LIFE IN U.S. Challenges Created By Migration To The Cities

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31239, 10 December 1966, Page 5

LIFE IN U.S. Challenges Created By Migration To The Cities

(Specially written for “The Press” by

JOHN E. OWEN,

, Department of Sociology, Arizona State

University) JjER cities are America’s glory and despair, the centres of her cultural attainment, the launching pads for dynamic social change, the focal point of her political and economic energy, and the pace setters for her style of life.

The tone of American civilisation today is derived essentially from the cities, where 70 per cent of her population live. America is the most urbanised nation in the world, but her culture reflects all the problems attendant upon this new experiment in living.

The urbanward trend has been the most significant long-term internal population movement in United States history, together with migration to the Western states. Ever since the first official census in 1790, when the population was 95 per cent rural, more Americans have been moving to the rising cities, a tendency that has accelerated sharply since 1900, and even since 1940.

At the turn of the century, two out of three Americans lived in the country, but the population explosion and migration to the city have revolutionised the old patterns of living. Just as President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programmes of the 1930 s were a response to a nation-wide economic depression, so the “Great Society” schemes of the 1960 s are a Governmental recognition of the challenges created by urbanism. Of America’s 196,000,000 people, fully two-thirds are concentrated into less than 10 per cent of the total land area, and 70 per cent of the urban population is squeezed into 1 per cent of the nation’s territory. With the increasing movement of population to the cities, 130,000,000 people —two thirds of the nation—are now classed as metropolitan, residents of urban areas with at least 50,000 population each, plus that of the adjacent suburbs. America now has 225 such metropolises. A new trend, already very evident, is the rise of “strip cities” or conurbations, in which the area between two or more metropolises gradually becomes completely urbanised along interconnecting highways. A prime example is the WashingtonNew York-Boston strip, more than 400 miles long, now almost entirely built up. On the Pacific Coast, the 100 miles between Los Angeles and San Diego, once an idyllic coastal line of quiet seashore communities, has become urbanised. Thirteen such “strip cities” now contain half the population of the nation.

Complicating Factors

The heart of city problems can be traced to sudden and unplanned growth, blight, social renewal of the slums, population pressure, and lack of space. American cities also face complex financial and political dilemmas together with grave problems of air pollution, racial tension, a growing crime rate, and the effects of the automobile. American life in general and cities in particular are dependent upon the automobile. More than 80.000,000 cars are on the roads and one job in six is related to the automobile industry. Historically, the tram and the internal combustion engine helped to make the urban community possible, enabling thousands of workers to live some distance from their place of employment. But overcrowded highways and concentrated use of cars make rush-hour traffic the hardest part of the day for thousands of workers. A traffic jam in New York this year held up 1,500,000 cars. In fact, astronauts can traverse the world in the time required for some American suburbanites to drive to work. In Los Angeles, America’s second largest metropolitan area after New York, with 6,750,000 people, 70 per cent of the downtown land is allocated to the automobile. Los Angeles is perhaps an extreme example, but in all United States cities the automobile demands 26 per cent of the land area for roadways alone. And the trend is increasing. Since 1945 and post-war prosperity, Americans have been using trams and buses less and cars more. Since 1950, there has been a decline of 78 per cent in the number of tram passengers, while bus riders are down 28 per cent. Several authorities have stressed the need to lessen the national dependence upon the automobile. In the mean-

time, more than 100 persons are killed in highway accidents every day, while fumes from myriads of car exhausts are a prime source of air pollution, and metropolitan electric-power failures are a disturbing reminder of the mass effects of centralised urban technology. Virtually all the problems of United States city life reflect the relation between city and suburb. The flight to the suburbs, where 59,000,000 Americans now live, has created a new situation for the inner cities, which are increasingly populated by racial minorities, beset by slum neighbourhoods, heavy congestion, an ugly ethos of violence and frustration, and overcrowded schools. This reflects a changed racial pattern of United States life. Since 1950, 5,000,000 Negroes have moved into urban slums. Three-quarters of the Negro population today lives in cities, and the city has replaced the South as the chief arena of race conflict in the nation.

The suburbs, by contrast, are predominantly middleclass and white, financially well-supported and enjoying superior schools. The central cities are becoming Negro ghettos, economically impoverished, and crime-ridden. As income-earners flee to the suburbs and pay taxes there, the cities lose tax revenue at a time when their financial burdens are rising sharply. Local - government spending has increased five-fold since

1946, about half the budget being allotted to schools. In almost all of America’s 12 largest cities, the proportion of non-whites has increased by more than 20 per cent in the last decade, but industry has shown a tendency to move from the city to outlying areas where taxes are lower. The central cities’ source of taxation—business and property—has, in consequence, been shrinking, while the demand upon city services—more police and welfare expenditures, water, gas, and low-income housing projects—is enlarging. A high birth-rate among the urban poor results in heavier welfare costs. For example, New York has 500,000 people on city assistance, mainly Negroes and Puerto Ricans. New York has had to resort to deficit financing to meet its $4 billion annual budget. Tax Aspects The United States tax structure, which many financial specialists claim needs reforming, currently favours the landlord of slum property and the speculator. For landlords to improve their property would result in a higher tax assessment.

There have also been demands that suburbanites who depend on the city for much of their shopping, cultural benefits, and water supply, should pay more for these services through taxation. Bond issues have been one answer, but in the last analysis the federal governwill probably be called upon to extend financial aid to improverished cities. Significantly, the original growth of suburbs was given an impetus 30 years ago by a Federal mortgage insurance programme which stimulated a quick building boom and

has since made home-owners of 63 per cent of United States families. The individual states have hitherto been reluctant to give financial support to their cities, partly because state legislatures tend to be ruraldominated. Paradoxically, the suburbs often vote with the rural law-makers against their own city. Even Congress is dominated by rural members. Almost half the members of the House of Representatives have agricultural backgrounds, as do more than half the senators in Washington. But a new Supreme Court ruling may lead to a reappointment of election districts between city and country, in favour of the city and the suburbs. In the meantime, however, many jurisdictional restrictions hamper the efficient administration of United States metropolitan areas, There is seldom one political authority over the entire city, although problems do not respect city and suburban boundaries. For example, New York City alone has almost 1500 separate jurisdictional units responsible for schools, water, land use, sewage, law enforcement, rivers and harbours, and transport. Trends towards metropolitan government are frequently blocked by voters who fear technocratic dictatorship. Unfortunately, many metropolitan districts have not evolved comprehensive plans to accommodate their current growth. Arising from the frontier at a time of rapid industrialism and large-scale European immigration three quarters of a century ago, they lacked a planned foundation for rational expansion, a factor that has continued to intensify the contemporary crisis. But in the last few years the very enormity of city problems has spurred a keener awareness, both at the local and the federal level, of the need for confrontation of the urban dilemna. A new profession of public administration is developing, and a modern town planning movement is under way.