Low article on "Gated Communities"

Setha Low, compares the gated residential communities of San Antonio, Texas and Queens, New York. Who uncovers the fear that causes people to move farther from Urban areas. Low, who has done participant-observation on residents of New York and Texas which ranged from 27-75 mostly all agreed to the reason why to moving to a gated community was for "search for a sense of safety and security". They feel safer and more secure with gates, walls, and guards, which are all factors of a gated community. Though all residents who Low, has interviewed had the same thoughts of fear to moving to a gated community; residents in New York vs. Texas mention different aspects of fear. In New York, they fear of Urban crime. While as in Texas, residents fear of kidnapping and illegal Mexican workers. One interviewer specifically name Felicia, believes that it's a false sense of safety because anyone can jump the gate, or the guard may fall asleep. Which i can totally agree on; crime can occur in any place whether gated or not!

"Urban Danger" by Merry

   Merry, reflects back on Wirth's article on how the city is a place of disorder with strangers who just live in it. Wirth, argues that "the ecological conditions of size, density, permanency, and heterogeneity create a social world of impersonal, superficial, transitory relationships in which individuals are detached from close ties to social groups such as families, and are freed from the social group". Many studies have been done on the social life of cities ever since Wirth's article has been published. Some researchers agree with his theory, and some do not. Merry has taken it upon herself to conduct a cultural study of Urban danger. She has moved in a couple blocks away of a subsidized housing project located deep in a neighborhood with one of the highest crime rates in a major northeastern city. The housing contained 300 Whites, blacks, spanish, and chinese people. With one year of research conduct on the housing residents she has managed to find out that the residents of different races did not socialize with one another, but with their race only. Despite them sharing the same housing with stoop, land and all they refuse to socialize with one another guess because they do not feel comfortable unless is with their own people.

"Urbanism As A Way Of Life" by Wirth

    Louis Wirth, contrasts "the urban" with "the rural". He views the city as being heterogenous individuals. Heterogenous, as in being different in kind; the studies of the differences between the rural and Urban mode of living. He states an important factor of the article in which how the shift from a rural to a urban society, which has taken place within the span of a single generation in such industrialized areas as the United States, and Japan, has been accompanied by profound changes in virtually every phase of social life. He states how "It is these changes and their ramifications that invite the attention of the sociologist to the study of the differences between the rural and the urban mode of living" (102). Urbanization is a mode of life containing all of the people's need such as transportation, metropolitan centers, theaters, libraries, museums, etc. All people; with different cultures, and ethnic groups who all enjoy the same qualities and needs.