City and Urban Social Problems

Sociologists point out that the factors characterizing urban life are the lifestyle, human interactions, and value system of cities.

Rural areas are sparsely settled, often in the form of villages, dominated primarily by face-to-face relations, agricultural production, extended family, kinship, and religious-community solidarity.

According to Kıray (1998: 28), a modern city is a settlement where both non-agricultural production is carried out and agricultural and non-agricultural production distribution is controlled, and that has a larger population size, heterogeneity, and integration with a certain level of technological development.

According to Simmel, the stranger was a social type specific to urban life that felt socially distant from the others with whom it was spatially close but socially unfamiliar, with confused feelings of belonging and non-belonging.

The inadequacies of neighborhood relations reduced the sense of belonging and social control in individuals, leading to a more intense prevalence of loneliness, alienation, suicide, and crime in the city.

While the importance of craftsmanship and agricultural life has decreased, the importance of technology and innovation, professionals with technological knowledge (engineers, architects, etc.), the working and capitalist entrepreneurial classes, scientists, and researchers have increased.

Exclusion is a multidimensional phenomenon, covering different socioeconomic, spatial, and political processes. It is often associated with terms such as poverty, inequality, disengagement, alienation, marginality, underclass, etc.

Economic exclusion is the inability to access economic opportunities especially due to working in precarious temporary informal jobs and/or falling out of the labor market and thus experiencing short or long-term unemployment.

Cultural exclusion refers to the inability to participate in social and cultural life regardless of economic reasons. Culturally excluded people may be exposed to social exclusion behaviors due to their ethnic origin, race, religion, sect, accent, dress codes, or sexual preferences.

Poverty has always been one of the main problems of cities. Poverty, including socioeconomic and spatial exclusion, has been the most fundamental problem of the modern city.

In a welfare state, poverty was seen as a structural problem, not an individual and moral issue.

Absolute poverty is the lack of income that could provide a minimum standard of living and consumption level necessary for a person’s physical existence.

Absolute poverty was measured on the basis of destitution and basic human survival.

Relative poverty is another concept that mostly defines poverty in advanced industrial countries. It refers to types of poverty or deprivation above absolute poverty or hunger. It also includes second-degree deprivations caused by being below the general welfare level of the society in which the individual lives. Relative poverty means not being at the average living or welfare level of a society while absolute poverty refers to a lack of access to very basic needs.

In the culture of poverty view, the poor are defined as economically useless and lazy, socially deviant, morally weak, and psychologically lacking in self-confidence. The poor are depicted as having negative attitudes and behaviors such as indifference, diffidence, and reluctance to work, all of which are seen to perpetuate poverty.

The “double city” structure refers to the polarization and segregation of occupational systems, characterized by a spatially segregated distribution of jobs along with a segregated spatial settlement.

Cities are generally masculine structures in texture and form and, thus, the needs and expectations of families, women, and children have not been sufficiently taken into account.

The principles of “every human being is born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and “rights and freedoms are not limited by one’s gender” constitute the core of the 1948 Charter of Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The concept of the right to the city is an umbrella concept or definition of rights that includes full participation of all the urban people in all areas of urban life, in decision processes and equal sharing of the values produced in the city free of any discrimination based on gender, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, political, religious or sexual orientation, etc. It includes the right to make full use of urban areas and spaces, the right to freedom, participation in society, a clean environment, health, work, education, training, and housing, among others.

The efforts of women for visibility and inclusion in city life have been the driving force for the women’s movement.