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Cities in Social Transformation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

John Friedmann
John Friedmann
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Extract

This essay has sought to bring out salient points that can throw light both upon the vexing problems of cultural transformation and on the related phenomena of economic growth. It has employed concepts that are relatively recent in the social sciences and that when synthesized provide the elements of a theory of social change. The five main concepts are: the city as a cross-cultural type; the functional urban hierarchy; the nodular regional structure; effective social, political-administrative and economic space; economic growth as being part of a more comprehensive process leading to successively higher levels of integration of the social system.

From the concept of the city as a cross-cultural type it follows that there are no fundamental distinctions between industrial and preindustrial cities, but both are sharply distinguished from communal village life. All cities have in common a way of life that is characterized by varying degrees of social heterogeneity and cultural vitality, and by inventiveness, creativity, rationality, and civic consciousness. From the fact that cities and the regions related to them may be seen as functionally differentiated and arranged in hieratic fashion it follows that the extent of urban influence will vary with (a) the stage of evolution reached by the hierarchy as a whole, and (b) the relative position of any given city within the hierarchy.

Economic growth has to be seen as part of a comprehensive process of cultural transformation. From the ruthless destruction of old social forms no aspect of society will be spared. It is the influences spreading outward from cities that accomplish both the disruption of the traditional social patterns and the reintegration of society around new fundamental values. The city acts as a coordinating, space-creating force, thus achieving the integration of the social order in its spatial dimensions. Intellectuals, administrators and entrepreneurs are the city's agents in this task. With their success in organizing the life of a society, both as a pattern of activities and as a pattern in space, the traditional notion of a city as a place having definite geographic limits will tend gradually to disappear. Just as Karl Mannheim speaks of fundamental democratization as one of the tendencies of our age, so one may speak of fundamental urbanization as the end-result of modern economic growth. With this, the former distinction between town and country will beblurred and will leave a thoroughly organized, impersonal, and functionally rational society to carry on.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , November 1961 , pp. 86 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1961

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References

2 Redfield, Robert, The Primitive World and Its Transformations (Ithaca, N.Y., 1957), p. 57.Google Scholar

3 See Sjoberg, Gideon, “The Preindustrial City”, American Journal of Sociology, 03 1955, pp. 438–45. (Editorial note: This article was accepted prior to the publication of Gideon Sjoberg's book of the same title, reviewed above, pp. 60–63).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Steward, Julian H., Theory of Culture Change (Urbana, Ill., 1955), p. 88.Google Scholar

5 It is not greatly different with cities which culturally are more remote. Marco Polo's description of ancient Hangchow is that of a genuine metropolis. It had, of course, a character appropriate to its time and place. Yet Marco Polo describes it as “far ahead of any European city in the excellence of its buildings and bridges, the number of its public hospitals, the elegances of its villas, the profusion of facilities for pleasure and vice, the charm and beauty of its courtesans, the effective maintenance of public order, and the manner and refinement of its people” (Durant, Will, Our Oriental Heritage, New York, 1942, pp. 761 ff.).Google Scholar

8 This has been excellently demonstrated in Georg Simmel's “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, in Paul K. Hatt and Albert J. Reiss, Jr., op. cit., pp. 365–646. His portrayal of the urban psyche is unthinkable apart from an environment that, if it does not exclude nature, allows her to intrude in only a controlled and highly selected fashion.

7 Failure to do so will lead to such unconvincing statements as Max Weber's, that “cities are peculiar to the Occident” (The City, p. 80), or that Peking was merely an assembly of “five large villages”, General Economic History (Glencoe, Ill., 1958), p. 380. The only similar approach to the definition of what constitutes a city is Louis Wirth's famous article, “Urbanism as a Way of Life”, American Journal of Sociology, July 1938.

8 Hoselitz, Bert F., “The City, the Factory, and Economic Growth,” American Economic Review, 05 1955, pp. 166–84.Google Scholar

9 Kingsley Davis and Hilda Hertz Golden have introduced the suggestive concept of “over-urbanization” to describe a situation, reported to exist in countries like Egypt and Korea, where the size of urban populations is far in excess of the existing requirements for full-time productive employment. It is especially those cities which suffer from over-population that may appear to possess a distinctly rural atmosphere. See their article “Urbanization and the Development of Pre-Industrial Areas”, Economic Development and Cultural Change, October 1954, pp. 6–26.

10 For instance, along the Northeastern Seaboard in the United States, a continuous area, 600 miles long and containing some 30 million people in 1950, has been classified as essentially urban. See Jean Gottlieb, “Megalopolis, or the Urbanization of the Northeastern Seaboard”, Economic Geography, July 1957, pp. 189–200.

11 Berry, Brian J. L. and Garrison, William L., “The Functional Bases of the Central Place Hierarchy”, Economic Geography, 04 1958, pp. 145–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Friedmann, John, “Locational Aspects of Economic Development”, Land Economics, 08 1956, pp. 214–227;Google Scholar also Isard, Walter, Location and Space Economy (New York, 1956) and the literature cited in both works.Google Scholar

13 See, for example, Vance, Rupert B. and Smith, Sara, “Metropolitan Dominance and Integration”, in Vance, Rupert B. and Demerath, Nicholas J., eds., The Urban South (Durham, N. C., 1954).Google Scholar

14 Lampard, Eric E., “The History of Cities in the Economically Advanced Areas”, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 01 1955, pp. 86 ff.Google Scholar

15 For a more detailed explanation of this concept of “space”, see John Friedmann, “L'influence de l'intégration du systeme social sur le développement économique”, Diogéne, 33 (Jan.-Mars 1961), pp. 80–104.

16 The impetus to the growth of cities, however, arose out of the commerce that developed to supply these regions with essential raw materials, especially timber and minerals from far-distant regions. See Gordon Childe, op. cit., chapter VII.

17 The interrelations between farm and city are of course far more complex than these few phrases would suggest. Important additional “linkages” may be found in connection with farm mechanization, agricultural research and extension, rural development, capital formation in rural areas, living standards, employment opportunities, and so forth.

18 The consequences of such an unbalanced, one-sided relationship are discussed in John Friedmann, “Regional Planning: A Problem of Spatial Integration”, Papers and Proceedings of the Regional Science Association, V (1959), pp. 167–179.

19 Davis, Kingsley, “The Origin and Growth of Urbanization in the World”, American Journal of Sociology, 03, 1955, pp. 429–37;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDickinson, Robert E., The West European City (London, 1951), chapter 15; Irene B. Taeuber cites the following populations for Japanese cities for the period between 1725–29): Edo (= modern Tokyo) 472,000, Osaka 369,000, and Kyoto 374,000, in “Urbanization and Population Change in the Development of Modern Japan”, Economic Development and Cultural Change, IX, no. I, Part II, p. 4.Google Scholar

20 For a discussion of these values and their role in social transformation see my forthcoming paper on “Intellectuals in Developing Societies”, Kyklos, XIII (1960), pp. 513–44.Google Scholar

21 For a penetrating discussion of these issues, see Lamb, Robert K., “Political Elites and the Process of Economic Development”, in Hoselitz, B. F., ed., The Progress of Underdeveloped Areas (Chicago, 1952), pp. 30–53,Google Scholar and Eisenstadt, S. N., “Internal Contradictions in Bureaucratic Polities”, Comparatives Studies in Society and History, I, 1 (10 1958), pp. 58–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Cities do not assure this while the aristocracy, as in medieval Europe and in colonial Latin America, live on their estates and shun urban life. Effective political power was thus dispersed, and economic expansion thereby drastically curtailed, for economic space must be combined with political and social space to become totally effective. Thus, Brazil did not begin her rapid rise as a modern industrial nation until the aristocracy, which had been a law unto itself, moved permanently into the cities following the repeal of slavery towards the end of the last century. This move led to the complete breakdown of the traditional plantation economy and made possible, through the accumulation and contralisation of wealth in the cities, the present development based on urban industrialism and agricultural diversification. Economic development was most retarded in precisely those regions, such as Bahia and Pernambuco, where this dissolution of the old aristocratic order was not carried to its logical completion. On the other hand, where a strong central power was lacking and where one city was neatly belanced off against another, the tendency was for cities to form States within the State, leading to political atomization. Modern industrialism could not spread until this atomized system of government was consolidated into a strong and unified nation-State. It is therefore not surprising that the period of great nationalism coincided with the rise of industrial civilization during the past 150 years.

23 See Myrdal, Gunnar, Rich Lands and Poor. The Road to World Prosperity (New York, 1957), for an exposition of the concept of “cumulative causation”.Google Scholar

24 John Friedman, “The Concept of a Planning Region: The Evolution of an Idea in the United States”, United Nations Social and Economic Council, Working Paper no. 12, E/CN.11/RP/L.14, June, 1958.

25 Chadwick, John, “A Prehistoric Bureaucracy”, Diogenes, summer 1959, pp. 7–8, cites evidence to this effect for Mycenaean Greece around 1500 B.C.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Friedmann, John, “Introduction to the Study and Practice of Planning”, International Social Science Journal, IX, no. 3 (1959), pp. 327–339.Google Scholar