meet the students

Four features of city life are presented in City People

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Yesterday this class of ten students shared their thoughts on the first two chapters of Gunther Barth’s City People via a short essay assignment. In the first chapter, Barth describes the “modern city culture” emerging in the United States during the nineteenth century. For him, modern means “present.” "Culture" generally refers to institutions like the apartment house that first appeared in urban areas in the U.S. during the nineteenth century, giving places like New York, Chicago and other urban areas a particular identity. Interestingly, Barth, a Harvard-trained historian who died in 2004 after teaching for years at the University of California, defines city as an abstraction even as he considers it a real space in which people came up with solutions to new problems, among them the isolation felt from residing in an area different from their more rural past, or previous life in another country.  I was curious about whether the students perceived the city that Barth describes as a hopeful place. About half of them seemed to feel as much. The rest generally saw a bit of hope, but also despair.  Anne Marie honed in on how people’s “sense of identity” often came from opportunities to work. Michael saw cities as places where one could “find yourself” and begin “anew.” Regan noted that improvements in technology led to sturdier buildings that made cities better through the years. Byron was attuned to the challenges of city living, saying those who moved to cities often did so to “survive.” Evelyn was drawn to the ways in which people adapted to city life. She mentioned the gridiron streets that helped city dwellers live in a more orderly way. Electric street cars “brought efficiency to transportation,” she also wrote. These and other factors such as dividing one’s home from one’s work place and one’s sources of entertainment figured into the “harmony” urban dwellers needed, she added. Ryan was attentive to the ways in which city life posed hurdles for women, especially those who “left farm life” to contend with “hard factory work.” Lewis understood the degree to which new arrivals were “strained by urbanization and industrialization” while they dealt with “Old World concerns” and “rivalries.” Aaron realized that the tensions felt caused some groups to become more cohesive and gave them “a sense of place.” Similarly, A.J. noted how individuals residing closely beside each other forced them to become a “community,” albeit not always a “close-knit one.” Aaron noted the “poetic” quality of Barth’s writing, saying his use of “great minds and great poets’ helped flesh out his view of the city. Finally, Lauren detected that cities were places where one could find “high culture” even as “the immense amount of people and buildings crammed into” small spaces left “many with a dirty impression” of urban living. I thought the responses from the students were generally a good start. I look forward to seeing them deepen their thinking as we look at some of the institutions Barth believes helped define city life in the United States. We start next week with the metropolitan press and the department store. Along the way, we will be very attentive to how race, class and gender, and ethnicity sharpen our view of city life. From time to time, per the suggestion of one student who was struck by how some of the architecture in the States receives influence from older cultures/civilizations, we will also focus briefly on nineteenth century city life outside of this country. My colleagues have steered me to readings about places as different as Germany, Mexico, France, Cuba and Brazil that should be helpful. In the meantime, please meet the students via the short video pictured here. Music provided in part by Weldon Burger, native of Greensboro, NC.