Urban Growth as a Function of Increased Work
Stating this, Jacobs aimed to emphasize, that the grown-up cities started working primarily for export, as the number of visitors grew proportionally to the growth of the city sizes. It was stipulated by the fact, that the bigger a city was, the more merchants aimed to trade there, and the more merchants traded there – the wealthier and bigger the city became. Thus, it started working especially for export, as trading for export was the only source of income. Thus, all the other occupations became subsequent, and necessary only for the activity maintenance, such as food, tidying up the streets, building, etc. All these occupations were aimed to keep the growing tendency and attract as many merchants as possible, both from the other cities and abroad. One of the brightest examples is the growth is the ancient Slavic cities, like Rostov, Kyiv, or Constantinople – the capital of the Byzantine Empire.
The definition of “complexity” here defines the amount and diversity of the probable occupations, as some particular cities may be famous for the variety of goods, the mastery of craftsmen, the beauty of architecture, and so on. As a rule – the capitals were usually famous for all the possible features, but everyone had their own particularity.
Another fact that is necessary to mention is the unification of the cities. It means, that cities could unite for the common manufacturing of the goods: for example city A has high mastered potters, and city B has painters. Thus, these cities may unite and produce painted pottery, which is more expensive and precious. Moreover, some private masters may unite, thus gilds, trade unions, associations appear, and these associations issue the rules of production and trades, arrange all over trade crusades, and defend themselves from murders and rubbers.
Taking into account the social value of labor division it is necessary to mention, that the processes that had been described above accelerated the social developments among peoples, and fostered civilized trade relations among merchants, craftsmen, and citizens.
Human ecology is not just an alternative for, but an addition to, the other frameworks of orientation and methodologies of social examination. By providing some of the courage and much of the material and techniques suitable to the ordinary disciplines into the research of societal phenomena, human ecology has called concentration to the broad regions where communal life can correctly be studied as if the researcher was not an integral part of the monitored.
The Division of Labor Corresponding to the Ecological Concept
The literature of human ecology was much troubled with the difference between the society and the public. The former emphasized the symbiotic contacts, spatial and chronological measurements, physical arrangement, opposition, and the division of labor; the latter emphasized contacts, compromise, general standards, charges, mindful social control, and communal exploit. Unluckily these two idyllic-typical features of human communal activity have regularly been puzzled with particular actualities. Thus there has been a breakdown to regard that all communities are also societies and all human communities abide by at least some of the features of communities. The opposition, for example, among human beings by no means takes the form of a sightless challenge for life and endurance. Rather, it displays itself as a more or less controlled and organized effort for a living and for standing. Whereas in the animal world the means of collective actions, such as there are, are built into the arrangement of the beings and can really be explained in terms of reactions and natures, the activities of the human world can be realized only in the light of custom, custom, organizations, ethics, and rules.
It should also be emphasized that, though the most concentrated studies of human biology have been disturbed with municipal and rural societies, human ecology has also been used within larger regions and to universal phenomena. Thus the prototypes of urbanization, the tendencies of relocation, the contacts among national states, the purposes of boundaries, and the matters of minorities, among others, have been researched at least in an introductory way by the methodologies of the human network; and inhere is every motive to regard that in the future the information achieved from local small-scale examine will be applied to the humankind in general.
This in no way surely denotes that environmental researches are immaterial in relation to sociology and to the social disciplines and matters. They provide the essential frames of skills upon which societal and psychic subsistence exists.
Transport Links and Nodes
The influence of the transport links and nodes had on the development and flourishing of a city had been immense. This is supported by the fact, that roads were the trade ways, first of all, and if the road led through some town, merchants could have stayed there for a night, or to have a rest, and could buy or sell some goods, donating to the economic development of that town. Thus, by building a road, the municipalities made a serious and stable investment for long-term incomes.
On the other hand, industry, which hitherto was characteristic of cities, has gone into the countryside. Transportation has made the city accessible to rural people. The radio and, more lately, television promise to produce a virtual revolution. The time has come for a re-examination of the meaning of the concepts “urban” and “rural.” The difficulties that stand in the way of a rigorous comparison of rural and urban modes of life and problems are many, nowhere more numerous than in the United States and the countries of the Western world where the fusion of the two is becoming an inescapable fact. Urbanism is no longer synonymous with industrialism, and ruralism is no longer identified with non-mechanized labor. Since social contact is no longer intimately dependent upon personal relations, the size of community and location are of less significance for the mode of life. The standardization of ways of living tends to make rural life as we have known it look archaic in many respects; we look upon it more and more as a survival from an earlier era.
References
Wirth, L. (1964). Human Ecology. On Cities and Social Life. (IL) The University of Chicago Press. Pp178-188.
Wirth, L. (1964). Rural-Urban Differences. On Cities and Social Life. (IL). The University of Chicago Press. Pp221-225.