Neighborhoods in New Images
SHAPIRO, HARVEY D.
Neighborhoods in New Images America Becomes Urban The Development of U.S. Cities and Towns, 1780-1980 By Eric H. Monkkonen California. 244 pp. $25. The Clustering of America By Michael J....
...But he leaves the intellectual heavy lifting to others, citing the views of various analysts from C. Wright Mills to Ralph Whitehead, who writes about "new collar communities...
...Weiss also notes that demographic trends are increasing the size—and clout —of Gray Power and Golden Pond communities...
...The 40 categories each have cutesy names— Urban Gold Coast, Pools and Patios, or Golden Ponds...
...Once you discern that Bohemian Mix means hip central city neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village, for instance, you can move on to the next cluster...
...The ZIP codes are used to indicate where disproportionate buyers of various goods and services are located...
...To anyone who has traveled around this country the designations ring true, although that is not to say another scheme, with more or less categories, couldn't be devised...
...They can determine pretty much where to mail the flyers talking about saving Social Security and where to send the ones on gun control...
...The book is based on PRIZM, a market research system that breaks up the nation into 40 "lifestyle clusters" according to ZIP codes...
...They become yuppies or suburbanites or whatever, having more in common with their schoolmates and co-workers and neighbors than with their forebearers...
...You can skip most of the pages devoted to spelling out how each of the 40 groups live...
...Americanization creates distinct groups, depending on education and income...
...now they are from Greece and Mexico and Asia...
...consultant in urban economic development "The United States has become one of the world's most urban nations," Eric Monkkonen observes in America Becomes Urban, "but strangely, it has a rural sense of its own history...
...urban centers were built after the Middle Ages, expansion was never limited by their being walled in...
...This shift reflected the fact that once cities grew in size, anonymity and mobility meant the voluntary model, whether for charity or firefighting, had to give way to the professional one...
...Monkkonen, who teaches history at the University of California Los Angeles, divides that development into three periods: First came "the premodern era," from 1780 to 1830, when American cities " retained a deep similarity to and continuity with European cities" (although the author acknowledges that since the U.S...
...Actually, that is not so strange...
...America, particularly urban America, is a pot into which new ingredients are constantly added...
...Still, they are helpful in pointing out similarities, even of widely separated communities...
...Of course, as with Congressional districts, city limits, and other means of divvying up humankind, zrp codes inevitably have boundaries that are not exactly coterminous with the way we sort ourselves out...
...As consumers and as voters, for example, the residents of Silicon Valley towns are more like those of In Coining Issues The Fear of Low Interest by George P Brockway Europe's Imminent Transformation by Norman Gelb Report from Latvia by Juris Kaza Princeton, New Jersey, than of nearby California towns...
...So the findings cannot be definitive...
...You are probably familiar with most of what is in this volume, yet it's kind of fun to see someone lay it all out, and it's particularly engaging when the author talks about your neighborhood...
...Weiss provides profiles of specific individuals who embody their zrp codes...
...Nonetheless, they have begun to recognize the urban—and increasingly, the suburban—dominance of American life...
...22.50...
...And there is a growing body of literature, now expanded by the two books under review here, focusing on the development of our cities...
...It works because, as Weiss says, most people not only " tend to live where they can afford to live" but also "among people who are like themselves...
...Reading Michael J. Weiss' TheClustering of America is like picking up a travel guide to your home town...
...And he sees these new clusters emerging because of the growth of groups he calls Suburban Retirees and Minority Achievers...
...392 pp...
...Just in case you have any trouble doing so, the Appendix offers a test on "Where You Fit In...
...A great many Americans, after all, are still only a generation or two from the farms and small towns of Europe as well as the U.S...
...Reviewed by Harvey D. Shapiro Writer...
...What emerges is not a single creature who can be called the new American...
...The offspring of immigrants go to Yale and don't return to Little Italy or the Barrio...
...The Clustering of America By Michael J. Weiss Harper and Row...
...Overall, Monkkonen's historical analysis is interesting if not exactly the theory of relativity...
...The year 1830 marked the start of a "century-long period of local economic and population growth," when city governments became increasingly involved in more than simply regulating daily life...
...The picture of urban America drawn by both Monkkonen and Weiss is not that of a melting pot, but neither is it the hard-edged mosaic that revisionists have described...
...These clusters were designed for marketers who want to go hunting where the ducks are...
...Once they came from Ireland, Russia, Italy, and Eastern Europe...
...The clusters provide a framework for making sense of our pluralistic society and finding our way around in it," Weiss says...
...You will be tempted, naturally, to find yourself and your neighborhood...
...In addition, however, American attitudes toward government changed and laissez-faire was replaced by more proactive policies in a number of fields...
...The third phase, following the Depression, saw the Federal government institutionalize many city services, while the urban scene was transformed by families moving their babyboom children to surburbs on the new roads that had been constructed...
...Indeed, this is why political handlers find the system valuable, too...
...They build neighborhoods in their own, new images, creating the constantly changing spectrum of American urban life...
...Monkkonen notes "a deep shift in the role of the city" as municipal administrations went from "passive, regulatory, noninstitutionalized, and voluntary organizations" to "a very different, nearly opposite, model, actively providing a range of services...
Vol. 71 • December 1988 • No. 22
