systems and to build new ones to meet the demand of expanding population.

Water Supply

• Cities faced problems supplying safe drinking water.

• Residents of many cities had grossly inadequate piped water or none at all.

• Residents had to collect water in pails from faucets on the streets and heat it for bathing.

Housing

• Poor families struggled to survive in crowded slums living in tenements.

Hine, Lewis W. NYC tenement 1910

• Tenements were overcrowded, dirty and oftentimes had no windows, heat, or indoor bathrooms.

In the Tenements

• *Many immigrants lived in crowded tenement buildings. Families shared living space and decent lighting & fresh air were scarce.

• *

Jacob Riis, 1889 “Lodgers in a Bayard Street

Tenement, Five Cents a Spot"

Bunks in a seven-cent lodging-house, Pell Street

Jacob Riis – Men’s Lodging Room in the West 47th Street Station – c. 1892

Tenement Housing

Tenement housing in New York City.

A typical tenement house on the corner of Ontario and Monroe streets in Toledo, Ohio.

Problems in the Cities• Sanitation-As the cities grew; so did the challenge

of keeping them clean.

-Horse manure piled up on the streets;

sewage flowed through open gutters; and

Factories spewed foul smoke into the air.

• Fire-Overcrowded and poorly

built tenements and lack

of water made fire

especially dangerous.

-Most city firefighters

were volunteers and not

always available when

they were needed.

• Crime-As the population of cities increased so

did pickpockets and thieves.

-NYC organized the first full-time

salaried police in 1844.

-Most other cities were too small to have

much impact on crime.

Street cleaning, Fourth Street

• Garbage collection and street cleaning began regularly.

Reform

Typical tenement fire-escape serving as an extension of the flat: Allen Street

• New buildings were required to have fire escapes and plumbing.

Social Gospel Movement-Leaders of this movement preached that people reached salvation by helping the poor.• Salvation Army

Hull House in the early 1900’s (above) and Jane Addams in the 1930’s (right). She was a well-known social reformer.

Hull House – a settlement house set up by Jane Addams in Chicago

Settlement houses were community centers located in slum neighborhoods. Workers there provided help & friendship to immigrants and the poor.

Hull-House Nursery, ca. 1890s

Gospel of Wealth• Is an article written by Andrew Carnegie in

1889 that describes the responsibility of philanthropy (love of humanity) by the new upper class of Self-made rich.

• Distributing his fortune in a way that it will be put to good use, and not wasted on frivolous expenditure.

• Carnegie put his philosophy into practice through a program of gifts to endow public libraries, known as 'Carnegie libraries' in cities and towns throughout the United States and the English-speaking world, with the idea that he was thus providing people with the tools to better themselves.

Social Darwinism > Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer is both an early sociologist and also the father of social Darwinism, against which most early sociology was directed. His social Darwinist doctrines of “survival of the fittest,” “laissez faire” and the "night watchman state" became the conventional wisdom of most English speaking social theory from 1890 to 1920, celebrated by sociologists such as W. G. Sumner and by robber barons such as Andrew Carnegie.

Spencer saw individualism and competition as the key to social progress, and he argued that government programs are ineffective and lead to dependency. The individualism and the biological reductionism of Social Darwinism was in conflict with the basic insight that human behavior is socially shaped by culture, families, religion, class, gender, schools, organizations and other groups