Course objectives

The Sociology of Housing

To identify transformations in urban form, community,

To explain the neighbourhood characteristics, changes and effects,

To explain sociological aspects of housing research, and

To explain the social and urban renewal housing policies.

Assessment;
Class attendance and participation(5%), examination(25%),and

assignment (20%).
 Outline

Transformations in urban form

Preindustrial city

Industrial city

Contemporary city

Community
 Preindustrial city
 Small-scale settlements,

A mercantile economy,

A rigid social order stemming (medieval feudalism),

A small elite(religious, political, administrative and social functions), and

 larger groups of lower classes and outcasts

 The elite came to be increasingly segregated from the rest of

urban society,
Merchants (wealthy) excluded from the elites
a pre-occupation with money ran counter to the religious-philosophical value
 Con…
The lower classes and outcasts lived in the poorly built and garbage-strewn
periphery

Distinct socioeconomic clusters

The spatial association of craftsmen of different kinds reinforced by social

organizations (guilds)
Fostered group cohesion and spatial clustering of their members

the poor, members of ethnic and religious minority groups,

Menial employment (carting, sweeping )

Densely inhabited the very worst housing
 Con…
Many centred in distinct craft quarters
Metalworking, woodworking, and weaving

(each with its own shops, workplaces, and wide spectrum of inhabitants),
 Spatial differentiation is dominated by a mosaic of occupational districts,

with class and status stratification

Status and wealth steadily diminished with distance from the city centre
Con…
 The industrial city
Inherited few of the social or morphological characteristics of the preindustrial

city
Retain their castles, cathedrals, palaces, and other institutional buildings

Products of a new economic logic that turned urban structure inside out from

the preindustrial model

Rich exchanging their central location for the peripheral location of the poor

Occupational clustering has given way to residential differentiation in terms of

status, family structure, ethnicity, and lifestyle

 Con…
 Power and status in the city are no longer determined by traditional values,

Profound realignment was primarily economic, rooted in the emergence of

capitalism, and
Reinforced by the technologies emerged during the Industrial Revolution

Two ‘new’ social groups: the industrial capitalists and the unskilled factory

workers
The accumulation of capital by individuals became not only morally

acceptable but the dominant criterion of status and power,

 Con…
 Entrepreneurs introduced a new, materialistic value system to urban affairs.

Changes in land use;

Competition for the best and most accessible sites for the new factories and the
warehouses, shops and offices,
Land was given over to the uses that could justify the highest rents,

Factory and commercial sites secured,

(sprang up large tracts of housing to accommodate workers and their families)

Homes are no longer used as workplaces,

The new urban structure became increasingly differentiated.

 Con…
Social status;
Ascribed in terms of money, became synonymous with a rent-paying ability

Neighbourhoods were created along status divisions

The size and quality of buildings were positively linked with price and

price with builders’ profits.

Housing built for the lowest-status groups was of the lowest quality,

crammed in at high densities to cover the costs of the ground rent

The introduction of new transport services attracted to the fashionable new
dwellings (wealthy and poor)
 Con…
The wealthy moved to new locations on the urban fringe, and

Working-class neighbourhoods adjacent to the factories.

The rate of urban growth;

 Dramatic excess of births over deaths, and

 Massive immigration

Growth of the capitalist economy with successive improvements in urban

transport systems,
Endowed the industrial city with a series of irregular/sporadic

but distinctive suburban zones.

 The contemporary city
 System underpinned by information technologies and networked around the
globe
 Free markets as the ideal condition not only for the economic organization

but also for political and social life.

 Free markets have generated uneven relationships among places and regions

 An intensification of economic inequality at every scale, from the

neighbourhood to the nation-state.

 The pursuit of neoliberal policies and free market ideals has also dismantled a
great deal of the framework for city building and community development
 Con…

Technological change led;

The capacity of firms to adjust the levels and types of their output in response to
varying market conditions
Computer-aided design and manufacture (CAD/CAM)

Flexible use of labour (multi-skilled)

The creation of new industrial clusters (new industrial spaces)

Ex, Silicon Valley and Orange County in California

 Con…

Rapidly growing ‘sunbelt’ areas of California and the southwest of the United

States,
Extensive suburban development and conservative political regimes

Clusters of industrial sectors such as finance, design and marketing in major

cities (New York, Paris, Milan and London)

In Europe, there are regions specializing in products such as shoes,

ceramics and textiles

 Con…
Increasing social polarization;
Development of protective measures by the more affluent sections of society
(violence and crime are routine),
Bunker architecture (‘fortified’ and ‘paranoid’)

Gates, barriers and walls, security guards, infrared sensors, panic rooms, motion
detectors, rapid response links with police departments and surveillance equipment
(CCTV),
Scanscape
 The political economy of contemporary cities
Politics;
The moral and material contest over the way production, distribution, and
consumption organized on the earth.

Urban political economy;

The link between social organization and economic activity as mediated by
earthly resources.

A socio-spatial dialectic
 Uniting social process and spatial form into integration,
 Con…
 All social phenomena are linked to the prevailing mode of production

The forces of production(technology underpinning the production process),

and
The social relations of production ( legal system of property rights and

trade union legislation) that governed the system of production.

A transformation of society to a higher stage of development(tribalism

to socialism)
 Con…
Conflict between opposing social classes inherent in the economic order

The role of the city;

 Greater accumulation of capital, and

 The perpetuation of the economic base.

 Social reproduction (labour and capital),

 The stabilization of the associated social structure led

 The development of a variety of suburban settings

 Access to different kinds of services, amenities and resources

 Con…
The role of government;
Control over the patterns and conditions of provision of infrastructure,

 Neighbourhoods provide distinctive backgrounds (consumption habits,

moral codes and expectations).

 Permanent social groupings emerge within a relatively permanent

structure of residential differentiation (distinctive, locality-based

communities)
 Fragment class solidarity and elite groups strengthened by the symbolic

power of the built environment

 Con…

The city an expression of capitalism and a means of its perpetuation

recognized that the structure of the city reflects and incorporates
contradictions in capitalist society.
Residential neighbourhoods are cleared to make way for new
office developments,
leads to the dissolution of inner-city communities

The switch of capital to more profitable investment in private housing

leads to an expansion of the suburbs

 Con…
Conflict over the nature and location of new urban development,

Over urban renewal, road construction, conservation, land use zoning

The role of government as a legitimating agent,

Defusing discontent through the pursuit of welfare policies,

The provision of a stable and predictable environment for business,

 the propagation of an ideology conducive to the operation and maintenance

of the economic base

Socializing agencies (educational system, the armed forces and the civil

service).
 Community
 An association of individual and differentiated members coming together

more or less permanently, mostly to serve their own interests.

 A group of people by virtue of a natural longing for interaction

(shared goals, and interests, feeling a sustained bond of connection,

cooperation, and support with one another);

 Primary social relationships are coupled closely with a small physical group

 A societal cell that needs to be studied at the scale of housing schemes

 Con…
Four aspects of community relationships
Common bonds are perceived through shared interests,

Networks of intertwining memberships in voluntary associations,

Common membership of reference groups whose presence is not

necessarily visible to a casual observer, and

The feeling of living in a friendly, cohesive territorial group.
 Character of Communities
A social aggregate is characterized by the mutual orientation of members.

A common – constructed or imagined – identity and/or a common project.

Mutual orientation creates a form of dependence between members.

Sustaining a sense of belonging.

Community-building and maintenance are very much processes set in time.

A tendency to be quite stable and limited to a small number of proximate groups,

Much greater freedom to associate with to leave from different communities

 Con…
The symbolic construction of community
Progressively turned or woven into symbolic constructs

For individual members;

 “A resource and a source of meaning, and a referent of their identity

Makes communities conceivable even in the absence of direct and

regular contact or interaction,

As emergence of nations as imagined communities, and
 Con…
 A sense of belonging to a social and political formation

(local and face-to-face communities).

 The important institutional work involved in the stabilization and diffusion

of that mindset,
 Through the socialization and control of current members and

future generations.
 References
Cuthbert, A.R., 2008. The form of cities: Political economy and urban design.
John Wiley & Sons.

Knox, P. and Pinch, S., 2014. Urban social geography: an introduction.

Routledge.

• Scott, A.J. and Storper, M., 2015. The nature of cities: The scope and limits of
urban theory. International journal of urban and regional research, 39(1), pp.1-15.