Urbanism Theories and the Early Twentieth-Century Black Metropolis

ABSTRACT This study integrates three theories of urbanism into a single framework suggesting that urban population size has a nonlinear relationship with social-world intensity. Hypotheses derived from this framework are tested in regression analyses of 1930 census data on Black Metropolis communities created in major cities by blacks’ early twentieth-century urbanization. The findings show that the slope of the relationship between black population size and Black Metropolis social-world intensity varies by the type of social world under investigation. Consistent with subcultural theory, urbanism markedly intensifies blacks’ cultural-expression social worlds and modestly intensifies blacks’ political-action social worlds. Consistent with determinist theory, urbanism degrades blacks’ religious-participation social worlds, and consistent with compositional theory, urbanism is unrelated to blacks’ goods-distribution-and-consumption social worlds. These results imply that researchers should explore nonlinear relationships of urban population size and social-world intensity that are predicted by the integrated framework of urbanism theories.