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THE Urban (continued from front flap)

LEADERSHIP IN A SMALL TOWN

intimacy of associations in a group can be expected

AARON WILDAVSKY

to decrease the number of relationships and whether

Who rules in a small American town? How do its leaders emerge, how do they secure their objectives, and in what ways are they different from other people? This book gives answers based on searching accounts of the ways in which a wide range of issues are handled. The issues are familiar to many towns; they range from controversies about the building of a new water system to new housing and zoning codes, from united charity appeals to housing for Negroes, from nominations and elections to industrial development and off-street parking. As these issues are resolved the activities of two men—one a centrally placed local administrator, the other a perpetually energetic activist—assume prime importance and they become the subject of special role studies. The vivid description of men and issues is set against a historical background, and enriched by a survey of leaders and of the general community. There is discussion of the relationship between having a reputation for being powerful and the actual exercise of power, and attention also given to the relationship between leaders and the general population. The author draws parallels to other community studies and formulates general propositions in support of the thesis that American communities are pluralist. He finds that no one person or group controls community decisions, that power is fragmented and dispersed among a variety of participants no one of whom is powerful in all areas. Professor Wildaysky finds considerable advantages in the towns of the mass society, advantages enriching creativity and enhancing the ability of citizens to direct their own future. He closes his book with a suggested strategy of citizenship participations which is geared to his findings about the exercise of power in pluralist political systems. This realistic optimism about the potentials of active citizens in local communities sets his book apart from many other community studies. Both those who wish to understand and to do something about conditions in their communities should welcome this book.

people who seek a closer relationship with their social superiors will necessarily avoid the company of their inferiors . . . some of these problems have not been posed in this form before ■

■

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Theodore Caplow is Professor of Sociology in the Graduate Faculties, Columbia University. His interest in Latin American cities began with studies of Guatemala and Quetzaltenango in 1948, and has continued ever since. Sheldon Stryker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Indiana University. Most of his published work deals with problems in social psychology; his statistical inventiveness is here turned upon ecological data for the first time. Samuel E. Wallace is Research Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Puerto Rico. He remained there after the completion of the field work for The Urban Ambience to direct additional research on the problems and opportunities of Puerto Rican society.

mbience

a sway oT San Juan, Puerto Rico

THE URBAN AMBIENCE "The evaluation of urbanism as a way of life is especially crucial for cities in transition, those compelled to make present decisions about the whole course of their future development. San Juan is of particular interest because of the way it has grown by migration. Most of its new residents come directly from agricultural villages or isolated farms, without intervening stages. Because of its relationship to the United States, San Juan has more industries, more automobiles, more modernity of every kind than would ordinarily be expected in the capital city of an underdeveloped area. ■ The neighborhood—as it will be described in book—is this the first stage of society beyond the

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individual household. The analysis of such miniature social systems may be informative, as a step towards the analysis of larger chunks of social reality that can

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not be so easily observed or understood. ■ our inquiry into the San Juan neighborhood will carry us into some reflections on the nature of urbanism and the general question of how small vol-

Order through your bookseller, or direct from The Bedminster Press Shipping and Service Center,

untary groups develop and survive. We shall exam-

Vreeland Avenue, Totowa, New Jersey, U.S.A.

ine such problems as whether an increase in the

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THE BEDMINSTER PRESS

Theodore Caplow Sheldon Stryker Samuel E. Wal!ace

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A Social Science Research Center Study COLLEGE

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A study of San Juan, Puerto Rico

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z xE Urban Ambience THEODORE CAPLOW SHELDON STRYKER SAMUEL E. WALLACE

BIBLIOTtCA DEL CENTRO

DE INVESTIGACIONES SOCIALES UNIVERSIDAD DS P_USRTO RICO

Readers of this book are invited to send their names and addresses to The Bedminster Press, Vreeland Avenue, Totowa, New Jersey, U. S. A to receive announcements and literature about other books in the social sciences published by The Bedminster Press.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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We are greatly indebted to: Dr. Millard Hansen, Director of the Social Science Research Center of the University of Puerto Rico, for his unfailing encouragement and support of this project. Our intelligent, competent, and hard-working field staff: Elia Hidalgo, research associate; Vidalina Rodríguez, Livia Paniagua, Delma Ivette Vázquez Arjona, Harold Toro, Ernesto Maldonado, and Arlene Cohen, research assistants; and Caneen Herenia López and Conchita Torruellas Correa of the office staff of the Research Center. The public officials who graciously provided the basic ecological information about San Juan: Ismael Torres Macías, Subsecretario, Departamento de Obras Públicas; Victor M. Labiosa, Jefe, División de Investigaciones sobre Carreteras, Departamento de Obras Públicas; Laura Martinó, División de Inquilinato, Administración de Estabilización Económica; Rafael Ramírez, Director, División de Energía Eléctrica, Autoridad de Fuentes Fluviales; Rosa L. Stéfani, Departamento de Economía Doméstica, Universidad de Puerto Rico;

Mort Turner, Geological Division, Industrial Laboratory, U. S. Department of the Interior; José Janer, Negociado de Registro Demográfico y Estadísticas, Departamento de Salud Pública; Salvador Capestany, Director, Negociado de Urbanismo; Filiberto García, Director, Negociado de Permisos; Ramón García Santiago, Presidente, Junta de Planificación; Katy Hernández, Unidad de Nóminas de Asistencia Pública, Departamento de Salud Pública; Félix Mejías, Presidente, Autoridad Metropolitana de Autobuses; Rafael Nieves, Decennial Operations Division, U. S. Bureau of the Census; Herminio Sotomayor, Negociado de Tasación Científica; Conrad Taeuber, Assistant Director, U. S. Bureau of the Census. Pedro A'. Jiménez, Subadministrador; Edna Ranck, Directora, Oficina de Investigaciones; Josefina Monseratte, Directora, Servicios Administrativos; Eduardo Figueroa, Diseñador, Oficina de Planificación; and Carlos M. Alvarado, Director Ejecutivo, Administración y Corporación de Renovación Urbana y Vivienda. Angel Luis Rivera Cedeño, CRUV Office of Administration, spent many days wandering through the city with one of the authors to take the photographs for this publication. The photograph of the New Suburbs was obtained through the courtesy of the Planning Board. Special acknowledgments are due to Helga Umpierre whose competence and untiring effort made the administration of this project a pleasure and to Ann Sheer and Violeta Mitinas for their painstaking patience with an awkward manuscript. T. C. S. S. S. E. W. February, 1964

CONTENTS

Introduction 1

••• r•

The San Juan Urban Area

Some General Characteristics Gathering Descriptive Data The Spanish Colonial City The North American City An Ecological History of San Juan The Unnucleated City APPENDIX

City Planning in the Laws of the Indies

Ecological Zones Barrios and Zones The Old City The Beach Front

•: rr.

The Central District The Slum Belt The Old Suburbs The New Suburbs Population Population Density Residential Mobility Sex Ratio Public Assistance Delinquency APPENDIX

Characteristics of Barrios and Ecological Zones San Juan Urban Area (Tables) 53

Barrios and Neighborhoods •'

Selection of the Neighborhood Sample The Interview Procedure The Content of the Interview The Neighborhood Interaction Scale Ambience Measurements The Nature of the Neighboring Relationship Structural Diversities APPENDIX

Photographs, Descriptions, and Interaction Networks—The Twenty-Five Neighborhoods

The Correlates of Interaction

153

Using the Neighborhood Data The Distribution of Intensity Scores Housing Characteristics Stratification Characteristics Locational Characteristics Demographic Characteristics Attitudinal Characteristics Summary and Conclusions The Urban Ambience APPENDIX

The Correlates of Neighboring (Tables)

169

Dimension of Neighboring

176

Intensity and Extensity Previous Studies

Findings of This Study APPENDIX

Intensity and Extensity of Neighboring (Tables)

Reciprocal Choice

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185

187

The Choosers and the Chosen Pattern of Discrepancy Who Are the Chosen APPENDIX

Distribution of Discrepancies in Reports of Neighboring Relationships (Tables) 193

Residential Satisfaction

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196

Residential Satisfaction Satisfaction and Moving Intentions The Time Factor The Correlates of Satisfaction Local Peculiarities Summary and Conclusions APPENDIX

Correlates of Residential Satisfaction (Tables)

San Juan's Future

r'''

San Juan's Future Urban Sprawl Traffic Blight The Persistence of Slums The Consequences of Mass Housing Segregation Envoi

Appendix

231

The Interview Schedule

Index

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237

222

209

E '

Introduction

The first sociological study of a neighborhood that we have been able to discover was Thomas Jesse Jones', Sociology of a New York City Block.' Nearly sixty years have passed since its publication and it has been followed by about forty empirical studies of urban neighborhoods in the United States and elsewhere? Almost all of these describe intensive and meant Thomas Jesse Jones, The Sociology of a New York City Block, New York, Columbia University Press, 1904•

2 Among the more important of these are: Roderick D. McKenzie, The

Neighborhood: A Study of Columbus, Ohio, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1923. Jesse Bernard, "An Instrument for the Measurement of Neighborhoods with Experimental Applications," South Western Social Science Quarterly, September 1937. The series of studies by Paul Chaumbard de Lauwe under the general title of L'Agglomeration Parisienne. Ruth Hill Useem, John Useem and Duane L. Gibson, "The Function of Neighboring for the Middle-Class Male," Human Organization, Vol. 19, Summer 1960.

. THE URBAN AMBIENCE

ingful interaction in the urban neighborhood. Yet one still hears the classic opinion that: "Neighbors, signifying intimate association, have been replaced by nigh-dwellers, this designating adjacent residences coupled with anonymity." 3 It was Robert E. Park whose view of urban life as lonely, impersonal and confused,4 has colored the viewpoint of American urban sociologists ever since. Louis Wirth's classic paper on Urbanism as a Way of Life identified the disappearance of the neighborhood as one of the distinctive features of urbanism together with the substitution of secondary for primary contacts, the weakening of bonds of kinship, the declining social significance of the family, and the undermining of traditional bases of social solidarity. The city planner who draws upon this intellectual tradition for guidance in predicting the human consequences of large-scale architectural design, is encouraged to disapprove of the urban environment even as he works with it. There are many other influences in the heritage of modern city planning that are hostile to cities as we know thems and that seek to reverse the normal characteristics of urban life by planning, substituting symmetry for variety, homogeneity of land use for heterogeneity and residential dispersion for concentration. A number of eloquent critics have recently expressed un3 Wilbur

C. Hallenbeck, American Urban Communities, New York, Harper and Bros., 1951, pp. 536-537• Not all urban sociologists suffer from this blind spot. A lucid discussion of the "intensity of neighborhood relations" can be found for example in Gist and Halbert's standard textbook, Urban Society, New York, Crowell, various editions. Phillip Fellin and Eugene Litwak have recently proposed a new view of the question. See their "Neighborhood cohesion under conditions of mobility," American Sociological Review, Vol. 28, June 1963 p. 76. 4 Robert E. Park, "The Concept of Social Distance," Sociology and Social Research, Vol. 8, July-August 1924• Louis Wirth, "Urbanism as a Way of Life," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 44, July 1938. 6 The anti-urban tradition in the United States literally goes back to the Founding Fathers. It is excellently documented in a recent publication by Morton and Lucia White, The Intellectual Versus the City: from Thomas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright, Cambridge, Harvard University Press and the MIT Press, 1962.

3 V'... Introduction

easiness about the assumptions behind master plans and challenged them with empirical data.? The revival of argument on questions that had been taken as settled points up the paucity of our knowledge about the social fabric of great cities and suggests that the social consequences of city planning need to be examined more closely, more often, and in more places. The evaluation of urbanism as a way of life is especially crucial for cities in transition, those compelled to make present decisions about the whole course of their future development. San Juan is of particular interest because of the way it has grown by migration. Most of its new residents come directly from agricultural villages or isolated farms, without intervening stages. Because of its relationship to the United States, San Juan has more industries, more automobiles, more modernity of every kind than would ordinarily be expected in the capital city of an underdeveloped area. It is also a major source of migration. About one in four of its inhabitants departs in any given year for the United States, the overwhelming majority to the Island of Manhattan.8 About 150,000 Puerto Rican families maintain a foothold both in greater New York and greater San Juan, with individual members moving back and forth according to the seasons, the vicissitudes of the labor market, or for personal and family reasons.° As if the culture shock of migration from mountain villages to the crowded pavements of San Juan and the interchange of people and ideas with the mainland were not enough, public policy and economic evolution are additional agents of change. Substandard housing is removed and new housing constructed at a dizzying rate. Highway development, industrial development, urban renewal, harbor improvements and the breakneck growth of public facilities displace thousands of families within the metropolitan area 7 The most notable of these critiques is Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York, Random House, 1961. See also The Editors of Fortune, The Exploding Metropolis, New York, Doubleday, 1958.

8 The contrast between the Island of Manhattan and the Island of Puerto Rico is the subject of a lively and factual musical argument in Act II of Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story." fl See: Characteristics of the Passengers who Traveled by Air Between Puerto Rico and the United States, October to December, 1961, San Juan, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1962.

THE URBAN AMBIENCE

every year. The stage is thus set to examine rootlessness, anomie, and the consequences of mobility under what seem to be extreme conditions. One primary purpose of this study is to provide the planners of San Juan with more accurate knowledge of how ecological zones and neighborhoods are structured in their community and how residential conditions can be improved. But our interest goes somewhat further than the dilemmas of local planning in San Juan. The neighborhood—as it will be described and discussed in this book—is the first stage of society beyond the individual household. The analysis of such miniature social systems may be informative, as a step towards the analysis of larger chunks of social reality that can not be so easily observed or understood. Thus our inquiry into the San Juan neighborhood will carry us into some reflections on the nature of urbanism and the general question of how small voluntary groups develop and survive. We shall examine such problems as whether an increase in the intimacy of associations in a group can be expected to decrease the number of relationships and whether people who seek a closer relationship with their social superiors will necessarily avoid the company of their inferiors. Finally, since some of these problems have not been posed in this form before, it will be our continuous effort to find ! simple forms of expression, either numerical or graphical, for networks of neighboring relationships. The findings of the study are presented in the following pages in descending order of territorial size. The report starts with a general description of the urban area and proceeds to examine it under progressively higher magnification, so to speak. The first chapter deals with the characteristics of the city, its ecological history, and its relationship to Spanish and North American models. The second chapter examines the ecological zones of the urban area in some detail and the third chapter discusses the barrios into which the city is conventionally divided and then introduces the neighborhoods that constitute the principal sample. The appendix to chapter three provides a good deal of information about these neighborhoods by means of photographs, impressionistic observations, and charts of their interaction networks. The four succeeding chapters are devoted to the analysis of several types of neighborhood data: the correlates of interaction, the relationship between intensity and extensity of neighboring, the basis on which neighbors choose each other for interaction,

5 YW'. Introduction

and the conditions that determine residential satisfaction and stability. The final chapter discusses the application of these findings to the current problems of city planning in San Juan.