One cannot talk about an isolated building in San Francisco which has housed people since the Gold Rush, without placing it in the context of how such dwellings come to be built, how cities planned and how costs and affordability have come to define a scarcity of housing as a normal condition the world over. The lack of affordability is one part of the crisis, the other part is homelessness which has many factors. The nature of homes or places of residence versus camps can be defined historically and culturally for our species.
Some animals produce structures to live in, others excavate depressions, many live in caves or inhabit structures built by other animals and discarded (von Frisch 1974). In many cases animals simply find limited shelter in temporary settingsāto avoid weather conditions or to restābuilding nests to sleep in or utilizing existing foliage. Humans have, over the past two million years behaved in all these ways. Structures are relatively new, appearing in the last half million years, while some peoples build only temporary windbreaks. A recent survey of this history shows the diversity of human creativity in dwelling design, from economy in manufacture and the demands of mobility to the excesses of the desire for architecture to reflect prestige and status (Buchli 2013). The nature of homelessness is a modern classification, though some sources from the Greek and Roman societies, Indian and Chinese, have commented on its varieties.
Analysis of a specific community reveals interactions of an economic nature that bind individuals in certain relationships. But the use of the term varies in the hands of different researchers. For example , while Gans (1967) uses the term throughout his description of Levittown , he states early in the book that it does not meet the criteria of a community . Various groups and even neighborhoods reflect ācommunity spiritā but the manifestation of this is in mutual help. He argues that Levittown lacks three essential elements: it is neither an economic unit, nor a social unit and lacked symbolic unit value to most of its residents. By these criteria, it would be difficult to class most urban areas as communities and so we find Gans ā definition lacks utility. Westās (1945) description of Plainville would fall into Gansā definition. In fact, Gans seems critical of the concept referring to efforts at community development as nostalgic and reflecting efforts to create social facts that are based on false ideas of the past, as in contemporary TV shows like āFather Knows Best,ā and āLeave it to Beaver.ā Gans (1967) now and then reverts to a term, āneighboringā to describe relationships that develop given proximity and mutual help. At the Goodman Building proximity, defined by which floor one lived on or which āwingā of the floor, was associated in some cases with more engagement and social activities as well as in a few cases who moved in next to whom. There was some room swapping which resulted from both desires to be closer to some individuals as well as rooms conceived of as better studio spaces (light, less street noise, etc.).
Comparing Gansā Levittown (1967) work to that of Merton (1948) and Merton et al. (1951) there is a similarity of subject in newly built and designed housing complexes. The interaction of the researcher and subjects is seen to be more complex in Mertonās work and he argued that the research process affected the lives of the subjects and their attitudes toward their housing and other residents. In reviewing Mertonās work and that done in Japan in similar new towns, called Danchi estates, Sukenari (2016) finds a parallel thread to Mertonās findings. There is also a pattern similar to the results Gansā (1967) published. For example, neighbor association and community interaction varies by design of buildings, economic group and number or lack of children. Also, most Danchi residents rely more on work friends and school mates for males and kin for women. But the design of structures was not as important as the means of cooperative solutions to residentsā common problems. This would be an effective way of looking at the differences between the Goodman Building , the Emeric/Goodman at present and the G2 Project which we will discuss later. Finally, as Merton argued, researchersā relationship with community members and methods of study do have effects on results.
Goodenough (1963) defines community as a transactional process of involved āclientsā while Biddle and Biddle (1965) define it as a goal related to local identity and control. A broad definition of groups of individuals who come together for various reasons appears in the work of Emerson et al. (2011), likewise to Pelto (1970) community emerges from a study of interactions as social groups and these may often show overlapping subgroups with varying goals and identities. These last definitions seem most appropriate for how we will describe the community of the Goodman Building .
As Malinowski (1938, 1962, 1945) noted, the everyday activities and ānormalā behavior is often more difficult to notice or quantify as the unusual, extreme variation or exigency demands attention and seems more notable and significant. In a study of a group we often find, as Simmel (1903) pointed out, the impression of demands of society against the needs and desires of the individual, the atomization of individuals from collective action and reciprocity. He describes the formation of a āblasĆ© attitudeā to deal with the overwhelming stimulation of masses of people and the potential pathologies of monetized existence. However, the voluntary production and joining of individuals in clubs and associations seem to act against Simmelās view and Southallās (1993) reassessment in a wider view of world cities and cultures shows how adaptable humans are to city life. Of course, this is a modern view in both cases. (Simmelās at the height of colonialism and Southallās of global capitalism.) Our pictures of earlier cities, either from ancient wanderers like Herodotus and Pliny the Younger or later Christian (e.g. Marco Polo, thirteenth century; the Conquistadores, of the Americas, sixteenth century) and Arab (e.g. ibn Battuta, fourteenth century; Leo Africanus sixteenth century) provide views from the Judeo-Christian perspective and Europe and the Middle East cultural bias. Other cultural views are in Ma Huan (wrote of the fifteenth century Chinese voyages of discovery to Africa) and Chou Ta-kuan who visited Cambodia in 1296ā1297. The comparisons are tantalizing tidbits of what was before the colonial disaster after 1492. The worse for Africa as we have virtually nothing from the indigenous voice prior to the conquest and the chaos it created, with the exception of Ancient Egyptian texts. Some glimpses survive from European visitors of African cities in the crisis of the slave wars, as those of Snelgrave in 1734 or John Atkins in 1735 and Robert Norris in 1789. While brief sketches from the voyages of Chang Ho of Asia and Africa have been preserved, our information on city life from a non-European perspective are limited as they are of pre-modern views (e.g. Apuleiusā The Golden Ass written in about 170 A.D. in the Roman Empire or Chaucerās descriptions, or the Menagierās Wife of Paris written about 1392 or the book, The Tale of Genji, by the Japanese noblewoman, Murasaki Shikibu at the beginning of the eleventh century A.D.).
Pardo and Prato (2018) note that Don Martindaleās (1958) suggestion that the age of the city was at an end by the post-WWII era, is complicated by the extent to which urban areas act beyond the boundaries of the city, in social behavior control and economics . We might say that the global city has exterminated the distance between city and hinterland. This does not just mean that people can travel across time zones or transfer wealth over continents and nations, but that cities now routinely lay waste to vast territories beyond their locations and transform the nature of local work and terrain for their survival. At the same time, cities are fragile and warfare in cities has become common and persistent as in Sarajevo in the 1990s and Aleppo in recent years.
Seen in todayās view of the triumph of the individual, our focus often becomes a search for a character that represents the group. The alternative impression is the tendency for a purposeful reduction of individuals all being leveled and the achievement of individual potential against common goals of community represented as such. On this point, Gans ā study (1967) was directed to find if planning produced healthy communities or if the suburban design was pathological and if residents could adapt and positively change conditions or if they were simply formed to the conditions. Gans ā research reflects both extremes, broad generalizations and idiosyncratic experiences he has that are offered as typical (e.g., conversation in a driveway). Gansā research was conducted much as NLCās at the Goodman Building , as a participant-observer. However, Gans did not tell his neighbors that he was studying them, but he did inform many in Levittown that he was engaged in a study of the development , and NLC did not plan at the time he moved into the building to produce a study. He was asked to create a record of what was happening and to use his social science skills in the struggle to save the building. An additional part to ...