urbania

These are the costs of ghetto life, of restricted choice of dwelling place by Negroes, of a shortage of housing, of the low-income status of Chicago's Negroes, of the segregated educational system existing in Chicago, of the cultural deprivation of the Negro community, and of the whole vicious cycle of conditions which aggravate and reproduce what is so well-known to and so disliked by all students of modern urbania.

1959 January 29, Debbie Meier, “The Public Buys a Ghetto”, in Michael Harrington, editor, Anvil and Student Partisan, volume X, number 1, New York, N.Y., →OCLC, page 19

While we all appreciate the problems of metropolitan areas, I think we are already overfeeding such sections with liberal doses of Federal money. I would like to see less Federal aid for urbania, despite the lure to the politicians of the hundreds of thousands of voters assembled in such centers.

1961 March 16, Glenn Cunningham, “A Department of Small Towns and Rural Affairs”, in Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 87ᵗʰ Congress, First Session (House section), volume 107, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, published 1961, page 4221, column 1

Let us ask ourselves the hard questions: Do we as a people really abhor violence? We are obviously concerned about crime. But to what extent? Perhaps our feelings about violence are not as strong as we think. With the Increasing incidence of crime there has been a sharp rise in the number of people who obtain weapons for self-defense, It is reminiscent of the era of the armed frontiersman, but the dangerous difference is that the sparse frontier has given way to heavily populated urbania. I leave to your imagination the tragic consequence of a shot fired in a downtown shopping area or even on a neighborhood street.

1970 December 7, Patrick V. Murphy, “Remarks of the Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy”, in Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 91ˢᵗ Congress, Second Session (House section), volume 116, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, published 1970, page 40235, column 1

American megalopili^([sic]) are concerned with metropolitan government—medium-sized centers are consolidating urban communities and semirural suburbs—but rural areas, where the crowding of population and other difficulties which afflict urbania are not yet problems, are unique.

1971 April 27, Dan B. Mackey II, “Testimony of Dan B. Mackey II, Executive Director, Upper Savannah Development District, Greenwood, S.C.”, in Revitalization of Rural and Other Economically Distressed Areas: Hearings Before the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, Ninety-Second Congress, First Session, on S. 10 […] , Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, published 1971, page 111

The theory is that people flock inexorably from small towns and the countryside to live in American's cities. Why worry too much about rural housing, the reasoning goes, when people are moving to urbania anyway?

1975 February 28, Ron Hendren, “Getting a HUD-ache”, in Anne Pautler, editor, UCLA Daily Bruin, volume XCIV, number 38, Los Angeles, Calif.: ASUCLA Communications Board, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 14