How+do+People+Make+Cities?

How Do People Make Cities?

Who else could make up cities other than people? The goals of the people of a city determines the landscape of the city. With the use of laws, cities turn out the way as planned, while sometimes,with the factor of population growth, they do not end up the way the people envisioned.

People move to cities in order to prosper. However, this growth in population of a city leads to overpopulation. The city’s houses, apartments, and tenements can only sustain so many people, resulting in the development of shantytowns. These developments are unplanned and made of almost any material the occupant can find, including wood, rails, and cardboard. Also called squatter settlements, or slums, these communities are sometimes illegal. Some cities try to prevent areas from turning into slums using zoning laws. These laws regulate the land so that it can be used in an environmentally and culturally sufficient manner. The lack of zoning laws allows the land in certain areas to have multiple land uses.
 * Shantytowns **
 * Zoning Laws **

Past Practices

During the time of segregation and the civil rights era in the United States, neighborhoods were marked as unsafe or run-down in order to keep black and white Americans from living in the same areas. Two notable practices used were redlining and blockbusting.

In this practice, loan companies would mark so called risky neighborhoods on a map and would not give loans to those who lived in those neighborhoods. These "risky" neighborhoods were often the poorer neighborhoods, and only became poorer because they did not have funds to preserve them. Redlining is now illegal in the United States.
 * Redlining**

**Blockbusting** Realtors would convince white residents that their neighborhoods were going downhill due to minority families moving in. This resulted in the white families selling their homes for low prices and moving to suburbs. This practice was beneficial to realtors because they would earn commissions from the sales and purchases of the homes. Blockbusting served to keep American citizens segregated by race, but unintentionally caused the growth of suburbs.

Suburbs, Exurbs, and Gated Communities

What are these so called **suburbs** previously mentioned? They are a section of the city that is mostly residential and has services that provides for its residents, such as shopping malls and schools. The process in which people move to these areas, and populate them with their businesses is called **surburbanization**. These lands are initially large expanses of rural land, and become urban through the process.

Similar to suburbs, exurbs are outlying residential areas of cities. However, they are even further away from the central city than suburbs. People who live here are generally wealthier and more educated than other residents of the city.
 * Exurbs**1]

Gated communities are residential areas of city that are closed in by a fence or wall. With the use of cameras and patrol officers, these fenced in areas provide a sense of security among its residents. In poorer countries,the objective is sometimes reversed, and walls are used to separate the poor from the wealthy. Modern Practices
 * Gated Communities**

To counter suburbanization, the gentrification process to get people to move back to the cities. This process takes place as people buy houses in old neighborhoods and improve them, causing the housing value to go up. Beautification of neighborhoods are attractive to those who want to live near workplaces. Although its intentions are to better a city, gentrification can cause homelessness of low income residents due to the rise of property value.
 * Gentrification**

Unintentionally promoting gentrification, people buy old homes for the purpose of tearing them down and replacing them with new, larger homes. The homes that are destroyed are called tear-downs, and the new homes are called McMansions. Some argue against tear-downs and McMansions saying that they take away the character of a neighborhood instead of saving them. Those who suupport them say that they help slow urban sprawl because houses are built on exisitn lots.
 * Tear-downs and McMansions**

media type="custom" key="21880536" Citations
 * Gentrification Video: Definition**

1. Blankenship, Christy. "[|New Urban Trends]." PowerPoint. 33-35. 2010. Web. 4 Jan. 2012. 2.

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