The City as a living organism

With the birth of the major American metropolises, scientists sought out ways to describe how a city is born and how urban sprawl occurs. One of the dominant urban growth theory models that is still used to explain the phenomenon of cities spilling over into more rural areas (thus becoming neighborhoods/subdivisions) is Ernest Burgess’ “Zone Model” (or “Urban Land Use Model” if you’re fancy). He was a sociologist at the University of Chicago, so his model was based on his home city and his aim was to study the city as a living organism and showed that just like in a natural environment, invasion and succession drove competition between species and drove formation of concentric rings. Burgess’ Zone Model served as an ecological model with ethnic groups as species (which is an obsolete measure in modern times as sociologists study zones in terms of socio-economic status).

The Zone Model

So what does all this rainbow mumbo jumbo mean? Remember, Burgess’ study was primarily focused on Chicago in 1920 which meant a lot of immigration and lot of factories which is obviously different in modern cities. Let’s take a quick look:

• Zone I- CBD stands for “Central Business District” and is the most densely populated area, is the primary source for employment and is where transportation systems converge.
• Zone II- the Factory Zone is where the CBD spills over and industrial activities take advantage of the immediately accessible labor and markets. City ports and railyards are located here.
• Zone III- the Transition Zone is where manufacturing/commercial and residential merge and typically contained the poorer urban population in poor living conditions.
• Zone IV- the Working Class Zone is (you guessed it) populated with the working class who have moved up from (but is still lower cost due to) it’s neighboring Transition Zone and was usually called the tenements or the projects.
• Zone V- the Residential Zone is famous for higher quality housing along with longer commutes and was later called “the inner city.”
• Zone VI- the Commuter Zone represents upper class, expensive housing in the suburbs where commuting costs are the highest. In the 20’s, it was most desirable to have land and live far from the industrial noise and pollution.

How does this relate to Social Media?

I’m most interested today in social media as a living, breathing organism, just as Burgess was with city life. If social media is organic (and I would certainly argue that it is), concentric circles of population form, overlap and converge just as Chicago did. The easiest way to look at the Zone Model is to look at the industrial area as the least desirable area to live in and the further you live from it, the more expensive and desirable it is. In social media, the space is virtual and the currency is social capital.

Because we exist in a space (despite it not being physical) and because we use currency, the parallel is easy to make and instead of calling it urban sprawl online, I would call it Internet Social Sprawl.

Internet Social Sprawl Model

This rainbow mumbo jumbo is a little different because we’re not talkin’ Chicago OR the 1920’s, we’re talking about the here and now:

• Zone I- Lurkers are the people who are either so new to the space that they’re simply listening before jumping in, or they’re not hip to a two way conversation. Either way they have no social capital and can’t afford to move out of Zone I (yet).
• Zone II- Casual Users are those who have created profiles on social networks but haven’t build social capital up yet- they haven’t really engaged anyone or produced any content, but they poke their head into conversations here and there.
• Zone III- I would argue that the largest zone is made up of Average Users, people who have a limited network but have social capital within their network. They are spending their social capital to build and grow their networks (on Twitter, their blogs, etc) and are working hard to move out to the suburbs.
• Zone IV- Niche Famous Internet users have great influence in their niche be it an industry, a hobby or otherwise, they’ve been at it long enough to build up social capital that they can expend in their dominated zone. Paul Chaney, Jackie Huba, and Wendy Piersall all live in Zone IV.
• Zone V- people in this zone have Web Fame that greatly transcends niches and location. People like Robert Scoble, Darren Rowse, and Jason Calacanis live in this zone as they have been fine tuning their networks by building and expending massive amounts of social capital and most people in this zone are the earliest adopters of social media giving them the advantage.
• Zone VI- few people live in the Mainstream Zone where they exist as a household name due to their Internet personality. Mark Cuban and Gary Vaynerchuck (aka garyvee) are known even to people that don’t use the Internet which is why they are mainstream names and live in the most expensive zone of all.

Pull it together!

Okay, I’ll pull it together now- the point is that as a living organism, the online space is much like a city where there are hot neighborhoods and ugly neighborhoods and not all people want to be Mainstream, but most would like to at least be Niche Famous as many people (over 18) are online to serve a business purpose. Yeah, the grass IS always greener on the other side, but much like we all dream of a downtown penthouse suite, we’re really aiming for that four bedroom with hardwood floors in the SoCo district. We have goals in mind and we are all working to build up our social capital so we can spend it (aka buy the SoCo house) and the Internet Social Sprawl Model is the easiest way to visualize this phenomenon.

Originally posted on my personal blog.