Urban Anthropology

Urban Anthropology Louis Wirth based his urbanism studies on the city of Chicago where he lived. A his research, he has identified three definable factors for urbanism: large population, dense settlement and social diversity. A city is "a large and permanent settlement, densely inhabited by a heterogeneous population." His urbanism describes the typical Western, industrial city: dangerous, unhealthy, where, due to the largeness of the city they live in, people develop forms of alienation and anarchy and where there is no sentiment of community.

Sally Merry found that Wirth's model worked best at a macro level, where she agrees with the anonymity that people live in and the disorder. However, she is more preoccupied with people manifestations at the city's peripheries: boundaries are a source of tension for people because of the unknown, so, starting with is, she observes human behavior at the city's boundaries.

Stanley Milgram somewhat refuted Wirth arguments in stating the theory according to which almost everyone is only six friends or acquaintances away from anybody else, thus pointing out to the existence, in fact of a small world and that people are separated actually by a small number of other people (see Wirth's idea of a large city where everybody is alienated).

In his book The Cultural Meaning of Urban Space, Rotenberg seeks to explain urban spaces as places made meaningful by the urbanities that live there through creation of metropolitan knowledge. I found this concept best explained in Rotenberg's essay PRICE AND STATUS IN VIENNA'S NASCHMARKT, where he identify's different types of 'knowledges' that applied to Vienna. Among them, metropolitan knowledge: "Only native born.