Louis Wirth's classic description of the social and psychological effects of urbanism is organized into a model for the purpose of reviewing relevant theory and empirical research. Evidence on predicted structural effects (differentiation, formal integration and anomie) and individual effects (sensory overload, role mobility, isolation and deviance) is, at most, mixed. The best-supported predictions are of differentiation and deviance. Alternative models of urban life are explored, and, in the process of the review, research directions are suggested.

"Urbanism as a Way of Life" A Review and an Agenda

We are now in the middle of a long process of transition in the nature of the image which man has of himself and his environment. Primitive men, and to a large extent also men of the early civilizations, imagined themselves to be living on a virtually illimitable plane. There was almost always somewhere beyond the known limits of human habitation, and over a very large part of the time that man has been on earth, there has been something like a frontier. That is, there was always some place else to go when things got too difficult, either by reason of the deterioration of the natural environment or a deterioration of the social structure in places where people happened to live. The image of the frontier is probably one of the oldest images of mankind, and it is not surprising that we find it hard to get rid of.

http://www.ub.edu/prometheus21/articulos/obsprometheus/BOULDING.pdf

The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth

Computer networks are social networks. Social affordances of computer-supported social networks – broader bandwidth, wireless portability, globalized connectivity, personalization – are fostering the movement from door-to-door and place-to-place communities to person-to-person and role-to-role communities. People connect in social networks rather than in communal groups. In-person and computer-mediated communication are integrated in communities characterized by personalized networking.

Les reseaux informatiques sont des reseaux sociaux. Les possibilites sociales qu’offrent les reseaux sociaux informatises – bande passante plus large, portabilite sans fil, connectivite mondiale, personnalisation – sont en train de favoriser le passage de communautes de porte-a-porte et de lieu-a-lieu vers des communautes d’individu-a-individu et de role-a-role. Ainsi, les gens se lient davantage dans des reseaux sociaux que dans des collectivites. Les communications directes et via l’informatique sont integrees dans des communautes caracterisees par un maillage personnalise.

/pdf/physical-place-and-cyberplace-the-rise-of-personalized-15nql4wk6y.pdf

Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise of Personalized Networking

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/167/3924/1461.full.pdf

Richard L. Meier

Papers

A communications theory of urban growth

A Communications Theory of Urban Growth.

Science and economic development: new patterns of living..

Planning for an urban world : the design of resource-conserving cities

Science and Economic Development