cities as sities of integration and division

What is meant by the urban paradox?
A: Cities are simultaneously sites of integration (opportunity, diversity, innovation) and division (inequality, segregation, stigma). These processes coexist and evolve unevenly over time.

Flashcard 2: Why Cities Matter

Q: Why are cities important in shaping integration and division?
A: Cities:

  • Can cause social and economic divisions

  • Intensify wider processes (capitalism, migration, racism)

  • Are sites where inequality is most visible and performed
    Urban processes are complex and historically shaped.

Flashcard 3: ‘Shock Cities’ & Early Urbanisation

Q: What are ‘shock cities’ and why are they important?
A: Cities like Manchester and Chicago experienced rapid industrialisation causing upheaval, innovation, and inequality. They revealed how urbanisation transforms society and exposed early forms of integration and disintegration.

Flashcard 4: Chicago School & Urban Models

Q: What did the Chicago School contribute to urban theory?
A: Viewed cities as social laboratories:

  • Burgess (1925): Concentric zone model (bid-rent theory)

  • Hoyt (1939): Sector model (growth along transport routes)
    Criticised later for oversimplifying inequality and power.

Flashcard 5: Governance, Knowledge & Freedom

Q: How did governance shape urban integration?
A: Mapping, policing, and infrastructure created order and control (Foucault), enabling mobility and civic freedom while also regulating populations. Knowledge of the city = power + integration.

Flashcard 6: Urban Crisis & Racial Segregation

Q: What caused the Western ‘urban crisis’?
A: Combination of:

  • Deindustrialisation

  • White flight

  • Redlining (state-led racial segregation)

  • Tax base collapse and stigma
    Case studies: Detroit, Chicago, Paris banlieues.

Flashcard 7: Marxist Urban Theory

Q: How do Marxists explain urban inequality?
A: Cities are shaped by capitalist interests, not natural processes.

  • Growth machine (Molotch): elites + state + developers

  • Lefebvre: “Right to the City” → cities should serve people, not capital
    Explains segregation, gentrification, motorway displacement.

Flashcard 8: UK Urban Disintegration & Stigma

Q: What characterised UK urban decline?
A:

  • Slum clearance failures (Hulme Crescents)

  • Racialised housing patterns

  • 1981 riots (Moss Side, Brixton)

  • Territorial stigma (Wacquant): places judged as social failures
    Example: Dewsbury Moor & Shannon Matthews case.

Flashcard 9: Global South & Alternative Frameworks

Q: How do alternative theories challenge Western urban models?
A:

  • Feminist urbanism: gendered spaces, care work, safety (Jacobs)

  • Postcolonial urbanism: rejects Global North dominance (Robinson)

  • Informal economies: Dharavi as integrated economic system

  • Johannesburg: post-apartheid inequality + gated communities.

Flashcard 10: Global Cities & Gentrification

Q: How do global cities produce new divisions?
A:

  • Sassen: global cities concentrate control and capital

  • Rising inequality, housing crises, class displacement

  • Gentrification (Glass): driven by rent gap (Smith)
    Case studies: London, Dublin (tech boom + housing crisis).