A classic landscape in American life is the Northeastern Central City, identified most closely with the density of New York City. This central area is also identified as the Central Business District, and it differs in tone from the Midwestern main street in terms of reputation. The Midwestern main street is identified as representing "a balanced community, populated by property-mined, law-abiding citizens devoted to free enterprise and a certain kind of social morality" (Knox and Marston 459). The Northeastern Central City, on the other hand, is identified with a greater freedom, a certain sense of danger, the perception of high crime (not always deserved), based on unlimited opportunities, and with a mixed population not always in agreement so that urban tensions are high. Such a city has come to be identified with America for many reasons, not the least of which is that New York City in particular has served as the representative American cityscape in films, television shows, and novels throughout this century.
The existence of the city itself creates certain problems for all citizens, pressures that weigh heavily on all the communities contained within the city. The urban center in a city like New York is ever-changing as new groups become part of the cityscape, supplanting older groups in terms of social class and housing. This is seen in the ongoing development of tenement regions in the inner city as new immigrant groups take older housing. However, in the latter part of this century, many of the groups that have achieved an increase in standard of living and so have escaped from the tenements have moved to suburban regions. The landscape that has resulted in the huge, dense cities like New York is of enclaves side-by-side, with the very rich and the very poor sharing the city amenities, while much of the middle-class population has left the city behind. This has contributed to urban problems like the development o...