1. Community: the Chicago School

2. Social Darwinism
Popular intellectual fashion in late C19th early C20th USA
Treated social and economic competition as “natural”
Connected to eugenics: preserving the race

4. Social Darwinism
Suggested that those groups which dominated society, economy somehow deserved it

5. Chicago School
University of Chicago emerging in the 1890s as an innovative research centre
Chicago a new kind of city
Application of new ideas

6. Chicago School UofC Philosophy programme:
John Dewey as leading influence
Strong on pragmatism
Influenced by Darwin’s ideas on evolution

7. Chicago School University Settlement House
Jane Addams and Ellen Starr lead Hull House programme to aid the poor immigrant

8. Chicago School of Human Ecology
Ernest W Burgess
Robert Ezra Park
Roderick D McKenzie

9. "The human community may be considered as an ecological product"
-- Roderick Mckenzie 1923

10. Park on Community
Community results from competition with other social groups for living space
Size, resources, location, internal organization
Internal workings and institutions

11. Park, Burgess, and McKenzie (1925) The City

12. Burgess concentric ring model

16. Traffic jam 1910

17. Old Park triangle

19. Chicago Astor St

20. Michigan Ave 1910

21. 1910

22. 1920 Chicago River

23. 23rd St Tracks 1907

24. Chicago 1934

26. Maxwell & Jefferson 1905

27. 12th & Jefferson 1905

28. Stockyards district 1904

29. 1912

30. 31st St 1910

31. Tenement 1910

32. Stockyard strike 1904

34. Kenilworth Ave 1925

35. Lakeshore Dr 1905

36. Lincoln Park 1907

37. Oak Park

44. Social Ecology Competition
people compete for living space in the city, like plants and animals in a jungle

45. Social Ecology Ecological dominance
some groups, and land uses achieve dominance over others
analogous to ecological dominance

46. Social Ecology Invasion & succession
social groups can colonize new areas, and create the conditions for other groups to invade
like plant communities

47. Critique
Developed for early C20th Chicago, but does not apply in other places/times.
1920s Chicago a city of the streetcar and the El

48. The El 1915

50. Homer Hoyt 1930s Expert on real-estate and land economics
Designed shopping plazas
By 1930s arterial highways beginning to distort rings into sectors and wedges
Sector model

52. Harris & Ullman 1945
Ullman
1940s freeways in LA lead to the Multiple nuclei model

54. Harris & Ullman 1945

56. Critique Competition represented as a process of “natural”.
Makes capitalism seem “natural”
Makes racism seem “natural”

59. Critique
Race, ethnicity etc., treated as “natural” categories, not social constructions.

60. Critique
Residential areas treated as if they have uniform social character
actually more diverse
Shows ignorance of subsequent critics
Park, Burgess, McKenzie knew the city to be diverse

61. 1910

62. Critique Implied moral judgements Valentine plays the same game too
Burgess et al viewed middle-class white heterosexual households as normal, everyone else as deviant
Valentine plays the same game too

63. Critique
Humans do not behave like plant communities

64. Critique
Represents power as a product of “natural” competitive processes
Discourages more serious consideration of power in the urban landscape

65. Legacy Classic urban models (Burgess concentric ring etc.,)
Continue to fascinate

66. Mike Davis (1992) Ecology of fear

67. Legacy The term “ecological” in sociology Schools of Social Ecology
ecological correlation
ecological fallacy
Schools of Social Ecology

68. Social Ecology grads at a California university