Eitzen13e.chapter6.lecture.ppt 193988

Editor's Notes

• #4: 83 percent of the U.S. population live in metropolitan areas. The remaining people live in rural areas. Each area has unique problems as a result of the living conditions.
• #5: Place is crucial to understanding social problems. Urban areas expand and intensify problems. No other industrial nation has allowed the kind of decline and deterioration facing U.S. urban centers. Most of the social and economic problems discussed in the textbook are primarily concentrated and have their severest consequences in the city, particularly the largest cities. Chapter 6, Activity 1 Urban Planning This chapter lends itself well to an urban planning activity. Give students the following guidelines and have them work on an urban economy worksheet in small groups. Students generally find that it is not easy to decide what to do first. Have them select a spokesperson to present their decisions to the class.   You are the city counsel for a small impoverished city. You have been given $500,000 to help your constituents. The city population is 20,000. 25 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. There is an unemployment rate of 34 percent. What should the money be spent on? Some possibilities include creating sustainable economic development projects, job creation, expanding employment, job preparation, community development, social services, drug rehabilitation, extended school hours, child care, community health services, and human services. What percentage of the money should be spent on each of the above? Why did your group choose the resource allocations it did? What are the benefits and consequences of those choices?
• #6: Company Relocation About one-third of the jobs in major U.S. metropolitan areas are with corporations that export goods and services outside the metro area (aerospace, defense, international trade, computer software/hardware development, pharmaceuticals, etc.). These jobs are the highest paying with the best benefits. The export jobs create regional service jobs (finance, real estate, utilities, media), which are not as high paying, but still good jobs. Other jobs serve the local area and include “good” jobs (school teachers, police officers, firefighters, other municipal employees, and neighborhood doctors and lawyers). There are also low-wage, insecure, temporary, part-time, dead-end jobs with few or no benefits in retail, clerical, custodial, food service, and private security work. The good jobs are leaving city centers, or not settling in cities. Deindustrialization The business of old industrial cities shifted from manufacturing to legal, financial, real estate, and other service work. The worst of the local-serving jobs, the jobs of low-skill workers, were hit hard. Especially affected were people of color in the inner city. Corporate Flight In addition to the jobs that cities have lost to the suburbs, there has been a net loss of good-paying and well-benefited jobs in the wider U.S. economy.
• #7: Redlining refers to the practice of not providing loans or insurance to people who live in what are deemed undesirable areas. These areas are almost always made up of high concentrations of poor minorities and are located in the central cities. Redlining has resulted in discrimination in race and place. This sort of redlining, discrimination, and disinvestment ultimately leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy of decline in inner-city neighborhoods. When banks and others disinvest in cities, residents and businesses cannot be sustained.
• #8: Federal aid to cities has been systematically cut since the Reagan administration. Cuts have been made in the federal revenue-sharing program, welfare, medical aid, subsidized housing, and essential social services. Successful urban programs—for public works, economic development, job training, housing, schools, and health and nutrition—have been systematically cut. Because businesses and individuals have left the city, the tax base does not support the city. Cities need to raise taxes or cut services in order to survive. Most do both. With all the loss, cities also loose political power. Policies then benefit the suburbs. Moreover, central cities, with their relatively high concentrations of racial and ethnic minorities tend to favor Democrats, whereas people in the suburbs are more likely to be Republicans. Thus, Republicans are not motivated to fund the cities’ needs, whereas Democrats are.
• #9: Central-city poverty areas: neighborhoods in which at least one in five households lives below the poverty line are designated by the federal government as poverty areas. High-poverty areas: areas where at least two in five households, or 40 percent of households, fall below the official poverty line. Urban public housing developments are most likely to fall into this category. People of color are also more likely to be concentrated in poverty areas in the city and much more likely to be among the poorest of the poor. The extremely high levels of segregation reflected in census-tract data underestimate racial separation and isolation. Racial segregation is even more severe when smaller units, such as immediate neighborhoods and blocks, are analyzed. High levels of segregation in housing also lead to segregation in schools, churches, and other neighborhood institutions. Racial segregation contributes to and perpetuates poverty because it isolates poor people from the educational and economic opportunities they need. The schools in racially segregated, poor Black communities in the inner city are separate but not equal. The poor people living in the poorest, racially segregated central-city neighborhoods are disconnected—both socially and physically—from urban labor markets. As a consequence of this “American apartheid,” urban African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately unemployed and uneducated.
• #10: Gentrification is the redevelopment of poor neighborhoods (run-down properties, warehouses, cheap apartments) into middle-class and upscale condominiums, townhouses, single-family dwellings, lofts, and apartments. Often, the original residents are displaced. Slumlording occurs when landlords buy properties in poor neighborhoods and have no intention of investing in their upkeep and maintenance. While neglecting these properties, slumlords collect as much rent as they can from their poor tenants. Warehousing is when real estate speculators withhold apartments from the housing market. Speculators purchase buildings and gradually empty them by not renewing the rents. They hold the property until developers on the edges of gentrifying areas become interested and purchase them for considerably more than their original cost. Government housing programs Beginning in the 1960s, federal urban renewal funds were meant for the rehabilitation and redevelopment of decaying urban neighborhoods This is not what happened in reality. Cities applied for funds; once granted, they used legal powers to have areas declared blighted. Then, those areas could be cleared and redeveloped. Beginning with the Reagan administration, there have been over three decades of federal divestment in affordable housing infrastructure and programs. The funding of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has been consistently cut back. Job/housing mismatch The little affordable housing is kept out of suburbs and city edges. The jobs are also moving out of city centers. Thus, those who need jobs the most are the furthest from them. This creates a spatial apartheid. Jobs and job growth occur in one place, populated by relatively affluent Whites, whereas poor African Americans and Latinos are restricted to another place. The bursting of the housing bubble Prior to 2007, there was a housing boom. People were buying homes, flipping houses, and taking out mortgages they could not afford. In 2007, the market changed. People began defaulting on subprime loans. This sent housing prices down. Banks and brokerages that borrowed money went under. Credit dried up. People were laid off. The newly unemployed had trouble meeting payments and faced bankruptcy and foreclosure.
• #11: Trends in the urban housing market affect both the affordability of existing housing and the number of low-income units. Private developers don’t invest in low-income areas. Gentrification develops low-income areas into middle-class areas.
• #12: The Department of Transportation estimates that 40 percent of all U.S. bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Only 2.5 percent of the federal budget is spent on infrastructure. Governments in other nations invest three to four times the amount that the United States spends If public dollars were invested in infrastructure rebuilding, it would create jobs and a functional city.
• #13: Our transportation systems are dominated by private automobiles, as opposed to public transportation. Since 1970, the number of automobiles has increased twice as fast as the population. Traffic jams are worse. Commuters lost 34 hours in 2009 due to traffic jams. 1.9 billion gallons of gas wasted on congested roads. Vehicles release greenhouse gasses. Our love of cars contributes to the decentralization of city centers. Other threats to the environment include the illegal dumping of waste in cities. In addition, lead paint poisoning and abandoned hazardous waste sites harm cities. Research shows low-income communities, especially those populated by people of color, bear a disproportionate burden of environmental hazards. When the victims of environmental hazards are poor, it is called environmental classism. When those exposed to environmental hazards are racial minorities, it is called environmental racism.
• #14: Problems related to health and healthcare are also concentrated in inner cities. The concentration of diseases like tuberculosis, cancer, and untreated diabetes is higher in cities. The poor go untreated and often become a burden to their families. Infant mortality Infant mortality rates are highest in poor minority neighborhoods in the inner city and are as high as or higher than in many developing countries. African American infants are four times more likely to die from low birth weight than White infants. After surviving their first year, children are at a greater risk of measles, tetanus, polio, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and whooping cough because they have not received adequate inoculations. Public urban hospitals Deal with higher rates of AIDS infections then other hospitals. The rates at which patients of private hospitals do not pay for treatment leads many private hospitals in urban areas to close. The patients who went to private hospitals are now forced into public hospitals. This overburdens the hospitals and forces them to practice triage—treating the most urgent emergencies first. Other patients must wait for treatment, sometimes for days.
• #15: The more affluent middle class has moved to the suburbs, where their children attend virtually all-White schools; or if they have remained in the city and can afford it, they send their children to private schools. The less affluent and racial minorities are left in the city’s public schools. Poverty is geographic, so poor children go to school with other poor children. Thus, urban schools are segregated by class This imbalance results from the heavy reliance on local property taxes to finance public schooling in the United States. Suburban schools, when compared to inner-city schools, are more likely to have smaller class sizes, more computers, a better library, special programs for the gifted and the disabled, and state-of-the-art equipment and facilities.
• #16: Cities and crime go together, at least as presented in the media. The focus on crime, drugs, and gangs in cities receives a great deal of media attention. In the public’s mind, crime has come to mean race. The arrest rates for African American males is higher than for other groups in the inner cities. In addition, African Americans are more likely to be victims of crime. The disinvestment in cities, rising unemployment, health-related problems, and decaying infrastructure have led to the creation of an informal economy for some city residents. To survive, residents turn to the sale of drugs and other street crime. While there are problems related to drugs, crime, and gangs in cities. The fear of crime is usually disproportionate to the reality. The fear of crime leads to further deterioration of cities (a self-fulfilling prophecy) as those who can, leave. Chapter 6, Activity 2 Urban Poverty Another exercise that students can do in small groups is to consider the plight of the urban poor. Have students describe the experiences of the urban poor with respect to the following: Judicial System Education Medical Attention Mental Health Attention Job Opportunities Housing Transportation
• #23: Beginning in 1950, the rate of movement to the suburbs increased. As a result, more Americans now live in suburbs than in cities, rural areas, and small towns combined. Although middle-class people of all races have moved to the suburbs, the majority of the movement is by Whites. White flight increases racial, class, and geographic segregation.
• #24: Suburban sprawl is low-density, automobile-dependent development. Suburbanization is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. The suburbs were encouraged, supported, and directly subsidized by the federal government, and they profited large developers and corporations. The federal government financed the construction of the interstate highway and expressway system. Housing policies implemented by the FHA (Federal Housing Authority) and VA (Veterans Administration), offered low-cost government-insured mortgages. The government subsidized home ownership by permitting taxes and mortgage interest to be tax deductible (a savings to homeowners of about $131 billion in 2010). Housing policies that allowed local suburban governments to refuse public and subsidized housing in their communities have also encouraged the White middle class to reside where there is less affordable housing and few poor and minority residents. More than one-fourth of all cities with a population of between 100,000 and 400,000 are suburbs. Boomburgs are defined as a suburban city that has at least 100,000 people and has experienced double-digit growth every decade since it became defined by the Census Bureau as urban (2,500 or more residents). The growth of urban villages and edge cities can be as far away as 40 miles from the city where jobs are located. The commutes and rising gas prices have forced some back into the cities. The effects of suburban sprawl are great. Environment. Clearing of land for development. Increased reliance on cars and longer commutes leads to more pollution. Inner cities. As mentioned before, suburban sprawl leaves the poorest in cities. As residents leave cities, jobs also leave. When people can’t work, they don’t buy, causing businesses to close. Economic costs. Every time there is sprawl it costs a great deal of money to build, tear down, reroute, and more. Health concerns. People living in suburbs rely on their cars to such an extent that it impacts their health.
• #25: A vicious cycle of sprawl: reliance on cars which gives way to more cars and highways. More automobiles traveling greater distances to the suburbs increases traffic congestion. More congestion, in turn, leads to the construction of more and bigger highways, which encourages even more cars, further decentralizing metropolitan areas. Decentralization and the development of housing areas and shopping centers destroys the landscape. Shopping areas in suburban areas are spread out, so residents must drive. Relying on more cars. Urban sprawl, with its reliance on the automobile, has also led to environmental pollution and a waste of natural resources.
• #26: Suburbs are predominantly White and relatively affluent. Suburbanites leave immigrants, racial minorities, poor people, and the homeless for life near people like themselves. More than 6 million households are situated in gated communities where the residents are walled off physically and socially from “others.” The physical arrangements of suburbs are especially socially isolating. Rather than walking to the corner grocery or nearby shop and visiting with the clerks and their neighbors, suburbanites drive somewhere away from their immediate neighborhood to shop among strangers.
• #27: Changes in the housing market and high gas prices have people questioning the decision to live far from work in a home they can hardly afford. With housing values plummeting in the suburbs while neighborhoods close to downtown have held value, people consider moving back closer to the urban core. Homes close to urban centers or with convenient access to mass transit are especially desirable. Builders and developers build communities that encourage walking with shops embedded in the community, reducing the need for cars and decreasing pollution.
• #32: By rural, we refer to the nonmetropolitan population that resides in small towns and the open countryside, an area encompassing 80 percent of the nation’s land area. Much of this country is emptying out, especially the Great Plains and Appalachia, with the share of people in rural areas falling to 16 percent in 2010, down from the previous low of 20 percent in 2000. In 1910, 72 percent of the population lived in rural America. Indicative of the rural decline is that the U.S. Postal Service plans to close thousands of branches in rural areas. And Delta Airlines, for example, ended flight service to twenty-four small airports in 2011. Rural areas with job growth are in natural gas, oil, and coal extraction.
• #33: Rural counties growing in population did so because of jobs, such as the boom in natural gas, oil, and coal extraction in North Dakota, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
• #34: There are important differences between the rural and urban poor. The rural poor have some advantages over the urban poor (low-cost housing, raising their own food) and many disadvantages (low-paid work, higher prices for most products, lack of public transportation, fewer social services, and fewer welfare benefits). Rural minorities are especially vulnerable to poverty.
• #35: The rural poor have some advantages over the urban poor (low-cost housing, raising their own food) but many disadvantages (low-paid work, higher prices for most products, lack of public transportation, fewer social services, and fewer welfare benefits).
• #36: Farming Around 1800, 95 percent of Americans made their full-time living from agriculture. A hundred years ago it was 45 percent, and by the turn of the twenty- first century, it was less than 2 percent. The United States still has agriculture, but it is mostly large-scale agribusiness, as 1 percent of farmers account for more than half of all farm income. The demise of the family farm is the result of market forces. Competition from global markets required producing more per acre. The demands of national retail chains require standardization and huge outputs. Manufacturing Manufacturing in rural areas employs nearly twice as many workers as does farming. Some industries have moved to rural areas, where land is relatively cheap and there is a supply of nonunionized labor willing to work for wages lower than in urban/suburban areas. A particular industrial form—meatpacking—has transformed some rural areas. Extraction of Natural Resources Today there is a tremendous oil boom in some rural areas brought about by the new technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing Recreation and Leisure Rural areas with natural amenities—mountains, lakes, pleasant climates—have encouraged development and jobs in tourism. Most of the workers in these areas cannot afford to live in an amenity-based tourist community.
• #37: Environmental problems in rural areas: A reduction in land devoted to farming and ranching. Plowed over by developments and shopping centers. Massive irrigation takes water from underground aquifers much faster than it can be replenished. Land is being bought, not to farm, but for the water under it. Chemicals used in agriculture are a danger to agricultural workers and can get into the rivers, lakes, and streams. Factory farms pollute the air and water. A single hog operation may involve as many as 20,000 pigs, which produce an awful stench and problems the waste they produce.
• #38: Rural residents have greater health problems than those in metropolitan areas. Death rates for children and young adults (ages 1 to 24 years) are higher. Death rates from unintentional injuries are higher. Death rates from traffic-related injuries are higher. Suicide rates for males are higher. Age-adjusted death rates for heart diseases, strokes, diabetes, nutritional deficiencies, and digestive organ cancers are higher. The medical infrastructure (hospitals, emergency clinics) in rural areas is inadequate and, in some areas, nonexistent.
• #39: Today, in small towns only the church remains. People used to shop and “hang out” in small towns, making towns social hubs. As local stores and restaurants close because of commercial competition, the town is no longer a social center. Schools have consolidated into larger districts nestled between many rural areas.
• #40: Statistically, rural areas are safer places than metropolitan areas. The data show consistently that rural crime rates are lower than in the central cities and their suburbs. Rural dwellers are involved in illicit drugs (consumption, production, and shipment), just as are their counterparts in central cities and suburbs. Facts from the DEA on rural drug use are listed in the book. Most of the marijuana is grown in rural areas. The arrest rate for drug offenses in rural America is lower than in metropolitan areas by a factor of four. Rural law enforcement agencies have fewer resources and relatively large areas to patrol. It is easier to hide activities in remote residences than in high-density areas of the city where neighbors are more likely to detect unusual odors and irregular activities. Covert operations, a common device to break urban drug rings, are difficult in rural areas because everyone knows the local police and is wary of strangers. Finally, because rural inhabitants, including police personnel, know everyone, there is a tendency to handle first offenses informally rather than in the criminal justice system.