Description
In 3000 words, critically analyse the area of Salford Quays (in Salford, Greater Manchester, UK) , in relation to the transformation it has undergone and in connection to the readings
attached and by mobilising (secondary) data that you
have sourced on this area. You need to build a sociological argument based
on the sociological analysis of the area and the critical engagement with the
theoretical content of two topics in the reading. The first two literature attached are on the topic of from industrial to post-industrial city and the last two is about recent trends in urbanization: entrepreneurialism, regeneration and new urbanism.The argument of the essay depends on the area have chosen. In building an argument you need to consider, for example,
any major changes that the area has undergone, which were discussed in those two readings – such as de-industrialisation, regeneration – and the socio-economic and demographic profile of this area. The focus needs
to be on mobilising the sociological explanations discussed in reading for understanding the
transformations of the area chosen. Please also collect (secondary) empirical data and grey literature, such as official statistics, city council regeneration reports and plans, on chosen area of study, analyse and include these data in essay. Supported and evidenced the analysis by the literature attached and illustrated
through the (secondary) data on this specific area.
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2
Industrial-Modern Cities
Copyright © 2002. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. All rights reserved.
Origins and Growth of the Pre-industrial City
In order to understand the transformations that occurred with the onset
of the industrial city, it will first be necessary to look at the origin of cities
and the growth of the pre-industrial city. The definition of the city by
Davis (1973:1), used in Chapter 1, sees the city as ‘concentrations of many
people located close together for residential and productive purposes’.
This sensitises us to two shifts that were important in the transformation
that created the earliest cities. The most significant was probably the shift
in the productive base of a society. The occupants of the cities were no
longer engaged in agricultural activity and were not self-sufficient. Rather,
they supplied services and commodities to the rural population and in
exchange they gained their food and other requirements. In order for this
new arrangement to occur, productivity had to increase to such an extent
that the farmers were producing more than they and their families could
consume. This required settled agriculture rather than nomadic hunting
and gathering. This is one of the reasons for the earliest cities emerging in
the places where they did. These regions had a benign climate and soil
and water conditions conducive to agriculture – the growing of wheat and
barley. Thus, we see the first cities emerging around 3500 bp in the fertile
crescent area of Mesopotamia (Sjoberg 1973). In this period, the metal
utilized was bronze and the agrarian production was enhanced through
the invention of the plough hauled by oxen. Wheeled vehicles had also
been invented which allowed the transport of produce to the urban
population. Cities were not large. The earliest were home to probably
between 5000–10,000 people. Ur, which has been extensively excavated,
housed around 34,000 people by 2000 bp. Cities spread by diffusion and
the transfer of the technology of agrarian production to the Indus valley
(modern-day Pakistan) by 2500 bp and the Yellow River area of China by
1000 bp (MacNeish 1964, Lamberg-Karlovsky and Lamberg-Karlovsky
1973).
In the newly emerging cities, a new social structure took shape. Cities
are social inventions rather than natural constructions so new forms of
13
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14
The Transformation of Cities
organisation had to evolve to cope with large population concentrations.
As Davis noted:
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For some villages to become large enough to approach an urban scale, trade in
artefacts and materials had to be available, and technologies of water control,
soil management, storage, transport, permanent house building and food
preservation had to be developed (Davis 1973:11).
This required new political structures and a different division of labour to
ensure the various tasks were accomplished. Further closer settlement
meant that land became a resource in demand. Who should own and
control land in the city? What form of property rights should develop?
What form of governance? Rulers who filled both spiritual and temporal
roles mostly governed the earliest cities. The central spaces of the city were
the ones where the rulers would be located and the significant buildings,
for example the temples, then further out, would be the residences of the
artisans and trades. Cities were often walled or fortified as the urban
populations were small relative to the surrounding rural and nomadic
populations.
The new technologies of production and forms of political and economic organisation required record-keeping, both for levying taxes and
recording trading activity, hence the need for written records. Cities were
shaped by the broader civilisations in which they were embedded and to
which their fate was linked. Under the Roman Empire, for example, the
city was diffused through much of Europe following along behind the
legions. Urban life was established. With the decline of the Roman Empire,
however, many of the cities that existed at that time disappeared. Early
cities were open to many problems associated with closer living, for
example, disease, fire, and natural disasters. Many were built on flood
plains as these were sites with alluvial soils good for crop production and
close to waterways for trade and transport but thus were prone to flooding. They were also subject to internal political and economic problems
over the creation and distribution of wealth. Rivalries occurred between
urban and rural populations and between cities.
In Europe, by medieval times, city-states were not uncommon. The
basis of their wealth arose from trade and the growth of the craft guilds
producing the new equipment for agrarian production and the commodities for the merchant class and the wealthy elites (Pirenne 1956). The
opening up of trade on a global scale through voyages for the ‘explorers’
paved the way for colonialism and the extraction of commodities and raw
materials from around the world and the bringing of these back to Europe.
The pre-capitalist world made its money largely through land-based production and trade. The cities that grew were those strategically integrated
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Industrial-Modern Cities
15
into these activities. The dominant ‘global’ cities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were therefore those which held a key position within
the mercantile world, with London, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Genoa, Lisbon
and Venice being the most significant. As political fortunes changed across
Europe in the eighteenth century, to this group were added Paris, Rome,
and Vienna (Robertson 1992, Knox 1996).
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Industrial City
The major transformation of the pre-industrial city took place with the rise
of the industrial world. The new cities were the result of a combination of
technological change and the creation of a new economic system, one
based not on trade, but upon the creation of wealth through use of capital.
The nineteenth century saw the development of a new form of urbanism,
the industrial city. This brought a new set of cities to the fore, as key nodes
in the system of global cities – among these were Manchester, Chicago,
Detroit, Pittsburgh, cities of the Ruhr region of Germany (Essen,
Dortmund,) and North East France (such as Lille). The growth of these
industrial cities was rapid. In Britain, for example, in 1801 London was
the only city of over 100,000 people and this contained 4.7 per cent of the
United Kingdom’s population. London, at this time, was also the largest
city in Europe. By 1901, one hundred years later, there were thirty-five
cities of over 100,000 containing 25.9 per cent of the population. The
growth occurred most rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century.
A major shift occurred with respect to time. The clock tower in the
industrial village of Loefsta in Sweden, built in the early eighteenth
century to accommodate Flemish ironworkers, marked the need for accurate timekeeping. The ironworks operated on a shift system; six days a
week with Sunday off. The ‘village’ was carefully planned to reinforce the
social order and create an ‘ideal’ environment. The central axis was the
manor house, paymaster’s house and the church. The workers’ houses
ran from this central axis to the periphery according to the worker’s
place within the industrial workforce. The shift from agrarian to industrial work thus brought about far-reaching changes to patterns of work
and social arrangements, bringing in a new social hierarchy, based around
ownership of industrial production and possession of factory-based work
skills.
The rise of the industrial city thus saw the creation of both factory
production and urban residential districts close to the new forms of employment creating areas often of tenement dwellings. The new physical
structure was one of narrow streets and crowded dwellings. In these
circumstances, dwellers suffered from diseases arising from the new
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16
The Transformation of Cities
environmental conditions. Pollution of the air arose from the shift to carboniferous fuels as the basis of industrial energy and residential heating
creating smoggy conditions and reducing sunlight to many of the areas of
residence. Water supply also became problematic, as drainage was often
poor and infectious disease spread (McDermott 1973). Nutrition was often
deficient due to lack of money and knowledge.
One disease, which appeared in the industrial city, was rickets, a bone
disease. Research during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
centred on whether this was the result of environmental conditions or
nutrition (Loomis 1973). Eventually, it was discovered this was probably
the first ‘pollution-induced’ disease and arose largely from the lack of
sunlight getting through to children living in the new urban slums. The
narrow streets and tenements created alleys and courts where little sun
penetrated, especially during the winter months. And this problem was
exacerbated by the smog. It was particularly widespread in the poorest
districts of the large urban areas – the ‘narrow alleys and haunts of the
poor’ (Engels 1971).
One of the earliest analysts of the industrial city was Frederick Engels
who wrote an account of early industrial life in Manchester in 1843. In
this, he chronicled the conditions of life in the great towns. He began with
life in London where he noted the poverty in the East End areas such as
Bethnal Green. Another acute observer of urban life in the nineteenth
century was Charles Dickens who also drew attention to the plight of the
urban poor and the conditions under which they lived at this time. The
Engels family had acquired a cotton mill in Manchester, the cradle of
industrial capitalism, and, in his twenties, Frederick Engels moved from
Bremen in Germany to train as a businessman and help manage the family
mills. This brought him to one of the new industrial cities at the time when
it was beginning to expand rapidly. He thus saw Manchester as a typical
example of the new form of urbanism. The physical structure of the city
demonstrated, for Engels, the separation of the classes that was the hallmark of industrial capitalism. The new class structure that was emerging
was built into the very structure of the city.
Engels’ work identified a number of urban zones. The centre of the city
was where the commercial district was to be found, just under a kilometre long and a kilometre wide, containing offices and warehouses, no permanent residences and intersected by the main roads. Moving out from
this area the next zone was that of a working-class district around the commercial core about two kilometres wide and beyond this lived the upper
middle class in regularly laid out streets and in villa-like houses surrounded by gardens. The transport system stretched out along the main
roads bisecting the working-class areas. Along these roads spread the
shops and other businesses of the lower middle class. Thus the commer-
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Industrial-Modern Cities
17
cial, lower middle-class areas acted as a buffer between workers and the
richer upper middle-class residential districts.
Engels’ (1971) writing was not just a descriptive account of the new
spatial patterns. It also included an argument as to why the city was spatially organised in this particular way. He argued that the riches of the
upper middle class were the direct result of the level of exploitation. Here,
he reflects Marx’s analysis in seeing all wealth arising out of the unpaid
labour of workers (surplus value). The privileges of the upper middle
class could only therefore be maintained through the exploitation of the
workers. The poor living conditions, which were found, were seen as part
of the shift from pre-capitalist to capitalist forms of production. The result
was that thousands of workers and their families were living in houses
and neighbourhoods without drains or sewers. A number of writers, as
the century progressed, drew attention to the statistics of life in the industrial city. Life expectancy was low, and city death rates were higher than
average for the country as a whole. The increase in urban population was
maintained during this period not by natural increase but through migration from the countryside.
Two factors were important in shaping the structure of the city as the
nineteenth century progressed to its end. These were rising affluence
created by the new capitalist industrial economy and the growth of urban
reform movements. Real wages rose by the end of the century allowing at
least some of the workers to escape from the poverty and overcrowding
of the slums. Transport systems were improved enabling commuting to
take place across greater distances. The development here was of the rail
system (Kellet 1969), to be followed by electric trams and buses in the early
decades of the twentieth century and finally the private car. The latter had
a major impact on the spatial arrangement of the city and led to the rise
of the suburb. With suburbanisation, also came tenure shifts and the
increasing role of home ownership.
The rise of reform movements was the second factor of significance.
Here, the public health movement and the rise of epidemiology was significant. These drew attention to the linkage between the incidence of
disease and spatial factors which in turn led to the realisation that diseases
were related to such things as sanitation, clean water supply, and proper
drainage systems. The development of an improved physical infrastructure led to a dramatic improvement in the physical condition and overall
health of the population such that mortality rates fell and fertility
improved. The work of Booth on poverty, which linked this to income
deprivation, occupation, residence and overcrowding, and that of the
early social statisticians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
further documented life in the cities. This, in turn, assisted in the creation
of a reformist agenda pushing for greater regulation of urban develop-
Thorns, David C.. The Transformation of Cities : Urban Theory and Urban Life, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2002. ProQuest Ebook
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18
The Transformation of Cities
ment and improved physical and social conditions (Abrams 1968, Thorns
and Sedgwick 1997).
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Suburban Development in First-world Cities
during the Twentieth Century
The reforms and expansions of the economy provided opportunities
for mobility, occupationally and geographically. The public health and
housing improvements led to strong population growth. Cities expanded
outwards aided by new forms of relatively cheap transportation. Thus
began another transformation: from the concentrated to the more dispersed urban form, which became typical of the majority of western cities.
The older cores changed in their function and population composition as
the century progressed as a result of slum clearance, renewal and gentrification. Major tenure shifts took place within the UK, for example, the
population shifting from one largely living in private rental to one mainly
in owner occupation by the mid 1960s. The move to ownership and suburbia was based on an increased level of privatisation and privatism
(Saunders 1990a). The triumph of individualism was seen to have
occurred.
A key factor in this transformation was the changed nature of industrial production. The early capitalist enterprises were small in scale and
often family owned. As the twentieth century progressed, it became dominanted by the new corporations, initially national in scale but later
transnational and, by the end of the millennium, global. The Ford Motor
Company was one of the first such corporate organisations established
within the auto industry. Henry Ford is credited with two important innovations. These arose from his realisation that it was not sufficient to
produce cars, it was also necessary to sell them. Thus, workers needed to
earn sufficient money to be able to afford a model T Ford and also they
needed to have time to enjoy it. Ford increased wages and reduced the
length of the working day solving both these ‘consumption problems’.
This strategy stimulated demand and thus increased production, sales and
profits. The system, which this heralded, was that of mass commodity
production. Hence, this period is often dubbed ‘Fordism’ (Harvey 1990,
Amin 1994).
The high point of modernism is often seen as the period in the twentieth century during which both ‘Fordism’ and ‘welfarism’ predominated.
This was a time when both economic and state activity was designed to
increase production and output and incorporate all individuals into an
increasingly standardised pattern of mass consumption. It was the period
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Industrial-Modern Cities
19
of suburban growth and the proliferation of single-family dwellings on
their own plot of land. Suburbs were considered to be a perfect design to
stimulate the production of household commodities such as washing
machines, fridges, mowers, televisions and video recorders – the hallmarks of the mass consumer. The rough time frame for modernism
(although strong vestiges remain with us) is 1800 to the 1970s. In the latter
decade, the processes that ultimately became associated with the postmodern began to emerge.
As noted earlier, Fordism is the shorthand for the development of largescale, mass production-based industries, built around the technologies of
the assembly line (Cooke 1989). Such industries produced standardised
commodities in hierarchically structured organisations. Originally, they
were nationally organised but as they grew in size they moved to become
multinational in scope but still with a firm base in the country of origin
given the requirements for large plant, equipment and a local labour force.
The application of scientific management techniques associated with
Taylorism1 to the labour process was part of the way work relations were
organised through wage regulation and control. Workers completed single
tasks on the assembly line rather than working on the total product. This
required specialisation and differentiation amongst the workers leading
to an extensive division of labour. Work was largely gendered with skilled
workers being predominantly male. Unionisation, because of the large
plants, was generally strong. Wages had to be set at a sufficient level to
allow workers to purchase commodities and they also had to have sufficient leisure time to enjoy their use. Thus, hours of work were reduced
and hourly pay rates improved both as a result of unionisation and the
need of the capitalist producers to encourage the buying of commodities.
The creation of demand also required the creation of a marketing and
advertising industry linking consumer items to lifestyle requirements creating the ‘suburban way of life’ which was written about in the 1950s and
1960s in both popular and academic literature (Dobriner 1958, 1963; Berger
1960; Gans 1967; Thorns 1972; Clapson 1998).
The system was designed to produce a standard product. For this
system to be successful, it had to overcome the resistance of the labour
movement. Consequently, there were struggles within the advanced
European, American and Australian and New Zealand societies to bring
about change and create the necessary conditions to enable this new form
of capital accumulation. In these struggles, the state played a prominent
part and assisted in the formulation of wage-setting procedures and union
recognition through the use of arbitration and wage awards. In particular, struggles intensified in the 1920s and 1930s during the time of the
Depression. Further, the 1939 to 1945 wartime period was a crucial one as
it provided greater opportunity for both employers and the state to bring
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20
The Transformation of Cities
about the necessary reorganisation of the labour process, under the guise
of war-time necessity, to facilitate the full development of the ‘Fordist’
system in the 1950s and 1960s.
The other pillar of the system was welfarism. The intervention of the
state to assist in the regulation and setting of economic conditions for the
success of capitalist production was a characteristic of the New Deal in
the USA and the Keynesian welfare state of Britain, Australia and New
Zealand (Castles 1985, Thorns 1992). This was the time of collective bargaining, national wage regulations and centralised planning designed to
ensure national and regional economic growth and development. The successful combination of state, capital and labour organisations into a period
of ‘corporatist’ management created a time of sustained economic growth.
At the level of urban planning, this system brought about an emphasis
upon rational comprehensive planning, the development of city and
regional plans and planning authorities. One major consequence was the
separation of activities, through zoning and other similar regulatory
devices, creating segregation between areas of residential, industrial, commercial, shopping and entertainment land use. One major separation
occurred where public life took place in the inner city and where private
‘domestic’ activities dominated the suburbs. This separation was also
strongly gendered with the ‘city’ being the preserve of men while the
suburb, especially during the day, was the place of women and children
often in under-serviced neighbourhoods (Hayden 1980, McKenzie 1980,
Saegert 1980, McDowell 1989, Saville-Smith 2000). The gendered nature
of city spaces is well captured by Doreen Massey where she describes her
recollections of travelling into Manchester on the top deck of the bus
and observing football and rugby pitches along the way stretching across
the Mersey floodplain she passed – all were given over entirely to boys
(Massey 1994). It was, therefore, not just residential space that was gendered but also the public spaces for urban leisure and recreation. Such
divisions were incorporated into the design of urban spaces and reflect
the patriarchal nature of the industrial city and its managers – the politicians and planners within local government.
Economic growth appeared assured under this system of economic,
political and social organisation as the initial post-war decades were characterised by affluence and the creation of full employment with labour
shortages rather than surpluses, which necessitated an increased rate of
migration to satisfy demand.
Migration and natural increase stimulated housing production with
strong growth in residential development and the creation of companies
such as Levitt and Sons (USA), Wimpey (UK) and A.V. Jennings
(Australia) as major suppliers of housing (Gans 1967, Kilmartin and
Thorns 1978). There was thus a substantial increase in home-ownership
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Industrial-Modern Cities
21
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rates in such suburban-based societies. For example, in Australia, a society
with strong encouragements for home ownership it reached 74 per cent
by the end of the 1960s and became clearly the dominant mode of tenure
(Stretton 1970, Kemeny 1981). New surburban spaces were created,
designed around individual family households dedicated to privatised
forms of consumption and increasingly dependent on the private motor
car rather than public transport systems.
The result was a strong expansion of private detached housing in
peripheral suburbs based upon the ownership of a private car and an
expansion of consumption, especially of household commodities (for
example, fridges, washing machines, televisions, motor mowers, videos,
microwave ovens, and so on) with private cars eroding public transport
and adding to each individual’s possible flexibility. This expansion of consumption led to a greater degree of homogenisation across class boundaries as more people enjoyed the mass consumption economy that was
created (Dunleavy 1979). The ‘Fordist system’ began to show signs of crisis
and decay in the 1970s as the underlying structural conditions changed
and the ideology that had helped to underpin it came under increasing
attack.
The Fordist form of urban growth and expansion is often thought of as
characteristic of first-world cities. The case of Sao Paulo, in Brazil, shows
that this is too limited. Sao Paulo’s history of urban development in the
twentieth century is one of growth and expansion based around an ‘industrial-commercial metropolis’ creating a city of suburban living and segregated neighbourhoods (see Box 2.1). Further spatial changes took place
re-enforcing patterns of segregation in the latter part of the last century.
Box 2.1
Sao Paulo, Brazil: industrial change
• Population 2000: 17.8 million, 4th largest city in the world
• Population 2010: estimate 19.7 million – would still be the 4th largest city in the
world
History of the city
• City founded in 1554 by Jesuits located at a ‘critical intermediary point in the transportation routes between coast and interior plains’ (Godfrey 1999).
• Initially, relatively poor colonial settlement without extensive resources.
Continued
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22
The Transformation of Cities
• Significant change came with coffee, European immigrants (largely from Italy) and
immigrants from other areas of Brazil from the late nineteenth century.
• By 1928, population had grown to its first one million.
• Industrial structure developed in the twentieth century, assisted by tariff barriers.
City structure
Rapid growth created three cities within the twentieth century. In 1933, the city was an
‘industrial-commercial metropolis’ with ‘quite homogeneous districts’ arranged around a
‘compact core’. Its shape was not unlike the classic Chicago school model. With the
Boulevard Plan (1930s) for reshaping the centre around major avenues, large scale
redevelopment took place which included demolition and redevelopment, new transport
systems and office and commercial development in the downtown area. Suburban
housing development was encouraged by the opening up of new transport lines.
Urban segregation occurred as the city grew, with distinct districts for workers around
the factories both near the centre and in the outlying districts where new industrial plant
was located. The wealthier groups within the city sought the higher ground in the city’s
southwest creating a series of fashionable suburbs.
After the Second World War, the city was reshaped again by urban renewal, automobile transport, peripheral industrial and retail development and suburbanisation. Accompanying the growth was residential segregation by social class. In 1960, 21.6 per cent
of population lived outside the central city. By 1990, this had increased to 40.7 per cent
indicating the rapid growth of the wider metropolitan region.
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The 1990s has seen a third stage of development with economic restructuring leading
to the de-industrialisation of the core and further metropolitan decentralisation. Industry has moved out and relocated looking for cheaper locations. This has meant job
losses creating increased levels of unemployment (Da Silva 2000).
The urban economy has become ‘tertiarised’ favouring finance, commerce, and other
service sectors. Downtown has been redeveloped around high-rise office and residential accommodation for the wealthier urban service class which has emerged. These
changes have created greater wealth and poverty which are spatially segregated and
located in contiguous neighbourhoods leading to increased levels of ‘fear’ of crime and
disorder leading to ‘defensive architecture and heightened security measures’ (Caldeira
1996).
City web site: http://www.uoregon.edu/~sergiok/brasil/saopaulo.html
Explanations for the Growth and Shape of
the Industrial-Modern City
Introduction
The analysis of the industrial city was initially examined as part of the
transformation of societies from a pre-industrial form to an industrial one.
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Industrial-Modern Cities
23
The first generation of writers therefore emphasised the ‘contrasts’
between city forms and the rural world which they were replacing.
Durkheim and Tonnies are two influential writers from this tradition.
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Contrast Theories
The key theorists were Comte (1876), Durkheim (1960), Toennies (1956)
and Weber (1921). The newly-emerging urban industrial world was seen
by most of these early writers as typified by competition, conflict, contractual relations and utility, whereas community was the antithesis of
these things, based around cooperation, integration, and kinship relations.
Comte, for example, grew up during the period of the French Revolution and the breakdown, as he saw it, of an ordered society. He was
critical of this breakdown, which he saw as spreading anarchy and
rampant individualism. The restoration of order for him was a priority.
Consequently, he saw community as people’s natural habitat, which was
being destroyed along with other traditional forms of association by revolutionary change. The creation of ‘communities’ would thus be part of
the process of rebuilding an ordered, industrial, modern society.
Durkheim (1960), writing towards the end of the nineteenth century,
feared the disintegration of social relationships into ‘anomie’. This constituted a situation where the norms and expectations surrounding behaviour were no longer known. The onset of industrialisation would create
normlessness and social breakdown. He identified, as a key feature, the
shift from a community based upon mechanical solidarity to one based
upon organic solidarity. Mechanical solidarity was where the moral ideas
and values of a society were shared by all members, collective authority
was absolute and deviants were not allowed. Conformity to the rules was
expected of all the population and was enforced by strong sanctions. The
basis of this form of solidarity was the homogeneity of moral belie
