Land values, since they reflect movement, afford one of the most sensitive indexes of mobility. The highest land values in Chicago are at the point of greatest mobility in the city, at the corner of State and Madison streets, in the Loop. A traffic count showed that at the rush period 31,000 people an hour, or 210,000 men and women in sixteen and one-half hours, passed the southwest corner. For over ten years land values in the Loop have been stationary, but in the same time they have doubled, quadrupled, and even sextupled in the strategic corners of the “satellite loops,”[[29]] an accurate index of the changes which have occurred. Our investigations so far seem to indicate that variations in land values, especially where correlated with differences in rents, offer perhaps the best single measure of mobility, and so of all the changes taking place in the expansion and growth of the city.
In general outline, I have attempted to present the point of view and methods of investigation which the department of sociology is employing in its studies in the growth of the city, namely, to describe urban expansion in terms of extension, succession, and concentration; to determine how expansion disturbs metabolism when disorganization is in excess of organization; and, finally, to define mobility and to propose it as a measure both of expansion and metabolism, susceptible to precise quantitative formulation, so that it may be regarded almost literally as the pulse of the community. In a way, this statement might serve as an introduction to any one of five or six research projects under way in the department.[[30]] The project, however, in which I am directly engaged is an attempt to apply these methods of investigation to a cross-section of the city—to put this area, as it were, under the microscope, and so to study in more detail and with greater control and precision the processes which have been described here in the large. For this purpose the West Side Jewish community has been selected. This community includes the so-called “Ghetto,” or area of first settlement, and Lawndale, the so-called “Deutschland,” or area of second settlement. This area has certain obvious advantages for this study, from the standpoint of expansion, metabolism, and mobility. It exemplifies the tendency to expansion radially from the business center of the city. It is now relatively a homogeneous cultural group. Lawndale is itself an area in flux, with the tide of migrants still flowing in from the Ghetto and a constant egress to more desirable regions of the residential zone. In this area, too, it is also possible to study how the expected outcome of this high rate of mobility in social and personal disorganization is counteracted in large measure by the efficient communal organization of the Jewish community.
Ernest W. Burgess
CHAPTER III
THE ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF THE HUMAN COMMUNITY
The young sciences of plant and animal ecology have become fairly well established. Their respective fields are apparently quite well defined, and a set of concepts for analysis is becoming rather generally accepted. The subject of human ecology, however, is still practically an unsurveyed field, that is, so far as a systematic and scientific approach is concerned. To be sure, hosts of studies have been made which touch the field of human ecology in one or another of its varied aspects, but there has developed no science of human ecology which is comparable in precision of observation or in method of analysis with the recent sciences of plant and animal ecology.
I. THE RELATION OF HUMAN ECOLOGY TO PLANT AND ANIMAL ECOLOGY
Ecology has been defined as “that phase of biology that considers plants and animals as they exist in nature, and studies their interdependence, and the relation of each kind and individual to its environment.”[[31]] This definition is not sufficiently comprehensive to include all the elements that logically fall within the range of human ecology. In the absence of any precedent let us tentatively define human ecology as a study of the spatial and temporal[[32]] relations of human beings as affected by the selective, distributive, and accommodative forces of the environment. Human ecology is fundamentally interested in the effect of position,[[33]] in both time and space, upon human institutions and human behavior. “Society is made up of individuals spatially separated, territorially distributed, and capable of independent locomotion.”[[34]] These spatial relationships of human beings are the products of competition and selection, and are continuously in process of change as new factors enter to disturb the competitive relations or to facilitate mobility. Human institutions and human nature itself become accommodated to certain spatial relationships of human beings. As these spatial relationships change, the physical basis of social relations is altered, thereby producing social and political problems.
A great deal has been written about the biological, economic, and social aspects of competition and selection, but little attention has been given to the distributive and spatial aspects of these processes. The plant ecologist is aware of the effect of the struggle for space, food, and light upon the nature of a plant formation, but the sociologist has failed to recognize that the same processes of competition and accommodation are at work determining the size and ecological organization of the human community.
The essential difference between the plant and animal organism is that the animal has the power of locomotion which enables it to gather nutriment from a wider environment, but, in addition to the power to move in space, the human animal has the ability to contrive and adapt the environment to his needs. In a word, the human community differs from the plant community in the two dominant characteristics of mobility and purpose, that is, in the power to select a habitat and in the ability to control or modify the conditions of the habitat. On first consideration this might seem to indicate that human ecology could have nothing in common with plant ecology where the processes of association and adjustment result from natural unmodifiable reactions, but closer examination and investigation make it obvious that human communities are not so much the products of artifact or design as many hero-worshipers suppose.[[35]]
The human community has its inception in the traits of human nature and the needs of human beings. Man is a gregarious animal: he cannot live alone; he is relatively weak and needs not only the company of other human associates but shelter and protection from the elements as well. Brunhes says there are three essentials to the inception of the human community: the house, the road, and water.[[36]] Food may be transported more easily than shelter or water; the latter two therefore constitute, even under the most nomadic conditions, the essential elements in giving a location and a spatial fixity to human relations.[[37]] This is exemplified under our present régime of automobile tourist life, where water and shelter become the determining factors in the location of the camp.