Women in US cities: urban captives
Abstract This article examines the contemporary position of women in US urban areas. It seeks to explain the increasing numbers of service-dependent women residing in urban locations through reference to the historical evolution of the urban political economy as it reflects the national and global political economy. More specifically, it recognizes that policies at the national level influence and change urban form and function, a process which has definite and identifiable consequences for society.
Women and Urban Policy.
Any analysis of the impact of urban policy on women is complicated by the absence of an urban policy. While the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has been in place since 1965 and hundreds of policies and laws affecting urban areas have been promulgated in the last forty years, there is no coordinated, directed policy with specific programs to achieve important goals. From this perspective, President Carter's announcement early in his term that he would present a national urban policy was a major step. The fact that his "policy" was largely a smorgasbord of already existing programs capped by some new ideas that Congress did not pass into law reflects the difficulty of creating coherence out of chaos when there is no consensus on goals and many vested interests with stakes in specific means. Within the arena of urban policy are several recognized but unresolved conflicts for which Carter's proposals did not display a clear preference. One of the most overwhelming is the sheer diversity of urban conditions. The phrase "urban crisis" suggests pervasive decay, but an ordering of cities by an "urban hardship index"1 shows that the crisis is concentrated in the older cities of the Midwest and Northeast, and "within these cities, to certain areas that have been characterized in recent years by a rapid process of decentralization."2 In part, the highly
Territorial behavior and fear of crime in the elderly
Observations were made of the visible territorial markers of elderly homeowners. Attitudinal measures of their fear of crime indicated that high-territorial elderly were less fearful of being victimized than were low-territorial elderly. Strong sex differences in the amount of fear were also found, as were interactions of territoriality with the sex and with the living arrangement (alone or not alone) of the homeowner. The results are discussed in the context of the mastery of the environment by the elderly.