The article focuses on the phenomenon of small towns within large American cities like Chicago, formed by clusters of immigrants and captures two moments of their history: the first, when the emerging industry initiated the creation of human settlements around industrial centers and the second, when big American cities collapsed as a result of deurbanization. As illustration the author uses the writings of American men of letters mostly of Polish and Jewish origin namely of Studs Terkel, Stuart Dybek, James Farell, Nelson Algren and Mike Royko. The author also makes an attempt to analyze the concept of urbanity, based largely on the work of Louis Wirth, Urbanism as a way of life, recognizing this publication as a key concept in the analysis of urbanity. Wirth’s urbanity sets borders of navigating of the urban space, which in turn stabilizes the famous city versus rural area opposition. American tradition of the formation of cities significantly differs from the European one, where the rise of cities is largely followed by transformation of the settlements into the villages, small towns into rural areas and finally small towns into the cities. The settlers coming to the New World in large groups at once set about to build small towns skipping other forms of evolution of space. Many smaller or larger so-called American cities, ‘instant cities’ were literally created out of nothing in a very short time. These changes the axioms of urbanity, among others, rules governing the social bond. It creates the concepts of urbanity unknown in Europe, such as the concept of inner city or the specific meaning of the term neighborhood. The article provides analysis of texts of Tadeusz Sławek, Robert E. Park, Carlo Rotella, Ulf Hannerz and Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska.
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