Mid Term Exam Questions – Part 1

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Vusal Gahramanov

There are 59 questions here. Please mark each answer T or F.

1. Our point of view in this course regarding cities is to view cities as rooted in the lives of human
beings. - True

2. Within the gigantic scale of megacities the microscopic meanings they also possess as places are
no longer relevant. - False

3. Unequal types of identity, community, and security are provided by various urban places but
these factors have little influence on the lives of individuals and groups. - False

4. When a prosperous city gradually becomes financially minimized, that process is known as
gentrification. - False

5. Social capital is the source of economic capital. - True

6. It is the invisible hand of market capitalism that shape the fates of the individuals who live in a
city and not the human actions and decisions made by people. - False

7. The daily routine of our movements through the neighborhood and the people that we see,
eventually weakens our sense of being surrounded by a community. - False

8. It is public spaces that in many ways represent the heart of societies. Public spaces are, by
definition, open and accessible to every person in a society, in particular to the inhabitants of
that society. - True

9. Early theories of cities and social change helped to lay the foundations for the later theories,
ones that emerged in the latter part of the twentieth century. - True

10. The late nineteenth century was a period of great upheaval in much of Europe and the United
States. New technical inventions, such as the steam engine, and new forms for the production of
goods, such as the factory system, released people from the farms. - True

11. Marx and Engels characterized cities as sites where the concentration of laborers reflected not
only deprivation but also great potential. - True
12. The stranger was someone we might meet on a train or a plane, share a few hours with during
our trip, even share some secrets with, because we knew that we would never see that person
again. - True

13. One urban planner who merged Tonnies “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft” archetypes in a single
planning scheme called it the “garden city”. - True

14. The most influential advocate of urban parks and boulevards was Frederick Law Olmsted. - True

15. French urban planner Le Corbusier proposed preserving the ancient city of Paris by minimizing
any changes to the “radiant city”. - False

16. It seems that the university of Chicago’s department of urban planning had a great effect on the
landscape of Chicago. - True

17. A ‘polyglot city’ is a place where just one major language is spoken. - False

18. Human ecology: The view that change in cities can be construed in terms of the rivalries among
different population groups. - True

19. Wirth lamented that the great paradox of urban life was close physical contact among people
who knew nothing about one another. - True

20. In a negative sense, modernization means being liberated from the tedium of life on the farms
and becoming detached from the secure bonds of rural homes and villages. - True

21. In the 1960’s a spirit of revolution which reached back into Marx’s nineteenth century
eventually invaded the halls of academia. - True

22. Manuel Castells, one of the leading sociologists of the world, has argued that the machinery of
the market is the single-minded pursuit of profit by people. - True

23. Neo-Marxist English geographer David Harvey believes that capitalism is intent on the process of
gaining profit through promoting urban growth in the form of new housing and commercial
properties. - True

24. International mega sporting events funnel profits into growth coalitions, obscure urban
problems, and leave local low-income populations worse off. - True

25. By resurfacing the idea of Gemeinschaft, Jane Jacobs became a major critic of many important
urban planners who wanted to remake the urban landscape. - True
26. Distinguished sociologist Sharon Zukin helped to spearhead and develop a new line of urban
scholarship devoted to issues of culture and consumption. - True

27. Richard Florida’s new “creative economy” and the new “creative class” of the cities is an
important factor of urbanization. – True

28. A good theory is a theory that is simple and easy to capture in a few leading ideas. - True

29. We can reach a fuller understanding of the nature of theories of the city by considering the
social and historical contexts in which a theory is developed.- True

30. As industrial manufacturing left cities in the 1980’s and 90’s, income inequalities somehow
remained the same. - False

31. When studying cities it is common practice to select one instance of a chosen issue for study, or
at most two or three and gather evidence to support your claim. - True

32. A good case study will never be generalized to other similar cases. - False

33. It is not uncommon for a social scientist to advance the claim that the city which they are
studying is an example of other cities. - True

34. The sociologist Elijah Anderson always referred to specific people by name. - False

35. While some social scientists like their history rich and while others prefer insights that are
general, it is not difficult to combine the two into one masterwork. – False

36. Alexis de Tocqueville spent a year in the United States in the 1830’s and returned home to write
about America as a prototype of democracy. - True

37. Cities as prototypes can serve as very important methodological devices for urban scholars. -
True

38. “Hinterlands” are the vacant fields which are sometimes contained within a highly urbanized
city’s boundary. - True

39. Applied sociology and action research seek to bridge the gap between the interests of academia
and the interests of communities. - True

40. Grounded social theory is based on careful observations of how people actually behave. - True

41. The size of the population and the complexity of social institutions makes no difference in
people’s lives. - False
42. While we think of a metropolis as having a center and a range of communities and
neighborhoods, we exclude the fringe areas and the suburbs. - False

43. In rural settings there is no strong interdependence between the core and the periphery. - False

44. The percentage of people living in urban centers has grown over time from about 29 percent in
1950 to slightly above 40 percent in 2010. - False

45. As the history of the metropolis has unfolded in the twentieth century, social scientists attribute
this to the workings of the invisible hand of competitive capitalism. - False

46. Although the development and the structure of an urban areas is a very complex topic it is easily
reconstructed in the form of a model. - True

47. Social and geographic mobility of families are rarely connected with one another. - False

48. It is unthinkable that an Irish Catholic refugee church could ever be transformed into a mosque
for Muslims. - False

49. Fortunately, once African Americans reached the metropolis, they found that their way into the
outer regions of white picket fenced housing was open to them. - False

50. In spite of push-pull factors, social scientists have found that migration to a new geographical
region is a random process. - False

51. A primary objective of New York’s early Zoning laws was to keep out unwanted neighbors. - True

52. In the light of the three qualities of place: identity, security, and community, suburbs are places
where the illusion of a homogenous identity masks deeper diversity. - True

53. Hi-rise apartment density epitomizes what Americans seek to avoid in moving to the city’s edge.
- True

54. Early popular literature glorified simple tasks such as yard work and home repair. - True

55. Popular-culture representations of cities portrayed them as moral wastelands where the
otherwise upright citizens would be tempted by gambling and drugs. - True

56. The isolated, overly sheltered life of the white middle-class suburban housewife had no appeal
to women who had to work outside the home. - False

57. Mortgage “Redlining” was a practice that also prevented the infiltration of goats, rabbits, and
dark skinned babies” - False
58. Suburbs have drastically changed cities; the household replaces the community as an
increasingly important unit within urban areas. - True

59. Privatization and gated communities are perhaps the most pressing concern in contemporary
suburban areas. - True