Week 4: “Theories of Urbanism”

Claude Fischer offers a seminal codification of academic thought on the theory of urbanism, and in the process makes a valuable reformulation of the theory through his attention to the emergence of subcultures. Fischer accepts some of the precepts of the prevailing determinism in urban sociology that acknowledges the primary and independent impact of urban effects, which Louis Wirth had identified as size, density, and heterogeneity. He differs from the compositional approach of Oscar Lewis and Herbert Gans, who rebuke urban effects and look to the cultural, demographic, and class characteristics of urbanites. Fischer believes that the size and density of the population, or what he calls critical mass in cities, have independent effects in fostering subcultures. The emergence of subcultures fosters the further creation of more subcultures through the touch and recoil of more intensive interactions between more diverse populations and heterogeneous communities. That is to say that increasing size and density fosters greater heterogeneity. This recalls Robert Park’s concept that the modern city becomes a mosaic of social worlds. The larger the city, the greater there is the potential to produce subcultural communities.

Fischer reconstructs the theory of urbanism by downplaying the negative effects of Durkheimian anomie with reference to the crime, mental health, and social problems that are found in the metropolis. He gives another perspective on differentiation as a cultural process linked with specialization in the division of labor. Fischer sees the city and its subcultures as a vital force for the amplifying of cultural experience and human creativity. Subcultures mark the emancipation of the individual from traditional controls and conventions, while providing a new set of subgroup identities and communities. In this way, they counterbalance some of the alienation and normlessness, the spiritual anxieties and social disorders found in our cities and marketplaces, which result from the breakdown of traditional customs and primary relationships.