Section 6-2

Urbanization

Urban Opportunities

• Urbanization- growth of cities, mostly in the regions of the Northeast and Midwest.

• Americanization Movement- designed to assimilate people of wide-ranging cultures into the dominant culture.

Americans Migrate to the Cities

• Skyscrapers- Tall steel framed buildings. The Home Insurance Building in Chicago was built in 1885 (ten stories). First Skyscraper in America.

• Louis Sullivan- No one contributed more to the design of skyscrapers. (Chicago)

Urban Problems

Six Major Urban Problems• Housing

• Transportation• Water

• Sanitation• Crime• Fire

Urban Problems

• Housing:

-row houses- single family dwellings that shared side walls with other

similar houses. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu9A7zUE_fU

-Tenements- multi-family urban dwellings.

Urban Problems

• Transportation:

-Mass Transit- Transportation systems designed to move large numbers of people along fixed routes.

-Streetcars-San Francisco (1873)

-Subway-Boston (1897)

Urban Problem

• Water:

-As late as the 1860’s many cities had grossly inadequate piped water.

-Disease- Typhoid Fever, Cholera

-Filtration (1870’s)

-Chlorination (1908)

Urban Problems

• Sanitation:

-Manure piled up on the streets

-Sewage flowed through open gutters

-Factories polluted the air and water

-Scavengers- private contractors hired to sweep the streets.

-Sewer lines and sanitation departments (By 1900)

Urban Problems

Crime:

-First full-time police force- NYC (1844)

-To small to impact crime.

Fire:

-First paid fire department- Cincinnati (1853).

-Automatic sprinkler (1874).

Machine Politics

• Political Machine- an informal political group designed to gain and keep power in the cities. Came about partly because cities had grown much faster than their governments.

• Party bosses- (City Boss) Those in charge of their respected political machine.

Machine Politics

• Graft- getting money through dishonest or questionable means.

• George Plunkitt- One of NYC’s most powerful party bosses; defended honest graft. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bnN9SZlLkg

• William “Boss” Tweed- Leader of Tammany Hall, the NYC Democratic political machine. Very corrupt!