Urbanism As A Way Of Life

Many people have studied the urban sociology, but the most important ones are the members of the Chicago School. One of these members is Louis Wirth who was born in 1897, and who with the collaboration of Robert E. Park, St. Clark Drake and Horace Cayton reinvented modern sociology. Wirth’s major contribution was the sociological definition of urban life, in which he argue that for sociological purposes, a city might be defined as a large, dense, and permanent settlement of heterogeneous individuals.

Since Aristotle’s, it has been recognized that the number of habitants directly affect to the relationships in the city. First of all, the personal traits, occupations, the cultural life, etc. may affect in the character of urban people. For example, in Caracas, a lot of people takes part in commerce, and they have to be very friendly with people, so at the end the day or work, they continue being the same way as in work; in contrast, in Beijing, people are not too friendly because they seem to be pressed at their jobs, and at night they seem as stressed as they were in job. Second of all, the rhythm of life makes urban life intelligible. For instance, at the subway nobody smile or even look at anybody, and come and go covered by the anonymity.

The quantity of people living in a city produces a differentiation that tends to make to the citizens more sensitive to artifacts than to world of nature. Firstly, in Mexico, there are many specialized places in many functions as sports, night life, studies, familiar, etc; and all this is caused by the density mainly expressed in Mexico City, where 9 million people live and the nature is constantly changing; for this, a lot of green areas have been destroyed, but nobody notices it because right now people believe that things they are getting worth more than the nature. Secondly, nowadays, urban people have lost the sentimental ties even though they live closer than rural people. For this, the base of the urban life is tension, where the traffic is not flowing and the clock don´t stops. For example, in Caracas, a few years ago just five minutes were necessary to go to school, but now fifteen minutes are not enough because of the constant movement of individuals which creates irritation every morning.

The heterogeneity in cities has broken the caste lines. Since people started to move, a great number of diverse individuals created the social groups, with the result of a more integrated society. For example, most of the groups of friends in the urban cities have a person who is a musician, a sportsman, a studious, a gamer, etc. This accentuate the competition, but even though this seem to be good, this kind of relationships are part of the depersonalization because when a person is in a group of friends, this man stop thinking as he/she wants in order to be part of the group. Furthermore, the politics are involved too. For example, the past 20th of July, people from my city selected

...