BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303 SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (August 2017)
Name: Chong Xin Dean Lecturer: Mr Nicholas Ng Reader/Text Title: of Life “
“Urbanism is a Way
ID No.: 0325353 Tutorial Time: 1011a.m. Synopsis No: Text 01 Author: Louis Wirth
In “Urbanism is a Way of Life “, Louis Wirth expressed his thoughts on how urbanism is a continuous developing concept, as the urban life has its own form of developing and also a constantly changing phenomena. He strongly believes in that “sociological definition“ of urban life. The contact that happened among the urban inhabitants are indeed to be directly confronting each others but those are rather impersonal, which is why he mentioned the four elements that characterized urbanism, which is transitory, superficiality, anonymity and also individualism. Wirth states that there are a few factors which contributes to the development of individualism, namely size of the population aggregate, heterogeneity, and density of inhabitants. The people are giving more importance to one’s vested interests only. I think it is relevant in today’s context. I have observed this phenomena in various situations ever since I moved down to KL to pursue my studies. For example, people in KL tend to avoid building more connections with other people. They only do it during certain situations when it is absolutely needed like when going to an event. Wirth mentioned that “Urbanism as a social form of organization “, which he also touched on losing the primary contacts, there are weakening of kinship and family significance, as well as lacking of neighbourhood in a urban mode of living, which I am certainly agreed with that. In my case, I did not grew up in an urbanised area, and my family has always stressed the importance of family bond. Furthermore, we have always felt that neighbourhood is the integral part of our living, so we never moved to urban areas and rather stay closer to our relatives. In Wirth’s perspective towards urbanism, he clearly distinguishing the differences between the living in urban and rural areas. As the number of people interacting increases, the lower the depth of communication. Overall, the quality of living in urban areas is better than the rural areas. However there are trade offs with the relationship between people.
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