Cities and towns; Social psychology; Sociology; Sociology, Urban
Each formation or ecological organization within a community serves as a
selective or magnetic force attracting to itself appropriate population
elements and repelling incongruous units, thus making for biological and
cultural subdivisions of a city’s population. Everyone knows how racial
and linguistic colonies develop in all of our large cities, but the age
and sex segregations which take place are not quite so obvious to common
perception. In the city of Seattle, which has in general a sex
composition of 113 males to 100 females, the downtown district,
comprising an area inscribed by a radius of half a mile or so, has from
300 to 500 males to every 100 females. But in the outlying districts of
the city, except in one or two industrial sections, these ratios are
reversed. Females predominate in numbers over males in all the
residential neighborhoods and in the suburbs of the city. This same
condition is true with regard to the age distribution of population. The
school census shows an absolute decline in the number of children of
school age in the central districts of the city although the total
population for this area has shown an increase for each decade. It is
obvious, then, that the settler type of population, the married couples
with children, withdraw from the center of the city while the more
mobile and less responsible adults herd together in the hotel and
apartment regions near the heart of the community.
This process of population-sifting produces not only increasing mobility
with approach from the periphery to the center of the formation, but
also different cultural areas representing different mores, attitudes,
and degrees of civic interest. The neighborhoods in which the settler
type of population resides, with their preponderance of women and
children, serve as the custodians of the stabilizing and repressive
mores. It is in the Seattle neighborhoods, especially those on the
hill-tops, that the conservative, law-abiding, civic-minded population
elements dwell. The downtown section and the valleys, which are usually
industrial sites, are populated by a class of people who are not only
more mobile but whose mores and attitudes, as tested by voting habits,
are more vagrant and radical.
R. D. MCKENZIE
CHAPTER IV
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE NEWSPAPER
I. THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE
The newspaper has a history; but it has, likewise, a natural history.
The press, as it exists, is not, as our moralists sometimes seem to
assume, the wilful product of any little group of living men. On the
contrary, it is the outcome of a historic process in which many
individuals participated without foreseeing what the ultimate product of
their labors was to be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account