Urbanism As A Way Of Life Analysis

What makes someone feel safe? Everyone will provide different answers; however, most people wouldn’t realize that diversity can create safety. According to the author of Urban Danger by Sally Merry, people tend to care about those whom they know, therefore neighboring and building relationships with different people from different communities provides that layer of understanding and the desire to protect one another. Also, fear is defined differently by people, as the white man who packed his suitcase into his car by midnight so the potential burglars don’t notice him, in the other hand, a Chinese lady honks the car to let her parents know that she arrived. The author, Louis Wirth in the article “Urbanism as a Way of Life” defines a city by three factors which are population size, density, and social heterogeneity. According to him, cities promote individualism, since cities have been the melting pots and destinations for immigrants, that builds superficiality among neighbors. The population size might force people to interact with each other but that doesn’t get them closer or establishing much of a …show more content…
In reality, it was the total opposite of diverse. It was known as Yellow Hook for the hue of the yellowish soil observed by the original Dutch settlers, according to the 1998 book “The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn” by Kenneth Jackson and John Manbeck. After the yellow fever epidemic in 1849, the new name was given due to the proximity of the neighborhood to New York Bay and the magnificent views of the Ridge. These views attracted the wealthy who built extravagant summer homes along Shore Road overlooking the water, those houses are worth multiple millions of dollars today. The increase of rail transit in 1916 and 1917, led other ethnicities as Jewish and Italian families to move in Bay Ridge, also the building of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge encouraged more ethnicities and social classes to construct more