and interesting changes, and produced many unusual types of local communities. More than that, there are nascent neighborhoods and neighborhoods in process of dissolution. Consider, for example, Fifth Avenue, New York, which probably never had an improvement association, and compare with it 135th Street in the Bronx, (where the negro population is probably more concentrated than in any other single spot in the world) which is rapidly becoming a very intimate and highly organized community.
It is important to know what are the forces which tend to break up the tensions, interests, and sentiments which give neighborhoods their individual character. In general these may be said to be anything and everything that tends to render the population unstable, to divide and concentrate attentions upon widely separated objects of interest.
- What part of the population is floating?
- Of what elements, i.e. races, classes, etc., is this population composed?
- How many people live in hotels, apartments, and tenements?
- How many people own their own homes?
- What proportion of the population consists of nomads, hobos, gypsies?
On the other hand, certain urban neighborhoods suffer from isolation. Efforts have been made at different times to reconstruct and quicken the life of city neighborhoods and to bring it in touch with the larger interests of the community. Such is in part the purpose of the social settlements. These organizations and others which are attempting to reconstruct city life have developed certain methods and a technique for stimulating and controlling local communities. We should study, in connection with the investigation of these agencies, these methods and this technique, since it is just the method by which objects are practically controlled that reveals their essential nature, that is to say, their predictable character (Gesetztmässigkeit).[1]
- ↑ "Wenn wir daher das Wort [Natur] als einen logischen Terminus in der Wissenschaftslehre gebrauchen wollen, so werden wir sagen dürfen, dass Natur die Wirklichkeit ist mit Rücksicht auf ihren gesetzmässigen Zusammenhang. Diese Bedeutung finden wir z. B. in dem Worte Naturgesetz. Dann aber können wir die Natur der Dinge audi das nennen was in die Begriffe eingeht, oder am kürzesten uns dahin ausdrücken: die Natur ist die Wirklichkeit mit Rücksicht auf das Allgemeine. So gewinnt dann das Wort erst eine logische Bedeutung."—H. Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung, p. 212.
