Robert Park and Urban Ecology

This article presents an overview of the concept of urban ecology (sometimes called human ecology), which grew out of the work of Robert Ezra Park and the Chicago School of sociology between about 1915 and 1935. The term urban ecology is based on an extended analogy between natural ecosystems and human communities in what Park thought of as the social "laboratory" of Chicago. Park essentially attempted to provide a model for understanding the processes by which individuals and communities interact with each another and their surrounding urban environment. Park's distinction between the biotic and social orders of city life clarifies the analogy between ecosystems and cities: In this context, plants, animals, and humans all have a biotic level of life, but only humans have a social (or cultural) level of existence. The mixture of qualitative (or descriptive) and quantitative (or statistical) methodologies used by the Chicago School is also significant, particularly in a historical context.

Keywords Biotic; Chicago School of Sociology; Concentric Zone Theory; Dominance; Ecological School; Ethnography; Qualitative Research; Quantitative Research; Social Control; Social Darwinism; Social Distance; Succession; Zone of Transition

Sociological Theory > Robert Park & Urban Ecology

Overview

Chicago School of Sociology & Robert Ezra Park

The Chicago (or "Ecological") School was an important force in the establishment of sociology as a distinct and influential discipline in the United States. Although the Chicago School was more of a school of working sociologists than a distinctive and coherent school of thought, Park and his colleagues and students played an important role in developing a more scientific methodology for studying social issues related to crime, immigration, and urban development (Becker, 1999).

The experience and program of research that Park brought to the study of sociology at the University of Chicago suited the situation well: The school was pursuing a more empirical approach to scholarship, and the city itself was experiencing both substantial growth and extensive social problems. Park had covered similar social problems for twelve years as a journalist and reporter, and he subsequently spent seven winters studying racial conflict in the American South. That course of study was undertaken on the advice of Booker T. Washington, the President of the Tuskegee Institute. Park had also spent nine years as Washington's secretary and studied racial issues domestically and internationally in that capacity.

Park likened a good sociologist to a reporter who presents factual information of such quality that it can simultaneously provide insight about the reader and society itself. He also frequently told his students that the role of the prospective sociologist is to pursue information objectively rather than to be a "crusader" (Coser, 1977). Nevertheless, an aura of societal reform hovers around much of the work of the Chicago School. Common topics of Chicago School dissertations include homelessness, deviant behavior, crime, strikes, ghettos, and brothels (Abbott, 1997). Park termed sociology "the science of collective behavior" (quoted in Coser, 1977, p. 358).

The Urban Environment

Park used the Darwinian notion of a "web of life" to illustrate the comparison between natural and urban environments. He literally studied insect ecology in order to find a model that could be applied to human society (Cortese, 1995). The rhetorical emphasis Park and others placed on terms like "competition," "conflict," "scarce resources," and "division of labor" can distract contemporary readers from the fact that these terms were meant to emphasize multiple interactive relationships rather than mere competition (Abbott, 1997). In short, Park is sometimes taken to be an advocate of the discredited notion of social Darwinism, which viewed competition and social hierarchy as a healthy or desirable forces. Gross and Krohn (2005) summarize the central idea that urban ecology explored: "All parts of the environment are interdependent and are moved by individual, collective, and ecological forces" (p. 69).

Park & Burgess's “Introduction to the Science of Sociology”

Park was more proficient as an editor, collaborator, teacher, and dissertation supervisor than as a writer or researcher. Ernest Burgess has been credited with systematizing Park's somewhat vague theories and imperatives regarding practitioner detachment (Cortese, 1995). In a seminal early sociological textbook, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, Park and Burgess (1966 [1921]) developed a four-stage system for describing social processes:

• Competition
• Conflict
• Accommodation
• Assimilation

The first stage exists at the biotic level in that it is universal to all living things; the second at the conscious level in that it is related to periodic disputes over issues such as social status or limited resources; the third involves a temporary suspension of conflict through social control and the subordination of one of the parties involved in the conflict; and the fourth involves a resolution of the related conflict through integration (or "assimilation") into a common culture (pp. 502–505, 644–665; 730–735; Coser, 1977). The meaning of the term "assimilation" is this formula is a crucial but contentious issue.

A related dominance principle in this analogy refers to the unequal level of access that different individuals or organisms have to social status or resources; some trees, for example, do not have as much access to sunlight as others. Park (1952) used the ecological term succession for upward social mobility; at the plant or animal level, the term denotes natural development or progression (pp. 220–225). Whereas biotic relationships are universal in that all life forms exist in some sort of interdependent environment, the social level of human existence allows for conscious communication and collective action (Park 1952; Coser, 1977, pp. 359–360).

Concentric Zone Theory

Park and Burgess (1925) also developed the concentric zone theory of the city: A central business section that is surrounded by four outer areas that are occupied by successively more affluent groups. According to this model, new immigrants tend to occupy the second of the five areas, the zone of transition that is characterized by a high level of social problems, deteriorating quality of housing, and low-paying jobs. The three outer levels are occupied by the working class, the middle class, and the commuter class, respectively.

Natural Areas

The modern city is also described as a kind of ecosystem comprised of "natural areas": Function-related sections (including social, business, and residential sections); physical barriers (like rivers or large roads and buildings); financial divisions (like affluent suburbs and ghettos); and ethnic enclaves. These divisions are "natural" in the sense that the inhabitants of each of the four residential areas tend to engage with similar economic, social, and "ecological" issues. Rapid and drastic alterations in social institutions, values, and standards have been termed "social disorganization theory" or "differential social organization" in this context (Park, 1952; Coser, 1977). Park (1936) also framed the forces that shape the city in terms of a different four-tiered system:

• Population
• Artefacts (technological culture)
• Custom and beliefs
• Natural resources.

This model accounts for the role that technology-related issues occupy in the urban environment and, as such, might seem to minimize the importance of the ecological analogy; at the very least, the technological angle is an expansion on the social/cultural level of human life.

Although these ecological analogies may seem implausible to contemporary readers, Park also provided social-psychological explanations for the process of competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. The methodological techniques by which these ambitious models were tested are themselves an important element of the Chicago School's legacy.

Application

Qualitative & Quantitative Research

Park termed his preferred technique of firsthand fieldwork "participant observation," which resembles what anthropologists term the qualitative method of ethnography. This approach, as he defined it, involves immersing the sociological practitioner in the subjective experiences of others and producing an objective account of those experiences (Cavan, 1983, p. 414). Quantitative research, such as survey results, census data, and map-making, were also used extensively by students of the Chicago School to identify the spatial patterns of social problems in specific areas and, indeed, how specific areas might be classified according to the concentric zone theory (Cavan, 1983; Bulmer, 1984). The use of qualitative research in the form of personal information is particularly characteristic of the early stage of the Chicago School.

Thomas & Znaniecki's Study

Thomas and Znaniecki (1918) assembled the first major work of the Chicago School; it is a study of Polish immigrants that made substantial use of both quantitative and qualitative research: newspaper reports, official archive material pertaining to immigrants, interviews, personal stories, and private letters. This five-volume collection, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America: Monograph of an Immigrant Group (1918–1920), has been considered a useful study of the psychological and social changes triggered by immigrant transplantation in general and Polish social history itself for many decades (Coser, 1978). W. I. Thomas, in particular, emphasized the elements of immigrant behavior that were culturally patterned prior to transplantation, rather than simply examining the immigrant's response to a new environment. Rather as Burgess's methodological acumen helped Park's ideas reach theoretical completion, Thomas's work may well have been more sensitive to the nonmethodological elements of these social issues than Park's work (Cortese, 1995). In other words, neither the concentric zone theory nor the competition/conflict model explain the reasons that those in the zone of transition might find upward social mobility such a challenge as well as Thomas's approach does. Despite this early emphasis on qualitative fieldwork, it soon declined after a colleague named William Ogburn rose to prominence in the department, but quality of results remained the main point of emphasis.

Park's Teaching

The possible drawbacks of qualitative research were familiar territory to Park. When he oversaw the research about a 1919 race riot in Chicago for an African American graduate student, Park warned against using white interviewers to collect information from nonwhite individuals and asking biased or leading questions. Park associated these tactics with what he took to be the manipulative or otherwise irresponsible techniques of the reformist so-called social survey movement that was prominent at the time. Social surveys can include both qualitative and quantitative elements. Abbott (1997) proposes that much of the qualitative research of the Chicago School likely resembles the techniques of the social survey movement to contemporary readers.

Park instructed his students to write for the general public rather than for academics (Gross & Krohn, 2005, p. 69). Furthermore, Park (1924) explained the importance of studying the autobiographical details of the lives of homeless people in nonmethodological terms: "The real significance of the community's social institutions is revealed [in these studies] as they are in no other way" (p. 268). These sentiments certainly seem to justify the connection between Park's work and that of the societal reformists he criticized on methodological grounds. Park (1915) also criticized city laws, organizations, and buildings that are not influenced by community interests: "These things in themselves are only utilities, adventitious devices that become part of the living city only when, and in so far as, through use and wont they connect themselves, like a tool in the hand of man, with the vital forces resident in individuals and community" (p. 578).

Urban Change, Urban Stasis, & the "Assimilation" Model

Park evidently maintained hope that African Americans would follow in the path of immigrant groups that had achieved upward social mobility — the social equivalent of the biological process of succession. His social psychology theories acknowledged, perhaps grudgingly, that prejudice, racial antagonism, and the subjugation of disadvantaged groups were the dominant elements of race relations in his time. These ideas are grouped together under an idea termed social distance. Park acknowledged that these forms of social control support the status quo and thereby discourage social reform; he termed social control "the central fact and the central problem of society" (Park, 1955, p. 227). His experience as a reporter in the American South produced a curious observation: "There is probably less racial prejudice in America than elsewhere, but there is more racial conflict and more racial antagonism. There is more conflict because there is more change, more progress" (quoted in Coser, pp. 361–362). Social distance and social control are elements of accommodation, the third and penultimate stage before assimilation in the formula that Park and Burgess devised for explaining social processes.

When Park and his students attempted to use the experiences of a community of Asian immigrants in California to demonstrate the accommodation/assimilation hypothesis, they found that assimilation had clearly not occurred (Cavan, 1983). Drake and Clayton (1945) soon arrived at a similar conclusion (p. 176). Their landmark study, "Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City," demonstrates that in the 1930s, 90 percent of African Americans in Chicago lived in neighborhoods with an African American population of more than 50 percent; and 63 percent of them lived in neighborhoods comprising between 90 and 99 percent African Americans. In other words, racial discrimination had evidently barred African Americans from upward social mobility. Park's failure to demonstrate his assimilation thesis in the California study did not lead him to revise it, and others attempted to use it until the mid-1960s. Since then, integration and pluralism (a recognition of diversity) have been viewed as the appropriate categories to apply to immigrant groups and African Americans (Cavan, 1983, p. 411). In other words, the link between upward social mobility and the assimilation of immigrants and other analogous groups into mainstream society is a thoroughly outdated notion. Some of Park's other ideas, however, may reflect or at least be compatible with this development.

The Marginal Man

Park's much discussed notion of the "Marginal Man" provides a possible response to the failure of his theory of assimilation. This figure, described as an immigrant or a member of a minority group, is initially termed one who "lives in two worlds, in both of which he is more or less of a stranger." However, Park also claimed that this disadvantage produces beneficial traits: "The wider horizon, the keener intelligence, [and] the more detached and rational viewpoint" (Park, 1950, p. 376). These corresponding traits, claims Park, render such a figure an important subject in the examination of social change (cited in Coser, 1977, p. 366). This quotation sounds like Park's description of the good sociologist. In late twentieth-century studies, the "Marginal Man" figure was discussed in terms of an immigrant or outsider who is able to combine elements of two differing cultures (Cavan, 1983, p. 412). This approach, however, merely seems to add contemporary-sounding language to Park's general sentiment.

An alternate criticism of Park's idea could be that it is an overly optimistic portrait of the marginalized individual, particularly in comparison with the public and private transformation that Thomas and Znanieki identified in Polish immigrants. Park's theory of larger societal change may represent a similar trend. This theory describes a three-stage process known as "natural history": Large-scale social unrest leads to collective organization and finally to institutional change. He intended to write a "natural history" of the newspaper as institution but evidently did not complete the study (Coser, 1979, p. 362). In short, Park's pragmatic theories about seemingly unavoidable societal elements such as accommodation, social control, and antagonism in the face changing social status hold up relatively well; his more ambitious theories may not.

Natural Areas

Somewhat inconveniently, Park apparently used the term "natural history" in a slightly different sense. Park (1929) also explained the term "natural area" in terms of slums: "A region is called a 'natural area' because it comes into existence without design, and performs a function, as in the case of a slum, that may be contrary to anybody's desire. It is a natural area because it has a natural history" (p. 9). Park seems to mean that slums perform a necessary (and therefore, natural) function in the modern city. Abbott (1997) draws on another Chicago School study by Wirth (1956 [1928]) about a Jewish ghetto in Chicago to explain this version of "natural history." That ghetto did not primarily have this particular quality of "natural history" but rather one shaped by three different factors: New immigrants, changing patterns of business patronage, and changing patterns of domestic succession (specifically, lower birth rates). In other words, slums apparently have an unchanging quality in Park's model. The ghetto, by contrast, seems to occupy a sort of "intermediate" stage between slums (or the zone of transition) and other areas of the city, perhaps both in terms of an undesirable form of social stability and societal structure.

In The Ghetto, Wirth (1956 [1928]) attributed a partially positive quality to the Jewish ghetto in Chicago: "The Jews owe their survival as a separate and distinct ethnic group to their social isolation" (p. 122). Park somewhat similarly attributed a beneficial quality to the drawbacks experienced by the "Marginal Man," but both assimilation and integration seem to be undesirable according to Wirth's observation. Wirth also mentioned that many of those in the Jewish ghetto chose to stay even after leaving was an option and that some of those who did leave felt as if they had abandoned an important component of their individual and social identity (p. 288).

Viewpoints

The Second Chicago School

The Chicago School lost its influence in the 1930s, but in the late 1940s, a "second Chicago School" emerged. The latter school developed the ideas of Park, Thomas, and others about the socially self-aware individual — of the participation of the individual in the social construction of society — under the rubric of "social interactionism" (Cortese, 1995). These "intersubjective" or social psychology approaches largely abandoned the first Chicago School's interest in criminology and the larger forces that shape society (Cortese, 1995). At about the same time that a Marxist-oriented movement known as "political economy" challenged the legacy of the Chicago School in the late 1960s, a movement of "Chicago Irregulars" or "neo-Chicagoans" reasserted the qualitative tradition in the journal Urban Life. This movement focused on studying deviant behavior through fieldwork and direct observation (Thomas, 1983).

Social Darwinism

Based on Park's view of competition, Miley (1980) links him with social Darwinism, which Miley defines as "the ideological defender of laissez-faire capitalism" (p. 166). Park's professed suspicion of social reformists and advocacy of a detached viewpoint might support this view. Miley actually concedes that Park — rhetoric aside — was really more concerned with cooperation than competition, but then asserts that Park's notion of competition fails to account for the full social-economic scope that such a concept entails (1980, p. 167). This Marxist-oriented approach might be compatible with the idea that Park was overly optimistic about the possibility of societal change, but it does not follow that simple optimism of this sort amounts to social Darwinism as Miley defines it. On the other hand, Park's reason why studying the figure of the "Marginal Man" is worthwhile is that he possesses traits that allow for the study of the "processes of civilization and progress" (quoted in Coser, 1977, p. 366). This last phrase sounds like code for social Darwinism, but again the similarity is largely rhetorical.

The LA School

The contemporary so-called LA School of sociology claims to have reversed the logic of the Chicago School. That is, the Los Angeles School claims that the outer areas of the modern city have come to shape the activities of the disorganized core (Dear, 2002). Hunter (1980) suggests that subsequent Marxist critiques are grounded in the shift from an industrial society to a post-industrial society. In this respect, the LA School might be a direct descendent of the Chicago School. The Marxist emphasis on the socially corrosive forces of the capitalist marketplace may not be all that different from Park's discussion of competition for scarce resources and conflict over social status. In other words, the concentric zone theory and the LA School model of urban organization can both be understood as responses to rapid social reorganization and disorganization.

Alternative Approaches to Research

The example set by Thomas and Znaniecki's The Polish Peasant did not establish a significant new vein of scholarship. Later studies that combined qualitative and quantitative research in the 1950s and 1960s tended to be strong in terms of narrative interest but weak on data-based information. One alternative approach that has emerged has been to study the variables in the responses that social surveys produce, which has been useful primarily for the purposes of polling and market research. Another response to the failure of these two methodologies to function together has been to pursue cross-disciplinary studies between sociology and fields such as cognitive psychology, physics, computer science, or biology (Abbott, 1997). A comparison with the natural sciences, of course, is exactly what Park and Burgess attempted in the 1920s.

Terms & Concepts

Biotic: This term literally means "of biological origin." Park used it in terms of the symbiotic relationship, or interrelatedness, of living things in their natural environment.

Concentric Zone Theory: The concentric zone theory is the five-area model of the contemporary city; the generic model is that of a downtown core surrounded by four areas (or rings) of successively higher levels of income.

Dominance: Dominance is an ecological term describing competition between dissimilar parties for resources in an area in which equilibrium is disrupted; it denotes a movement away from succession.

Ethnography: Ethnography, the traditional research method of anthropologists, involves direct immersion in the activities of people in order to gather information. Richness of context and empathetic understanding are emphasized in this method of research. It is largely synonymous with what Park termed "participant observation," except perhaps in that Park favored more detachment.

Qualitative Research: Qualitative research is essentially descriptive. Forms of qualitative research include interviews, observation (either passive or active), and personal information such as direct autobiographical accounts of events or indirect accounts such as correspondence. In research terms, qualitative research is considered more valid but less reliable, meaning that the questions being asked are answered more thoroughly but findings are less easily replicable.

Quantitative Research: Quantitative research provides data that are measured numerically (or statistically). Quantitative data are often considered more scientific and objective than qualitative data. Surveys are quantitative in the sense that the limited number of responses that are possible can provide for statistical analysis. Quantitative analysis is also considered more reliable but less valid than qualitative research.

Social Control: Social control denotes restrictive means to police competition, minimize conflict, and generally encourage cooperation and ensure social order. Measures for social control include the law, convention, and public opinion. In short, social control restricts social behavior.

Social Darwinism: Social Darwinism tends to transfer the Darwinian notions of struggle and the "survival of the fittest" to human society. One version is that the practice of protecting the weak, sick, and old will inhibit the general fitness of the human race (genetically and/or socially) in the future and therefore governments should not attempt to do so. Another variation is that struggle, competition, conflict, or war between individuals or nations is the means by which progress, development, or evolution of some sort is realized. Early twentieth-century social Darwinism is often described as a means by which societal inequality was maintained.

Social Distance: Social distance is a sense of difference or antagonism between different racial or class groups largely based on a sense of dissimilarity; the antithesis is a sense of intimacy between members of the same social group.

Succession: Succession is an ecological term meaning natural development, progression, or change.

Zone of Transition: The zone of transition is the second of the five areas (or rings) of the concentric zone theory of the modern city. It is characterized by a high rate of social problems and deteriorating housing.

Bibliography

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Bulmer, M. (1984). The Chicago School of sociology: Institutionalization, diversity, and the rise of sociological research. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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Coser, L. A. (1977). Masters of sociological thought: Ideas in historical and social context. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Coser, L. A. (1978). American trends. In T. Bottomore & R. Nisbet (Eds.), A history of sociological analysis (pp. 283–321). New York, NY: Basic Books.

Dear, M. (2002). Los Angeles and the Chicago School: Invitation to a debate. Community & City, 1, 5–32. Retrieved May 6, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=10454564&site=ehost-live

Downey, D. J., & Smith, D. A. (2011). Metropolitan reconfiguration and contemporary zones of transition: Conceptualizing border communities in postsurburban California. Journal of Urban Affairs, 33, 21–44. Retrieved October 29, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=57581379

Drake, S., & Clayton, H. (1945). Black metropolis: A study of Negro life in a northern city. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Gross, M., & Krohn, W. (2005). Society as experiment: Sociological foundations for a self-experimental society. History of the Human Sciences, 18, 63–86. Retrieved May 6, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=17518007&site=ehost-live

Hunter, A. (1980). Why Chicago?: The rise of the Chicago School of urban social science. American Behavioral Scientist, 24, 215–227.

Miley, J. D. (1980). Critical dimension in human ecology: Ideology in American sociology. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 9, 163–185.

Owens, B. B. (2012). Mapping the city: Innovation and continuity in the Chicago school of sociology, 1920-1934. American Sociologist, 43, 264–293. Retrieved October 29, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=78643833

Park, R. E. (1915). The city: Suggestions for the investigation of human behavior in the city environment. American Journal of Sociology, 20, 577–612. Retrieved May 6, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=15429729&site=ehost-live

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Park, R. E. (1950). Race and culture. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.

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Suggested Reading

Abbott, A. (1999). Department & discipline: Chicago sociology at one hundred. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Burns, T. (1996, August). The theoretical underpinnings of Chicago sociology in the 1920s and 30s. Sociological Review, 44, 474–494. Retrieved May 4, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=9612125443&site=ehost-live

Deegan, M. J. (1988). Jane Addams and the men of the Chicago School, 1892–1918. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Lal, B. B. (1987). Black and blue in Chicago: Robert E. Park's perspective on race relations in urban America. British Journal of Sociology, 38, 546–566. Retrieved April 28, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=6788904&site=ehost-live

Matthews, F. H. (1977). Quest for an American sociology: Robert E. Park and the Chicago School. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queens University Press.

Scharper, S. B. (2012). From community to communion: The natural city in biotic and cosmological perspective. In I. L. Stefanovic & S. B. Scharper (Eds.), The natural city: Re-envisioning the built environment. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Retrieved October 29, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=469002&site=ehost-live