The Inner City Dwellers
By Marge Thielmann Hastreiter
The social and cultural moorings of the inner-city population
are best described by a brief analysis of the five types of inner-city residents.
These are:
1. the ìcosmopolitesî;
2. the unmarried or childless;
3. the ìethnic villagersî;
4. the ìdeprivedî; and
5. the ìtrappedî and downward-mobile.
The ìcosmopolitesî include students, artists, writers, musicians, and entertainers,
as well as other intellectuals and professionals. They live in the city in order
to be near the special ìculturalî facilities that can be located only near the center
of the city. Many cosmopolites are unmarried or childless. Others rear children in
the city, especially if they have the income to afford the aid of servants and governesses.
The less affluent ones may move to the suburbs to raise their children, continuing
to live as cosmopolites under considerable handicaps, especially in the lower middle-class
suburbs. Many of the very rich and powerful are also cosmopolites, although they
are likely to have at least two residences, one of which is suburban or exurban.
The unmarried or childless must be divided into two subtypes, depending
on the permanence or transience of their status. The temporarily unmarried or childless
live in the inner city for only a limited time. Young adults may team up to rent
an apartment away from their parents and close to job or entertainment opportunities.
When they marry, they may move first to an apartment in a transient neighborhood,
but if they can afford to do so, they leave for the outer city or the suburbs with
the arrival of the first or second child. The permanently unmarried may stay in the
inner city for the remainder of their lives, their housing depending on their income.
The ìethnic villagersî are ethnic groups which are found in such inner-city
neighborhoods as New York's Lower East Side, living in some ways as they did when
they were peasants in European or Puerto Rican villages. Although they reside in
the city, they isolate themselves from significant contact with most city facilities,
aside from workplaces. Their way of life differs sharply from Wirth's urbanism in
its emphasis on kinship and the primary group, the lack of anonymity and secondary-group
contacts, the weakness of formal organizations, and the suspicion of anything and
anyone outside their neighborhood.
The first two types live in the inner city by choice; the third is there partly because
of necessity, partly because of tradition. The final two types dare in the inner
city because they have no other choice. One is the ìdeprivedî population: the very
poor; the emotionally disturbed or otherwise handicapped;broken families; and, most
important, the nonwhite population. These urban dwellers must take the dilapidated
housing and blighted neighborhoods to which the housing market relegates them, although
among them are some for whom the slum is a hiding place or a temporary stopover to
save money fore in the outer city or the suburbs.
The ìtrappedî are the people who stay behind when a neighborhood is invaded
by nonresidential land uses or lower-status immigrants, because they cannot afford
to move or are otherwise bound to their present location. The ìdownward-mobilesî
are a related type; they may have started life in a higher class position, but have
been forced down in the socio-economic hierarchy and in the quality of their accommodations.
Many of them are old people, living out their existence on small pensions.
The unmarried and childless are detached from neighborhood because of their
life-cycle stage, which frees them from the routine family responsibilities that
entail some relationship to the local area. In their choice of residence, the two
types are therefore not concerned about their neighbors or the availability and quality
of local community facilities. Even the well-to-do can choose expensive apartments
in a near poor neighborhoods, because if they have children, these are sent to special
schools and summer camps which effectively isolate them from neighbors. In addition,
both types, but especially the childless and unmarried, are transient. Therefore,
they tend to live in areas marked by high population turnover, where their own mobility
and that of their neighbors creates a universal detachment from the neighborhood
Wirth's description of the urban way of life fits best the transient areas of the
inner city. Such areas are typically heterogeneous in population, partly because
they are inhabited by transient types who do not require homogeneous neighbors or
by deprived people who have no choice or may themselves be quite mobile. Under conditions
of transience and heterogeneity, people interact only in terms of the segmental roles
necessary for obtaining local services. Their social relationships thus display anonymity,
impersonality, and superficiality
The social consequences of differences in density and house type also seem overrated.
Single-family houses on quiet streets facilitate the supervision of children; this
is one reason why middle-class women who want to keep an eye on their children move
to the suburbs.
Although many characteristics affect the choices and demands people make with respect
to housing and neighborhoods, the most important ones seem to be class - in all its
economic, social, and cultural ramifications - and life-cycle stage. If people have
an opportunity to choose, these two characteristics will go far in explaining the
kinds of housing and neighborhood they will occupy and the ways of life they will
try to establish within them.
Many of the previous assertions about ways of life in cities and suburbs can be analyzed
in terms of class and life-cycle characteristics. Thus, in the inner city, the unmarried
and childless live as they do, detached from neighborhood, because of their life-cycle
stage and distinctive but class-based subculture.