Urban sociology at academies 5 pages

urban sociology at academies such as the University of Chicago has focused largely upon such theoretical factors as the development of urban areas, the functioning of human community within cities, the flow of capital in urban economies, and the like. In a recent reader on urban sociology edited by Lin and Mele (2005), for example, the essays are grouped to highlight such themes as city structures and identity concerns of people living in the city. While these themes are the proper domain of urban sociology, and they are necessary to theoretically capture the modern essence of life in cities, they do not capture what most people who are considering where to live want to know. When Forbes publishes its intermittent rankings of the most livable cities in the U.S., for example, they deal exclusively with what are called quality of life issues (Greenburg, 2009). These include such factors as cost of living, quality of education and cultural venues, natural environmental factors such as clean air, and similar concerns. While these factors may be, of course, driven by the traditional concerns of urban sociology, they are in some ways more immediate and less theoretical. The underlying theories of teeming populations and identity issues closely related to equality realities are important to weigh, because as Kotkin (2009) argues, “It seems to me what makes for great cities in history are not measurements of safety, sanitation or homogeneity but economic growth, cultural diversity and social dynamism.” But in many ways the practical concerns and quality of life issues of city life play a more important role in decisions about where to live than do theoretical concerns.
This paper will consider practical and quality of life for two major urban centers that the author is considering for a permanent home, San Diego, California and Tokyo, Japan. The concerns chosen as key decision factors include cost of living expenses such as housing, food, and utilities, quality of and access to public service concerns such as transportation and healthcare, and environmental factors such as climate, recreation, and safety. Factors related to each of these three major areas of concerns will be summarized according to available research data, and comparisons will be designed to allow the researcher to make a decision about which city would be preferable.
Methods of Comparison
Because of the difficulty of comparing the two cities side-by-side, complicated by such factors as currency fluctuations and availability of rankings for both cities within the same survey data sets, this study presents only a qualitative, relative comparison. The researcher utilized the best available data and made, when no other was available, comparisons with a general model of what a city ought to provide. Such are the difficulties that exist when making comparisons of even major cities in different regions of the world. Kotkin points out this difficulty when he expresses a preference for cities that are less orderly and less homogeneous than those found near the top of rankings in some of the standard quality of livability ranking lists. If such concerns as culture and economy are difficult to standardize, however, they can be described and compared in a qualitative fashion. That is what has been done here with a few notable exceptions. Where economic figures are available that can be standardized, I have done so. In other considerations, such as cultural and infrastructure concerns, I have summarized information from a wide reading of different sources readily available online and elsewhere.
Cost of Living
Tokyo has consistently ranked near the top of the most expensive cities in the world in which to live. However, San Diego also ranks relatively high on many lists. Coleman (2009) ranks cities around the world based on such factors as housing, food, transportation, and the like, as a service for expatriates considering international cities for relocation purposes. He ranks Tokyo as the most expensive city in the world, and San Diego is ranked at