In the first half of the twentieth century, a school of
thought emerged from the University of Chicago that expanded upon the organic
analogy used by Emile Durkheim. Theorists from this school of thought included
Ernest Burgess, who developed an early model for the development of cities. This
model is represented as a series of rings in which the center ring represents
the city’s central business district. Just outside the center ring is a
“transition zone” which is characterized by businesses and light manufacturing,
along with a few residences. The next three rings are primarily residential,
each one representing a step up in class as you move outward into the suburbs.
(Burgess 340) I decided to visit downtown Long Beach to take a look at how well
this model holds up.
This first
picture was taken from a corner on Ocean Boulevard in Downtown Long Beach. This
image shows the Wells Fargo building and City Hall on the left. The building on
the right is the Renaissance Hotel, a lodging option for those attending events
at the Long Beach Convention Center, which is just behind me in the image.
This
building has businesses on the bottom and first floors, and apartments on the
floors above. There might be a restaurant or lounge on the top floor, which is
common in a lot of these skyscrapers.
This image
shows some of the recent development that has occurred in Downtown Long Beach
over the last few years. Several apartment buildings have been built either
from the ground up or remodeled out of old businesses, bringing a new life and
feel to the area. This area is roughly four hundred feet west of Pine Avenue on
1st Street.
As you move
away from Pine Avenue and the beachfront, the neighborhoods begin to show a
little more wear. Houses and apartment complexes begin looking older and older.
Several
problems arise when attempting to apply Burgess’ model to Long Beach. The
largest and perhaps most significant of these is the nature of industrial
production around the Downtown area. Assuming you can establish that this is
the center of the city, this area lacks the factory and transition zones that
the concentric ring model predicts (Burgess 340). It goes from center of power
and major business district directly to residential dwelling without much
evidence of a manufacturing industry of any kind.
It is
possible that over the years, such industries may have disappeared from the Downtown
area, but this argument ignores the fact that the major manufacturing center
within the city was (and arguably still is) the McDonnell Douglas/Boeing
production plant a few miles away. The surrounding neighborhoods around this
plant do offer a sense of transition between two of the ring zones Burgess
observed, but it is between the “Zone of Workingmen’s Homes” and the upper
class “Residential Zone.” (Burgess 340) Ultimately, the model proposed by the
Chicago School fails to account for the expansion and growth of cities like
Long Beach.
Burgess,
Ernest. "The Growth of the City." Trans. Array The Blackwell City
Reader. Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
2012. 339-344. Print.
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