Cities 07

Does Jackson’s article confirm Webber’s theories? Well, yes and no. A good example of the “yes” can be found in the section of Webber’s article where he talks about how the urbanites used to live in the cities and the rural people used to live in the country, but now – or at the time he wrote the article, anyways – the trend has reversed itself. While Webber never seems to implicitly say it, the only real way this reversal could have happened is due to the automobile. The urban people got cars more frequently, realized “hey, it’s pretty nice out here – less crime, less pollution,” and decided to move out of the city, killing the city somewhat. Which is exactly what Jackson was talking about in his article.
This brings up an interesting idea, mainly: were the city people really that transformed by the idea of mass car ownership or was it more a case that the city people didn’t really want to live in the city in the first place? If all it took was a steady, convenient mode of transportation that they themselves could both own and operate to get them out into the surrounding areas (causing the birth of the suburb), one wonders if this mass migration wasn’t an inevitability, anyways. My guess is that this was bound to happen, anyways.
While Jackson helps confirm Webber, they have some areas in which they differ. Mainly, Jackson and Webber seem to differ on how they feel about this transformation. Jackson damns the idea of a growing suburban culture – which came about mainly through the automobile – while all Webber seems to say is that things like mass car ownership will change things. This is where Jackson can be found at fault. Jackson’s main fault lies in the fact that he seems to put the blame for declining cities directly on the automobile. Webber touches on things like cars, but he was smart to also point out things like air travel and telephones as reasons that people migrated out from the cities. He doesn’t pin the blame strictly on the automobile.
And yes, the car did take the people out of the city. But did it take the city out of the people? I don’t think it did. Webber himself says, “High educational attainments and highly specialized occupations mark the new cosmopolites.” Nowhere in there does he say, “You have to have an address within the city limits to be a cosmopolite.” Just because cars have given people a way out of the city, that doesn’t mean they don’t like the city, which is what Jackson seems to be saying throughout his article. Take Minneapolis, for example. Sure, people might live in Edina or Chaska or wherever, but if they want to go to a Twins game or a concert at Target Center, they have to come into Minneapolis. Last time I checked, there weren’t any major concert venues or stadiums in Eden Prairie.
In the end, Jackson – to a certain extent – helps confirm what Webber was talking about. But Jackson takes a far too narrow view of what caused the decline in cities and a far too narrow view of how people perceive cities. Webber, by casting a wider net, comes off with a better approach.