City Dwelling

Paper Summary:

This paper comments that, while living in cities provides obvious benefits such as art and culture, access to food and medicine and trade, there is an adverse effect as well. The paper refers to a number of articles by Brechin, Pena, and Foster, among others, who all write on the subject. The writer concludes that, while each article may have some value, the reality is that we do live in cities and, at least in the foreseeable future, will continue to do so.

From the Paper:

"There must be few citizens of the 21st century - at least few who are citizens of both the 21st century and the First World - who do not view the city as a problematic accomplishment of humanity. Certainly, cities are the highest expression of human civilization, at least in some ways: They support the flourishing of the arts and culture, of haute cuisine and high-tech medicine, of universities and research labs. But cities are also the expressions of the worst that humans have created, both in terms of how we treat each other and in terms of how we treat the planet, as the readings that we are examining for this paper argue. The city is many things, but it is and always has been essentially a site of commerce, and the basing of relationships upon commercial grounds is never unproblematic."

More papers on City Dwelling:

• Research Paper # 49451 : "Urban Sprawl"
• Article Review # 108776 : "Urban, Rural and Social Networks"
• Analytical Essay # 53345 : "A Child in the Hills"

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