American CitiesEssay Preview: American CitiesReport this essayEric StewartAmerican CitiesTitleAmerican cities the latter half of the Twentieth Century experienced a tremendous transformation. The industrial cities which experienced large growth and production had to find a change in their forms of production, or face declination. Detroit faced issues answering this question as the citys dominant industry weakened. Las Vegas, which also relied heavily on a single industry, improved. Cities like Los Angeles and Portland found solutions to the deterioration of post-war deindustrialization. Unique formulas were constructed for an individual city to prosper. The second half of the Twentieth Century saw urban one-industrial cities such as Detroit shrink as new methods of economic industry thinned out employment opportunities and housing began to move outside the city, taking with it both jobs and workers. A City like Las Vegas created a unique service with broad boundaries that excelled in entertainment and, unlike Detroit, remains ever expanding. Because of a deteriorating industrial production in cities, Los Angeles and Portland developed strategies to stimulate new development on a local and global scale.
Detroit experienced the most severe decline of any American industrial city after the Second World War. As the cities population grew during the early 1940s, locals fled the inner city, migrating into the nearby suburbs at the end of the war. The suburbs absorbed the citys large, growing population, however, the suburbs brought with them the citys industry. Historian Thomas Sugrue refers to this as Detroits “deindustrialization, the flight of jobs away from the city.” More improved methods of industry began to surround Detroits industry as jobs fled the city. Automated machinery took over the need of manual laborers. Nearly 134,000 manufacturing jobs alone were lost between the years 1947-1963. Detroit began to unravel as an industrial city. The heart of the city, its manual workforce, began to diminish. The cities deteriorated industry produced urban crises.
The decrease in Detroits production critically affected the citys ability to run itself smoothly. The loss of production and fewer businesses meant a shortfall of taxes within the city. A social crisis involving a large amount of unemployed citizens resulted from fewer businesses. The citys fiscal was down. A chain reaction developed from the fleeting industry; however, the problem faced in Detroit may be reversible. A Yahoo News article from 2010 sheds light on the possibility of Detroit reclaiming its prominence from a few factors; a large increase in the cities population resulted from immigration from Middle Eastern Countries. The city benefits twice from the immigrants. First, an infusion of new citizens provides the city with much needed population boost. Second, the immigrants bring with them an economic boost and capital from other countries, ameliorating Detroit from its declining trend. A city dominated by an industry did not always result in declination. Las Vegas prospered with its unique services, and doing so indicated a different trend.
Las Vegas unique services of entertainment made the city prosperous despite its single dominant industry. From its origin as a gambling city, to its transformation as world entertainment, Las Vegas has spread its reach, capital and investment, across the world. Highways were the first methods for connecting Las Vegas to nearby cities. As the city grew, an airport expanded the reach of Las Vegas. It created an international port of entry. Capital had expanded Las Vegas and unlike Detroit, the citys deterioration would rely on a larger, global population rather than a single cities community. The cities production occurred form global accommodations. The influx of worldly tourists brought with it investment and the economy of other nations. Las Vegas took one-industry towns to a new direction but expanding the pool of production that it draws from. Las Vegas established itself as a new trend of development. Global production and revenue. The American city was headed into a new direction with industry; outward. This strategy also helped other cities which sought to revitalize development.
Los Angeles relied on revitalizing its city from an influx of immigrants and the arrival of capital from foreign countries. As disinvestment occurred economically, it also occurred socially. After the Watts Riots in Los Angeles, the economy and society were bifurcated. African Americans were disinvested, losing employment for the city. The decentralization of workers made the workforce became further globalized. The dynamics which shaped urban growth now reached for a new global space. New immigration prohibited the breaking down of the cities economic workforce. An article from The Los Angeles Times states how the workforce is continually growing. Bruce Kelley refers to the regional work force and the change 150,000 workers has provided for business in Los Angeles. A vast majority of the new immigrants came from Latin America and Asian countries, like Mexico and Korea. The flow of labor and capital from the immigrants assumed responsible for the restructuring
The transformation of the urban middle class from a city-poor to a city-strong middle class (Los Angeles by 1950) was a central and significant cause of the Los Angeles urban revolution. An emerging mass-immigration and suburbanization of the urban middle class began in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. In the decade following the Second World War, the urban middle class experienced a rapid surge after its collapse from the 20th century’s low levels of industrial work. At this time most cities were divided into small groups of urban professionals, working together for more than a decade, each working separately to get the most out of their respective neighborhoods. This rapid growth resulted in more “news,” which became the dominant street classes.
In a 1950s article in The New York Times, a social scientist argues that while much of the city’s “news” existed as a group rather than as individuals, a “constrained” middle class comprised a larger number of those with an affinity for a particular social or cultural identity. These “constrained middle classes” were able to adapt and move from small towns to small farms or from farm to field, moving their work and work-life balance from village to field. The new middle classes grew because of local economic growth and the shifting of resources between different neighborhoods. The new middle classes also relied on a strong network of government, including local government agencies, and the government was able to attract immigrants and “subordinate” urban working to the urban center.
Although it may have been a great opportunity to reintegrate the urban middle class to new life, the lack of new middle classes is no substitute for an economic “recovery.” In 1950 the share of new immigrants in the city grew from 6 percent to 12 percent, but the share of new middle classes declined from 70 percent to 25 percent. In 1970, about 90 percent of the new middle classes worked in the city. Today, about 55 percent of the city’s new immigrant population does not have full-time employment. Over the past century, urban employment figures were significantly decreased compared to that of the city as a whole.
As our society is now less segregated, we are increasingly seeing a transition of “new” middle classes to “old” middle classes that was seen by many as the end of segregation. Some young people have come to identify as “new” middle class, while others see as a new, growing minority. While there are clear political differences, many middle class groups and neighborhoods are more ethnically diverse and more affluent, and many of these are predominantly white. The urban middle class is now being replaced primarily by people that live in small cities such as Los Angeles, where there may be more people living in urban areas living with one parent than with all of the other people living together.
The Los Angeles Urban Revolution began in 1950 with the emergence of an urban middle class. At the time, people were able to move from their rural farms and jobs in rural areas to the urban center because of low unemployment rates. The urban middle classes were able to relocate many of their “news” to small cities, like San Jose, to find work without a home or other financial assistance. This growth gave the urban middle classes the strength to be resilient in times of hardship and hardship.
In Los Angeles, many of the people living with one parent now live in small or rural areas where they are the ones who have to rely on government and government services. These people often have to find their own money so they can afford to buy government benefits or services at a local store.
In the United States, about 40 million households have a household income below 50 percent of the federal poverty line. The percentage of U.S. population without adequate income drops to 38