Being Urban

A Sociology of City Life, Third Edition

DAVID A. KARP, GREGORY P. STONE,

WILLIAM C. YOELS, AND
NICHOLAS P. DEMPSEY
Copyright © 2015 by David A. Karp, Gregory P. Stone, William C. Yoels, and Nicholas P. Dempsey
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Karp, David A.
Being urban : a sociology of city life / David A. Karp, Gregory P. Stone, William C. Yoels, and
Nicholas P. Dempsey. — Third edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–275–95647–9 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–275–95654–7 (pbk. : alk.
paper) — ISBN 978–1–4408–2856–0 (ebook) 1. City and town life—United States. 2. Sociology,
Urban—United States. I. Title.
HT123.K37 2015
307.76—dc23 2015007990
ISBN: 978–0–275–95647–9 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978–0–275–95654–7 (paperback)
EISBN: 978–1–4408–2856–0
1918171615 12345
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To my wonderful grandson Yadi Yoels, who lights up my life with his joy
and laughter.
—W.C.Y.

For the extraordinary joy they provide, I thank Cody, Emily, Jayden, Malia,
Sydney, and Tyler.
—D.A.K.

To Jack, Bridget, and Angela.

—N.P.D.
 Contents

Preface to the Third Edition

Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments

Part I Issues and Perspectives in Urban Sociology

Chapter 1 Classical Conceptions of Urban Life
Chapter 2 Classical Observations of Urban Life

Part II Experiencing City Life

Chapter 3 The Rediscovery of Community
Chapter 4 The Social Organization of Everyday City Life
Chapter 5 Lifestyle Diversity and Urban Tolerance
Chapter 6 Women in Cities

Part III Urban Institutions and Social Change

Chapter Power, Politics, and Problems
7
Chapter Sports and Urban Life
8
Chapter Arts in the City
9
Chapter New Urban Dynamics: Gentrification, Suburbanization,
10 Globalization, and the Federal Divestiture

References
Index
 Preface to the Third Edition

Over 20 years have passed since we published the previous edition of

Being Urban. In that time, the world has become predominately urban—for
the first time most human beings live in cities. Many U.S. cities have seen
their fortunes continue to decline. Others have seen dramatic turnarounds—
where once New York was dirty and crime ridden, and on shaky financial
grounds, it is now a global powerhouse with an almost-Disneyland feel in
some places. All cities have had to contend in an increasingly globalized
world, where economic and political events in faraway places impact the
internal dynamics of even isolated cities. Suburbs have grown. The Internet
is now available to almost every American, and some commentators have
even wondered if cities would be dying out by now (they’re not). Disasters
—9/11, Katrina, Sandy—have taken huge tolls on cities, and the cities have
bounced back.
With so much changing and having changed, one might rightly wonder
whether a book like Being Urban, written from the interactionist
perspective with roots in the first half of the last century, is still relevant. If
cities have changed so much, shouldn’t urban life now be of a totally
different nature than it used to be? If everybody is reading smart phones on
the subway, are they anything like people were in the days of newsprint and
payphones? Actually, we believe that people are very much the same—and
that the lessons we offer in Being Urban are still very relevant, perhaps now
more than ever. Now that we’re moving back into cities. Now that urbanites
are contending in a global economy. Now that our cities are again brimming
with immigrants looking to make it big in their new home. Now that we,
perhaps ironically, are networked with more people than ever through those
smart phones.
In fact, the interactionist paradigm that informs Being Urban is key to
understanding much of what goes on in cities, as well as to understanding
many of the most important sociological inquiries into urban life that are
produced today. Interactionism simply holds that people are conscious of
the impressions that they make on others whenever they take an action.
People’s actions are regarded as meaningful and significant by observers.
“Thus,” writes Herbert Blumer, “human interaction is mediated by the use
of symbols, by interpretation, or by ascertaining the meaning of one
another’s actions” (Blumer 1969:79). By taking account of how people do
this in urban settings, from the smallest scale of people bumping into each
other on the street corner, to the larger level of people interacting in
neighborhoods, to even larger questions of how politics and economies are
coordinated, we stand to learn much about the inner workings of cities.
Of course, this is not to say that the changes that have happened in and to
cities are not important. This revised and expanded third edition explores
the ways that cities have been changing, and applies the interactionist
paradigm to help understand contemporary urban dynamics such as
gentrification, globalization, and New Urbanist development plans.

WHAT’S NEW IN THE THIRD EDITION

For the most part, Chapters 1 and 2 remain the same, outlining the
contributions of classical sociological theory to our understandings of cities.
Chapter 2 has added a discussion of Henri Lefebvre’s contributions to urban
sociology, as we have noted that an important thread to studies of cities in
recent years owes a great debt to the work of Lefebvre and other Marxist
sociologists.
Chapter 3, our discussion of community studies, both describes the rich
tradition founded by the Chicago school and explores how that tradition has
continued to grow and inform recent studies of neighborhoods and urban
community in general. We show how research has demonstrated
consistently that people form important connections with one another in
cities, and that, indeed, much of the action going on in cities is based in
groups—from neighborhood organizations to informal groups of street
vendors.
In Chapter 4, we delve into the details of everyday interaction in cities.
We consider how people make efforts to get along in the city’s crowded
spaces, and show how life in cities is a remarkable achievement, an intricate
interweaving and coordination of diverse people’s activities. Despite the
persistence of various negative images—that cities are crime ridden,
anonymous, and dangerous—we discuss numerous findings that show that
people in the city do a remarkable job getting along with, and looking out
for, each other. In addition to examining classic studies of interactions in
urban space, we discuss how new technologies like smart phones have
worked their way into urban dynamics, and how New Urbanist design has
been working in recent years to make cities more open to interactions.
Our discussions of tolerance for diversity in both lifestyles and ethnicity
in Chapter 5 has been augmented to consider how urban dynamics have
changed in recent years, with some places more accommodating than ever
to diversity, and others acting as “last stand” islands of intolerance. We also
discuss studies that show how some segments of the professional class seek
out quirky and diverse neighborhoods—and how that can feed
gentrification.
Women’s gains in the workplace and politics have been remarkable over
the last 25 years, and our discussion of women in cities in Chapter 6 reflects
those changes. We discuss the gains that women have made in pay equity,
as well as the changing dynamics of gender equity in different kinds of jobs.
Some recent studies even note that recent shifts in urban economies may
favor the kind of occupations (like clerical, medical, and service work) that
are dominated by women. Chapter 6 goes on to discuss the important
contributions women have made in community building and voluntary
organizations. We also take note of the troubling persistence of patriarchy in
public spaces—women continue to experience marked levels of sexual
harassment in public, not to mention sexual assault. We discuss how this
can limit the range of motion of women within the city, but we also discuss
how women are working to reclaim public spaces and overcome the culture
of harassment.
Chapter 7 provides a wide-ranging discussion of urban politics and social
problems. Recent data continue to show an increasing concentration of
wealth and power at the upper end of the social spectrum. But we also look
into recent findings on increases in political participation since the Motor
Voter act of the 1990s. We take stock of recent developments in campaign
financing, in addition to explaining how the very structure of urban
governance significantly affects the accountability and the decisions of
urban political leaders. Chapter 7 goes on to explore recent findings
regarding a number of problems that plague some cities—including the
segregation of minority poverty into marginal neighborhoods, rises in
single-parent families, and low high school graduation rates.
The next two chapters discuss activities that might be classified as leisure
—sports and the arts—but we couch these discussions in a recognition that
these activities have an importance to cities beyond pure entertainment.
Both bring people together as a sort of community building. And both are
big business. Our discussion of sport in Chapter 8 has been updated to
recognize the changing dynamics of the sports business, and in particular
revises our discussion of the racial makeup of college and professional
sports teams in the United States, which are more diverse now than ever
before. Chapter 9 is entirely new, and explores the relationship of the arts to
urbanism. We discuss how artistic production relies in many ways on the
density of audiences, suppliers, and artists in cities, and also how the arts
enliven the experience of dwelling within cities. We further consider how
recent studies of urban population and economic dynamics pay increasing
attention to the artistic offerings different cities make, and see a strong local
arts community as a driver of urban growth and success.
Finally, Chapter 10 concludes with a discussion of the dynamics that we
believe are most important to understanding how cities are changing today.
We first discuss globalization—the increased interconnectedness of
economies, information, and culture on a global scale—and how it has had
a transformative effect on cities. Some have become centers for a new
economic order, while others like Detroit have lost much of their productive
economy to foreign nations. We address the increased inequality in cities,
frequently noted in a job structure that is bifurcated between highly
compensated skilled service professions and unskilled service jobs that
barely pay subsistence wages. Next, we consider issues of federal
divestiture from financing urban programs in the United States. Where once
cities could rely on a relatively great degree of support from the national tax
base, now it is no longer the case. Fourth, we consider the resilience of mid-
sized cities, and the new roles they play in a postindustrial economy.
Finally, we consider the movement of the U.S. population in and out of
inner-city areas and suburbs. Where once we observed massive out-
migration from cities to suburbs, that trend has recently reversed. And
where we could once assume that suburbs were reasonably well-to-do, we
have in recent years observed the rise of low-income suburbs.
 Preface to the Second Edition

The growth of cities and the urbanization of social life have long stood at
the center of social science inquiry. Urban housing, politics, intergroup
relations, class and stratification patterns, economic structure, demographic
trends, and the nature of communities are among the most frequent areas of
scholarly investigation. Indeed, so much has been written on the city in
recent years that it is virtually impossible for even urban specialists to keep
abreast of the literature.
In Being Urban we have not tried to cover the full range of issues and
topics found in most urban sociology textbooks. Rather, we want first of all
to pose some of the social psychological questions typically neglected in
most treatments of the urban scene. Second, we want to illustrate how our
answers to these questions lead us to reevaluate certain traditional,
longstanding images of the city. In this respect we view ours as a work of
revision. We do not seek to disprove or reject traditional and current
sociological understandings of the urban place. We wish, instead, to
indicate how these understandings may be incomplete or partial. Finally, the
authors share a common theoretical orientation that gives impetus and unity
to this enterprise. By offering a theoretically integrated perspective on
experiencing city life, we will demonstrate throughout this work the value
of symbolic interaction theory for analyzing the meanings of being urban.
The perspective of symbolic interaction is based on the uncomplicated
idea that the social world is composed of acting, thinking, defining,
reacting, and interpreting human beings in interaction with one another.
Persons are not merely puppets pushed around by forces over which they
have no control. Interactionists hold a picture of social life in which persons
are the architects of their worlds. Reality is, then, socially constructed, and
to understand human behavior we must inquire into those processes through
which persons construct and transform their social worlds. For those who
accept the validity of these premises, the major concern of any social
psychological treatment is to establish the relationship between the
meanings persons attach to their environments and the consequences of
these definitions of the situation for their behavior.
As we note throughout this book, however, the conditions under which
such symbolic definitions of the situation take place are themselves
functions of the power at the disposal of the groups involved. In short, the
participants in various social worlds have differential access to the
production and distribution of scarce, highly valued resources. As a result,
any focus on the meanings of urban life must remain sensitive to the larger
institutional and historical dimensions of the urban experience. In writing
the second edition of Being Urban we have tried to illustrate throughout the
nature of the dynamic interplay between historically based structural
conditions and persons’ interpretations of and responses to those conditions.
As well, this edition reflects a commitment to interdisciplinary thinking and
draws heavily upon works by anthropologists, historians, political scientists,
and psychologists to supplement the underlying interactionist view of urban
life.
The second edition contains two new chapters: Chapter 6, “Women in
Cities: The Absence of a Presence,” and Chapter 8, “Sports and Urban
Life.” These are topics that receive virtually no coverage in current urban
sociology texts. In addition, Chapter 7, “Power, Politics, and Problems,”
and Chapter 9, “Urbanism, Suburban, and Cultural Change,” have been
almost totally rewritten. All the other chapters have been updated and
revised in varying degrees. Where relevant, we have tried to call attention
to the experience of women in cities throughout the book in addition to the
in-depth treatment of Chapter 6. The uniqueness of the first edition’s focus
on the social organization of everyday city life and urban tolerance is
further enhanced by the treatments of women in cities and of sports and
urban life.
 Having made our general intentions clear, we want to explain how they
are to be fulfilled. We have organized the book so that readers will become
progressively acquainted with the major theoretical traditions basic to an
urban social psychology. Simultaneously, we indicate in each chapter how
these traditional views may be critiqued and extended. In this respect we
will not be offering any further explanations of symbolic interaction theory;
rather, we will be exercising that theory.
In Chapters 1 and 2 we examine the effects of the Industrial Revolution
on the origins and development of urban sociology. In these chapters we
look at the recurrent themes and concerns essential to a social psychological
view of city life. Themes such as alienation, freedom, and social integration
are discussed, with the focus on their differing treatments in the works of
classical European and early American sociologists. We review only the
ideas of those who have had a definitive influence on the development of
urban sociology.
In Chapter 1 we analyze how the transformation of European social life
during the nineteenth century is reflected in Sir Henry Maine’s distinction
between societies founded on status relations and those founded on contract
relations, in Tonnies’s distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft,
and in Durkheim’s distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity.
The overall image presented in these theoretical writings on the modern
urban structure is an abidingly negative one. The theoretical conceptions of
the city described in this chapter were influential guiding forces in the
empirical investigations of urban sociologists at the University of Chicago
in the 1920s and 1930s.
Chapter 2 demonstrates how the theoretical conceptions of urban life
formulated by the thinkers discussed in Chapter 1 were carried over and
expanded in the works of early American sociologists, which reaffirm an
essentially negative image of the city. The observations of Robert Park and
his students by and large supported the idea that the city destroyed the
communal bonds characteristic of nonurban life.
Chapters 1 and 2, taken together, outline the major themes inherited by
more recent sociologists. In the next two chapters we provide evidence that
communal ties do exist in large cities. We want to show how the works of
more recent writers necessitate a new paradigm for the study of urban social
relations.
 Chapter 3 illustrates how persons faced with the city’s impersonal
rationality will seek out alternatives in the environment to provide a source
of personalization, identity, and community involvement. The thrust of the
work of the writers discussed in Chapter 3 is that community is not dead in
the city. It took several years to realize this because our former conceptions
of community stood as obstacles to our seeing the transformations in social
life that have occurred in urban settings. The rediscovery of community
depended, in part, on sociologists’ ability to forge new tools for looking at
the urban world. We find these tools in the works of the sociologists
mentioned. The rediscovery of community provides us with the platform
necessary for our argument in Chapter 4, where we show that a clear social
organization exists in even the most anonymous public sectors of large
cities.
The guiding question for Chapter 4 is, “In what ways are persons relating
or failing to relate to one another in ‘anonymous’ public settings?” At first
glance, it would appear that in most urban public settings persons do not
interact at all with one another. Persons seem to avoid each other, to close
themselves off from communication with each other. We argue in this
chapter that ordered everyday life demands a high degree of cooperation
among persons. We elaborate on a paradox of public urban interaction
whereby persons must systematically take each other into account in order
to avoid unwanted encounters. We develop a minimax hypothesis of urban
life in an attempt to capture the complexity of urbanites’ daily encounters.
Urbanites seek to minimize involvement and to maximize social order. We
try to show how urban persons are required to strike a balance between
involvement and indifference, intimacy and anonymity; how they
collectively create and maintain a kind of public privacy.
Chapter 5 examines the issue of urban tolerance. One of the hallmarks of
the great metropolis is that it fosters a tolerance for differences in behavior
and group lifestyle. The freedom and individualism fostered in urban
contexts stand in contrast with the pettiness and prejudices of small-town
life. The very characteristics that define urban life—size, density, and
heterogeneity—allow the emergence of distinctive subcultures that help to
resolve personal crises. The fundamental concern of this chapter is to
understand the basis for urban tolerance and the conditions under which it
breaks down. One goal of the chapter is to resolve two apparently
contradictory explanations of urban tolerance. One argument is that
tolerance for lifestyle differences exists because urbanites have learned how
to interact with a diversity of peoples. A second argument is that tolerance
is sustained only because groups are generally segregated and isolated,
because each group inhabits its own “moral region.” A central effort in the
chapter is to create a theory stressing the notion of controlled contact as a
bridge between these competing explanations of tolerance.
Chapter 6 focuses on women’s experiences in cities. We examine
women’s situation in the paid labor force, participation in community
voluntary associations, and movement in the public sphere of what we call
gendered spaces. Our work here calls attention to the issue of women’s
“invisibility” in most treatments of the urban scene.
In Chapters 1 through 6, then, we largely explore the nature of the
interactions among individuals in the urban milieu. A focus solely on
individuals as a means of understanding the quality of city experience is,
however, incomplete. In the remaining chapters, therefore, we consider the
interrelationships between urban social groups and the effects of larger
institutional arrangements.
Chapter 7 explores a broad range of issues affecting urban political life.
We elaborate on the pervasive and pronounced effects of hierarchical
exclusionary political processes that promote a self-sustaining pattern of
political dominance by better-off sectors of the population. We also note,
however, that even in the face of such tendencies, countervailing forces
promoting grassroots participation in cities may be found. We also illustrate
the vicious cycle of urban problems that results from the intertwining
connections among racially based economic inequality, joblessness, family
structure, and schooling.
Social scientists often study some area of social life because it reflects on
a wide variety of events, processes, or phenomena. This is certainly so in
the case of sports. In the first half of Chapter 8, “Sports and Urban Life,”
we use sports as a medium for analyzing a number of institutional processes
central to the growth and development of cities. We show how the
development of sports in the United States and the development of cities
mirror each other, parallel each other. Analysis of sports is, for example, an
interesting way to analyze how ethnic and racial groups become assimilated
into American society. We also illustrate how sports intersected with such
distinctively urban phenomena as the development of journalism and the
mass media, new forms of communication such as the telegraph and the
radio, and the development of mass transportation systems. We also explore
how processes of urbanization and industrialization influenced images of
work and leisure. In the second half of this chapter we use sports as a
medium for analyzing a number of social psychological processes. Here our
focus shifts from the connection between sports and urban institutions to the
role of sports at the level of the social psychology of everyday life.
Expanding upon our discussion in Chapter 3, we consider the role of sports
in fostering a sense of community identification and pride. Additionally, we
consider how such diverse places as playgrounds and poolrooms provide
forums for expressions of self, identity, and individualism in an urban
world.
All endings should reflect and account for their beginnings as well as
provide the basis for new beginnings. If the literature dealt with and the
theoretical perspective offered in this book raise questions for the reader,
then our earlier chapters will have succeeded. One such question must
center on the future of city life. The purpose of the last chapter is to discuss
the demographic, cultural, and historical factors that lie behind the ongoing
transformation of American cities. After World War II there was a massive
loss of middle- and upper-middle-class urbanites, who fled to the suburbs.
We consider how the fate of cities is connected to the dramatic growth of
suburbs. We also analyze how the imperatives of advanced capitalism are
differentially influencing older industrial cities and the Sunbelt cities in the
United States. Last, we view these urban changes within a still larger frame.
We are entering a postindustrial era, an era characterized by the decline of a
production economy and the emergence of a service economy. Such a
change has widespread and radical implications for the meaning of work,
consumption, and general cultural values. The latter part of Chapter 9 traces
through some of the cultural implications of this new urban revolution.
 Acknowledgments

We would like to thank a number of persons whose help and

encouragement have been instrumental in the completion of this book.
Wendell Bell (Yale University) and W. Clark Roof (University of
Massachusetts) reviewed the manuscript for the first edition in detail, and
their comments were most helpful. Through the years Mike Flaherty, Mark
Hutter, and Lyn Lofland have been supportive and encouraging colleagues.
Eunice Doherty, Barbara Harlow, and Roberta Nerenberg patiently and
with great skill typed several drafts of earlier editions of Being Urban. They
also read our work with discerning eyes and alerted us to a number of
points requiring clarification. Tinker Dunbar of Sterne Library at the
University of Alabama, Birmingham, offered a great deal of assistance in
tracking down references. Will Schantz provided valuable help in cross-
checking references for the current edition.
Finally, we would like to acknowledge our intellectual indebtedness to
Greg Stone, who died in 1981. His enormous influence on our thinking will
be evident throughout this revised edition.
 PART I

ISSUES AND PERSPECTIVES IN

URBAN SOCIOLOGY
 CHAPTER 1

Classical Conceptions of Urban Life

The development of sociology as a discipline, as Nisbet (1966)

demonstrated, arose out of the social and ideological upheavals brought
about by the French and Industrial Revolutions. Indeed, from its earliest
beginnings, sociology was simultaneously a response to and a critique of
the emergence of a secular urban industrial order in nineteenth-century
Western civilization. The rapid development of urban industrial centers
throughout the nineteenth century precipitated a still-ongoing conversation
about the nature of the social bond. Foremost in the minds of individuals
writing about society during the nineteenth century is the contrast between
forms of social life seen as rooted in a small agrarian or feudal order and the
kinds of social relations viewed as characterizing an urban industrial order.
What kinds of social developments, in particular, were nineteenth-
century social theorists responding to in their writings? Nisbet noted five
“Themes of Industrialism” that were especially influential in the thinking of
the early, or classical, sociologists: “the condition of labor, the
transformation of property, the industrial city, technology and the factory
system” (1966:24).
While Nisbet listed the industrial city as a specific theme, for our
purposes in Being Urban it is important to note that, in one way or another,
all five of the above themes overlap and have their common center in the
development of the industrial city.
 Concomitant with the emergence of an industrial city is the development
of new social categories, such as the working class (or proletariat in Marx’s
sense), which coalesced in the city and formed the mass base for the
workforce of the developing factory system. The social heterogeneity and
apparent formlessness of this social class occasioned great concern among
the classical sociologists. The explosive potential of this class, which was
no longer bound by the traditions of the former feudal society nor tied to the
larger society through property ownership, made the classical sociologists
apprehensive about the fragility of the social bonds in the cities. Marx
himself, as Nisbet noted, was ambivalent about the development of the
working class. On the one hand, he saw its uprooting from its previous rural
conditions as a necessary catalyst for the eventual transformation of the
capitalist system. At the same time, however, he voiced concern over the
living and working conditions that confronted its members.
New forms of property, such as industrial and finance capital, also
focused the attention of the classical sociologists on the urban industrial
order. Previously, the ownership of land, transmitted from one generation to
the next, ensured the continued dominance of certain elites in Western
European society. With the development of these new forms of property,
however, an emerging middle class, concentrated in the cities, was
accumulating wealth at a rapid rate; as nouveau riche, they were attempting
to buy their way into the sacred preserves of the traditional landed gentry.
The cities became the arenas within which this status struggle took its most
dramatic form. In the United States the period after the Civil War witnessed
the robber barons’ full-scale assault on the status prerogatives of the
traditional elites who traced their lineage and landowning heritage back to
the earliest colonial times (Hofstadter 1955; Levine 1988). During the
Gilded Age, these elites used their newfound wealth to endow various high-
culture organizations, from museums to operas and universities, in all major
American cities (Warner 2012).
The development of technology and the emergence of the factory as a
socially organized system of labor were instrumental in attracting
newcomers of varied social origins to the cities. Much of this migration was
a result of policies (in England, for example) whereby local peasants were
prevented from farming through the passage of enclosure acts. As a result,
they were forced off the land and had to seek a livelihood in urban factories.
The most dramatic effect of technology on the social life of the masses,
however, was its role in separating work from the household situation. As
Peter Laslett (1971:18) noted in his impressive study, The World We Have
Lost: England Before the Industrial Age, “The factory won its victory by
outproducing the working family, taking away the market for the products
of hand-labour and cutting prices to the point where the craftsman had
either to starve or take a job under factory discipline himself.” It is also
important to note the following statement by Laslett:
In the vague and difficult verbiage of our own generation, we can say that the removal of the
economic functions from the patriarchal family at the point of industrialization created a mass
society. It turned the people who worked into a mass of undifferentiated equals, working in a factory
or scattered between the factories and mines, bereft forever of the feeling that work was a family
affair, done within the family. (1971:19)

As our brief discussion indicates, a profound shift in the basis of social

organization attended the growth of cities in Western civilization during the
nineteenth century, with far-reaching consequences for institutional and
personal life. Probably the most important advances in sociological theory
have originated from the many attempts made by social scientists and social
philosophers to explain this fundamental transformation in the nature of the
social bond. While we may speak here of a “fundamental transformation,”
we must simultaneously recognize that the nature of a social bond between
persons is continuously in a state of transformation. Our society, for
example, has moved beyond what might be called the epoch of urban
industrialism into one characterized variously as the “age of high mass-
consumption” (Rostow 1960), the “postindustrial society” (Bell 1973),
“Post-Fordism” (Harvey 1990), the “postmodern condition” (Harvey 1990;
Jameson 1984; Lyotard 1984), or a society dominated by “globalization”
(Sassen 2012). (For a review of these “post” theories of society, see articles
by Antonio (2000) and Scott (2007).) With this in mind, let us examine
some of the specific classical conceptions of the city offered by sociologists
writing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

A FRAME OF REFERENCE: THE CITY AND BEING URBAN

With the purpose of providing a theoretical reference for this book, this
section deals with some major contributions that classical sociologists made
to the study of urbanism and being urban. Our objectives here are twofold:
 1. to demonstrate how three major theories of social organization
proposed similar, but not identical, conceptual schemes in terms of
which more specialized theories of urban life have been constructed
and,
2. to show how sociological interpretation of urbanism in terms of
these schemata has resulted in a neglect of the place of
interpersonal relations in urban social organization.

The review of these contributions is necessarily selective. Any thorough

survey of all the attempts that have been made in sociological theory and
research to describe and to explain the effects upon social relationships
flowing from the rise of cities would encompass the entire history of
sociological theory. Five criteria have guided the selection of sociologists
discussed in Chapters 1 and 2: (1) relevance for the sociological
interpretation of being urban, (2) recognized prominence in the field of
social organization, (3) social-psychological relevance, (4) the historical
and logical interrelatedness of their contributions, and (5) their diversity of
national background.
It should also be noted that none of the theorists discussed in Chapters 1
and 2 paid particular attention to the experience of women in cities. In fact,
their writings reflect a taken-for-granted acceptance of women’s “natural”
place in the private world of home and family. Their writings, unfortunately,
also refer to humankind in masculine terms of “he,” “his,” and “him.” In
such matters, then, they were clearly prisoners, so to speak, of the climates
of opinion current in those times and places. Despite such limitations,
however, their works still constitute the fundamental starting point for later
thinking about urban life. We will supply a correction to their oversights
concerning women throughout the remainder of the book, especially in
Chapter 6.

SIR HENRY SUMNER MAINE: STATUS AND CONTRACT

Maine, an Englishman writing in the latter part of the nineteenth century,
was most concerned in his research with depicting and ascertaining the
origins of the early village–community and its institutions. In his book
Ancient Law (1870), Maine made the additional contribution of providing a
framework to analyze the changing basis of social solidarity.
 Maine began his analysis with an inquiry into the origins of codified law
(that is, law formulated in a written code), and he concluded that two
distinct periods of legal development preceded the emergence of written
legal codes. He called the first of these periods the age of “heroic kingship,”
since, in the ordinary sense of the word, there was no law present. During
this period the actions of every person were controlled largely by the
personal whims and wishes of patriarchal despots. According to Maine, the
later development of legal precepts had its origin during this period in the
judgments of these despots, who founded such judgments at times upon
custom or usage, and at other times upon personal whim or caprice. In
effect, law at this stage was largely a result of the pronouncements of the
heroic leader.
The period of heroic kingship was transformed as a result of the
development of an oligarchy—a small group of persons who collectively
seized power from the heroic kings. This phenomenon ushered in the period
of “customary law,” that is, law based primarily upon custom and tradition.
Customary law was known only to a privileged minority who exercised a
monopoly over the secrets of the law.
According to Maine (1870:15), the monopoly of the oligarchy was not
dissolved until the diffusion of writing paved the way for the written
specification of law. Once literacy develops in a population, the
monopolistic control of secrets about the law is weakened, since individuals
are in a more favorable position to communicate with others and to question
the decisions of governing elites.
Maine did not conceive of law as a transcendent, self-evolving agency.
The changes in law as it progressed from the pronouncements of heroic
kings to a written code were viewed as responses to changes in the more
fundamental conditions of life. For Maine, the fundamental conditions of
life were rooted in the social relations of people, which were transformed as
the family’s importance in determining one’s life chances gave way to
individual responsibility. That is, as the role of the family decreased in
importance, there was a simultaneous enlargement of opportunities for
personal choice and decision making—for example, in the areas of choice
of spouse, freedom of physical movement, and occupational preference.
Since earliest human groupings were tribal clans—a social organization
based on bloodlines—the large-scale population growth of the clans was
problematic. Through the development of a legal fiction, however, it
became possible to incorporate nonmembers into the group. Such a process
of adoption greatly facilitated the incorporation of conquered peoples and
the continued growth of the clan. In his treatment of this issue, Maine
provided a beautiful example of functional analysis—that is, of the
functions of law (or legal fictions) in society.
In examining the view that the origin of society is to be found in a social
contract, an unwritten agreement about the nature of social relationships
arrived at by freely consenting individuals, Maine noted:
Society in primitive times was not what it is assumed … to be at present, a collection of individuals.
In fact, and in view of the man who composed it, it was an aggregation of families. The contrast may
be most forcibly expressed by saying that the unit of ancient society was the Family, of a modern
society the Individual. (1870:126; italics added)

The transformation of society’s basic units was not accomplished

suddenly and all at once. A new principle of community organization
gradually replaced that of kinship. People now became related through their
physical proximity rather than through common lineage. The family,
however, persisted as a “fictitious” (in Maine’s sense of the word) source of
authority. In other words, the role of legal fictions in facilitating social
change assumed prominence, since it permitted the family circle to escape
its earlier household limits and to distribute itself over territory. By “legal
fictions” Maine was referring to the phenomenon whereby nonblood
members of the original family had been incorporated, through a process of
adoption, into the family unit and treated as if they were in fact legally
members of the original family. Thus, the notion of “legal fiction.”
Once the principle of local geographic residence was established as a
basis of community organization, the way was paved, according to Maine,
for the dissolution of the family and the emergence of the individual as the
fundamental unit of society. And this meant, of course, an unqualified
change in the nature of social relations. No longer were the relations of
individuals defined by family origin and position (that is, status); they now
arose out of mutual agreement (that is, contract). Hence, we can see clearly
how Maine conceived the major change in the social bond as being the
process whereby contract replaced status as the fundamental condition of
human association. Maine asserted that this trend was not only universal but
also irreversible in Western culture, for “whatever its pace, the change has
not been subject to reaction or recoil” (1870:169).
 The remainder of Maine’s Ancient Law is devoted to an application of the
above principles to the study of property, contract, and crime; those
considerations are not relevant here. What would seem to be relevant is the
fact that the general propositions formulated by Maine were explicitly
recognized and taken into account by sociologists in their later attempts to
understand and explain essentially the same kind of change in social
relations. These later attempts are indicative of social theorists’ continuing
concern with this issue. In the writings of Ferdinand Tönnies and Emile
Durkheim, we see a treatment of the historical change in social relations
that was clearly influenced by Maine’s distinction between status and
contract. We turn first to Tönnies’s1 distinction between Gemeinschaft and
Gesellschaft.

FERDINAND TÖNNIES: GEMEINSCHAFT AND GESELLSCHAFT

In his attempt to describe and explain theoretically the changing modes
of social relationships that accompanied the emergence of capitalism in
Western civilization, Ferdinand Tönnies owed much to the work of Maine,
and, like Maine, he was influenced by the works of Thomas Hobbes, a
seventeenth-century English social contract theorist. Unlike Maine,
however, Tönnies, in his formulation of Gesellschaft, accepted many of the
notions put forth by Hobbes concerning the inherent conflict between the
individual and society. It is misleading, however, to draw too close a
parallel between the contributions of Maine and Tönnies. Tönnies’s
Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, first published in 1887, seems to differ
from Maine’s Ancient Law in at least three important respects. First,
although Tönnies did apply his concepts to the analysis of social change, he
was concerned primarily with distinguishing types of social relationships
that had no necessary empirical historical reference. The terms
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft were intended to be applied in either
contemporary or historical analysis. They were thus formulated
independently of the characteristics of any particular society, past or
present. This is what is meant by saying that they had no necessary
empirical historical reference. Second, Tönnies’s methodology contrasted
sharply with that employed by Maine, whose concepts “status” and
“contract” were designed to refer explicitly to historical situations that had
actually occurred. Tönnies, on the other hand, formulated his concepts in
terms of ideal types, that is, as notions allowing for the comparison of
particular kinds of social relations, even though such relations might not
exist in a pure form. Third, Tönnies resorted to a psychological level of
analysis, that is, the level of individual motivation, in his explanation of
sociological events. In this regard Maine was more accurately the
sociologist of the two, seeking to explain institutional change in terms of
institutional agencies rather than individual motivations.
If it can be said that Maine was more the sociologist, it should also be
said that he was the more naive theorist. By focusing primarily on the
operation of large institutional arrangements, he tended to lose sight of the
importance of individuals’ relations with one another. Tönnies’s emphasis
on the psychological level, however, also gives rise to problems. “Human
will” was for Tönnies the fundamental basis of social relations, and the
resultant blurring of analytical distinctions between individual and social
phenomena accounts in large part for the difficulty that he apparently had in
communicating this theory.
“Human wills stand in manifold relations to one another. … This study
will consider as its subject of investigation only the relationships of mutual
affirmation” (Tönnies 1940:37). These two introductory sentences state the
central unit of inquiry and delimit the scope of Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft und
Gesellschaft. Significant here is the fact that Tönnies focuses his inquiry on
relations of mutual affirmation, that is, on relationships based on a shared
liking or respect. He did not consider conflict relationships in his analysis.
The principal objective of his study was the description and explanation of
the ways that human wills enter into relationships of mutual affirmation.
To realize this objective, Tönnies constructed a continuum along which
all concrete relationships of mutual affirmation could be placed as they
approximated either of two theoretically distinct (but not necessarily
opposed) concepts. He defined Gemeinschaft as the kind of traditional
community that existed in a feudal organization where persons were bound
together by shared values and sacred traditions. In the Gemeinschaft, social
solidarity stemmed from members’ common identity and kinship. In
contrast, industrialization and the rise of urban centers marked the transition
to a Gesellschaft type of society, with its heterogeneity of values and
traditions. In such a situation, according to Tönnies, individual differences
operate to reduce social solidarity and individualism becomes the
paramount value at the expense of communal cohesiveness.
 The construction of Gemeinschaft as ideal type proceeded from “the
assumption of perfect unity of human wills as an original or natural
condition which is preserved in spite of actual separation” (Tönnies
1940:99). Tönnies cited the relationship of the mother to her child, the
sexual union of a man and his wife, the bond that unites brothers and sisters
in a family circle, and, less exactly, the relationship of the father, in the
capacity of an educative and authoritative model, to his children. Other
kinds of relationships approaching the type included kinship, the
neighborhood, friendship, and authority in the sense of dignity based on
courage,2 age, or wisdom.
Tönnies expressed the logic of Gemeinschaft in terms of three
metaphorical “laws”:
(1) Relatives and married couples love each other or easily adjust themselves to each other. They
speak together and think along similar lines. Likewise do neighbors and friends. (2) Between people
who love each other there is understanding and consensus. (3) Those who love and understand each
other remain and dwell together and organize their common life. (1940:55)

Gemeinschaft, then, is an ideal construct that abstracts the essence of the

organization of the common life among people who share a sympathetic
consensus and physical proximity. Moreover, although this condition is
most closely approximated in the home or the household, it persists under
the impact of such patently disruptive factors as the emergence of town and
country distinctions, the manor, and the village.
In contrast with Gemeinschaft relationships—in which human beings are
essentially united despite the presence of apparently divisive influences—
Gesellschaft relationships are entered into by individuals who are
“essentially separated in spite of all uniting factors” (1940:74). It is in this
sense that Gesellschaft must always be seen as an artificial, “mechanical,”
rationally contrived structure of human relationships. For when Gesellschaft
associations are removed—when the artificial structure is destroyed—a
residue remains in which “everybody is by himself and isolated, and there
exists a condition of tension against all others” (1940:74). Gesellschaft, for
Tönnies, is an elaborate superstructure of human relationships precariously
erected upon an incipient Hobbesian war of all against all. He notes that in
the Gesellschaft, “the relation of all to all may therefore be conceived as
potential hostility or latent war” (1940:88).
 In his formulation of Gesellschaft, Tönnies was heavily influenced by his
antipathy to the social contours of contemporary Germany. Having
observed the social consequences of the growth of capitalism and industry
in late-nineteenth-century Germany, he was inclined toward an idealization
of the past rather than toward Marx’s “future heaven.” Thus, he yearned for
a return to the loving sentimentality of the Gemeinschaft.
The associations of Gesellschaft are typically contracted in commodity
exchange and sealed by promises and conventions that are as likely to be
breached as to be fulfilled. For Tönnies, then, the development of
Gesellschaft is part and parcel of the growth of commerce or trade. As
commerce and trade become further elaborated, Gesellschaft becomes more
pervasive. The crucial agent in its furtherance is the merchant, and, for
Tönnies, Gesellschaft is literally the instrument of the merchants and
capitalists. They are the natural masters of a Gesellschaft that is called into
being for the pursuit of their aims. (For a more recent treatment of Tönnies
with reference to Gesellschaft, see Muller (2002)).
It is the essence of Gesellschaft that no social relationship has value in
and of itself. Tönnies’s depiction of life in the Gesellschaft is strikingly
similar to Marx’s portrayal of life under the beginning stages of industrial
capitalism. Tönnies, like Marx, sees this as a situation in which people
relate to one another only through a cash nexus. Here is alienation in its
most dramatic form—people measuring each other’s and, even more
important, their own worth by the yardstick of monetary value. This image
of urban life became a standard ingredient in the classical conception of
urban relations. The notion that no social relation has value in and of itself,
that “money is desired by no one for the sake of keeping it, but by everyone
with a view to getting rid of it” (Tönnies 1940:81), was later portrayed by
Simmel as the ultimate essence of interpersonal relations in the city.
Relations in Gesellschaft, then, are characterized by an inherent instability.
It is a loosely coordinated structure held together by the interests of discrete
individuals—individuals working for their own interests.
Viewed historically, the demands upon the merchant who commands the
Gesellschaft are altered with the rise of industry. Early in the development
of Gesellschaft, the merchant rules by virtue of controlling the disposition
of commodities in commerce. Yet this rule must be consolidated by
dominating labor and the retailing of manufactured goods as the production
of these goods passes through the phases of “(1) simple cooperation, (2)
manufacture, (3) industry based on machinery (‘large scale’ industry)”
(Tönnies 1940:102). When the merchant class dominates the commodity
market, the labor market, and the retail market, Gesellschaft may be said to
have realized itself historically.
A little reflection upon the assumptions underlying the conceptualization
of Gesellschaft, as depicted above, suggests that they are essentially
analogous to the assumptions of such classical economic thinkers as Adam
Smith and David Ricardo. These assumptions were enumerated by Mayo
(1945:40):

1. Natural society consists of a horde of unorganized individuals.

2. Every individual acts in a manner calculated to secure his self-
preservation or self-interest.
3. Every individual thinks logically, to the best of his ability, in the
service of his aim.

It is clear, then, that if you presume society is built on a horde of

individuals working rationally in their own self-interests, you must explain
the social organization of society as a consequence of self-interest or the
exercise of individual volitions. Tönnies made this premise explicit in the
proposition that Gesellschaft associations were “willed” into being by
concrete individuals capable of perceiving that such relationships would
benefit their own (individual) interests.
In pursuing his analysis, Tönnies devoted the bulk of his volume to the
elaboration and description of two contrasting forms of human will.
“Natural will,” the basis of Gemeinschaft, is conceived by Tönnies as an
innate, unified motivating force that directly determines personal activity.
“Rational will,” the basis of Gesellschaft, on the other hand, emerges from
experience and is produced out of conscious deliberation.
It is important to note that while in Tönnies’s terms, “natural will” (or
passion) and “rational will” (or reason) can be distinguished analytically,
they are always intertwined empirically. Thus, no passion can occur without
reason, by which the passion finds its expression, and vice versa. The
implication of this point is far reaching because it clarifies why the terms
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are not unreservedly antithetical (as are
Maine’s notions of status and contract, terms that are viewed as entailing
two different types of relationship). In short, there is a tendency, rooted in
individual will, for every Gemeinschaft to become a Gesellschaft and (what
was largely neglected by urban sociologists who based their theories in part
upon these distinctions) for everyGesellschaft to become a Gemeinschaft.
This crucial insight for urban sociology unfortunately is obscured in the
work of later theorists such as Louis Wirth, who presents a notion of urban
life’s becoming more and more impersonal, more rational, more calculating.
But Wirth misses the point—central to symbolic interaction, we might add
—that people do not live in their immediate environment; rather, they live
in their interpretations of their environments. Thus, as the city becomes
more impersonal, we may expect people to transform the city symbolically,
injecting into it some sentiment, some passionate sources of life, thereby
recasting the symbolic environment of the city. Had Tönnies carried out
some systematic observations deriving from the implications of his own
theorizing, he might have found that even a supposed cradle of
impersonality—the urban marketplace of sellers and buyers—may be
buttressed by the comforting cushion of intimate and friendly relations. In
contemporary New York City, we can observe this in the importance of
long-term interpersonal, often familial, relations for transactions in the
diamond market (Shield 2002; Siegel 2009).
Tönnies’s emphasis on the priority of individual volitions affirmed his
belief in the necessity of building sociological concepts upon a
psychological base. In reviewing Emile Durkheim’s book The Rules of
Sociological Method in 1898, he took issue with Durkheim’s notion that the
study of individual behavior could be understood through the investigation
of the individual’s membership in social groups. Although this marked one
of the chief differences between the theoretical systems of Tönnies and
Durkheim, it was not the only difference. In 1889 Durkheim had, in
reviewing the 1887 edition of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, rejected
Tönnies’s notion that present-day industrial society is a mechanical and
artificial structure (as opposed to the organic and natural structure of earlier
society). Contemporary society, Durkheim held, is clearly as “organic” and
“natural” as life was before the emergence of a complex and extensive
division of labor.3 This thesis was documented in 1893, when Durkheim
published The Division of Labor in Society.

EMILE DURKHEIM: MECHANICAL AND ORGANIC

SOLIDARITY
 Like Tönnies, Durkheim was disturbed about the drift of contemporary
civilization; he was particularly concerned with the issue of occupational
specialization. During the period in which Durkheim wrote about the
division of labor—the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth
century—there was an intense intellectual argument that particularly
emphasized the negative consequences of occupational specialization. The
question that Durkheim raised in regard to this issue centered on whether
there was any moral function in specialization. Contemporaries of his, such
as Tönnies, argued that specialization contributed to the disintegration of
the larger social order. Durkheim’s response was that, that which is moral
contributes to both solidarity and the healthy continuity of society. For him,
the division of labor had this function. Durkheim developed the further
argument that this was the most important method by which people were
linked to one another in complex societies. To test his argument, societies in
which the division of labor had not progressed so extensively were sought
for comparison with industrialized societies. He looked for relatively small,
isolated communities—such as the Australian Aborigines—as testing
grounds for this theorizing. Durkheim’s selection of such communities
derived from his assertion that all societies have some division of labor—
such as by sex, age, or family status—but in small communities the division
of labor differs from that in complex societies.
According to Durkheim, Western civilization was caught up in an
irreversible historical trend from an aggregate of undifferentiated,
homogeneous “social segments” to a unity of heterogeneous, functionally
interrelated “social organs.” Theoretically, the social segment is composed
of mentally and morally homogeneous people whose beliefs, opinions, and
manners are similar. These similar sentiments are representations (or rather,
representations) of society’s collective life. They represent those forms of
behavior that have been repeated to the extent of becoming habitual. Taken
together, such collective representations comprise the collective conscience
of an earlier society, that is, “the totality of beliefs and sentiments common
to the average members of a society” (Durkheim 1984:38–39). Because it is
a commonality of beliefs and sentiments, and because it may be perceived
in a special sense as external to, and constraining, individual conduct and
thought, the collective conscience is referred to as a thing, sui generis. We
call attention once more to the fact that Tönnies, in his review of Durkheim,
took issue with this conceptualization of social life.
 Much debate has ensued among sociologists about whether Durkheim
was saying that society is really a thing. In our view, all he is saying is that
we should look upon society as a social object that can be examined. By
saying that this conscience is external to, and constrains, the conduct and
thought of society’s members, Durkheim means that no particular person is
responsible for that commonality of beliefs.
Ordinarily, no single person can master the entire range of beliefs and
sentiments that make up the collective consciousness or conscience. No
specific individual reading this book, for example, is responsible for the
English language. Perhaps someone may introduce one or more words in
our lifetime, but an individual’s contribution will still be minimal. In this
sense, language is external to any given individual member of society.
Sports may serve as another instance. With reference to football, for
example, no living football player is responsible for the rules of the game;
such rules are external to any individual player.
In effect, then, when Durkheim says that society is real, he is not saying
that it is something physically outside of us that commands individual
behavior. Rather, he is saying that it is more than any one person is
responsible for and that it severely limits alternative forms of behavior.
Through this collective conscience, then, the behavior of society’s members
is brought into line. Through the diffused constraining power of the
collective conscience, solidarity is ensured in the social segment, and the
activity of its members is brought more or less automatically into harmony.
Solidarity conditioned in this manner is termed “mechanical solidarity.” In
other words, mechanical solidarity “for Durkheim is the condition typical of
early segmentary, relatively homogeneous society when sentiments and
beliefs are shared in common, where individuation is minimal, and
collective thinking is maximal” (Tiryakian 2005:306).
Given such a view of mechanical solidarity, the question now arises as to
how Durkheim was able to detect the operation of mechanical solidarity.
Like his predecessor Maine, Durkheim turned to the operation of law in his
own investigation of this issue. In Durkheim’s view, “we may be sure to
find reflected in the law all the essential varieties of social solidarity”
(1984:25), as the law represents the entire institutional basis of a society.
To the extent that the sanctions attached to the legal rules of a society are
repressive in nature, that is, demanding retaliation and punishment, they
reflect the presence of mechanical solidarity. In its most unqualified form,
the collective conscience is represented by an impersonal form violently
and passionately embraced by the society’s members. Consequently,
offenses against it evoke an immediate and direct response. Such offenses
must be repressed, for they symbolically threaten and violate the integrity
of the society as a whole. Punishment of offenders in these instances not
only guarantees conformity to social rules but—more important—also
serves as an occasion for reinforcing the sentiments that make up the
violated collective conscience.
Durkheim is here making a very important observation. In effect, he is
saying that without the existence of sinners you cannot have a church,
because the existence of sin provides the opportunity for believers to
reaffirm the faith that has been offended by the sinner. It is impossible,
therefore, for a church completely to eliminate sin from the world and to
propagate its faith to the entire society. In The Rules of Sociological
Method, Durkheim points out that in a community of saintly monks, “faults
that appear venial to the ordinary person will arouse the same scandal as
does normal crime in ordinary consciences” (100).
The test of mechanical solidarity is found in the sanctions exerted when
the rules of society are violated. In a sense, then, to the extent that a
common morality exists in a particular society, the society comes to depend
upon its deviants for the maintenance of social boundaries. In contemporary
society, we may observe this in the treatment of transsexuals and
transvestites as radical others, used by the media to define the boundaries of
“normal” sexuality (Gamson 1998). Kai Erikson (2005), in his provocative
book Wayward Puritans, showed how Durkheimian ideas about social
boundaries clarify the nature of the witch-hunts in colonial America. With
reference to deviance, Erikson notes:
Like an article of common law, boundaries remain a meaningful point of reference only so long as
they are repeatedly tested by persons on the fringes of the group and repeatedly defended by persons
chosen to represent the group’s inner morality. Each time the community moves to censure some act
of deviation, then, and convenes a formal ceremony to deal with the responsible offender, it sharpens
the authority of the violated norm and restates where the boundaries of the group are located.
(2005[1966]:13)

In contrasting the notion of repressive law with the kinds of law that
characterize present-day advanced industrial societies, what is strikingly
apparent is the paucity of offenses in such societies that are construed as
offenses against society in general. What has happened is that there has
been a transformation in the character of offenses so that punishment is no
longer repressive in many cases; rather, it has become more restitutive (that
is, offenders are expected to repay those offended by their transgression).
Civil litigations offer examples of restitutive law in action. The civil suit
does not often imply a crime against society—a moral offense—and,
accordingly, the defendant in such cases is seldom subject to general social
censure. Instead, one is asked to make amends to the party or parties
injured.
What kinds of offenses, Durkheim asks, culminate in civil suits? Usually,
he observes, they are either offenses against rights or breaches of (usually
contracted) obligations. Adherence to the rules built up to guarantee the
inviolability of rights, however, has little positive influence upon the
formation of solidarity associations between people. Obedience to the law
requires merely that the members of society abstain from infringing upon
the privileges of one another. The solidarity that results is of a negative
character. It takes the form of persons not doing certain things to one
another. But, as Durkheim notes, this “negative solidarity is only possible
where another kind [of solidarity] is present, positive in nature” (1984:75).
The positive force making for social solidarity in this regard is manifested
by legal forms, such as domestic law, contract law, commercial law,
procedural law, administrative law, and constitutional law, which, taken
together, can be called “cooperative law,” since such laws specify
obligations that members of various social circles have toward one another.
Contracted relationships best exemplify the form, but not the basis, of
solidarity associations in societies distinguished by an extensive division of
labor. Durkheim writes that “the contract is indeed the supreme legal
expression of cooperation” (Durkheim 1984:79). Here obligations are
established and their fulfillment guaranteed so that individuals with
different interests may be brought together in complementary relationships.
Unlike Tönnies, Durkheim did not perceive contracts as discrete
associations of otherwise unrelated persons who came together
momentarily for the sake of a contract and then disbanded the relationship
after the contract’s fulfillment. Contracts can be built only upon implicit
social foundations. As Durkheim notes, “Every contract therefore assumes
that behind the parties who bind each other, society is there, quite prepared
to intervene and to enforce respect for any undertakings entered into”
(1984:71).
 Anytime one enters into a contract, much of the arrangement is taken for
granted in spite of all the small print. What this means is that this body of
beliefs (this mechanical solidarity) never completely disappears, even in
advanced industrial societies. Such beliefs must persist to a certain extent so
that contracts can be enforced. The role of Jews in the New York diamond
market is, again, a good example of the persistence of such traditionalism:
in the diamond market, huge monetary deals are concluded with nothing
more than a verbal agreement and handshakes (Shield 2002; Siegel 2009).
With reference to these implicit beliefs, we can, for example, examine the
continued necessity many people feel to have all parties physically present
for the consummation of large business deals. While many had predicted
that increased electronic communication could finally rid us of the necessity
of such physical meetings, Boden and Molotch have shown that the
physical appearance of the people making deals is often critical to the
success of the venture, in a situation they refer to as the “compulsion of
proximity” (Boden and Molotch 1997). People make assumptions based on
the appearances of others, which are anchored in the belief systems of
society (see, for example, Shannon and Stark 2003; Stone 1962; Wookey,
Graves, and Butler 2009). In effect, then, elements of mechanical solidarity
can still be found in societies organized in terms of an extensive division of
labor.
Cooperative law is not charged with the sentiment and passion of
repressive law, nor is it diffused so that it is incorporated into the
conscience of every member of society. Nevertheless, its solidarity-building
role is apparent, for cooperative laws “determine the manner in which the
different [social] functions should work together in the various
combinations of circumstances that may arise” (Durkheim 1984:82). The
society held together by the concurrence of functions in this way displays
what Durkheim called “organic solidarity.”
In sum, Durkheim isolated two contrasting types of social solidarity—the
one mechanical, the other organic. Of the two, he wrote that “the first binds
the individual directly to society without any intermediary. With the second
kind, he depends upon society, because he depends upon the parts that go to
constitute it” (1984:83). Placing the two types in historical perspective,
Durkheim argued that societies, insofar as they advance at all, advance from
a condition of mechanical solidarity to a condition of organic solidarity, and
the progressive preponderance of the division of labor is the prime impetus
for such an advance.
Accordingly, the next problem to which Durkheim turned in his inquiry
was the explanation of the development of organic solidarity through the
growth of the division of labor. Proceeding deductively, he singled out three
interrelated factors related to the increase of organic solidarity in society:
(1) dynamic density, that is, the rate of communication between societal
members;4 (2) material density, that is, “the real distance between
individuals” (1984:201); and (3) volume, that is, the geographical space
defining the physical boundaries of a particular society.
In Durkheim’s view, the growth in any one of the above factors was
dependent upon simultaneous growth in the other two. In short, the
conditions for the division of labor are multiple and interrelated. Nor are
volume, material density, and dynamic density5 sufficient to account for the
growth of the division of labor. They alone cannot explain the dynamic of
that process. For Durkheim, the division of labor is, ultimately, a further
reflection of a response to the biological struggle for existence and
competition for control of scarce resources.6
The significance of the collective conscience for the establishment of
social solidarity in society is progressively weakened with the emergence of
organic solidarity as a new organizing principle. As Durkheim notes:
This is not to say that the common consciousness is threatened with total disappearance. … There is
indeed one area in which the common consciousness has grown stronger, becoming more clearly
delineated, viz., in its view of the individual. As all the other beliefs and practices assume less and
less religion as a character, the individual becomes the object of a sort of religion. (1984:122)

In effect, then, Durkheim is suggesting that as traditional forms of religion

decline, the belief in the worth of the individual gradually develops into a
religion itself. Erving Goffman, one of sociology’s most influential social
psychologists, was deeply influenced by this idea of Durkheim’s (see
especially Goffman (1959, 1963, 1971)), and one might say his work is an
effort to demonstrate how the development of the self is a product of
socially constructed interaction rituals (see, for example, Smith (2011)). As
Goffman so aptly notes:
It is strange and more Durkheimian than it should be, that today, at a time when the individual can
get almost everything else off his back, there remains the cross of personal character—the one he
bears, albeit lightly, when he is in the presence of others. (Goffman 1971:187)
 It may be, as Durkheim argued, that in complex societies, individuation is
buttressed by a cult. When we look at the city, however, it is not a case of
individuals set apart under conditions of urbanism but, rather, a separation
of social groups or social circles. Such a phenomenon, we may argue,
makes for greater freedom than the cult of individualism implies, for here
we have a multiplicity of different selves that we can realize in a number of
varying social circles. We will elaborate on this point throughout this book,
as we make the argument that while “individualism” is typically thought of
in terms of unique personality features, the analysis of urban social life
shows that our “individualism” is really a socially constructed phenomenon
in which the development of “multiple selves” is fostered and enhanced by
opportunities to participate in a variety of urban groupings and
communities.
Durkheim further argued that with the transformation of the division of
labor, new sentiments are introduced into other areas of social life.
Durkheim recognized the proliferation of contractual relationships in
contemporary society, but, as has already been mentioned, he denied that
the contract functioned as a basis of social solidarity. Noncontractual
elements underlying and regulating the formation of contracts must develop
simultaneously. Any society, in any condition of solidarity, is, at bottom, a
moral order. Durkheim found that “men cannot live together without
agreeing, and consequently without making mutual sacrifices, joining
themselves to one another in a strong and enduring fashion. Every society is
a moral society” (1984:173).
Having demonstrated the social function, or the moral value, of the
division of labor, Durkheim turned to an examination of the effectiveness
with which the function was performed in modern life. Asserting that the
full moral value of the division of labor was not realized in contemporary
society, he conceptualized that fact in terms of three distinct types of
division of labor that were dysfunctional in that they prevented the division
of labor from performing its solidarity-building role. First, the
interdependent parts of society cannot be efficiently coordinated when the
division of labor is anomic. Anomie (social normlessness) results from
economic crises such as inflation, depression, strikes, boycotts, or any crisis
that does not contribute either to the adequate formulation of moral values
or to the achievement of social ends. Second, if the division of labor is
based on a compulsory caste or class system, it “sometimes gives rise to
miserable squabbling instead of producing solidarity … because the
distribution of social functions on which it rests does not correspond, or
rather no longer corresponds, to the distribution of natural abilities”
(1984:311). Finally, the division of labor may assume a character such that
“functions are distributed in such a way that they fail to afford sufficient
scope for individual activity” (1984:323). Thus, it is possible for us to
become so finely specialized that there is not enough work to be done to
give meaning to individual activity. There may be no meaning forthcoming
from the effort in which one is involved. In musical performances, for
example, there is an optimum number for a jazz group because there are
only so many parts to be played—drums, bass, guitar, piano, and so on;
with too many performers, some people would feel they are playing
redundant parts to the others. In such a case, functions are distributed so
that they offer sufficient tasks to give everyone the sense that they are
making important contributions (cf. Becker 2008[1983]; Dempsey 2008).
It is to such “abnormal” forms of the division of labor, rather than to the
division of labor itself, Durkheim concludes, that we must look for the
source of the moral “inadequacies” of our age.

CONCLUSION
Small wonder that all these—an Englishman intent on critiquing the
method of the social contract theorists, a German concerned with the
changing character of human wills in industrial society, and a Frenchman
concerned with the moral value of occupational specialization—should
have addressed like questions and consulted the same authorities, as well as
one another, in quest of solutions. That scholars of diverse national origins
and unlike interests inquired into the varied roots of human association is
demonstration enough of the problem’s salience. Furthermore, the problem
is still the central problem of sociology. Sociological thought continues to
converge on the following questions: What is the nature of the social bond?
How has the basis of the social bond been historically transformed?
The persistent devotion of social scientists to the question raised by
Maine, Tönnies, and Durkheim emphasizes the strategic place that such
inquiries still assume in the extension and refinement of sociological
knowledge. To cite only a few prominent examples, the debate over how
and whether societies proceed from a basis in the sacred through
secularization continues to engage sociologists of religion (Greeley 2003;
Sherkat and Ellison 1999); sociologists of culture continue to appraise the
resiliency of the cultural products of folk society, often in the guise of
studies of “authenticity,” in the face of the mass culture characteristic of
urban environments (Grazian 2005; Peterson 1999); and urban sociologists
have continuously fretted over the distinction between “society” built upon
the consensus and understanding of its members and “community”
integrated by the interdependence of population aggregates (Fischer 1982),
now often in the guise of studies of “neighborhood effects,” “social
capital,” or “collective efficacy” (Sampson 2012; Sampson, Morenoff, and
Gannon-Rowley 2002; Wilson and Taub 2006). The theoretical contexts
proposed by Maine, Tönnies, and Durkheim continue to be refined as the
study of social organization is extended and given precision by
contemporary sociologists. Yet (at least in the case of Tönnies and
Durkheim) the distinctions between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and
between mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity, were more than
devices for the conceptual delimitation of contexts within which human
association could be investigated. The social types were related to one
another as the basic terms of theoretical propositions. Neither Tönnies nor
Durkheim, as we have shown, was content to rest his inquiry with the
demonstration that all human existence ranged between polar types of
social organization. Both perceived the interdependence of the typical
elements in concrete reality.
The impact upon Tönnies’s theoretical system of Maine’s distinctions
between the familial and territorial bases of social relations, on the one
hand, and between status and contract, on the other, is clear. As a matter of
fact, the notion of contract is central to Tönnies’s construction of
Gesellschaft as a pure type. Similarly, but in a less detailed way, Maine’s
thinking influenced Durkheim’s study of the division of labor, and it is not
unlikely that Durkheim was affected in that work by Tönnies’s writings
more than a perusal of the citations and references would indicate.7
Accordingly, the conceptual schemes developed by these three men do have
many similarities, although each is clearly distinguishable from the others.
Probably more than anything else, the dependence of these scholars upon
one another has contributed to the superficial and erroneous equation of the
different schemata by many sociologists in their effort to organize and to
contrast in a theoretically significant way the empirical characteristics of
rural and urban life. This lumping together of heterogeneous concepts from
diverse theoretical schemes for the sake of classification rather than
analysis has had a definitive influence upon the character of urban
sociology.

NOTES
1. For a critique of Tönnies that takes us up to at least the twentieth century, see Herman
Schmalenbach, “The Sociological Concept of Communion,” a free translation by Kaspar D. Naegele
and Gregory P. Stone, in Talcott Parsons et al. (eds.), Theories of Society (New York: Free Press,
1961), 331–47, as well as more recent work by the historian Jerry Muller (2002).
2. This phrase seems more accurately to render Tönnies’s meaning than does the translated
“authority based on power or force.” See Tönnies (1940:47–53, esp. 47, 51).
3. These reviews are discussed by Loomis in his introduction to the Tönnies translation
(1940:xviii).
4. Durkheim drastically underestimated technological developments in communication as affecting
the moral density of society, but he was, after all, writing at the end of the nineteenth century.
5. Throughout his career, Durkheim was concerned with this question of the importance of moral
or dynamic density, which we choose to call the rate of communication or the rate of symbolic
interaction. On this point see Stone and Farberman (1970).
6. In another work (1938:92–93), Durkheim recognized the implicit inadequacy of explaining the
division of labor by biological factors.
7. Although Durkheim never made explicit reference to Tönnies in his principal works, Sorokin
(1928:491) has noted: “One cannot help thinking that Durkheim intentionally gave to his social types
names which were opposite those given by Tönnies.”
 CHAPTER 2

Classical Observations of Urban Life

In Chapter 1 we dealt at length with the treatments of urban industrial

society put forth by the classical sociologists. In this chapter we shall
examine the manner in which those conceptual schemata influenced the
kinds of observations of urban life made by a later generation of
sociologists.

THE CITY AND THE SOCIOLOGIST

Tönnies spoke of “the city … where the general conditions of
Gesellschaft prevail” (1940:265), and Durkheim submitted the proposition
that “so long as the social organization is essentially segmentary towns do
not exist” (1984:202). When they have made use of the conceptual
apparatus of Durkheim or of Tönnies, urban sociologists have paid little
heed to the qualifications contained in such remarks; and they have
characterized the city, often absolutely, in terms of Gesellschaft and organic
solidarity. In this regard, they seem not to have recognized that the value of
a concept is never realized solely from its application as a classificatory
device. A concept is valuable to the extent that it facilitates the
discrimination of empirical events so that the relationships among them
may be better perceived and more adequately explained. Sociologists have
used the terminology of Maine, Tönnies, and Durkheim to differentiate the
character of urban living from that of rural existence and to detect the social
consequences of urbanization. Interest in this regard has been mobilized
around the investigation of the historical impact of contract upon status,
Gesellschaft upon Gemeinschaft, and organic solidarity upon mechanical
solidarity. The place of status in contract, of Gemeinschaft in Gesellschaft,
or of the social segment in the solidary society has been slighted and often
unperceived. More often than not, the status, Gemeinschaft-like, or
segmental, elements that have been perceived as occurring in the context of
urbanism have been described as rural survivals or remnants from some
earlier form of social organization. As a consequence, urban sociologists
have been preoccupied with the disorganizing, alienating, and
individualizing influences of urbanism. Certain disruptive results of the rise
of cities have been completely studied, but social life in the city was never
adequately explored until the mid-1940s. Urban sociologists had not
systematically taken into account in their researches either Tönnies’s
proposition that every Gesellschaft tends to become a Gemeinschaft or
Durkheim’s axiom that every society is a moral order.

GEORG SIMMEL: THE METROPOLIS AND MENTAL LIFE

Simmel’s writings on the city may be viewed as a transitional link
between the conceptual models provided by nineteenth-century sociologists
and the observations of urban life made by sociologists at the University of
Chicago in the early part of the twentieth century. Like Durkheim and
Tönnies, the German sociologist Georg Simmel recognized the study of the
historical transfiguration of social solidarity in Western civilization as a
legitimate problem. Simmel’s (1971:324–339) discussion of the metropolis
and what might be termed the urban personality type centered on the
question of how the individual maintains his “existence against the
sovereign powers of society” (1971:324) (in this case, forces exerted by the
metropolitan environment). Such a question is obviously a significant one
for a social psychology of urban life.
Simmel isolated several distinctive features of the metropolis that elicit
from the metropolitan dweller a unique pattern of responses not found
among the inhabitants of small towns. Primarily, the large city can be seen
as a setting for contrasting physical and social stimuli so numerous and
diverse that any single individual exposed to them cannot possibly respond
to them all, nor can one escape a subliminal awareness of their presence.
Consequently, the first difference that one might detect between the resident
of the metropolis and the resident of the small town is the heightened
awareness and greater critical acumen of the former in contrast with the
depressed awareness and greater naiveté of the latter: “Instead of reacting
emotionally, the metropolitan [personality] type reacts primarily in a
rational manner, thus creating a mental predominance through the
intensification of consciousness” (1971:326). This may be attributed to the
fact that the urban dweller must select from a ubiquitous shower of highly
varied stimuli the ones appropriate for a particular response. That the
metropolis is characteristically the seat of a money economy gives added
impetus to the development in the urban person of a detached, rationalistic
view of the world: “Money economy and the dominance of the intellect
stand in the closest relationship to one another” (1971:326). Moreover, in
the city, time is an all-important coordinator of human activity. Without a
meticulous devotion to punctuality on the part of most of its inhabitants, the
metropolis would become a bedlam. The necessity of arranging a schedule
for transportation to and from one’s place of work, for example, heightens
the significance of punctuality for the urban dweller. The interlocking
activities of varied businesses in the urban area also reinforce a respect for
punctuality, so as to maximize operating efficiency.
Insofar as the intense stimulation of the metropolis and the prominence of
its money economy promote the intellectuality of the urban person, they
also cultivate in one a characteristically blasé reaction to events. The
incessant bombardment of incompatible stimuli upon individuals ultimately
exhausts their mental energies and renders them incapable of response to
every new occurrence. In the same fashion the blasé response is evinced by
the money economy: “The essence of the blasé attitude is an indifference
toward the distinctions between things … and … to the extent that money,
with its colorlessness and its indifferent quality, can become a common
denominator of all values it becomes the frightful leveler—it hollows out
the core of things, their peculiarities, their specific values and their
uniqueness and incomparability” (1971:329–330).
Almost every day the metropolitan person is somehow involved in the
exchange of dollars and cents. Perpetually reminded of the purchasability of
things, one makes a habit of evaluation. Inevitably this habit mediates one’s
estimation of others and, reflexively, of one’s own worth. Dwarfed by an
awesome and overpowering milieu, urbanites, in the struggle to maintain
their self-esteem, devalue the objects and persons that surround them. In its
most controlled state, this mechanism is expressed as a typical reserve that
sets individuals apart from the objects and persons challenging their ideal
self-image. Often “the inner side of this external reserve is not only
indifference but … a slight aversion, a mutual strangeness and repulsion
which in a close contact which has arisen in any way whatever, can break
out into hatred and conflict” (1971:331). Those processes that pit persons
against persons in the city and disrupt the collective life are a sine qua non
of urban existence.1
Here again we are presented with the notion that underneath the social
order of the city lies the hostility of each person against every other.
Simmel, like Tönnies, is here echoing a kind of Hobbesian motif. For
Simmel, this “chip-on-the-shoulder” demeanor of the city dweller is one
guarantee of the great personal freedom that abounds in metropolitan life.
But personal freedom, in Simmel’s view, is more basically a product of a
“universal tendency” underlying the rise of the metropolis and the
development of all social groupings. Any group is originally “a relatively
small circle almost entirely closed against neighboring foreign or otherwise
antagonistic groups” (1971:332). In it the self-expression of numbers is
circumscribed by dogma and petty prejudice. As the group extends itself
over territory and increases its size and importance, its structural rigidity
and negative orientation to other groups are considerably weakened.
Consequently, the demands that it makes upon its members are weakened,
and personal freedom is enhanced so that “the citizen of the metropolis is
‘free’ in contrast with the trivialities and prejudices which bind the small
town person” (1971:334). One must occasionally pay a price for this
increment of freedom in the currency of an overpowering sense of
loneliness and deprivation. “It is obviously only the obverse of this freedom
that, under certain circumstances, one never feels as lonely and as deserted
as in this metropolitan crush of persons” (1971:334).2
The freedom of the urban person cannot, however, be viewed only in this
negative sense—as the absence of social control. One’s breadth of vision
and areas of interest are both extended and objectified in the city. “The most
significant characteristic of the metropolis lies in [its] functional magnitude
beyond its actual physical boundaries” (1971:335). The overflow of
metropolitan institutions carries the spirit of the inhabitants with it into an
awareness of a larger world and a sense of involvement with impersonal
history, what Simmel refers to as “cosmopolitanism” (1971:334).
In effect, then, cities are inevitably providing functions that affect people
and institutions lying outside their political boundaries. We might argue
here that it is primarily this phenomenon that has heightened urban growth
and exacerbated urban problems. Since so many of our cities’ political
boundaries were based on rivers and other geographical features, the
spilling over of city functions makes the earlier physical boundaries of the
city increasingly archaic. The financial plight of the cities is thus often
intensified as a result of a structurally generated inability to raise the
necessary revenue to provide for an increasing number of additional
functions. This is particularly problematic when wealthier urbanites choose
to dwell outside the city proper in suburban municipalities. While these
individuals still reap the benefits of living near a central city, the city does
not gain the benefit of their contributions to the property tax base (Logan
and Molotch 2007).
At the base of the functional expansion of the metropolis is the division
of labor. With the proliferation of occupations that Durkheim noted in the
division of labor, the inhabitants of the city are looked upon more in terms
of what they do rather than who they are. It follows that opportunities for
close social contact with others are greatly lessened. This limitation, taken
together with the imposing dimensions of the city’s objective culture,
stimulates in metropolitan people considerable anxiety about their self-
importance vis-à-vis the importance of events around them. In order for
urbanites to preserve individual personalities, Simmel writes that
“extremities and peculiarities and individualizations must be produced and
they must be over-exaggerated merely to be brought into the awareness
even of the individual himself” (1971:338).
In his characterization of urban freedom, Simmel evidences an
ambivalence about city life that was continued by such classical observers
of the city as Park and Wirth. In one sense Simmel portrays the city as the
source of personal freedom. At the same time, however, the city is seen as
the basis of a larger kind of social disorganization. These two conflicting
themes continually reappear in the writings of the sociologists who
established urban sociology as a particular area of study. It should be noted
that a view of urban life as disorganized was reinforced in the writings of
American sociologists concerned about social problems in the early
twentieth century. As C. Wright Mills (1943) noted in his probing essay
“The Professional Ideology of Social Pathologists,” such sociologists often
traced the pathology of contemporary life to predominantly urban causes.
For Simmel, the ideological function of the city is the provision of a setting
within which the tension between quality and freedom can be resolved.
As Simmel conceived it, then, urbanism has the cardinal effect of
promoting the intellectuality and individuality of those who are exposed to
it. Emotional reserve and the blasé attitude that distinguish the conduct of
urban people are to be understood as the principal adaptive mechanisms of
individual life in the metropolis. Their importance lies in making an
intellectual and individualistic life psychologically possible. These
propositions and the inferences drawn from them concerning the nature of
urban groups and social structures have left an indelible stamp on the
character of urban sociology in the United States. Further, they provide a
kind of connecting link between the observations of Maine, Tönnies, and
Durkheim about the character of social organization and later observations
about the social psychology of the city dweller. Fruitful as such
propositions may be, they are inadequate for a detailed treatment of the
social psychology of urban life.
We take issue with Simmel’s notion that urban life can be described
simply in terms of individualization. This is not to deny that the chances for
individual autonomy are obviously enhanced in the urban environment. As
Simmel argues, emotional reserve psychologically sustained by a powerful
charge of negative emotion may be an efficient way of preserving
individual autonomy, once it is secured. At least two questions, though, are
suggested by those observations. First, does the increase of potential
individual autonomy mean that urban life is increasingly individualized (as
most sociologists have inferred), that is, that human beings must more and
more look to their individual selves for resources capable of facilitating
their daily lives? Second, is latent hostility a means of sustaining emotional
reserve? The questions are interrelated, and the answer seems to be negative
in both instances.
People are first and foremost social animals. It is only through one’s
relationships with others that one’s individuality can in any way be realized,
as Cooley, Mead, and others recognized long ago (Cooley 1998; Mead
1934). There are essentially two reasons for this. First, the self (which
includes the idea of individuality) is a reflexive phenomenon. That is,
persons come to view themselves as they believe others view them; they
look at themselves from the point of view of others. Second—and this was
also recognized by Cooley—self-expression premises intimate social
association. Simmel observed the first point (1971) when he indicated the
devaluation of the other as a means of heightening one’s self-esteem.
Although he singled out the technique of devaluation, there is also its
opposite: one can so devaluate oneself that others will respond by bolstering
one’s self-esteem. Here is the power of depression. There is apparently a
positive aspect to this as well: one can attempt to fulfill, beyond the
demands of adequacy, the expectations that others have of one in the effort
to secure one’s sense of dignity and moral worth. Indeed, some
contemporary theorists believe such affirmation is a key driver to all social
action (Fligstein and McAdam 2011).
The second point that we have raised—that self-expression presumes
intimate associations—constitutes a resurgent premise within the discipline
of psychology (Swann and Seyle 2005). The absence of satisfactory
primary relationships with significant others has negative consequences for
one’s conception of self,3 and the significance of others transcends one’s
relationship to parents and siblings. This should not be taken to mean that
the identification of the self with social groups assures the expression of
individuality. When this qualification is properly understood, it would seem
that the basis of the difference between cities and towns, and between large,
complex environments and small, relatively closed, social circles becomes
clearer insofar as such differences are manifested in a social psychological
way. In the small town, one may easily lose one’s individuality in
relationship with others, whereas in the large city one establishes one’s
individuality through social relationships with others.
It is not, therefore, that life in the city has become individualized in any
usual sense of that word. One cannot depend upon oneself alone as one
lives from day to day, and this is especially true if one lives in a large city.
Sociologists have recognized this in urban studies from classic Chicago
School reports on gangs (Thrasher 1926), the taxi dance hall (Cressey
1932), and commercialized vice (Landesco 1929) to more recent
investigations of street vendors (Duneier 1999) and heat waves (Klinenberg
2003). However, one of the points of this book is that the isolation of
individuals in the city is offset by the purposive establishment of
commercial ventures such as dating services, taverns, and the like. Other
institutions, such as shopping and sports, provide both intended and
unintended settings within which fairly intimate associations may be
formed between presumable strangers. It is such relationships that prevent
the individual from becoming “lost” in the city and offer a platform from
which one can express one’s individuality. Instead of the individualization
of urban life, then, we might well speak of the “socialization” of urban life
in the specific meaning of that word, that is, the collectively shared aspects
of urban existence. The observation was never put this way in any of the
studies referred to earlier, and we believe that it marks an important point
on which our treatment of urban life differs from previous accounts.
Similarly, it is difficult to understand how emotional reserve can be
maintained over any great length of time merely because it is fortified with
latent hostility. The hypothesis does not pass the test of introspection. For
instance, we have experienced neighbors who trespass upon those areas of
our personal life that we have “reserved” as our own (or better, our
family’s). They have penetrated our shell of reserve to the extent that we
have become all too aware of the antagonism beneath it. Sometimes the
antagonism has been expressed or, at best, too thinly disguised; sometimes
the reserve has prevailed and the antagonism has been suppressed. What
can account for the difference? Although we cannot be certain of all the
reasons, we are sure of this much: when we entered into an intimate social
relationship with someone close to the presumptuous neighbor, let us say a
husband or good friend, we suppressed the hostility; when we were not
linked closely to the social circle of the neighbor, this hostility was not as
effectively controlled. Thus, it appears that close social relationships may
be as important for the maintenance of emotional reserve as they probably
are for the assertion of individuality.
Such a line of argument is not entirely fair to Simmel, since it is directed
partly at inferences suggested by his essay and partly at the actual
propositions he submitted. Also, Simmel was fond of uncovering the
apparently profound opposites in social life only to demonstrate their
superficiality later on (as in his discussion of reserve and suppressed
hostility), and often his enthusiasm in discovery supplanted his power of
balanced judgment.
Finally, in further defense of Simmel’s seminal contributions, we should
note that he devoted a great deal of intellectual effort to precisely the area of
investigation that we have accused him of avoiding, the function of
membership in small groups or closed circles.4 His essay on the metropolis,
which has been forced to withstand the burden of our attack, does not begin
to represent his sociological endeavors.
It was Simmel’s other works—those in the area of formal sociology—
that were first introduced to American sociologists largely through the
efforts of Albion W. Small.5 Later, Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess
(1921) made additional essays and fragments of essays available. What is
more, Robert E. Park, a student of Simmel, shared his teacher’s interest in
the problems of modern urban society and made major contributions to
sociological theories on the city. Importantly, Park apprehended the
centrality of the altered primary group in urban social organization and
offered propositions to explain its function.

ROBERT E. PARK: THE CITY—A SPATIAL PATTERN AND A

MORAL ORDER
It can probably be said that Park had Simmel’s gift of trenchant insight
without his ability to present observations systematically. Consequently, it
is difficult, if not impossible, to provide a precise and integrated résumé of
Park’s ideas about the city and, at the same time, to do justice to their scope
and depth. Nor shall we review the entire range of his contributions in this
chapter. Instead, we shall focus on those aspects of his writings that are
most relevant for the development of a social psychology of city life. Park
viewed the city as the central phenomenon of modern life; this theme recurs
in all his writings. For our purposes, we shall examine in detail two of
Park’s (1925, 1926) better-known essays in which he addressed himself
exclusively to problems of urban sociology.
Both essays proceed from the elementary observation that the city—or,
for that matter, any human community—is occupied by human beings who
are distributed over, and confined within, a territory. In this sense, the city
has a spatial aspect that the discipline of human ecology is peculiarly fitted
to study. More specifically, the subject matter of an ecological investigation
of the city is constituted by the number, position, and mobility of city
dwellers. And ecological investigation derives from the assumption that
these elements are useful indices of, for instance, the rates of crime,
divorce, and mental illness. In addition, these units are quite amenable to
measurement and, hence, lend themselves to quantitative description of
social phenomena that are otherwise difficult to treat with statistical
precision. For Park, an examination of the modern city’s spatial features
facilitates the determination of its sociology.
Since in Park’s view the city is a product of natural forces rather than of
preconceived design, its periphery never coincides with legislated
boundaries. The outer limits of the modern city, as we noted in our
treatment of Simmel, are constantly changing and are extended outward in a
piecemeal fashion along established routes of transportation as land is
privately acquired and developed. However, the bounds of the city are only
the most general features of the spatial pattern that shapes its physical
organization. “Everywhere the community tends to conform to some
pattern, and this pattern invariably turns out to be a constellation of typical
urban areas, all of which can be geographically located and spatially
defined” (1926:11). The area that first comes into focus is the city center.
In contrast with the ancient city, which grew up around a fortress, the
growth of the modern city represents the elaboration of a market. It is in the
urban marketplace, the city’s business center, that the concentration and
mobility of the population are intensified. Here, each day, large masses of
people are brought by a complex transportation system to earn the money
they spend or to spend the money they earn. At night they are transported
out of the city center and are deposited in the various areas radiating
outward, toward and beyond the metropolitan periphery. The great density
and mobility of the daytime population in the business center is expressed
by the height of buildings and the concentration of transportation terminals
in the vicinity. Both these factors—density and mobility—capture the
essence of the modern city. In fact, because of this, “the business center …
is the city par excellence” (1926:10). In emphasizing the importance of
business-related activities, Park is echoing a theme (as we noted in our
treatment of the classical sociologists) that played a central role in the view
of city life taken by urban sociologists.
According to Park, the growth of the city’s business center is always
viewed by the investor with an eye to profit, and characteristically there is
much speculation in the land immediately surrounding the center.
Underlying the acquisition of this land is the expectation that its value will
automatically and inevitably increase as the business center is extended. As
a result, the investors must hold on to their land only so long as they can
make the greatest margin of profit. The maintenance and upkeep of this
land does not affect the speculator’s chances for realizing a profit on an
investment. Consequently, the land surrounding the city center is in a state
of physical deterioration. In brief, the business center of any modern city is
always surrounded by a slum.
But the business center and the slum are only two of many distinctive
areas that make up the spatial pattern of the city. The city is organized
territorially as a constellation of diverse natural areas, and “natural areas are
the habitats of natural groups” (1926:11). These natural areas may be
examined in terms of the extent to which they approach or depart from the
typical characteristics of neighborhoods “where proximity and neighborly
contact are the basis for the simplest and most elementary forms of
association” (1925:7). Urban neighborhoods manage to retain their identity
over time only occasionally and, even then, with the greatest difficulty. The
increasing proliferation of transportation and communication facilities in
the city stimulates population mobility, and thus tends “to break up the
tensions, interest, and sentiments which give neighborhoods their individual
character” (1925:8). Often, stabilizing influences strong enough to isolate
neighborhoods from the rest of the city and its disruptive forces are exerted
by race, language, and belief. Yet such culturally isolated areas as the
ghetto, the black belt, or “little Sicily” cannot maintain a perpetual hold on
their inhabitants. Processes of selection recruit the intelligent, specially
skilled, and ambitious residents of the culturally segregated areas and
deposit them in less isolated places. As a consequence of the birth,
persistence, and dissolution of neighborhoods and other natural areas, the
growth of the city may be conceived as a kind of social metabolism. Like
food being incorporated and digested in the body, persons here are
assimilated to, and eliminated from, the independent organs comprising the
urban physical pattern.
For Park, the principal selective mechanism operating to maintain the
metabolism of the city is (and here he echoes Durkheim) the division of
labor, which is a function of the size of the urban population: “The larger
community will have the wider division of labor” (1925:4). With the growth
of the division of labor in the city, the population is at once differentiated
and brought into close cooperation. A heightening of the community’s
intellectual life is also indicated, for specialization means essentially that
rational methods are increasingly being applied to the solution of communal
problems. Largely because they work, then, individuals are caught up in the
metabolism of the city. Hence, a study of persons’ mobility in space reveals
much of the character of their social participation and of the social
organization at large.
The point is that change of occupation, personal success or failure—changes of economic and social
status, in short—tend to be registered in changes of location. The physical or ecological organization
of the community, in the large run, responds to and reflects the occupational and the cultural. Social
selection and segregation, which create the natural groups, determine at the same time the natural
areas of the city. (1926:9)

As a matter of fact, “all we ordinarily conceive as social may be

eventually construed and described in terms of space and changes of
position of the individuals within the limits of a natural area” (1926:12).
From this, it might seem that the propositions of sociology will ultimately
be reduced to a series of statistical equations, since the location and
mobility of a population are eminently fitted for description in
mathematical terms. This is not the case. Park accepted the interactionist
view of society as existing in and through communication. Since
communication is an interactive process that changes its constituent units as
it is carried on, the sociologist is confronted with a subject matter that is
infinitely variable and heterogeneous. This alone reduces the likelihood of a
purely statistical study of urban society. The units—urban dwellers—are
constantly changed by the processes in which they are involved. There is,
therefore, a limit to the fruitful application of ecological method:
“Geographical barriers and physical distance are significant for sociology
only when and where they define the conditions under which
communication and social life are maintained” (1926:14). And these are not
the only barriers that intrude into and qualify the communicative life. Social
and psychic distance are also involved. The interrelations of physical,
social, and psychic distance give form to the society in which we live by
placing limitations upon our communication with one another.
The world of communication and of “distance,” in which we all speak to maintain some sort of
privacy, personal dignity, and poise, is a dynamic world, and has an order and character quite its own.
In this social and moral order the conception which each of us has of himself is limited by the
conception which every other individual, in the same limited world of communication, has of
himself, and of every other individual. He is able to maintain them, however, only to the extent that
he can gain for himself the recognition of everyone else whose estimate seems important; that is to
say, the estimate of everyone else who is in his set, or in his society. (1926:17)6
 Such a statement implies, of course, that the crucial struggles for status
are waged in face-to-face communication with others. The arena of such a
struggle can only be the small circle, and the small circle is progressively
disappearing from urban society, according to Park: “The growth of cities
has been accompanied by the substitution of indirect, ‘secondary’, for direct
face-to-face, ‘primary’ relations in the associations of individuals in the
community” (1925:23). The forces that destroy the neighborhood in the
urban community also destroy other primary groupings. Everything that
increases mobility—the growth of transportation and communication
systems—has an adverse effect upon primary group life. Increases in
literacy and education make the newspaper replace conversation. The
pursuit of interests supplants behavior motivated by sentiment. In this
respect, “money is the cardinal device by which values have become
rationalized and sentiments have been replaced by interests” (1925:16).
Actually, the entire basis of social solidarity in the economic order has been
changed: There remains “in the industrial organization as a whole a certain
sort of social solidarity, but a solidarity based, not on sentiment and habit,
but on community of interests” (1925:15–16). According to Park, as a result
of this ascendancy of secondary relations and the increased importance of
interests in modern urban conduct, the overall organization of the city is
characterized by a precarious equilibrium that can be maintained only by a
process of continuous adjustment. Urban life progresses from crisis to
crisis, and the “psychological moment” replaces the 60-second minute as a
measure of time. The crisis of the city may be seen on the front pages of the
daily newspapers and in the stock exchanges. Indeed, the stock exchange is
in a perpetual state of crisis, so that the behavior of its members is more
akin to the behavior of crowds than to the behavior of institutionalized
personnel. It may be worth noting that some later readings of Park’s work
overemphasize this latter point, painting him as an advocate of an
economistic approach to the study of urban life (Gottdiener and Hutchison
2010; Logan and Molotch 2007). While clearly Park intends to describe a
situation where people tend toward ruthless economic calculation in cities,
we find it also important to remember that much of his theory of cities
relies on an awareness that primary group relations never entirely disappear
in cities, much in the same way that Durkheim found a continued vitality of
mechanical solidarity in the age of industrial capitalism.
 For Park less dramatically, but nonetheless steadily, the deterioration of
primary group life is visible in the readjustments of the family, the church,
the school, and the neighborhood: “It is probably the breaking down of
local attachments and the weakening of the restraints and inhibitions of the
primary group, under the influence of the urban environment, which are
largely responsible for the increase of vice and crime in great cities”
(1925:25). This proposition nicely exemplifies the way in which
dichotomous thinking has blinded urban sociologists to the function of the
primary group in contemporary society. Park knew full well, and made
explicit in other essays, the primary group nature of crime and delinquency.
What he meant (but did not say) was that different, and often
unconventional, primary groupings had been substituted for the
conventional ones. He states this brilliantly in his discussion of the political
machine, but even there, primary relationships are viewed (when they are
perceived in the context of the city) as rural survivals.
For Park, the entire basis of social control is altered by the rise of cities.
He notes (1925:31) that three fundamental changes are evident:

1. The substitution of positive law for custom, and the extension of

municipal control to activities that were formerly left to individual
initiative and discretion.
2. The disposition of judges in municipal and criminal courts to
assume administrative functions so that the administration of the
criminal law ceases to be a mere application of the social ritual and
becomes an application of rational and technical methods, requiring
expert knowledge or advice, in order to restore the individual to
society and repair the injury.
3. Changes and divergencies in the mores among the isolated and
segregated groups in the city.

Perhaps no area of urban life has undergone more drastic readjustment

than that of government. The kind of government that had its origin in the
town meetings of the early American colonists has no place in the large city.
In its stead, two alternatives have emerged: the political machine and the
“good government” organizations.
The political machine is, in fact, an attempt to maintain, inside the formal administrative organization
of the city, the control of a primary group. … The relations between the boss and his ward captain
seem to be precisely that, of personal loyalty on one side and personal protection on the other. … The
virtues which such an organization calls out are the old tribal ones of fidelity, loyalty, and devotion to
the interests of the chief and the clan. The people within the organization, their friends and
supporters, continue a “we” group, while the rest of the city is merely the outer world, which is not
quite alive and not quite human in the sense in which the members of the “we” group are. We have
here something approaching the conditions of primitive society. (1925:35–36)

In contrast with the political machine, the “good government”

organizations are essentially secondary groups rationally oriented to
political life in the interests of reform. The two groups vie with one another
for the vote of the electorate.
The ecological and sociological characteristics of the city are not without
their social psychological implications. Social distance and the weakening
of primary restraints permit a great diversity of individual expression.
Whereas the small community is always peopled by one or two eccentrics,
the city consists of a world of “characters” who can always find one another
and establish themselves in their own moral regions. “Because of the
opportunity it offers, particularly to the exceptional and abnormal types of
man, a great city tends to spread out and lay bare to the public view in a
massive manner all the human characters and traits which are ordinarily
obscured and suppressed in smaller communities” (1925:45–46).
With magnificent insight, then, but without logical rigor, Park established
a number of propositions describing and explaining city life that
considerably broadened the area of theory and research in urban sociology.
Implicit in his contributions to the study of the city was a frame of reference
for the study of any sociological problem. This, however, was not made
explicit until one of his students, Louis Wirth, formulated it for application
to the study of urbanism. Park had demonstrated that the city as an
empirical event could be investigated in an ecological, social
organizational, and/or social psychological perspective. Wirth (1938)
clarified these perspectives, commented upon their interdependence, and
showed their relevance for the formulation of a systematic theory of
urbanism.

LOUIS WIRTH: URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE

Wirth’s work marks the culmination of what we have been referring to as
the classical view of urban sociology, impressed with the central
significance of the city for any interpretation of contemporary civilization.
Wirth noted the inadequacy of existing definitions of the city for any
disciplined exploration into the nature of urbanism. In his view, the
difficulties of formulating an unambiguous sociological definition of the
city are insurmountable, since any particular city seen in sociological
context is only more or less urban. Because the past always overlaps with
the present, there is no city without rural characteristics.
To a greater or lesser degree … our social life bears the imprint of an earlier folk society, the
characteristic modes of settlement of which were the farm, the manor, and the village. This historic
influence is reinforced by the circumstance that the population of the city itself is in large measure
recruited from the countryside, where a mode of life reminiscent of this earlier form of existence
persists. Hence we should not expect to find abrupt and discontinuous variation between urban and
rural types of personality. The city and the country may be regarded as two poles in reference to one
or the other of which all human settlements tend to arrange themselves. In viewing urban—industrial
and rural—folk society as ideal types of communities, we may obtain a perspective for the analysis
of the basic models of human association as they appear in contemporary civilization. (1938:3)

The presence or absence of rural characteristics, in what we are

accustomed to refer to as cities, is contingent upon many variables, among
them the unique history of the city, its function, the manner in which its
population is recruited, and/or the character of the surrounding region.
Consequently, census definitions of the city at the time (that is, as any
community with a population of 2,500 or greater) cannot be employed
fruitfully in sociological investigation. A census definition can never
guarantee that the institutional structure of communities whose population
is less than 2,500 is predominantly rural—folk. Nor can political boundaries
define a city, since it is a sociological truism that the legislated limits of a
community never coincide with its natural limits. Other definitions that
depend upon single criteria, such as population density, occupational
distributions, physical facilities, and various institutional features, also fail
to provide the sociologist with an adequate definition of the city: “A
sociologically significant definition of the city seeks to select those
elements of urbanism which mark it as a distinctive mode of human group
life” (1938:4). It is precisely this that existing definitions have not sought to
do.7
Accordingly, Wirth established five criteria that a sociological definition
of the city must satisfy:8

1. Urbanism must be defined as a mode of life.

 2. A serviceable definition of urbanism must be generic and not
particular; that is, the mode of life referred to must not arise out of
specific locally or historically conditioned cultural influences.
3. The definition should denote the essential characteristics that cities
in our culture have in common. Conversely, the definition should
not be so detailed as to include all the characteristics that our cities
have in common. Rather, the more significant features of cities—
size, density, and differences in functional type—must be included
in the definition.
4. The characteristics of cities included in the definition should be as
few in number as seems feasible for the deduction of significant
sociological propositions. (This is implicit.)
5. The definition should lend itself to the discovery of significant
variations among cities.

We may note that these five criteria suffer from at least two important
shortcomings. First, although it has been specifically stated that the
definition of urbanism must be generic, the extension of the desired
definition has been confined to the essential aspects of cities in Western
culture (if that is what is meant by “our” culture). This is undoubtedly a
result of the fact that, at the time of Wirth’s writing, sociological
information about cities in other cultures may have been sparse. Second,
there are no criteria in Wirth’s essay for distinguishing the essential from
the nonessential characteristics of cities. Wirth perceived that “some
justification may be in order for the choice of the principal terms
comprising our definition of the city” (1938:9), but in the brief discussion
that follows in his essay, no alternative characteristics are considered.
Despite these inadequacies, Wirth advanced a definition of the city that
conforms to the criteria he had established and that is demonstrated to be
useful for extending and integrating our sociological knowledge of city life:
“For sociological purposes a city may be defined as a relatively large,
dense, and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals”
(1938:8).
If it is postulated that “the larger, the more densely populated and the
more heterogeneous a community, the more accentuated the characteristics
associated with urbanism will be” (1938:9), then a series of propositions
may be deduced about the urban mode of life as it is conditioned by the
interrelated influences of the three selected variables.9 Each of the three
variables—size, density, and social heterogeneity of the population
aggregate—is treated separately by Wirth in the effort to distinguish the
consequences for social life under circumstances characterized by the
relatively high quantitative value of the variables concerned. It at once
becomes apparent, however, that the variables are so interrelated that most
of the deduced consequences flow not just from any single factor but from
the combined influence of the three. Therefore, our account of Wirth’s essay
will enumerate only the major consequences discerned in his inquiry rather
than discuss the relations between such consequences and each separate
variable.
Eight major effects upon human association and social life may be
expected to occur in communities that are typically large and whose
population is dense and socially heterogeneous. First, large numbers
ordinarily result in an increase in individual variation in the population
aggregate. This tendency is reinforced under conditions of great density. We
may note here that Wirth’s conception is close to that of Durkheim. Wirth
writes that “an increase in numbers when an area is held constant (i.e., an
increase in density) tends to produce differentiation and specialization”
(1938:14).
Since social heterogeneity is directly stimulated by density, individual
variation would be expected to increase.
Second, large numbers contribute to the segregation of population
groupings according to various commonly held characteristics, such as
color, ethnic heritage, economic and social status, or tastes and preferences.
This tendency is even more pronounced under conditions of density where
physical proximity is socially reflected as distance: “The city consequently
tends to resemble a mosaic of social worlds in which the transition from one
to the other is abrupt” (1938:15). Just as the city’s population is broken up
into distinct natural groupings, so is the personality of the urban dweller
divided into compartments.
A third effect of urban conditions is the segmentalization of personal life.
The multiplication of persons in a state of interaction under conditions which make their contact as
full personalities impossible produces that segmentalization of human relationships which has
sometimes been seized upon by students of the mental life of cities as an explanation for the
“schizoid” character of urban personality. This is not to say that the urban inhabitants have fewer
acquaintances than rural inhabitants, for the reverse may actually be true; it means rather that in
relation to the number of people whom they see and with whom they rub elbows in the course of
daily life, they know a smaller proportion and of those they have less intensive knowledge. (1938:12)

This segmentalization of personal experience is exacerbated by the

heterogeneous character of the urban population, for the city dweller is
inevitably caught up in varied and sundry social groups.
No single group has the undivided allegiance of the individual. The groups with which he is affiliated
do not lend themselves readily to a single hierarchical arrangement. By virtue of his different
interests arising out of different aspects of social life, the individual acquires membership in widely
diverse groups, each of which functions only with reference to a single segment of his personality.
Nor do these groups easily permit of a concentric arrangement so that the narrower ones fall within
the circumference of the more inclusive ones, as is more likely to be the case in the rural community
or in primitive societies. Rather the groups with which the person typically is affiliated are tangential
to each other or intersect in a highly variable fashion. (1938:16)

The characteristic apathy of many urban dwellers is quite probably linked

to the fact that one must compartmentalize one’s role-playing to carry on an
effective urban existence. It is difficult for one whose loyalty is claimed by
diverse interest groups to decide what is in one’s own best interest, or even
to make major decisions. The imposition of diverse claims upon individuals
renders it difficult for them to see their place in a total scheme of things and
frequently results in their disinvolvement from a large segment of the social
world.
A fourth effect of urbanism may be termed the depersonalization of
human association. Wirth has referred to Weber to explain the way in which
size and density bring about depersonalization: “Large numbers of
inhabitants and density of settlement,” he writes, “mean that the personal
mutual acquaintanceship between the inhabitants which ordinarily inheres
in a neighborhood is lacking” (1938:11). And this observation is valid
despite the fact that everyday contacts of city life are face-to-face contacts.
The contacts of the city may indeed be face to face, but they are nevertheless impersonal, superficial,
transitory, and segmental. The reserve, the indifference, and the blasé outlook which urbanites
manifest in their relationships may thus be regarded as devices for immunizing themselves against
the personal claims and expectations of others. (1938:12)

There is a certain similarity between some of the responses of urban

dwellers to the depersonalization of their relationships with others and what
might be termed a fifth effect of urban conditions, sophistication and
rationality. Wirth has noted in this regard that “the superficiality, the
anonymity, and the transitory character of urban social relations make
intelligible also, the sophistication and the rationality generally ascribed to
by city-dwellers” (1938:12). Not only are sophistication and rationality
associated with the large numbers and great density of the typical urban
population, but like the depersonalization of social experience, they may be
traced to the socially heterogeneous character of the city. Life in the city is a
swiftly mobile life that persistently exposes the urbanite to sharp social
contrasts and other varied stimuli. Thus, one’s awareness of the shifting,
unstable character of the world at large is enhanced: “This fact helps to
account, too, for the sophistication and cosmopolitanism of the urbanite”
(1938:16). Both the depersonalization of social life and the enhanced
rationality in the city may be interpreted as the subjective reflection of the
dominance of secondary groups over primary groups in the urban situation.
It follows that a sixth consequence of the rise of urbanism in a
community is the substitution of formal for informal social controls.
“Under … urban … circumstances competition and formal control
mechanisms furnish the substitutes for the bonds of solidarity that are relied
upon to hold a folk society together” (1938:11). The large size of the urban
population means that the residents rely on representatives rather than on
themselves in the political process.
Seventh, Wirth perceived the complexity of social stratification in the
city in a manner would not be interrogated by students of stratification until
the 1990s (Grusky 2008). Wirth pointed out that social stratification in the
city is not simply hierarchical but also multidimensional. Yet he did not
observe the importance of nonverbal symbolism in the stratification of
urbanites, nor did he detect the “crazy rhythm” of shifting status
alignments.
Finally, Wirth noted the enhanced probability of collective behavior in
the urban environment. In cities, crowds can materialize from dense
anonymity. Results may be tragic, as in the Los Angeles riots or those in the
Parisian banlieues (Wacquant 2008), or merely chaotic, as in the case of
crowd behavior in the stock market.
These eight consequences of the characteristic size, density, and
heterogeneity of urban populations do not exhaust the number set down by
Wirth in his essay. Other effects of the city were considered. Some of these
have been deliberately omitted from this exposition because they stem from
conditions that are found only in modern cities beset by the unique impact
of industrial capitalism. In omitting these items, Wirth’s own stipulation has
been regarded:
It is particularly important to call attention to the danger of confusing urbanism with industrialism
and modern capitalism. The rise of cities in the modern world is undoubtedly not independent of the
emergence of modern power-driven machine technology, mass production and capitalistic enterprise.
But different as the cities of earlier epochs may have been by virtue of their development in a
preindustrial and precapitalistic order from the great cities of today, they were, nevertheless, cities.
(1938:7–8)

MARXIST IN THE CITY: HENRI LEFEBVRE

While Simmel, Park, and Wirth all made important contributions that
continue to guide studies of urban life, some find their work lacking
adequate consideration of the role of macrosocial structures in the
construction of urban life (for example, Gottdiener and Hutchison 2010;
Logan and Molotch 2007). All agree that the expansion of capitalist
exchange structures engender the development of large, dense,
heterogeneous cities with depersonalized relations. But little is said in their
work about how economic transactions directly impact the spaces in which
people live and interact, of how the government and economy shape cities
and ultimately give some framework to the urban experience.
Until now, we have not discussed the contributions to an urban sociology
made by the third intellectual father (along with Weber and Durkheim) of
sociology, Karl Marx. Marx’s work has generally provided sociologists with
the critical theoretical link between the macrostructures of the economy and
politics with social life in general. Marx did not himself express a
particularly elaborate vision of cities, though he did note that their
development was part and parcel of the expansion of industrial capitalism
that he decried in the nineteenth century. In his Manifesto, with Friedrich
Engels, Marx noted that
[t]he bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities,
has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a
considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. (Marx 1978:477)

But otherwise, Marx was comparably quiet on the effects of urbanization,

concerned as he was to show that all social phenomena were ultimately
based on the material, economic, productive relations of society. (Engels,
however, did produce a treatise on the life of the English working class in
1844, which included a somewhat lengthy description of the living
conditions for workers in Manchester, describing a place “so dirty that the
inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul
pools of stagnant urine and excrement” (Marx 1978:580).)
It was not until Henri Lefebvre that a fully elaborated Marxist vision of
cities would be produced. Such a Marxist vision requires understanding
social developments throughout history as being engendered by
developments in the material realm, largely the realm of economic relations
(Marx 1978). Writing in the 1960s and 1970s, Lefebvre traced a history of
how cities, particularly in Europe and North America, had changed since
the Roman era. The move to a Gesellschaft-like society began, in
Lefebvre’s estimation, in towns that developed as long ago as the twelfth
century, as “contractual (stipulated) relationships replaced customs”
(Lefebvre 1991:263). Towns of this epoch were increasingly the center of
trade networks, and Lefebvre observes that economic exchange begins to
replace more primal relationships. Exchange also displaces the importance
of religion as a shaper of towns, as shrines and churches increasingly share
pride of place with marketplaces. From the sixteenth century onward, the
capitalistic nature of urban space accelerated, and towns and cities replace
the countryside as the chief sites of practical and economic activities
(Lefebvre 1991:268). By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, European
cities were further developed alongside the violent upheavals that
accompanied the burgeoning of industrial capitalism. Lefebvre, like Marx,
characterizes these conflicts, such as the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic wars, as driven by states’ pursuit of capital accumulation. The
spoils of war were then invested in cities and towns, in the building of both
architecture and infrastructure (278), but more explicitly in commemorative
gates, arches, and columns—to this day, we may observe how these riches
were put to use in Trafalgar Square, the Brandenburger Tor, or the Arc de
Triomphe (277).
To Lefebvre, the outcome of this process is generally characterized by the
triumph of what he calls “abstract space” (Lefebvre 1991:49). The space of
earlier epochs generally includes “absolute space,” “made up of fragments
of nature located at sites which were chosen for their intrinsic qualities
(cave, mountaintop, spring, river)” (48), and “historical space,” which was
this same absolute space with an additional overlay of political or religious
valence (here Lefebvre is conjuring anything from oracular spaces like
Delphi to consecrated battlefields). With capitalist accumulation, however,
abstract space, disconnected from a place’s particularities, comes to the
fore, obliterating the unique qualities that had formerly characterized
humans’ relations to their space.
Extending his analysis of the domination of abstract space, Lefebvre goes
on to describe the concomitant domination of the use value of space by its
exchange value. Using the terminology Marx used to describe commodities,
Lefebvre notes that where formerly people interacted in and with space that
was uniquely endowed with meanings (a church, one’s home, a particular
park), and that such space thus constituted use values, the progression of
capitalism now dictates that spaces are increasingly perceived as exchange
values. Marx described exchange values as the pure economic worth of a
thing, its price, absent any consideration of what it is good for. “And,” notes
Lefebvre, “exchange implies interchangeability”—spaces lose their unique
value and meaning (337).
Like Marx, Lefebvre also proposes a sort of revolution to turn back
capitalism, and to return space to the benefit of the individuals who interact
with and within space. In The Production of Space he calls for the
production of “differential” space to overcome the domination exchange
value and abstract space. Rather than emphasizing homogeneity and
interchangeability, this differential space “accentuates differences. It will
also restore unity to what abstract space breaks up—to the functions,
elements and moments of social practice” (52). This space would allow
people to lead more unified lives, to harmonize their work, home, and play
lives.
Lefebvre discusses this latter aspect of play and festivals in his other
major work on the city, “Right to the City” (1996[1968]). And he does so
with an eye to interaction, seeing the city as a mediator between the “near
order” of human and group interactions and the “far order” of macrosocial
forces such as the church, state, and economy. Lefebvre’s theory is thus a
refined Marxism, not given to the reductionist economic determinism often
found in Marxian theory. Like Wirth and Simmel, Lefebvre theorizes
urbanism as something that is distinct from the concrete aspects of the city.
Lefebvre’s urban is a “social reality made up of relations which are to be
conceived of, constructed or reconstructed by thought” (103). While it is
inexorably tied to practical and material conditions, as described above,
Lefebvre sees urbanism as a force in and of itself.
 Importantly for Lefebvre, this urbanism should be comprised of moments
of “play, sexuality, physical activities such as sport, creative activity, art and
knowledge” (1996[1968]:147). But generally he laments that such moments
are rare in the abstract space of the fragmented city, where life’s activities
are broken up into a mundane division of tasks all oriented toward the
expansion of exchange value. Ultimately Lefebvre holds out great hope for
urbanism. “Urban life,” he writes, “has yet to begin” (150)—meaning that
the great life of the city that is to be found in ecstatic moments has not
come to fruition. But he feels that it can and will, carried by the working
class when they take advantage of their inherent “right to the city,”
interacting in groups in a space that is once again celebrated as a use value.
Of course, Lefebvre perhaps leans a bit too much toward an overtly
revolutionary Marxism in this conclusion. But his work has been
appropriated widely, and presents an important strategy for linking
macrosocial, especially economic, forces to everyday urban life. His work
is an important touchstone for later sociologies of urban development, such
as Logan and Molotch’s “growth machine” model (2007), as well as the
New Urban Sociology paradigm trumpeted by Gottdiener and Hutchison
(2010). Such authors give numerous empirical demonstrations of how
attention to government and economic forces is important for understanding
various dimensions of how urban life is formed and transformed. For
example, Logan and Molotch (2007) show how neighborhoods and
neighboring interactions act as a powerful use value in cities, one that is
often discarded by governments seeking to increase municipal tax bases and
developers looking to maximize their profits on land in a blind emphasis on
exchange value. Others (for example, Harvey 2006) emphasize the concept
of the right of the normally disempowered to shape their city, such as when
urban renewal threatens slums in places like Mumbai and Shanghai
(Weinstein and Ren 2009).

CONCLUSION
When the contributions of Park, Simmel, Wirth, and Lefebvre are
assessed to determine whether some consensus upon the common features
of modern cities may be revealed, many areas of agreement are at once
forthcoming. Each of the four writers agrees, in the first place, that the city
is large. No city may be said to exist without a large population. Moreover,
the city must occupy a relatively large space. Its functions are extended
over a large territory far exceeding than defined by its legislated limits—in
fact, the exact limits of the city are difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain.
As Park put it, they are the product of natural forces. Furthermore, they are
in a perpetual state of flux. City boundaries vary with changes in the nature
and range of the city’s functions, and these variations in function, it may be
added, can occur within relatively minute intervals of time. The functions of
the city are altered frequently, if only by virtue of the fact that the day-to-
day activities of its population are distributed differentially over a 24-hour
period. Despite such obstacles to the precise demarcation of the city’s
spatial extent, it is clear that the city is large in a physical sense. At least it
is typically larger than its legislators have anticipated.
There is complete accord among the sociologists reviewed here that the
economic organization of the city is typified by a highly developed and
pervasive division of labor. It is this that can explain in structural terms
Wirth’s choice of social heterogeneity as a criterion for distinguishing the
city from other population aggregates. For instance, Park observed that the
specialization of occupations, signifying the development of the division of
labor, is often marked by the tendency for each occupation to take on the
aspect of a profession in the sense of developing a distinctive ethic. Ethnic
differences do not necessarily have to be introduced into the equation to
justify Wirth’s depiction of the city as a mosaic of social worlds or Park’s
designation of the city as a composite of natural areas peopled by natural
groups with divergent mores. The social heterogeneity of the city can be
explained in terms of the division of labor and its ideological ramifications.
It is, of course, also manifested in ethnic differences and other differences
originating from the diverse ways in which urban populations are recruited.
This agreement upon the typical social differentiation of the populations of
cities supports the sociologists considered here in their further assertion that
the city is a locus of contrasting social stimuli. The number, diversity, and
transitoriness of urban relationships characteristic of life in the complex
environment of the city evoke in urban dwellers the typical responses of
sophistication and the blasé attitude that distinguish their demeanor from
that of individuals living in nonurban milieus. For Park, the clash of stimuli
involved in urban relationships is aggravated by the frequent and sudden
contact that the mobile urbanite has with many socially distinct groupings.
Seen from the point of view either of social organization or of the
individual person, then, the city, as a consequence of the division of labor, is
complex.
Economic institutions are important for distinguishing urban life because
they underlie occupational specialization. In addition, money and its
exchange for goods and services, all writers agree, capture in symbolic
fashion an important aspect of urbanism. When Park, for example,
submitted that the business center is the city par excellence, he was merely
demonstrating the reversibility of Simmel’s contention that the city was the
seat of the money economy. The importance of the money economy for
depicting the city as a type-phenomenon inheres, as Wirth has said, in the
fact that the use of money introduces a new basis of relationship into human
association.
The development of large cities, at least in the modern age, was largely dependent upon the
concentrative force of steam. The rise of the factory system made possible mass production for an
impersonal market. The fullest exploitation of the possibilities of the division of labor and mass
production, however, is possible only with standardization of processes and products. A money
economy goes hand in hand with such a system of production. Progressively as cities have developed
upon a background of this system of production, the pecuniary nexus which implies the
purchasability of services and things has displaced personal relations as the basis of association.
(1938:17)

Park and Simmel also pointed out the importance of money exchange for
stimulating abstract reasoning among the members of the urban population.
Lefebvre went on to demonstrate how the overarching power of the money
economy could have a powerful influence on space, sapping its uniqueness
or razing neighborhoods in the name of progress.
Park regarded political reform as a distinctive emergent of modern urban
life. However, Park pessimistically perceived reform and the political
machine as contending forces that had not yet become reconciled.
That the sociologists reviewed above agree upon these distinctive
institutional features of city life signals another (and perhaps the most
important) area of agreement. This can be found in their discussion of the
altered nature of social organization and social control that urban conditions
induce. Ironically, as population density within cities increased, each writer
observed that the opportunity for close social contact is lessened in the city.
Despite the fact that social contacts increase in number with increasing
urbanization, they are devoid of intimate content. In their view, the small
social circle is disappearing from urban society as secondary relations are
substituted for primary relations in every area of life. Neighborhoods
become progressively more disorganized. The community is being replaced
by associations, firms, or interest groups. The solidarity of the family and
the church is broken up by the rise of cities. Changes such as these in the
nature of social relationships call forth typical changes in the area of social
control. In general, formal controls come more and more to replace the
informal control mechanisms. According to these writers, the decreasing
significance of the primary group in urban social organization has taken its
toll in a vast weakening of moral consensus and has necessitated a reliance
upon law to succeed custom as the prime regulating agency of urban life.
It is in observations like these that the influence of Maine, Tönnies, and
Durkheim is most readily apprehended. Contract, Gesellschaft, and organic
solidarity have become identified with urbanism. In Park’s case, however,
some exceptions to the general rule that secondary relations were
destroying the opportunities for establishing primary relations in the city
were noted. Park, for instance, observed that to a certain extent immigrant
groups segregated themselves into particular districts in the city in order to
maintain more primary associations with those who shared a common
language and culture.
One dimension of the change in the character of the primary group under
the impact of urbanization is the preponderance of unconventional over
conventional primary groups in certain regions of the city. Many examples
of these unconventional groupings, together with a consideration of their
importance for the larger social order, are in existing studies of gangs and
the criminal underworld. Perhaps another dimension can be found in the
implications of Park’s discussion of the political machine. Here it is
suggested that the contexts within which primary relationships are carried
on have changed. Specifically, Park’s observations indicate that whereas
primary groupings were formerly carried on in informal community
organizations and comprised an integral part of those organizations, as
urbanization progresses, they come more and more to be contained in
formal organizational or associational contexts. A fruitful hypothesis to
pursue in this area would assert that every formal social structure contains
informally patterned relationships of varying degrees of intimacy that
permit the exercise of primary controls to regulate the collective conduct of
the larger formal organization. But to liken such informal relationships, as
Park did, to primitive tribal structures or to refer to them as clanlike
residues of a bygone age seems farfetched indeed. Or to say that a city is
less a city because of this, as Wirth implied, seems only to impede our
understanding of urban life.
Park said that politicians in the city are professional neighbors—which
does not necessarily make them any less neighbors. Another dimension of
the altered nature of the primary group might be located in the exchange of
intimacy and the building of primary, or at least intimate, social
relationships as professional investments that characterize the politician’s
and other professionals’ roles in the city.
We have tried to demonstrate in this chapter how the theoretical origins
of existing propositions that purport to describe and explain urban life have
affected the contributions of specialists in urban sociology. The conceptual
distinctions of Maine, Tönnies, and Durkheim between status and contract,
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and mechanical and organic solidarity,
respectively, have often been interpreted as antithetical polar dichotomies in
which one pole is representative of rural life and the other of urban life.
Such an interpretation seems to apply correctly only to the conceptual
scheme of Maine; it must be qualified when applied to the theoretical
systems of Tönnies and Durkheim, both of whom viewed the contrasting
concepts that they formulated as each having a place in the explanation of
the other.
The contributions of Simmel, Park, Wirth, and Lefebvre were discussed
as instances of the kind of influence that was exerted on twentieth-century
sociology by the more generalized theories of social organization proposed
by Maine, Tönnies, Durkheim, and later Marx. Each of these specialized
theoretical contributions to urban sociology was characterized by a view of
urban life that singled out its typical polar opposition to rural life.
Consequently, the significance of primary or close personal relations for an
adequate understanding of urbanism was neglected, glossed over, or
obfuscated. Merely because primary relations take on different forms in the
context of the city, or because they are apparently outnumbered by more
easily identifiable secondary relations, does not necessarily mean that they
have decreased in importance or that they have lost their significance. As
we shall indicate in the following chapters, sociologists have accumulated
ample evidence for the persistence of communal ties within urban settings.
This necessitates our interactionist paradigm for the study of urban social
relations.
NOTES
1. Compare here the idea of the “lonely crowd” later developed by Riesman (1950).
2. The incompatibility of freedom and equality is discussed in another of Simmel’s essays. See
Simmel (1971:219).
3. See, for example, Anderson and Chen (2002).
4. See, for example, “Exchange” (Simmel 1971:43–69), “Conflict” (1971:70–95), “Sociability”
(1971:127–140), and “Group Expansion and the Development of Individuality” (1971:251–293).
5. Small’s translations of Simmel’s essays in the early volumes of American Journal of Sociology
are listed in Simmel (1950a:lviii–lix).
6. Note the anticipation of the epoch of mass distribution by Max Weber (1958a).
7. For an incisive treatment of this issue, see John Gulick (1973).
8. These are paraphrased and summarized from Wirth (1938:4–8).
9. In this respect it is important to note that only three variables were extracted from the definitions
of the city as a basis for the deduction of propositions. The variable of permanence is given no
further role in Wirth’s discussion. The point is raised here for two reasons: (1) permanence is
undoubtedly as much a variable as size, density, or social heterogeneity of the population aggregate
and, as such, deserves some consideration in the essay, and (2) it may be that what we have often
regarded as typical urban phenomena (high crime rate, low birth rate, and so on) decline as cities
become older or more permanent.
 PART II

EXPERIENCING CITY LIFE

 CHAPTER 3

The Rediscovery of Community

A major preoccupation of sociological work has been to question, to

examine critically, and often to take issue with commonly held ideologies,
images, beliefs, and stereotypes. Some, indeed, have suggested that
sociology is an inherently revolutionary discipline, given its frequent
concern with testing the validity of long-standing truisms. Peter Berger
underscores this aspect of the sociological consciousness. Regarding what
he calls the “debunking” motif of sociological analysis, he writes:
The sociological frame of reference, with its built-in procedure of looking for levels of reality other
than those given in the official interpretations of society, carries with it a logical imperative to
unmask the pretensions and the propaganda by which men cloak their actions with one another.
(Berger 1963:38)

Among other things, sociologists have questioned long-standing beliefs

about the poor, have demonstrated the faulty character of racial stereotypes,
have uncovered the informal aspects of formal organizations, and have
exposed the diverse sexual practices maintained by various groups. They
have succeeded in showing that shorthand characterizations of the social
world tend to oversimplify its complexity. While generalizations about
social life help to make our individual and collective experiences more
intelligible, such generalizations are, by definition, based upon only
selected aspects of social reality. Therefore, a continuing task of the
sociological enterprise must be to uncover those features of social life that
lie beneath the veneer of accepted knowledge about the world. In some
instances we shall come to see the necessity of thoroughly rejecting certain
images; in other cases our data will dictate that these images be specified
and clarified.
To this general characterization of the goal of sociological research we
must add a specification that carries us into the subject matter of this
chapter. It is that scientific knowledge accepted as truth when produced
may later be found wanting. Indeed, in his book The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn (1967) argued that scientific progress is founded
on demonstrating the inadequacy of prior explanation. Subsequently, in
Chaos of Disciplines, Andrew Abbott (2001) discusses progress in social
scientific disciplines and traces the movement that knowledge seekers make
between generally polar divisions. So, for example, sociologists tend to
move between quantitative and qualitative poles. And even within the
qualitative camp of ethnographers, there are some who are more given to
using some quantitative data while others are wholly devoted to qualitative
descriptions of experience. There exists, in other words, the risk that our
scientific explanations may be partial, incomplete, or wholly illusory. Still
more to the point, sociologists, as do all scientists, create images of the
social world that are incorrect, misleading, or in need of revision in the face
of historical process. Ordinarily these faulty images acquire, largely through
continued use, an unquestioned legitimacy as part of a discipline’s accepted
body of knowledge. Scientists may fail to question unremittingly the
continuing truth value of certain of their key ideas. In this chapter we seek
to show that the sociological image of the city described earlier in this book
represented one such case of a long-standing conceptual misunderstanding.
In Chapters 1 and 2 we traced the theoretical and empirical roots of much
urban sociology. We documented a tradition that pictures the progressive
disappearance of warm, sustaining, community social relations. It is a
tradition that paints an unceasingly negative picture of life in urbanized
areas. From Durkheim’s perspective, the decline in traditional communities
poses the grave problem that “without strong local communities, our wider
civic existence risks becoming abstract and hollow” (Cladis 2005:404). In
his book The City, Max Weber (1958b) pointed out that the large number of
inhabitants and the population density (in cities) combine to increase the
likelihood of impersonal, anonymous relations. Georg Simmel (1971) saw
the “psychic life” of the urban dweller threatened by the overwhelming
tempo of everyday existence.
The theoretical images provided by these writers were given credence in
the empirical work of most early American sociologists. Following the
tenor of their European predecessors, many sociologists at the University of
Chicago saw the growth of cities typified by the substitution of indirect and
secondary relations for direct, face-to-face, primary relations. The
observations of Robert Park and his students bolstered the belief that the
sources of social control represented by the family, the neighborhood, and
the local community were largely undermined by the demands of a rational
urban existence. In all this writing, the city was on trial. The charge was to
be found in the nineteenth-century theoretical conceptions of the city and
the overwhelmingly damaging evidence in the observations of the city by
Park and others. The verdict seemed a nearly unanimous one: the city had,
indeed, killed community.
There must, of course, be some truth to this sociologically created image.
Were it glaringly incorrect and thoroughly contrary to our commonsense
experience of city life, it would have been quickly rejected. We prefer to
say that such a view has a relative validity. No one can doubt that the city is
different from the small town in important respects. The city is “a relatively
large, dense and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous
individuals” (Wirth 1938). We maintain, however, that too rigorous a
comparison of urban and small-town life led to an incomplete picture of
urban social relations.
The tendency to see the two types of social organization (small town and
city or Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft) as opposites, as examples of what
the other is not, badly obscures elements of both. Forms of social
organization are not static, but are in a continual state of change. In looking
at urban life, then, the focus ought not to be on whether various features of
human relations are existent or nonexistent in some absolute sense, but
instead on how they may have been, or are in the process of being, modified
and transformed. We should not ask whether primary relations exist in cities
just as they do in small towns. The question is a comforting one in that it
yields a clear, decisive answer—certainly they do not! At the same time the
question is misleading. It does not cause us, or allow us, to understand how
primary relations in cities have assumed new forms.
 Strong social bonds and a distinctively integrated group life do exist
among urbanites. They are simply not quite so obvious, not quite so easy to
observe. They must be uncovered, discovered. Our argument in the pages
that follow centers on the idea that we must reconceptualize our long-held
sociological beliefs about the nature of urban community. Even in a digital
age, we shall work to show that “a lively primary group life survives in the
urban area, and primary controls are effective over wide segments of the
population. The alleged anonymity, depersonalization, and rootlessness of
city life may be the exception rather than the rule” (Wilensky 1966:136).
Even among those sociologists who trumpet the arrival of the “network
society”—vast interconnected communities divorced from spatial
boundaries through the power of digital communication technologies—
there is agreement that spatial communities and neighborhoods remain
important and vibrant (Wellman 2001). As a first step in establishing the
validity of this position, we must consider the use made by social scientists
of the idea of community.

THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNITY

The concept of community has been a troublesome one in sociology. It
has come to be applied to such a wide diversity of situations, settings, and
forms of group life that it has lost much of its distinctiveness as an
analytical tool for investigation. We speak, for example, of rural
communities, urban communities, neighborhood communities, and
communities of scholars. We have come to use the term in its most generic
form to describe any collectivity of persons sharing values, ideas, or
lifestyles. The difficulties of its usage were already highlighted in a 1955
article by the sociologist George Hillery, who documented 94 separate
definitions offered by sociologists for the concept of community. Since
then, urban sociology has not come any closer to a consensus definition of
community, and we now have to contend with still more terms that share
connotations with “community,” such as “social capital” (often drawing on
Putnam’s (2000) work) or “neighborhood effects” (a literature reviewed in
Sampson, Morenoff, and Gannon-Rowley (2002)). Scott and Marshall
(2009) suggest that “ambiguities of the term community make any wholly
coherent sociological definition of communities, and hence the scope and
limits for their empirical study, impossible to achieve.” We submit,
however, that despite this general confusion, an analysis of some of the
most widely accepted definitions of community reveals common themes.
Roland Warren (1972), for example, considers community to be “that
combination of social units and systems which perform the major social
functions having locality relevance” (9). He goes on to specify the social
functions that he has in mind. He suggests that a community must function
to produce and to distribute the goods and services necessary for the
maintenance of a particular locality. A community must, as well, generate
social control mechanisms to ensure a predictable behavioral order. Third, a
community must provide institutional sources for social participation by its
members (churches, schools, businesses, recreational facilities, and the
like). Finally, a community must be a context in which individuals find the
mutual support provided by a primary social relationship.
Other writers put greatest emphasis on one or another specific criterion.
Talcott Parsons (1959), whose life’s work was to understand the
interdependence between the various units of a society, emphasized the
nature of social systems shared by a population of persons inhabiting a
common geographical location. Marvin Sussman (1959) puts greatest stress
on the structure of community interactions allowing persons to meet
individual needs and resolve collective group problems. There is, as well, a
long history of research on largely nonurban communities that has become
part of the tradition of American sociology. In many community case
studies from the mid-twentieth century (Lynd and Lynd 1929, 1937;
Redfield 1955; Seeley, Sim, and Loosely 1956; Vidich and Bensman 1958;
Warner and Lunt 1941; West 1945), to more recent efforts (Hyra 2008;
Venkatesh 2006; Wilson and Taub 2006), greatest attention has been paid to
the shared institutional and cultural realities of a geographically identifiable
population. As symbolic interactionists we find appealing a number of
studies that have emphasized the nature of social interaction as a primary
feature of community life. So, for example, we can look to Duneier’s work
that shows how a group of (largely homeless) book vendors who are
perceived by some in their neighborhood as pariahs form a cohesive
community unto themselves (Duneier 1999). At the other end of the social
spectrum, Sassen’s work on “global cities” discusses how a global network
of multinational corporations and their highly educated representatives
operate as a community within a network of cities at the core of the world’s
financial markets in places like New York, Sao Paolo, and Tokyo (Sassen
2001).
We could continue to list a large number of definitions that differ slightly
from one another. At this point, however, it seems fair to say that the
following are important features of community life:

1. Community is generally seen as delineated by a geographically,

territorially, or spatially circumscribed area.
2. The members of a community are seen as bound together by a
number of characteristics or attributes held in common (values,
attitudes, ethnicity, social class, and so on).
3. The members of a community are engaged in some form of
sustained social interaction.

We have ordered these three general characteristics according to the

frequency with which they are mentioned as criteria for the existence or
nonexistence of community. That is, there seems to be some uniform
agreement among social scientists that, at the very least, a population of
persons must share a clear spatial or ecological structure before a
community can be said to exist.1 An examination of Hillery’s findings
shows that the criterion of a geographical area shared by some population is
to be found, either explicitly or implicitly, in virtually all 94 definitions.
This is not unexpected, since the tradition of sociological thought about the
city finds its origin in a silent comparative reference to the geographically
well-contained rural or peasant community. If the members of some
collectivity are able to generate a degree of communal cohesion, if persons
are to share a common set of values, if there is to exist a mutual concern for
individual needs, if warm primary relations are to develop, it is likely to
happen to persons who share a common physical space. Geographical
stability, given this image of the peasant community, appears as the sine qua
non of community life. This is a central point because we believe that a
good part of our difficulty in fully comprehending the nature of city life
stems from sociologists’ past overreliance on geographic or spatial
variables. To see how this is so, we must examine a theory that has
particularly dominated sociological investigation of urban life. We must
look to the work of those who analyzed the city in primarily ecological
terms.
ECOLOGICAL CONCEPTIONS OF URBAN COMMUNITY
As noted in Chapters 1 and 2, classical European writers approached the
city from the perspective of its institutional structures—its division of labor,
its economic system, and the like—and largely engaged in secondary
analyses of historical and ethnographic data gathered previously by other
investigators. Georg Simmel departed somewhat from this approach
through his reliance on imaginative introspection. Even in his case,
however, we find no systematic observational studies of specific urban
institutions, populations, or communities. European thinkers, although
residents of major urban areas themselves, tended to view the city from a
distance. Only with the emergence of the Chicago School of Sociology did
the notion of the city as a research laboratory develop. It was largely under
the influence of Robert Park, a former journalist whose previous work had
sensitized him to the necessity for firsthand observation of the human
drama, that researchers began to investigate various “slices” of urban life.
The spirit of much of the work done during this period is caught in Park’s
methodological directive to his students:
You have been told to go grubbing in the library thereby accumulating a mass of notes and a liberal
coating of grime. You have been told to choose problems wherever you can find musty stacks of
routine records based on trivial schedules prepared by tired bureaucrats and filled out by reluctant
applicants for aid or fussy do gooders or indifferent clerks. This is called “getting your hands dirty in
real research.” Those who counsel you are wise and honorable; the reasons they offer are of great
value. But one more thing is needful; first-hand observation. Go and sit in the lounges of the luxury
hotels and on the doorsteps of the flophouses; sit on the Gold Coast settees and on the slum
shakedowns; sit in the orchestra hall and in the Star and Garter Burlesque. In short, gentlemen, go get
the seats of your pants dirty in real research. (McKinney 1966:71)

It was not enough, however, that these researchers share a common

methodological orientation. Park’s further contribution was to delineate a
set of theoretical questions that gave these separate investigations a uniform
purpose and direction. In 1915, Park wrote a position paper in which he
raised a set of research questions that became the focus for a generation of
urban sociologists. Among other questions, he asked: What exactly makes
cities grow? Is there a natural patterning to city growth and population
distribution? What is the structure of urban neighborhoods? How do social
institutions change with the growth of cities?
These questions caused researchers to focus their investigations on the
ecological structure of the city. The commitment to view the city in
ecological terms provided the theoretical impetus for nearly all the research
conducted at Chicago between 1915 and 1940. Ecology became the
theoretical thread that would ultimately hold together the comprehensive
image of urban life that Chicago sociologists were working to produce. One
of the most influential of the early ecologists, R. D. McKenzie, specified the
goal of ecological investigation this way:
The spatial and sustenance relations in which human beings are organized are ever in the process of
change in response to the operation of a complex of environmental and cultural forces. It is the task
of the human ecologist to study these processes of change in order to ascertain their principles of
operation and the nature of the forces producing them. (McKenzie 1925:167)

Although a formal theory of ecology was not spelled out until 1950 with
the appearance of Amos Hawley’s Human Ecology: A Theory of
Community Structure, urban ecologists shared from the beginning the view
that human community life was essentially analogous to the structure of
other biological communities, and generations of sociologists were taught at
Chicago using Park and Burgess’s “Green Book,” the Introduction to the
Science of Sociology (1921), which made liberal use of ecological
metaphors such as “succession,” “competition,” and “adaptation” (Deegan
2001; Sampson 2012). Human beings, like any other organism, must
somehow adapt to the particular environmental contingencies that they face
daily. Community was understood to be “the patterns of symbiotic and
communalistic relations that develop in a population; it [community] is in
the nature of a collective response to the habitat; it [community] constitutes
the adjustment of organisms” (Hawley 1950:v).
Equipped with a common methodological and theoretical base, a number
of researchers conducted studies of subgroups or subcommunities within
the city. In each case, the concern was to discover the kinds of adaptations
made by communities of persons to their particular urban environments. It
was a time of great activity and research productivity. In characterizing
these researches, Howard Becker describes each as constituting one piece in
a mosaic of urban life: “Individual studies can be like pieces of mosaic and
were so in Park’s day. Since the picture of the mosaic was Chicago, the
research had an ethnographic, case history flavor, even though Chicago
itself was seen as somehow representative of all cities” (Becker 1970:421).
These studies were important because their collective force was to show
that urbanites did not adapt very well to the contingencies placed on them
by the urban environment. Consider the tone of some of these better-known
ethnographies.
Harvey Zorbaugh (1937) documented the extreme personal
demoralization and destructive impersonality of Chicago’s rooming-house
district. The largest proportion of persons in this area was transients; they
were without families and without personal ties. As described by Zorbaugh,
it was an area in which social controls had virtually disappeared. It was
clear that here no “normal” community life could develop. Nels Anderson
(1923) documented the pathology-producing effects of city life in his
analysis of homeless men. The hobo, living in a rootless, impersonal urban
“jungle,” was somehow symbolic of what the urban world was making of
many. Paul Cressey (1932) focused his attention on immigrants to Chicago.
He painted a nearly pathetic picture of persons so starved for personal
relations that the “taxi dance hall” (a ballroom in which one purchased
tickets to dance with women for a specified time) could become a viable
urban institution.
In addition, a series of studies related a variety of social problems to
urban existence. Ernest Mowrer (1927) argued that family disorganization,
as reflected in divorce statistics, could not be disassociated from the general
decline of primary group controls and increasing individualization in the
city. Frederick Thrasher (1926) seemed to provide evidence of the city as a
cause of behavioral disorder in his investigation of over 1,300 gangs in
Chicago. Faris and Dunham (1939) documented varying rates of mental
illness in different ecological areas of the city. They showed that rates of
mental illness systematically declined as one traveled from the central city
to the periphery of the city. They claimed that their study established the
fact that “insanity, like other social problems, fits into the ecological
structure of the city.” In much the same fashion, Clifford Shaw (1966)
demonstrated that rates of juvenile delinquency varied with the ecological
structure of the city.
These works did, indeed, have a flavor to them. Despite their failure, by
and large, to produce comprehensive theories about the city, despite their
pretensions to objectivity, and despite the ministerial moralisms directed at
the pathologies of city life that “infected” their pages, these works
succeeded in doing something good ethnographies ought to do. They gave
the reader a gut feeling for relatively unknown aspects of urban life. We
could empathize with the hobo; we could begin to understand how
immigrants coped with their new urban status; and we were provided an
intimate picture of such diverse groups as waitresses, juvenile thieves, gang
members, ghetto dwellers, and the wealthy.
Taken together, these works contributed to the development of “social
disorganization” as an academically respectable field of inquiry during the
1930s and 1940s. These studies also seemed to provide confirmation for the
more general ecological theory of city growth proposed by the sociologist
Ernest Burgess (1925). Burgess developed a picture of urban growth and
process by focusing on the spatial distribution of population numbers and
patterns of geographical mobility in the city. The assumption underlying
Burgess’s work is the central tenet of urban ecological analysis generally. It
is that the typical spatial order of any city is a product of, and reflects, the
moral order. Still more explicitly, Burgess tried to show that city growth
eventuated in the development of a number of natural ecological areas.
Much of his work is devoted to describing these natural areas, which, he
believed, would mark the growth of any city. Based on his investigation of
Chicago, Burgess’s argument was for a growth pattern best characterized by
a series of concentric circles or zones.
The first circle or area that clearly comes into focus is the central
business district. The modern city grows up around the market. Here we
find the greatest density and mobility of population. Mobility is especially
great because of the existence of mass transportation that easily moves
persons into and out of the central city. For the early ecologist, the central
business sector, with its continuous activity, tightly packed buildings, and
emphasis on rational pecuniary social arrangements, is the city par
excellence. It is the central business district with its banks, department
stores, hotels, theaters, museums, and so on that most readily comes to
mind when most of us think about the city.
As Burgess describes it, we find around the city center a zone of
transition. It is in this ecological area (composed of warehouses and slums)
that vice, poverty, depersonalization, and social disorganization are most
pronounced. That Chicago sociologists had a particular fascination with this
natural area is evidenced by the number of ethnographies on life in it. Here
were Zorbaugh’s rooming houses, Cressey’s taxi dance hall, and Anderson’s
hoboes; here also were the highest rates of delinquency, mental illness, and
family disintegration. Beyond the zone of transition, there is a zone largely
populated by working-class families. This was a primary residential area
composed of second-generation immigrants who still found their
employment in the center of the city but had been able to escape from the
zone of transition. Still further toward the periphery of the city, we find a
residential zone populated largely by middle-class persons living either in
single dwellings or in well-maintained apartment buildings. Finally,
Burgess described a suburban zone composed of economically advantaged,
geographically stable, upper-class commuters to the city.
Burgess’s hypothesis aroused tremendous controversy among his
contemporaries. Homer Hoyt (1939), for example, suggested that cities did
not take on the ecological pattern suggested by Burgess. Rather, he thought;
cities grew in sectors along the main lines of transportation. His model of
the city, then, consisted of a series of sectors or bands that followed
economic activity. He also suggested that residences clustered along the
boundaries of bands. Rather than a concentric zone configuration, therefore,
the city was pictured more like a starfish or spoked wheel. The
disagreement did not stop with these two descriptions. Harris and Ullman
(1945) argued that neither the concentric zonal nor the sector hypothesis
best fit the natural ecology of the city. They provided yet another model that
posited the existence of “multiple nuclei,” each nucleus representing a
specific concentration of specialized activities growing up around facilities
in that nucleus.
It is not our purpose to indicate the full complexity of these debates. We
may see that, regardless of dissimilarities in the particular configurations,
all the descriptions remain wholly ecological in nature. The presumption is
that cities, and the specific communities contained within them, can be
understood in terms of the economic and social activities and the
demographic characteristics of the population inhabiting a natural
ecological area. This was the guiding hypothesis of each of the studies
reviewed earlier.
In all fairness to these ecological conceptions or characterizations of the
city, we should say a few more words about what Burgess and others hoped
to accomplish through their ecological constructions. It has, for example,
been suggested that Burgess’s hypothesis was incorrect for a number of
reasons. First, it was generated by looking at Chicago in the 1920s.
Burgess’s critics question the representativity of that city. Second, more
recent urbanologists have claimed that his ideas do not apply to today’s
cities. It is increasingly the case today that cities are carefully planned.
Burgess described a city that, to that point, had grown naturally, without
any outside planning intervention. The idea of planned cities could not, of
course, have entered into Burgess’s formulations because the
implementation of urban planning, particularly in the United States, is
rather recent. To some extent, however, these criticisms misunderstand
Burgess’s intent.
Burgess was considerably more sophisticated than his fellow critics
allow. He did, after all, live in Chicago and was obviously aware that Lake
Michigan, for example, cut into the symmetry of his concentric zones. In
other words, Burgess knew that he was not describing a city in absolute
terms.
He was, rather, creating what sociologists refer to as an ideal type. As
noted in Chapter 1, an ideal type is a tool to help social scientists ask
questions about phenomena as they engage in analysis. As social scientists
construct an ideal type, they recognize that it is an intellectual invention of
sorts. They realize that there is nothing in the real world perfectly fitting
their ideal picture. Instead, the ideal type becomes a kind of yardstick
against which what does exist in the real world can be evaluated. The ideal
type, we might say, represents a series of assumptions about the
organization of social life. After we specify these assumptions, we can ask,
“How may we expect things to look given these assumptions?” For
Burgess, as for other ecologists, their explanations, their ideal types, their
images of the city rested on three basic assumptions:

Individuals do not act alone. They act collectively, in aggregates.

Such aggregates are usually organized in social terms.
Behavior and social organization are rational and can be described as
such.
All actors have adequate knowledge of market and economic
processes and will use space in the city on the basis of that
knowledge.

Burgess was proposing that if people in fact behave rationally, have

knowledge of the market for social space, and behave as part of an
aggregate, then we should see cities developing in such and such a manner.
Like other ecologists, he was interested in isolating the factors that would
account for city growth and, thereby, for the social organization of
communities in the city. It is our position that these ecological assumptions
and emphases were inadequate and constrained our understanding of urban
communities. Let us consider how our symbolic interactionist approach
leads us to critique the ecological perspective that we have been describing.

ECOLOGY AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Ultimately our continued investigations of the city have demonstrated
that the ecological perspective is inadequate to understanding the full range
of sociality within cities. Ecologists seemed either to forget or to disregard
the fact that space has meaning for people. If we are to develop ideal types,
we must be careful to create as close a fit as possible between our
assumptions and empirical reality. We disagree with the ecological
assumptions that we have named because it seems clear that individuals do
not behave only in terms of the economic value of space. More frequently,
we suggest, persons relate to their social space in sentimental or emotional
terms. This point has been documented time and again by anthropologists
(Cieraad 1999; Hall 1966) and social psychologists alike (Bell, Greene,
Fisher, and Baum 2005; Sommer 1969). Both show enormous cultural
differences in persons’ attitudes toward the uses of physical space. Theirs is
a compelling argument that the meaning of social space cannot be
conceived only in economic/geographic terms.
Ecologists concentrate so much on the physical features of city space that
they have relatively little to tell us about behavior and social organization.
We learn little from ecological theory about the social psychology of city
life. As symbolic interactionists, we see the need to assess the relationship
between space, the symbolic meaning attached to space, and human
behavior itself. The sentimental value attached to urban space, for example,
has been clearly documented by a group of sociologists led by William
Julius Wilson and Richard Taub. These researchers showed that Chicago
neighborhoods are not merely spatial areas to be fitted into concentric
circles, zones, or nuclei. If we wish to understand Chicago as a city, we
must, as Wilson and Taub show, consider the symbolic value, the history,
the meaning attached to its various spatial features. The Chicago
communities they describe do not exist merely because persons share a
common ecological space that served a set of rational individual and
collective economic functions. The communities’ existence is more bound
up in the mutual symbolic value placed on that territorial area and on the
adherence to local behavioral norms and customs. Wilson and Taub express
the issue this way in discussing the neighborhood they call Beltway:
Neighborhood social organization over the years had been enhanced by several factors. These
included a network of dense acquaintances, the presence of extended families, a high level of
residential stability, vibrant community organizations, powerful local political ties and common
ethnic, racial, and class backgrounds. However … neighborhood social organization also benefited
from a common belief system, widely shared by the residents, that integrated social conservatism,
patriotism, and sentiments concerning adherence to neighborhood standards. (Wilson and Taub
2006:45–46)

We may extrapolate from Wilson and Taub’s argument. It is the sentiment

attached to urban areas, the whole range of meanings attached to urban
areas (and here we must, of course, include economic meanings), that
essentially determines the shape and social organization of cities.
In extending this discussion, we must be very careful in our assessment
of natural ecological boundaries. Ecologists tend to see certain features of
the landscape as creating natural barriers. Surely, for example, we cannot
consider city rivers merely as barriers or boundaries. There is more
involved than that. Rivers may be related to, and thought about, as objects
of beauty, as focal points for recreation, and possibly as central to persons’
images of the city as a whole. It is not the boundary alone that determines
forms of social organizations or communities. It is, rather, how we think
about, interpret, and give meaning to natural barriers. We must ask whether
physical barriers are also social barriers. The description of some features
(railroad tracks, rivers, and the like) only as a physical barrier may cause us
to read the sociology of the city incorrectly. It is true that an empty space
may constitute a line of demarcation in a city, but it is equally possible that
the same empty space might become a playground and therefore have the
effect of extending patterns of interaction in the city. Unless we consider the
use, the meaning, the symbolic significance, and frequently the sentiments
and emotions attached to various features of the city’s topology, we shall
incorrectly understand patterns of interaction in the city, and by definition,
therefore, incompletely understand the city’s social organization.
This leads us to our second general criticism of ecological conceptions of
the city. Too great an emphasis on spatial patternings without equal
attention to the nature of social interaction between persons both within and
beyond specific geographical areas of the city may be misleading. We must
recall at all times that communities are composed of human beings actually
or potentially interacting with one another. The limitations of a purely
ecological approach are seen when we look to the relationship between
geography and social interaction. If we agree that one of the elements of
human community is social interaction, we must ask whether that
interaction can be fully understood in terms of clear spatial demarcations.
If we were to find that social relations between urbanites transcend
naturally occurring or arbitrarily defined ecological boundaries, this would
be good reason for rethinking or reevaluating the territorial basis for
community. We are proposing that society or, in the more limited sense,
community exists in and through human communication. Communication
is, of course, an interactive process. Further, we can say that any interactive
process changes its constitutive elements in every interaction. In each
contact the identities of the participants are inevitably changed somewhat.
Therefore, as patterns of communication and interaction change, the basis
of community shifts as well. Urban units (the community being a central
unit) are constantly changed by the process through which they are created
—human interaction. The kind of dialectical process that we are describing
places a limit on a purely ecological or geographical conception of
community. To understand fully the nature of urban social arrangements, we
have to understand the shifting patterns of communications that continually
transform them.2 Form and his colleagues (1954) have shown, following
this line of thought, the inadequacy of purely ecological definitions of
human community.
They begin their analysis of one city by drawing a topological map
showing both natural barriers or boundaries (hills, rivers, empty spaces, and
so on) and boundaries imposed by technology (bridges, buildings). This is
one approach taken by ecologists in distinguishing various city areas. Next,
they look closely at the demographic characteristics and spatial distribution
of the population in the city. The purpose of this exercise is to see more
clearly the relationship between the purely topological boundaries earlier
described and the racial, social, ethnic, and economic composition of
populations. These two elements (topological and demographic), in
combination, are traditionally used to delineate the boundaries of city
communities. The task, in other words, is to see if there is any fit between
the topological characteristics of the city and the distribution of its
population. The third possibility for demarcation (and the one that is of
greatest interest to us here) is obtained by measuring the extent to which
persons interacted or communicated with each other over the city space. In
effect, the researchers create three maps of the city—a topological map, a
demographic map, and an interactional map—and then look to see how
much overlap exists among the three. Their finding: there is practically no
correspondence among the three maps; there is virtually no overlapping.
Subsequent research on a variety of topics has shown that this lack of
correspondence has ramifications in diverse realms. For example, research
on the spread of sexually transmitted diseases shows that people’s sexual
partnering tends to spread well beyond the bounds of traditionally defined
neighborhoods (Youm et al. 2009). Hyra (2008) shows that community
organizers tend to be more successful when they networked with other like-
minded individuals in different areas throughout the city. Fischer’s (1995)
meta-analysis of networks in the city shows that there are a number of bases
for community, from enjoying different hobbies to sharing ethnic identities.
Let us try to make clear the import of this lack of correspondence among
social interaction, demography, and the physical features of the city. It
makes plain the difficulty of drawing arbitrary lines of demarcation in cities
that will presumably alert one to the existence or nonexistence of
community. The matter is not that simple. Perhaps one of the reasons that
urban sociologists came to the conclusion that there were few viable urban
communities was their failure to see the inadequacy of purely ecological
conceptions of social organizations. One cannot determine the existence of
community simply by chopping up the city with arbitrary lines of
demarcation.3
Other researchers, dissatisfied with assumptions about social
relationships and interaction implicit in ecological theory, sought better
ways to identify and to describe urban subcommunities. One central
direction of this research was the development of a method called social
area analysis (Shevsky and Williams 1949). Social area analysis is a
method for the “systematic analysis of population differences between
urban subcommunities” (Bell 1965). Using published data on an areal unit
called the census tract (each census tract contains between 3,000 and 6,000
persons), researchers created indices of each tract’s socioeconomic status
(based on such indicators as rent, education, and occupation), familism
(based on such indicators as fertility ratios and women not in the labor
force), and ethnicity (based on such indicators as race and nativity). The
scores on each of these indices were standardized to range from 0 to 100.
Once all of the census tracts in a particular metropolitan area were scored
according to these three characteristics, it became possible to delineate
distinct social areas within the city. One such social area, for example,
would be constituted by all those census tracts with high scores on all three
indices; another social area might be composed of tracts scoring low on all
indices. In a review essay on the subject, Wendell Bell (1965) described
how 32 separate social areas may be identified, each representing a unique
configuration of the three central indices we have described.
Once the social areas in a city were specified, researchers could consider
how they varied from one another in any of a number of respects. Studies
based on the method of social area analysis uncovered many orderly
patterns within cities. Research indicated, for example, that social areas
vary widely and systematically on such factors as persons’ social
participation, their membership in formal organizations, and their sense of
community identification. Those living in different social areas, in other
words, differ consistently on a range of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.
Moreover, the patterns uncovered in one city appear relatively constant
when the same method is applied to a number of cities. Though social area
analysis has largely fallen out of favor in mainstream sociology (Sampson
2012:40), with the ability of computer systems to analyze vast swaths of
data simultaneously, it remains important in spheres such as marketing,
where clustering individuals into groups of like-minded others is of great
import. Some are optimistic there will be a resurgence in the type of
analysis pioneered by Shevsky and Williams, as programs such as
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) allow researchers to model a huge
variety of aspects of people’s lifestyles—their activities and attitudes—and
show how they are distributed across the urban environment (Longley
2003).
There is an important idea to be drawn from our brief discussion of social
area analysis. The method and the findings derived from it are congenial to
the point of view that we have been advocating. We say this because the
census tracts composing an identified social area need not be contiguous to
each other; they may be spread throughout the city space. Work using social
area analysis stands as further empirical confirmation that urban
communities need not have a specific territorial locus.4
There is another step to be taken in achieving a better understanding of
the sense of community felt by many city persons. At this point we want to
suggest that there may be subjective community identifications that cannot
be accounted for through the use of objective criteria for defining
community. Sociologists have long known that actual membership in some
group may be less important than an identification with that group. We
know, for example, that if we wish to explain certain social behaviors
related to a person’s social class position, it may be less important to know
the person’s objective class position (as measured, for example, by
occupation, education, and income) than to know the social class with
which the individual identifies. Reference-group theory in sociology is
based on the idea that persons’ objective social statuses, attributes, and
group affiliations may be less important than their interpretations of those
elements. W. I. Thomas’s dictum that “if men [sic] define situations as real,
they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas, 1928:572) is, we
think, applicable to persons’ constructions of their lives as urbanites. A
sense of community may reside in a person’s feelings of identification with
a city. Such identification cannot be appreciated simply by documenting
urbanites’ structural positions.

SUBJECTIVE COMMUNITY IDENTIFICATION:

NONTERRITORIAL BASES OF URBAN COMMUNITY
In an article titled “Primary Groups and Cosmopolitan Ties: The Rooftop
Pigeon Flyers of New York City,” Colin Jerolmack (2009) provided
evidence for an idea we have advocated: that anonymity and disorder is
certainly enhanced in the urban environment but that, in time, some
impersonal or anonymous urban contacts tend to become personalized. The
finding of Jerolmack’s study is that even as the forces of gentrification and
ethnic succession dissolve old neighborhood ties and tear apart personal
ties, new bases for community can be found in various settings. In this case,
he shows how the activity of rearing pigeons in rooftop coops, a longtime
tradition of Italian-American immigrants in New York City, has been
adopted by African-Americans and more recent Puerto Rican immigrants.
Though spread among various neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens,
these men form a community based in their shared interest, and depend
upon a locally owned pet shop as a space to build that community:
One thing that the flyers who gather at the pet shop are seeking is the kind of masculine primary
groups that working-class and poor men have historically often sought, a place where they can find
sociability and build a reputation among men with whom they share interests and experiences.
Whether Italian, African American, or Puerto Rican, these men once gathered at barbershops,
taverns, or general stores on their own—and some still do—or with their fathers. The pet shop is a
natural extension of, or replacement for, those places that either vanished or no longer meet the needs
of these men, who organize many of their relations around pigeon flying. (Jerolmack 2009:453)

For these men, the quasi-intimate contacts created at the pet shop
operated as a kind of substitute for true participation in the community;
flying pigeons was a way of identifying with a community. Jerolmack
found that a number of these men, older Italians in particular, were less and
less able to find coethnic others in the neighborhood who had once
constituted their community. In short, we can see that Jerolmack regards
pigeon flying as an opportunity for some to develop a subjective
identification with a community although they are not part of the
neighborhood community by some set of objective standards. We find a
situation that provides strong ties for people where we might not have
expected such ties to exist. We begin to see that, in the urban context, trips
to the pet store serve an integrative function every bit as important as the
more overt function of buying goods. In this case, we see that the
personalization of relationships in the market makes for a subjective
identification with a larger community. This is, we might add, an
identification that would not be seen if we examined only places of
residence. Let us reiterate the significance of this study in somewhat more
theoretical terms.
Jerolmack’s work seems to be saying, as we have been arguing, that
human beings are eminently capable of transforming their environments in
important ways. Although the conditions of urban life may seem conducive
to impersonality and rationality, persons can tolerate only so much
impersonality. Perhaps at the height of feelings of depersonalization and
lack of integration, persons will seek alternatives in the environment to
provide them with the kinds of relationships that seem to be denied them.
The marketplace, and particularly the small store, becomes a source for
sustained human relationships—for community identification. Should we
fail to see how new networks of interaction are created in the urban
situation, we shall too quickly leap to the conclusion that there are none at
all.
It is important, as well, to cite the policy implications of findings like
Jerolmack’s. Once we see that the small store acquires a new symbolic
meaning in the urban context, we must be careful in our planning. We must
be cognizant that businesses in urban areas play a very important function
other than the purely economic function. Small stores, taverns, cafes, and
the like are not just places to purchase goods; they also constitute meeting
places for neighborhood residents and crucial communication centers for
informal news about the community. The demolition of such stores does not
just eliminate a few more buildings from the community; it may also
rupture the fabric of social life in that neighborhood (see also Hunter 1974;
McQuarrie and Marwell 2009; Silver, Clark, and Yanez 2010).
This argument is of considerable importance for those engaged in
redesigning urban places. Our attention is called to the fact that there is
more to consider than the physical shape of a building before the decision is
made to do away with it. We might, for example, put this in the context of
building shopping centers in the city. Planners too frequently create their
ideas for city change by using the suburbs as their model. The preference
becomes to build a large shopping center in place of small “Mom and Pop”
stores. One argument is that small businesses are dying anyway and that it
is reasonable to hasten the process by engaging in a kind of social
euthanasia. We quarrel with the idea that small businesses inevitably must
die. It may very well be true that there is a big turnover in small businesses.
We must, however, look at the statistics showing an enormous constancy in
the percentage of the labor force involved in small businesses. There is
always another “Mom and Pop” waiting to take over a small community
business. The more important point that we wish to make is this: planners
going into an area should not tamper with the existing institutions because
change would better fit their own aesthetic conception of what the city
should look like or because of a devotion to the idea that all change is good
and creates jobs. We have to understand the crucial importance of some of
these institutions in providing a platform on which a substantial number of
urban residents build their identities.
It is worth noting that we share this argument with others, from Jane
Jacobs (1961) to Richard Florida (2002), who amply demonstrate the role
of local small businesses in helping to maintain the fabric of urban life.
What is more, since this book was originally published, a number of urban
planners have come around to this viewpoint. While plenty of planners and
developers continue to push for big-box retailers to invade the urban
environment, “New Urbanism” in urban planning has increasingly pushed
to include diverse commercial enterprises in urban development projects
(Congress for the New Urbanism 2001; Katz 1994). Research indicates that
such planning, emphasizing locating small retail businesses within walkable
neighborhoods, has a positive effect on the frequency with which
community members interact with each other (Lund 2003). As Robert
Putnam (2000), in his sweeping review of the decline of community ties in
the United States put it, “The new urbanism is an ongoing experiment to see
whether our thirst for great community life outweighs our hunger for
private backyards, discount megamalls, and easy parking” (48).
The establishment of shopping relations is certainly not the only basis for
subjective urban community identification. As a matter of fact, such
findings about interactions of urbanites at small business places are
important only if they sensitize us to other sources of community
identification that transcend spatial boundaries. As another example, we
shall examine the function of institutions such as sports in the modern urban
center:
On the basis of a quota sample investigation of 515 persons, Gregory
Stone (1968) offers some evidence that “involvement with spectator sports
makes for subjective identification with the larger community under
objectively improbable conditions” (8). By “objectively improbable
conditions” Stone meant that subjective identification with the urban
community through sports would be highest for those who were, according
to purely objective criteria, least integrated into the urban community (those
who had been residents in the city for the shortest time, those who had the
fewest friends in the community). Once more, the theoretical point that we
made earlier seems to be sustained by the data: that persons produce
symbolic transformations of urban institutions so as to provide a source of
identification that is not available to them through routine sources of
community involvement.
“Sports teams should be thought of as collective representations of the
larger urban world. Teams represent that world. Significant then are the
names of teams. Such names have in the past designated urban areas. …
Identification with such representations may be transferred to identification
with the larger communities or areas they represent” (Stone 1968:10). We
have offered two examples of urban institutions that serve the unintended
function of providing urbanites a source of identification with urban
community. Sports and the marketplace may be identified as two sectors of
the urban world that must be studied in order to understand how urbanites
produce an involvement in the urban world that maintains their separate
identities, that injects a personal quality into a situation where it would
otherwise not seem to exist. There is an important point that comes out of
the brief analysis we have made here: the urban world is organized. There is
a clear social organization produced by urbanites through their
transformation and usages of urban institutions. Such organization is not so
easily seen because its source is found in unsuspected settings. We will
examine the role of sports and urban life in much greater detail in Chapter
8.
Institutions such as sports and the marketplace are just two among many
bases for subjective community identification. Richard Florida reminds us
that particular objects in cities become symbolic representations of the
whole city for its inhabitants. City dwellers build up a sentiment and
emotion for these meaningful city objects. Urbanites come to feel a
fondness for trees, buildings, particular street corners, rivers, and parks.
Some of these objects become, in fact, synonymous with the city itself. We
need only show persons New York’s skyline, or San Francisco’s Golden
Gate Bridge, or New Orleans’ French Quarter, and the city will be quickly
identified by most. For those who live in these respective cities, such
objects and places do not merely identify the city; they are also sources for
personal identification with the city. In a world increasingly dominated by
cookie-cutter subdivisions and big box retailers, Florida notes, “[p]laces are
also valued for authenticity and uniqueness. … Authenticity comes from
several aspects of a community—historic buildings, established
neighborhoods, a unique music scene or specific cultural attributes”
(Florida 2002:228).
As we speak, then, of subjective identification with the urban community,
meaning to indicate that (just as Robert Park maintained) the city is a “state
of mind,” so also must we consider community to be a social psychological
production. Communities do not exist unless they are collectively identified
as such. Nothing has any meaning until we invest it with meaning. It is not
enough to offer simple objective criteria for community. To say that
subjective community identification is possible is to reiterate a previously
made point: we do not live in communities as much as we live in our
interpretations of community. Our continuing assertion that community
identification does not depend solely upon residence in a well-defined
ecological area of the city flows from this theoretical position.
URBAN NETWORKS
The value of thinking about communities as bounded by interactional
rather than spatial variables is nicely illustrated in a now-classic experiment
conducted by Stanley Milgram (1972). Milgram tried to show that social
structures are composed of a number of overlapping circles of friends and
acquaintances. In order to see how these overlapping networks of
interaction operated, he worked out an experimental method to determine
the line of acquaintance linking any two persons chosen at random.
The method he adopted worked as follows: Milgram picked a person on
the East Coast who became the “target” for a number of other persons some
distance away (in Kansas and Nebraska). Each person participating in the
study was given the name and certain selected demographic information
about the target person. They were given a folder and told that the object of
the experiment was to get that folder to the target person as quickly as
possible. The most important rule that each of these persons had to obey
was the following: “If you do not know the target person on a personal
basis, do not try to contact him directly. Instead, mail this folder … to a
personal acquaintance who is more likely than you to know the target
person. … It must be someone you know on a first name basis” (Milgram
1972:294). Milgram’s intent was to find out how many links it would take
to reach the target person, if he could be reached at all.
The somewhat startling finding of this experimental procedure was that
the median number of linkages necessary to reach the target person was
only five. Milgram’s experiment suggests that we are all embedded “in a
small world structure.” In terms of the arguments that we have made in this
chapter, we agree with Milgram’s assessment of the potential importance of
his study.
[The study] reveals a potential communication structure whose sociological characteristics have yet
to be exposed. When we understand the structure of this potential communications net, we shall
understand a good deal more about the integration of society in general. While many studies in social
science show how the individual is alienated and cut off from the rest of society, this study
demonstrates that, in some sense, we are all bound together in a tightly knit social fabric. (Milgram
1972:299)

Milgram’s study has stood up to replication in the digital age—indeed on

a global scale. In 2003, researchers at Columbia University sought to find if
people across the globe could be connected via email in the manner that
Milgram had connected people through the post. Using targets in such far-
flung locations as Norway, Estonia, and Australia, the researchers found
that “social searches can reach their targets in a median of five to seven
steps, depending on the separation of source and target” (Dodds, Muhamad,
and Watts 2003:827).
The phenomenon of networking is, then, an important feature of how the
world at large is organized. It can, however, also be seen in more local
settings. In fact, the well-known urban sociologist Barry Wellman (1973)
has proposed that the city itself be viewed as a “network of networks.”
Insofar as urbanites’ relations with one another transcend particular spatial
boundaries, such a notion is well put and certainly is confirmed in the
studies of other urban sociologists (Fischer 1982, 1984; Giuffre 2013;
Olson 1982; Sampson 2012). Indeed, in his wide-ranging review of urban
neighborhood research, Phillip Olson notes that urban network theorists see
the urban community as “no longer a territorial unit, but … [rather] a
variety of linkages among persons sharing common interests and activities”
(1982:502). One of the most critical linkages among persons in urban
settings is kinship ties. Through the maintenance of kinship, urban
households are able to maintain sustained contact with other households in
both the immediate neighborhood and the larger metropolitan area. Urban
sociologists studying kinship have been particularly interested in how place
of residence affects kin relations.
Data indicate that the social networks of persons vary by community
size. Respondents living in more urban settings tend to name fewer kin than
those residing in small towns (Fischer 1982). In terms of the kinds of kin
relations, place of residence made little difference in persons’ responses to
questions about their involvement with siblings. Urban residents, were
however, less likely to socialize with their parents (Fischer 1982:81–84).
Fischer interprets his findings by arguing that urban life, as we have been
suggesting throughout this book, makes possible a wide range of living
choices and lifestyles. Urbanites are freer than small-town residents to
choose what kinds of relationships they wish to form and maintain. In the
urban context, then, kin are only one of many kinds of contacts that persons
may sustain. Small-town residents, by contrast, have many fewer
alternatives to choose from and may lack the institutional alternatives
provided by urban life—professional sporting events, art museums,
symphonies, and art fairs, for example. Such activities provide numerous
arenas within which strangers may meet one another.
 It would be a mistake, however, for us as students of urban life to
conclude that because urbanites have fewer kin ties than small-town
residents, kinship is therefore unimportant in their lives. Empirical studies
(Espinoza 1999; Hoyt and Babchuk 1983; Wellman 1985; Wellman and
Gulia 1999) show clearly that kinship still plays a vital role in urban life.
When 800 residents of two midwestern urban areas were asked about
factors influencing the probability of kin being viewed as intimates or
confidants, gender emerged as a critical factor. Women were “both more
likely to be cited as a confidant and to have confidant ties with kin” (Hoyt
and Babchuk 1983:84), a finding corroborated in Wellman and Gulia’s
(1999) research on social support networks.
Barry Wellman’s studies of urban networks (Wellman 1973, 1979, 1985;
Wellman and Gulia 1999) yield some important findings on the lives of
residents in East York, a residential area of Toronto. He first surveyed 845
East Yorkers in 1968, and the results of that effort indicated that “the most
intimate ties (and the very closest) were with either kin or friends. Intimate
ties with co-workers and neighbors were less common and usually less
close” (1985:163).
During 1977–1980 Wellman interviewed 33 of the respondents who had
been surveyed in 1968. Through in-depth interviewing and open-ended
questioning he was able to get persons talking in their own terms about
issues important to them regarding their personal networks. Wellman’s
work also documents the extent to which it is women who do the bulk of
the work involved in maintaining relationships with both neighbors and kin:
In those households with both a husband and a wife, there are specialized divisions of network labor.
The men contribute their skills as well as a good deal of social companionship. Yet it is the women
who maintain the East Yorkers’ networks—contributing much sociability and emotional aid, as well
as a good deal of companionship—because it is the women who do the great majority of the
households’ domestic work, even if they also do large amounts of paid work. (Wellman 1985:182)

Wellman’s work clearly indicates how gender and its accompanying

social assumptions lead to a situation where it is almost automatically
expected that women’s “natural” role is to provide emotional aid and social
support for others. Such an assumption, however, blinds us to the
tremendous amount of effort and labor that go into these activities. In
perhaps the first study to propose the concept of “kin work,” Micaela Di
Leonardo (1984, 1987) beautifully illustrates the considerable number of
activities and tasks comprising the category called kin work. Her study of
northern California Italian-American families of varying social classes
documents how “it is kinship contact across households, as much as
women’s work within them, that fulfills our cultural expectations of
satisfying family life” (1987:43). Her definition of kin work is particularly
illuminating:
By kin work I refer to the conception, maintenance, and ritual celebration of cross-household kin ties,
including visits, letters, telephone calls, presents, and cards to kin; the organization of holiday
gatherings; the creation and maintenance of quasi-kin relations; decisions to neglect or intensify
particular ties; the mental work of reflection about all these activities. (1987:42–43)

You might test Di Leonardo’s notion of kin work against your personal
experiences. Who mails the birthday and holiday cards in your home? Who
cooks the holiday dinners and telephones invitations to the relatives?
Though gender norms are evolving toward egalitarianism in American
society, women still typically are the ones who do these kinds of activities.
Di Leonardo’s study also documents an event occurring throughout the
metropolitan centers of the United States: the care of the elderly is primarily
assigned to women by virtue of their kin work. Often hospitals will not
release patients early unless there is someone available to care for them at
home—and that someone is usually an adult daughter (Glazer 1988). Were
this unpaid, invisible labor by women withdrawn, urban hospitals would
face even more pressing financial problems, and many municipal budgets
would have to be increased drastically to pay for the support services now
provided free by women in their homes, especially the care given by adult
daughters to their elderly parents and other kin (Olesen 1989; Stoller 1983).
As Olesen notes in this regard, the amount of “hidden care” provided by
women is enormous:
The Older Women’s League (OWL) estimates that the value of women’s unpaid work in American
society is $515 billion annually, more than twice that of men. OWL’s figures do not specify how
much time spent in the case of the sick contributes to that figure, but it is reasonable to surmise that it
must be substantial. (1989:5)

Data from a recent panel study of older women show that women
continue to disproportionately bear the burden of caring for their elderly
parents. Richard Johnson and Anthony Lo Sasso (2006) reported that
“[a]bout 28% of women ages 57-67 with surviving parents spent at least
200 hours in the 24 months between 1996 and 1998 assisting their parents
with personal care activities or with chores or errands” (201). They go on to
note that these women, who are approaching retirement themselves, spend
enough time helping out their parents to significantly negatively impact
their earnings power. Further, they demonstrate that the responsibility of
parental care is unequally distributed by gender among adult children,
finding that “[t]he probability that women help their elderly parents falls
significantly as the number of sisters increases, but the effect of brothers is
insignificant” (205).

SEEING COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION

We have tried to show why a purely ecological theoretical perspective
may be an obstacle to capturing the full range of meanings, identification,
and social relations possible in urban areas. In taking this position, we do
not mean to imply that viable geographical communities are nonexistent in
the city space. Such an implication would be contrary to the evidence
provided by a number of urban community studies. These studies show that
there is frequently a clear social organization in situations first appearing
wholly disorganized. It is somewhat ironic that the very factors taken by
Chicago ecologists as indices of disorder are used in these studies to
demonstrate the existence of an ordered community social life. As
mentioned earlier, Frederick Thrasher studied over 1,000 gangs in Chicago.
In this work, and in sociological work generally, the gang has always been
viewed as a most visible and distressing symbol of urban disorganization.
The documenting of Chicago gangs further worked to validate the
developing image of the city as the progenitor of social pathology. It was
not until the publication of William F. Whyte’s (1943) Street Corner Society
that the gang could be seen as reflecting a community’s organization rather
than its dissolution.
In still later studies, the ecological area presumably representing the very
epitome of disorder—the urban slum—is shown to possess a distinctive
moral order. To see this order, however, we must sometimes be willing to
question what first appears obvious. It seems obvious, for example, that the
more organized crime there is in an area, the more disorganized that area
must be. In order to illustrate the necessity of questioning such seemingly
unassailable ideas, we ask you to consider the following examples.
In his 1931 autobiography, Lincoln Steffens tells of the following
incident. His billfold having been stolen in a New York subway, Steffens
complained to city officials. Imagine the difficulty of ever finding it in a
city of several million people. That very evening, however, his wallet was
returned to him intact. In this case, organized criminals were responsible for
the quick retrieval of an important individual’s stolen property. The quick
retrieval obviously demanded a high level of social organization that
typically is not visible to us. The organized criminals did not want too much
free-floating crime taking place because it potentially put too much pressure
on them. In other words, we frequently find organized criminals becoming
one of the major organs of social control because they cannot tolerate
unorganized crime, which causes a public clamor and makes things difficult
for them. A second example illustrates the same point.
In the summer of 1966, New York was experiencing the threat of a
struggle in Brooklyn between Italian and black gangs. The situation was
further complicated by the development in the affected areas of a Jewish
vigilante group—the Maccabees—who began to patrol the area at night in
order to prevent or reduce muggings, robberies, and “rumbles.” Despite
their efforts, the situation threatened to get out of hand. A solution was
provided to the problem. How was the difficulty stopped? The local rabbi in
charge of the vigilante group, together with a city officer, approached a
leader of a criminal organization—one of the top racketeers in the city.
They explained that the juvenile warfare was threatening the community
and had to be stopped. The very next day the Italian juveniles left the area
and went back to their own communities, ceasing their attacks on the black
gangs. The result of this solution was an enormous outcry in the newspapers
as people asked what kind of city had to rely on organized criminals to
produce and maintain community order. We would simply answer that such
a city is a highly organized one. In short, once we are willing to look at
certain social forms from unfamiliar angles, we may come to perceive those
forms differently and more clearly. A number of urban community studies
written since 1943 look at the community from such unfamiliar angles. The
accumulated evidence from these researches further causes us to question
the image of the urban center as the source of unremitting anomie.
In 1943 William F. Whyte published his now classic study of Boston’s
North End. We can use Whyte’s own words to describe how his study
began:
I began with the vague idea that I wanted to study a slum district. Eastern City provided several
possible choices. In the early weeks of my Harvard Fellowship I spent some of my time walking up
and down the streets of various slum districts of Eastern City and talking with people in social
agencies about these districts. … I made my choice on very unscientific grounds: Cornerville best
fitted my picture of what a slum district should look like. Somehow I had developed a picture of
rundown three to five story buildings crowded together. (Whyte 1943:283)

The fact that from a very early point Whyte saw the need to investigate
this slum community through direct participation observation was not, we
think, merely incidental in allowing him to make certain discoveries about
its structure. He became a member of the community for more than two
years. So much did he see the need to integrate himself into the community
that he worked during that time to learn Italian. We call attention to the
method employed by Whyte because it has implications for some of the
arguments that we have been making in this chapter and will continue to
make throughout the book. We have been advocating the necessity of
coming to understand how persons experience and give meaning to their
lives as city dwellers. Unless we grasp how persons define their own
behaviors and the environment in which they produce those behaviors, we
shall comprehend their lives incompletely. If the goal of symbolic
interaction is to uncover these meaning structures, then we must be careful
as researchers not to impose our meanings on those we study. We advocate
direct participation observation as the method best allowing the researcher
to remain true to this task of seeing the world from the perspective of those
studied, providing the investigator does not lose sight of history.
Primarily through chance, Whyte made friends with several members of
a street-corner gang that “hung around” the area. His entry to this group
was provided, in particular, through Doc, who was the leader of the gang
and whose confidence Whyte gained. This gang became the central focus of
Whyte’s research over the two-year period that he studied Cornerville.
While the study of a single gang of 10 to 12 persons seems a very limited
focus for two years’ work, it became apparent to Whyte, after a short time,
that he could see many facets of the community reflected in the gang. The
gang became a kind of lens through which Whyte would come to see the
highly organized nature of this urban community. In terms of some of the
points that we have already made in this chapter, Whyte realized that the
gang was only one part of a highly elaborated system of social networks in
the community and itself an important source of personal identity for its
members. It soon became obvious to Whyte (a point not easily accessible to
the outsider who views the community from a distance) that the gang was
tightly linked to other institutional sectors of the community—especially
the political structure and organized crime.
Whyte eventually came to see that the community was rather tightly held
together through a system of developed obligations and reciprocities. These
findings, which hold true today, have important implications for the way
that we look at urban community life. Whyte’s findings led to a complete
reorganization of our usual conceptions of slum areas. He recognized that
one cannot define an area of the city as a slum only in terms of its physical
characteristics. Rather, we have to consider whether there is an order, a
social organization, a pattern of interactions that holds the area together
regardless of its physical appearance. We must realize that “slum” means
much more than physical deterioration. The essence of community lies in
the kinds of social bondings described and documented by Whyte. We
reiterate that the social organization discovered by Whyte is not readily
obvious without investigation. Once we look carefully at certain areas of
the city, we shall find viable communities that might otherwise escape us.
Gerald Suttles (1968), in his aptly titled book The Social Order of the
Slum, an observational study of the Addams area of the Near West Side of
Chicago, further supports our contention that intense and careful
observation is absolutely necessary for discovering the less visible
components of community social arrangements. Suttles’s own close
observations allowed him to make the convincingly strong case that there
exists a clear moral order in this slum area. It is a moral order rooted in the
personalized relationships that members of the community have with one
another. It is a moral order derived from persons’ needs to come to grips
with a “dangerous and uncontrollable outer world” (1968:ix).
It is particularly useful that Suttles shows the possibility of combining an
ecological approach to the study of community with a sensitive attention to
the internal, cultural, and symbolic meaning structures established by the
residents. He offers further certification for our earlier assertion that various
urban institutions importantly foster channels of communication and, hence,
community solidarity. The Addams area was a particularly interesting
context for investigation because it is an ethnically segmented community.
The area is ecologically separated into a number of neighborhoods, each of
which is ethnically homogeneous. The four major groups living in the area
were a black group, an Italian group, a Mexican group, and a Puerto Rican
group.
 Suttles’s argument is that although these groups are segmented by a
number of ecological, institutional, and cultural factors, this segmentation
can be described as ordered segmentation. He means that discontinuities
and conflicts between groups do not necessarily preclude consensually held
needs, goals, and interests. It would be contrary to common sense to
disregard cultural, political, and racial conflict in the city; such differences
obviously exist. Suttles asks us, however, not to leap from our observations
of these overt differences to the conclusion that there is no underlying social
organization or order in the community. The well-worn metaphor that warns
us against looking only at the tip of the iceberg applies most directly to
community life. We have too frequently assumed that a community existed
only in what could be readily seen—in Suttles’s case it was conflict and
cultural differences that stood out on first inspection. More detailed
observation alerts us to question the faulty assumption that conflict
immediately signals social disorganization.
The anthropologist Eliot Liebow offers further evidence to support our
earlier contention that certain urban institutions (taverns, poolrooms,
laundromats) come to have a function as “informal communications
centers, forums, places to display and assess talents, and staging areas for a
wide range of activities, legal and illegal, and extralegal” (Liebow
1967:viii). Tally’s Corner is an especially revealing study because it
documents the wide-ranging patterns of communication between persons in
an urban black ghetto, an area of the city generally considered wholly
lacking in any social organization. In some ways we must construe
Liebow’s work as a kind of replication of William Whyte’s study done 30
years earlier. Like Whyte, Liebow studied a rather small group of men in
depth. And, like Whyte, Liebow documented a tightly and elaborately
established network of primary, face-to-face relationships. It is, further,
through an examination of these relationships that broader features of the
community are revealed. The underlying relations between fathers and their
children, husbands and wives, and patterns of friendship give an order to
what often appears from the outside as a disorganized, chaotic situation.
The necessity of creating and sustaining personal, identity-fostering
relationships is especially great for the persons described by Liebow—black
persons facing a continually hostile world that helps to sustain a cycle of
economic failure in their lives. Under these conditions the production of a
strong network of primary social relations becomes all the more imperative.
Liebow expresses well the sense of community that we have been
proposing in this chapter:
More than most social worlds, perhaps, the streetcorner world takes its shape and color from the
structure and character of the face-to-face relationships of the people in it. Unlike other areas of our
society, where a large proportion of the individual’s energies, concerns and time are invested in self-
improvement, career and job development, family and community activities, religious and cultural
pursuits, or even in broad, impersonal social and political issues, these resources in the street-corner
world are almost entirely given over to the construction and maintenance of personal relationships.
On the streetcorner, each man has his own network of these personal relationships and each man’s
network defines for him the members of his personal community. His personal community, then, is
not a bounded area but rather a web-like arrangement of man–man and man–woman relationships in
which he is selectively attached in a particular way to a definite number of discrete persons. In like
fashion, each of these persons has his own personal network. (1967:162)

Like Liebow’s treatment of community discussed above, a more recent

examination of neighborhood life by Sudhir Venkatesh demonstrates the
degree to which an apparently crime-riddled, disorganized neighborhood in
fact forms a rather well-organized, even functional community. Though the
residents of the Chicago neighborhood he pseudonymously dubs Maquis
Park have been left largely unemployed by the United States’ transition to a
postindustrial economy, he shows that
the seemingly random collection of men and women in the community—young and old, professional
and destitute—were nearly all linked together in a vast, often invisible web that girded their
neighborhood. This web was the underground economy. Through it the local doctors received home-
cooked meals from a stay-at-home down the block; a prostitute got free groceries by offering her
services to the local grocer; a willing police officer overlooked minor transgressions in exchange for
information from a gang member; and a store owner might hire a local homeless person to sleep in
his store at night, in part because a security guard was too costly. (2006: xiii)

And again, as Whyte had found more than a half century earlier in
Boston, a key part of the informal economy and the community more
generally was a street gang. In Venkatesh’s Maquis Park, in the place of
Doc and his boys, we find the Black Kings. Venkatesh notes that residents
have a conflicted relationship with the street gang. Though on one hand
they deplore the violence that the gang engages in with some frequency, as
poor African-Americans on the South Side of Chicago, they know they
cannot regularly depend on the police to provide public safety. Further, the
gang forms a crucial part of the underground economy in which most
residents participate. Thus, community leaders, including the local pastor,
work with the gang to come to agreement on standards of behavior. The
gang’s leader, Big Cat, willingly and openly negotiates to work for the
communities’ best interests, while still maintaining his gang’s profitable,
illegal business in prostitution and narcotics sales. “Such,” Venkatesh
writes, “was Big Cat’s involvement in the well-being of his community; an
unapologetic criminal, he nevertheless knew that he couldn’t afford to be
insensitive to his neighbors” (293).
To reiterate, what we see in situations such as that described by
Venkatesh is the way in which the fabric of city life is crafted in small-scale
interactions. As interactionists, we must recognize that even apparently
monolithic, anonymous institutions such as “the economy” are crafted at a
basic level in interaction; but not simply minimax calculations of costs and
benefits by individuals exchanging goods, cash, or services. Big Cat and his
fellow community members recognize that economic activities are
meaningful—selling drugs in the park is not the same as selling ice cream.
And so they must negotiate how these different activities will be carried out
in such a way that leaves community members feeling some degree of
comfort, at the same time they convey profits to the Black Kings.
Mitchell Duneier (1999) nicely focuses our attention on how outsiders’
views of homeless street vendors in New York’s Greenwich Village contrast
dramatically with the meanings of daily life created by the men themselves.
For outsiders the community structure is invisible—How can these people
be part of a community if they don’t even have an address there?
Outsiders, and even many residents of the Village, tend to see the men’s
lives in basically stereotypical terms, that is to say, as homeless men, as
black men, as potential criminals. The end result of such outsiders’ views is
to create a vicious circle of sorts in which the key institutions in the city do
little actually to improve life in the community. Duneier notes that police
and some businesses regard the men as “broken windows”—signs of blight
in the community that can lead to crime and disorder. This follows the
notion popularized by Kelling and Wilson (1982) that broken windows on
cars or buildings act as a sign to criminals that a neighborhood is lacking in
order and is a good place to commit further crimes. Policing strategies in
the 1980s onward have concentrated on removing such signs of disorder
from neighborhoods. But Duneier points out that
[t]he men working on Sixth Avenue may be viewed as broken windows, but this [Duneier’s] research
shows that most of them have actually become public characters who create a set of expectations, for
one another and strangers (including those of the criminal element—as, indeed, many of them once
were), that “someone cares” and that they should strive to live better lives.
 Indeed, Duneier found that among these vendors, there is relatively little
criminality beyond a certain degree of recreational drug use and public
urination. More significant, Duneier finds, is their contribution to life in the
Greenwich Village community. As eyes on the street, these men may
actually make the sidewalks a safer place for residents to walk. Some even
have ties to local businesses, providing services like feeding customers’
parking meters.
But perhaps even more important is the community that the vendors build
among themselves. Duneier demonstrates that many of these men are ex-
convicts or current and former drug addicts. Some have no family ties.
Most have been unable to find gainful employment in the formal sector of
the economy. Street vending is a sort of last resort, and Duneier describes it
as a sort of salvation for many men. Though they compete with each other
for customers and for space on the street, more notable is the degree of
cooperation between the vendors. They teach each other the ins and outs of
the business. They police each other’s behavior, making sure they put a
good face forward to the community. And ultimately, more than one of
these homeless vendors “begins to feel the self-respect that also comes from
knowing that he is earning ‘an honest living’. After a time … he makes his
way off the streets to an apartment” (Duneier 1999:315).
While the vendors’ values and lived experiences tend to contrast sharply
with outsiders’ views of their lives, and while many do find vending to be a
path away from living on the streets, this is not to say that they are placed
on a very long upward trajectory. They will not rise very high on the
socioeconomic ladder. This community, like numerous other low-income
minority ones, is faced with a number of structural barriers in terms of
education and employment that are historical legacies of the social location
of minorities in American society. We will return to this point in more detail
in Chapter 7, in the section “Thinking About Urban Problems.”

CONCLUSION
Our review of community in this chapter suggests that people in cities are
far from solitary, isolated malcontents. We have shown that sociologists
find community in the most unlikely places. We also must, however, note
that the degree of social support found by people in cities is variable. As
Eric Klinenberg explains in his book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of
Disaster in Chicago, in Chicago’s 1995 heat wave, certain neighborhoods
were disproportionately affected. Among the over 700 heat-related
fatalities, a great proportion were elderly African-Americans who lived in
neighborhoods with low levels of social networking and neighborliness.
Other residents, even among those living in great poverty, were more likely
to survive to the extent that they lived in neighborhoods with stronger social
ties like some of those we have described above (Klinenberg 2003). More
generally, Sampson and other urban researchers have worked to describe
collective efficacy—“social cohesion combined with shared expectations
for social control” (Sampson 2012)—as highly variable between
neighborhoods. While some neighborhoods exhibit a great deal of
neighborliness and are able to accomplish goals like getting streets paved
and keeping the streets safe, there do exist neighborhoods with low levels of
trust or community as we have described above. There are places in the city
where it is essentially “every man for himself.”
Despite that caveat, our review of the literature leads to the recognition
that we miss much in our analysis of city life by evaluating its quality in
terms of the existence or nonexistence of clear ecological communities.
While there is evidence that such community forms exist, they do not fully
encompass the lives of the majority of urban persons. The relative
disappearance of the “village” community type should not make us leap to
the immediate conclusion that urbanites live “nonsocial” existences. On the
contrary, it has been our position that community still exists; it has simply
taken a different form. If the essence of any community lies in patterns of
warm, intimate interactions, then communities are to be found in cities.
We find it reasonable to characterize urban life in terms of a number of
individual, personal, or intimate communities. Persons, we think, owe
allegiance less to a particular territory than to a network of social
relationships that is without boundaries. This idea leads us to see that there
are as many urban communities as there are urban persons. Some have
more extensive interactional networks than others, and some obviously
have overlapping networks, but we are unlikely to find two personal
communities that will be identical.
Once we put greatest emphasis on urbanites’ interactional social circles,
we find that we are no longer bounded or restricted in our view of what
human community is or can be in the city. The view of community as a
complex network of interpersonal relations allows us to see other features
of the urban social world. We must consider that urban social relations are,
like any other set of human interactions, in a continual state of change,
transition, or process. We have seen that the rediscovery of community
depends on the analyst’s ability to look at the world in a new way.
Community is alive; it is our old conceptions of community that are no
longer viable.
We also have detailed why this transformation in the nature of
community became necessary. As the city becomes progressively more
impersonal, persons must create new sources of sentiment, meaning, and
identification. As persons’ needs demand it, they will assign new meanings
to objects and make different usages of existing institutions. We have seen
how the marketplace is used by some as a source for identity-fostering
relationships. We have briefly discussed the possibility that institutions,
such as sports, may become the basis for subjective community
identification. Our analysis is based on the presumption that persons are
active participants in the construction of their worlds.
We may also see how technological developments facilitate the kinds of
interactional arrangements that we are describing. As technology develops,
it is possible to create interactional networks that are literally boundless
geographically—for example, the use of the social media like Facebook and
LinkedIn in maintaining interactional circles of primary relations among
geographically dispersed persons. With the advent of smartphones, people
can literally carry their social network with them wherever they go,
instantly send messages to friends or colleagues on the other side of the
globe, and share the details of their day-to-day lives with everyone they
know.
As our analysis of several community studies indicated, the lives of
residents are often characterized by a high degree of regularity and social
organization that is usually invisible to outsiders lacking firsthand
familiarity with community life. In Chapter 4 we turn our attention to the
seemingly random, chaotic, “unstructured” world of everyday public life in
cities. Our task, to borrow a phrase from Freud, is to make conscious that
which is presently unconscious.

NOTES
1. Some recent work, however, disputes this criterion, regarding virtual communities constructed
in cyberspace as communities, though their members do not share any physical proximity (for
example, Gottschalk 2010). Griswold usefully distinguishes such communities as “relational”
communities, as opposed to the more traditional “spatial” communities we discuss in this book
(Griswold 2012).
2. It may not be entirely fair to Park to criticize human ecology for ignoring social interaction. In
fact, Park’s studies did include consideration of social interaction, and he did define society as
involving social interaction. Although ecologists talked about “community” as being in some sense
subsocial (a view that derives from the intellectual origins of the human ecological studies), much of
what in fact was done did include the societal or interactional aspects. See Chapter 1.
3. While making this general criticism, we do not wish to imply that there is never any linkage
between the city’s ecology and patterns of behavior. Sociologists at Chicago documented a
correlation between distance from the city center and the occurrence of such behaviors as mental
disorders and juvenile delinquency. This is not to say, however, that the correspondence is perfect or
that “subsocial” explanations are valid.
4. For some examples of empirical studies of the “factorial ecology of cities,” see the collection of
studies edited by Schwirian (1974).
 CHAPTER 4

The Social Organization of Everyday

City Life

Our task of specifying or amending long-standing images of city life is

not yet completed. In Chapter 3 we chiefly considered how certain
sociological images of community life have limited our understanding of
urbanites’ relations with one another. We discussed at some length the
necessity of viewing “community” in terms of the range of meanings,
sentiments, and feelings constituting persons’ own images of their lives in
cities. To this point, you should have achieved a better understanding of
how sustaining patterns of interaction develop in cities—networks of social
interaction that are not bounded spatially. You should better appreciate, by
now, the subtle ways in which urban community life is organized. You
should recognize, as well, how urbanites use city institutions to achieve a
source of identification with each other and with the city itself.
There is, however, a conspicuous aspect of urban life that our
presentation thus far does not fully prepare us to understand. We have not
yet thought about how city persons deal with, make sense of, or manage
anonymous public encounters. If, as social psychologists, we see it as a
major goal of sociological inquiry to capture those whom we study “in their
own terms,” then we must ask how urban persons perceive and interact with
fellow urbanites on a day-to-day basis in public places. Urbanites do, after
all, come into contact with vast numbers of persons daily on city streets, on
public conveyances, waiting in lines, and so forth. Simmel (1971) saw the
everyday tempo of city life as importantly affecting the social psychology
of urban persons.
There are, then, a number of questions that a focus on public city
encounters leads us to ask: In what ways do urbanites see themselves
constrained by the urban scene? In what ways might the anonymity of daily
life provide urban persons with a greater freedom than might be found in
the relative intimacy of nonurban settings? What are the perceived risks in
establishing relations with strangers in the urban milieu? How do urbanites
deal with the potential overload of stimuli that they are forced to confront
daily? How do spatial configurations unique to the urban context shape our
view of ourselves and our relations with others? Is there a clear normative
structure to anonymous encounters? In general, the guiding question for this
chapter is, in what ways are urban persons relating or failing to relate to one
another in anonymous public settings?
An abiding image of the city stresses the failure of urbanites in public
places to treat each other with any degree of civility. The litany of
complaints about the insensitivity that they show toward one another is
long. Adjectives like uncivilized, uncaring, indifferent, reserved,
uncommunicative, and blasé are frequently used to describe urbanites’
attitudes toward one another. Visitors to large cities claim that it is
frequently difficult to find someone willing to give simple directions.
Urbanites seem to treat each other as adversaries, frequently competing for
scarce resources—seats on subways, parking spaces, cabs, or places in line.
Persons bump into one another on crowded streets, barely acknowledging
the unwelcome contact. In the extreme this uncaring attitude is seemingly
proved by the failure of urbanites to intervene even in cases where persons
are in desperate trouble. Instances of persons being robbed, or even
murdered, while many others watch without intervening, are often taken as
exemplifying the total lack of responsibility for each other that persons feel
in urban public places. This image is shared by some social scientists.
Sociologists Catherine E. Ross, John Mirowsky, and Shana Pribesh (2002)
found that, even after controlling for personal disadvantages and the effects
of living in or near crumbling inner city neighborhoods, city dwellers are
more distrustful of other people than nonurban residents. They note that
[t]he density and scale of big cities means that residents experience frequent proximity to many
people they do not know personally. One learns which of one’s acquaintances can be trusted, but
strangers are unknowns. The diversity of urban cultures and subcultures may compound the
ambiguity, making individuals less condent that they can accurately interpret the behavior of
strangers. People may be more cautious when they are less able to distinguish true threat. (78)

We do not contest that there is an important degree of truth in this image

of cities. Rather, it is often overstated. It needs specification. It does not
adequately explain how city life is possible in any form. We must come to
understand how, in the face of this presumably chaotic urban place, persons
manage to get along at all. To this end we must get beyond loose
description of everyday urban life. We must analyze the daily situations
faced by urban persons, the way those situations are defined, and how they
are ultimately dealt with.

EVERYDAY INTERACTION: A NEGLECTED ASPECT OF CITY

LIFE
Since the 1970s sociologists have systematically studied everyday public
behavior. Especially before the 1990s, relatively few social scientists
viewed the urban public realm as a theoretically and practically important
area of inquiry. One notable exception was Erving Goffman, whose books
(Goffman 1959, 1961, 1963, 1971, 1974) have been influential in showing
the utility of frameworks for ordering a variety of everyday encounters.
Goffman is not generally considered an urban sociologist, but his work has
increasingly been adapted to considerations of life in urban public spaces
(see, for example, Anderson 1990, 2000; Duneier 1999; Grazian 2008;
Jerolmack 2009). To the extent that many of the examples in his writing on
everyday public interactions are drawn from urban contexts, Goffman’s
work provides an invaluable framework for our understandings of urban
sociability. With regard to the sociological importance of studying everyday
behaviors, Goffman says,
Although this area [the study of behavior in public and semipublic places] has not been recognized as
a special domain for sociological inquiry, it perhaps should be, for the rules of conduct in streets,
parks, restaurants, shops, dance floors, meeting halls, and other gathering places of any community
tell us a great deal about its most diffuse forms of social organization. (1963:4)

Attention to everyday social interaction as a major area of sociological

inquiry generally—and of urban sociology more particularly—is vitally
important to the discipline. We say this because even those theorists who
analyze large institutional arrangements in a society must have some
guiding model of the nature of microsocial interaction. One writer has made
this point by stating that “the process of interaction is … at the logical core
of sociological interest, even though for some purposes, particularly of a
macrosociological sort, this is often left implicit” (Wilson 1970:697).
It is a major premise of this book, and a major underlying theme of
symbolic interaction, that one cannot fully understand the operation of any
large institutional complex (a school, a business organization, an army, a
city) without paying attention to the ways in which the individuals who
make up that institution are defining and making sense of it. Sociologists
may lose sight of the fact that institutions are composed of acting, thinking,
defining, interacting human beings. The study of face-to-face interaction is
not, therefore, simply an exercise motivated by idle curiosity. “Any
understanding of human behavior at whatever level of ordering or
generality must begin with and be built upon an understanding of everyday
life of the members performing those actions” (Douglas 1970a:11).
Those unacquainted with the growing sociological literature on
interaction in urban public spaces may overlook this vital aspect of city life.
One reason may be that in most public urban situations, individuals do not
appear to be interacting. In anonymous urban situations they seem to avoid
one another, closing themselves off from direct communication. Urbanites
frequently hide behind newspapers. They normally avoid excessive eye
contact as an invitation to interaction. They maximize their “personal
space” (Sommer 1969). Any interactions that may occur seem to be of a
transitory, ephemeral sort. They are encounters constructed around a
question asked and an answer given, an accidental bump and an “I’m
sorry.” These are interactions without a career. They have no past and hold
little possibility of a future. Urbanites seem to shun involvement with others
at nearly all cost. They watch passively as a person is beaten up on the
street. They pass by derelicts lying in the gutter. They seem to look upon
any direct encounters with others as fraught with danger. City dwellers, in
sum, appear distrustful, if not fearful, of contact with others. Hence, the
logical question: “How can one study public urban interactions when no
such interactions are occurring?”
One of the things we shall try to show here is that those who hold to this
view have too narrow an idea of social interaction. Interaction encompasses
more than direct verbal communication. We advocate a view that
interaction is occurring in any social situation in which persons are acting in
awareness of others and are continually adjusting their behaviors to the
expectations and possible responses of others. Our definition, for example,
would cause us to see avoidance as a form of social interaction. As we shall
see, there are occasions, particularly in urban settings, when persons must
communicate to others that they wish to avoid communication. In the
typical urban street situation it appears that persons have nothing to do with
each other, that persons on subway cars bear no relation to one another, and
so on. By looking closely at the behavior of persons in such contexts, we
see that the operation of our everyday behavior as urbanites demands a high
degree of cooperation. We must question the assumption that urban
interactions are haphazard, unordered, or altogether nonexistent.
Immediately we assert that persons in public places cooperate with one
another, if for no other reason than to preserve and sustain their social
identities. The “moral” task of preserving both one’s own and others’ public
images is most detailed in Goffman’s writings.

IDENTITY AND INTERACTION

Goffman is primarily responsible for what has come to be known as the
“dramaturgical” view of interaction. In our previous discussions we argued
that people are not merely passive agents abiding by fixed meaning
structures. Persons, rather, are always in the process of defining and
redefining one another’s acts, and they are continually interpreting and
assigning meanings to the situations in which they are behaving. The
dramaturgical view of interaction developed by Goffman clearly falls
within a symbolic interactionist frame of reference. Goffman is sympathetic
to the idea that persons must interpret the interactions in which they find
themselves, that they must forge out meanings in the encounters in which
they participate. In Goffman’s work, and central to the dramaturgical
model, certain aspects of this process are emphasized. Beyond being role-
players and meaning interpreters, Goffman sees persons as continually
manipulating meanings in interaction.
Goffman sees persons as continually fostering impressions of themselves
(the model is sometimes referred to as an “impression-management”
model). Persons often systematically exclude information about themselves
that might be damaging in any particular social encounter. For Goffman,
human beings are frequently “on” in the theatrical sense. He views persons
as primarily concerned with their appearances. It matters little what one
actually is. What really matters is what one appears to be, because it is on
the basis of appearances that persons will formulate their definitions of the
situation. In other words, individuals always have some motive for trying to
control the definition of the situation that others will come to have. In the
analogy suggested by a dramaturgical view of interaction, the essential
reality of life becomes a series of fostered roles, and society becomes a
theater in which all are actors engaged in a perpetual play. Goffman’s view
results from his taking seriously Shakespeare’s claim that “All the world’s a
stage. And all the men and women merely players.”
There are a number of major assumptions underlying such a view of
human relations. Because of space limitations we shall not attempt to
discuss all of them. We must, however, note what is clearly the major
assumption underlying this model. Basic to the dramaturgical model is the
view that people are guided in their behavior by the need for approval.
Goffman sees us as anxious to receive social approval for our behaviors.
The approving agreement of others helps to confirm the images that we
have of ourselves. We want to be seen as social, as proper, as worthwhile
persons. People coming together are always trying to present their best
“faces” in an attempt to win recognition and approval from others. Goffman
does not see us as having only one identity. We have, rather, a repertoire of
identities, and we choose from among these the identity that will make us
appear most proper in front of a particular audience.
Given this characterization of human life, we can begin to see the
tentativeness, fragility, and risks that may be involved in any social
interaction. In the beginning of his first major work, The Presentation of
Self in Everyday Life (1959), Goffman argues that if we are always
managing impressions in order to appear proper, then there is a major risk
to be run in any social interaction. There is the ever-present possibility that
the images and identities presented to others are subject to disruption. Any
interaction is likely suddenly to be punctured by events that cast new and
unfavorable light on us. There is always the possibility that our presented
self-image will be disconfirmed by public events. Given such a model, it is
no mystery why the dramaturgic analyst’s work frequently focuses on the
commission of improprieties. The study of public deviance is a necessary
research concern. It is by studying those situations in which something goes
awry that we are informed about the processes through which order is
normally maintained.
For Goffman (and this is a theme that runs through a good deal of his
work), individuals in public places work to ensure their “properness” by
carefully monitoring the nature of their involvement with others. To the
extent that those in public places wish to be seen as proper by those around
them, they are clearly taking one another into account in producing their
own behaviors. The silent, internal question that persons must continually
raise for themselves is: “What is sufficient presence or involvement in
various social contexts?” More directly of interest for us is an assessment of
what constitutes appropriate situational involvement in urban, anonymous
public situations. The decisions made by persons in public regarding the
proper extent of their involvement with others hinge on an important feature
of urban public life—persons in anonymous urban settings have little or no
biographical information about one another; they are strangers.

CITY LIFE AS A WORLD OF STRANGERS1

In seeking to discover the hidden dimensions of urban public life, one
fact seems of unique importance. Anonymous public sectors are composed
of persons who are strangers to one another. “Far from being constantly
surrounded by persons who share his culture and have a stake in preserving
his system of meaning and interactional rituals, the urbanite, whenever he
ventures forth into the public sector of the city, is instead, plunged into a
world peopled by many strange and alien others” (Lofland 1971a:97). The
fact of urbanites’ strangeness to one another would seem, on the face of it,
to have profound implications for the way that public life is managed.
Clearly, the way that we conduct ourselves in interaction is a function of the
degree of intimacy that exists between ourselves and others.
We have already asserted, following our description of Goffman’s
dramaturgical model of interaction, that it is our ongoing task to appear
proper in the eyes of others. Persons are concerned with presenting a
“correct” self in any social encounter. In urban settings, the strategies
employed by actors, the definitions of the situation they construct, the
impressions of themselves offered to others, and the extent to which their
activity is calculated are all inescapably related to their mutual status as
strangers.
 The status of stranger has long intrigued sociological theorists (Berger
1970; McLemore 1970; Schutz 1960; Simmel 1950b). In Simmel’s
discussion (1950b), the relationship of the stranger to organized group life
is stressed. Simmel is not so much concerned with one-to-one relations
between persons as he is with the relationship between an individual and a
larger social system (a group, a community, or an institution). The special
quality of the stranger’s status is the fact that while he or she may hold
membership in a group, he or she nevertheless remains a peripheral or
marginal member of the group. In Simmel’s words, the stranger is near and
distant at the same time. “It is that synthesis of nearness and distance which
constitutes the formal position of the stranger” (1950b:404).
In “The Stranger,” the philosopher Alfred Schutz (1960) also speaks of
the status of the stranger in terms of the individual’s relationship to some
organized group life. In Schutz’s case, greatest stress is placed on the fact
that the stranger is not knowledgeable about the “taken-for-granted”
cultural pattern of the everyday life of the group to which he or she seeks
admission. The stranger does not share the same relevancies of everyday
life as the group members do. He or she is not sure exactly how to interpret
social situations, social events, and social behaviors. The stranger, typified
by the immigrant, is, at least initially, puzzled by the incoherence, lack of
clarity, and seeming inconsistency of the group’s cultural pattern. The
stranger is forced to call into question those elements of group life which
full-fledged members take for granted. In Schutz’s words, “the cultural
pattern of the approached group is to the stranger not a shelter but a field of
adventure, not a matter of course but a questionable topic of investigation,
not an instrument for disentangling problematic situations but a problematic
situation itself and one hard to master” (1960:104).
As insightful as they are, these conceptions of the stranger do not fully
serve our purposes. In urban public settings, individuals are rarely trying to
relate to any specific group. More congenial to our purposes is Peter
Berger’s conception of “strangeness.” Berger thinks about strangeness this
way: “The strangeness lies in the fact that [persons] come from different
face-to-face contexts … they come from different areas of conversation.
They do not have a shared past, although their pasts have a similar
structure” (Berger 1970:54). By “different areas of conversation,” Berger
means that persons possess different biographies, discrete experiences, and
possibly, therefore, dissimilar definitions of the situation. In this regard we
might suggest that it is the merging of separate biographies and the
production of some kind of joint reality that transforms an anonymous,
unanchored relationship between strangers into a relationship that has a
career, a relationship that now has a past and the likelihood of a future.
A key, then, to understanding the relationship between strangers in public
places lies in the fact that, by definition, they have little or no biographical
information about one another. “The public realm may be defined rather
broadly as those non-private sectors or areas of urban settlement in which
individuals in co-presence tend to be personally … unknown to one
another” (Lofland 1989:454). This lack of social information increases
persons’ conceptions of the potential risks that may be involved in public
encounters.

INFORMATION AND RISK IN STRANGER INTERACTION

All social interactions, even those between intimates, involve a degree of
risk. The risk originates in the possibility that an information deficit will
cause an actual or potential interaction to go awry. Risk is an inherent
feature of interactions, since we can never be sure of the motives and
intentions of those with whom we interact. We can never fully suspend
doubt about the “true” motives of others. Our inability ever to suspend
doubt fully is a constant feature of interaction and poses for us a problem
that is never fully solvable. One paradox of interaction is that we must
simultaneously doubt and trust others. While ordered interaction must
proceed on the normative assumption that others’ spoken words and actions
reflect the actual nature of their interests, motives, and goals, we can never
be sure that such an assumption is a safe one. We must, in short, run a
course between complete trust and paranoia.
Encounters between strangers pose special problems. Strangers have little
or no information about one another except the information that can be
ascertained through immediate observation (dress, demeanor, and facial
expression). Such readily accessible, although partial, information can be
referred to as “face” information. In some instances the potential risks are
so clear that strangers will assiduously avoid even the slightest encounter.
Here we refer to the case in which, on the basis of face information alone, it
is easily apparent that either no meaningful interaction could take place or
an interaction might be interpreted as improper. For example, an older man
approaching a little girl on the street might, rightly or wrongly, be suspected
of being a “dirty old man.” Those who unwarily attempt to begin
interactions in anonymous public settings, even when these “face
discrepancies” exist, do so at potentially great risk.
In short, we depend heavily on face information in determining which
potential interactions are permissible and which are impermissible because
they involve too great a risk. We carry around with us fairly clear
background expectancies concerning the appropriateness of social
interactions. We know, for example, that when lost we ask only certain
persons for directions. Cab drivers will sometimes pass by certain persons
(those obviously drunk, those persons in particular areas of the city). And
so on.
As in other places throughout this volume (see Chapter 6), it is important
to consider how the urban experiences of men and women differ. One
useful way to think about variation in urban experience is in terms of the
question, “Who can be where, when, and doing what?” We propose that
urban places and times are not equally accessible to men and women. Any
well-socialized urbanite knows that it is dangerous for women to be in
certain city areas, especially at night (Melbin 1987). To the extent that men
and women have different access to activities, places, and times, they have
different subjective experiences of urban life. Moreover, while everyone is
constrained to abide by norms of noninvolvement in public places, women
are especially vulnerable to unwanted attentions by men and so must be
more vigilant about protecting their privacy. A number of studies (Duneier
and Molotch 1999; Gardner 1980, 1995; Martin 1989; Wise and Stanley
1987) focus on the particular strategies women must adopt in public places
to minimize being sexually harassed by men. It is, for example, reflective of
power differences between men and women (Henley 1986) that men feel
the right to stare (and often to make comments) at women passing on the
street while women must carefully avert their eyes lest they be mistakenly
seen as inviting the attentions of men. In her interviews with New York City
residents, Karen Snedker found that perceptions of vulnerability to crime
were powerfully conditioned by gender and how people, women especially,
conduct themselves on the street:
Lack of [perceived] vulnerability was linked to lifestyles. Susan, a 22-year-old White woman,
commented that “if I’m dressed up to go out and I’m running around in a little skirt, I wouldn’t really
feel comfortable.” She later said that she does not feel vulnerable anymore because she is neither
dressed in a provocative way nor engaged in risky activities, “I’m not running around in tiny little
dresses, anymore, for one. My lifestyle has changed.” … [C]onforming girls—those who do not dress
provocatively or go out late alone—imagine that they will be safe or at least be perceived as
nonculpable victims. Nonconformists if sexually assaulted are perceived as culpable victims as they
made themselves easier targets. (Snedker 2012:86)

The general point we wish to make is that there are always risks to be run
in engaging a stranger in interaction. There is the possibility of generating a
set of obligations that one is not prepared for or is unwilling to pay off, the
possibility of damage to one’s presented self-image, attacks on one’s
identity, boredom, loss of time, and even physical danger. Just as the
knowledgeable gambler understands that the one sure thing is that there is
no such thing as a sure thing, and works systematically to reduce the
possibility of unforeseen contingencies in placing a bet, so should we
expect all persons to attempt to minimize the odds of an unpleasant, risky
interaction.
Beyond the fact that urbanites in anonymous situations are biographical
strangers to one another, we must consider the sheer volume of potential
interaction faced by persons in the midst of the large city. Around New
York, for example, the number of people encountered in a 10-minute
walking distance varies from 11,000 in Nassau County; to 20,000 in
Newark, New Jersey; to 220,000 in midtown Manhattan (Palen 1975). In
midtown Manhattan you probably would not intimately know any of the
thousands of people who would pass you. In 1970, the psychologist Stanley
Milgram considered the effect of this density and the nature of potential
encounters in the city. He has stressed the need for adaptive mechanisms to
deal with what he terms urban “overload.”

A THEORY OF URBAN OVERLOAD

Like many urban social psychologists, Milgram (1970) begins his inquiry
by making reference to Louis Wirth’s (1938) essay on the city. He agrees at
the outset that the criteria offered by Wirth adequately define the city. The
city is large, dense, and heterogeneous. Milgram goes on to argue, however,
that these demographic characteristics have not been used in producing an
adequate social psychology of the city. As a psychologist he argues that we
need an idea that links the individual’s experience to these demographic
circumstances of urban life. The theoretical link proposed by Milgram
stresses the idea of “stimulus overload.” His argument, very simply, is that
urbanites in their daily lives are bombarded with far more stimuli than they
can handle successfully. The human organism cannot process and act upon
all the stimuli that it necessarily confronts daily. “City life, as we
experience it, constitutes a continuous set of encounters with overload, and
of resultant adaptations” (1970:1462). In this article Milgram tries to outline
some of the adaptations that urban persons are forced to make in the face of
this stimulus overload.
It should be noted that the theory that Milgram seeks to make explicit is
found in rudimentary form in earlier works. Georg Simmel indicated that
urbanites must somehow come to grips with the multiple experiences of city
life. Simmel suggested that city persons must maintain ever more
superficial and anonymous relations with their fellow urbanites in order to
maintain their “psychic life.” The link between density, heterogeneity, and
the psychology of the individual is made in the following statement:
With every crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational and
social life—[the city] creates in the sensory foundations of mental life, and in the degree of
awareness necessitated by our organization as creatures dependent on differences, a deep contrast
with the slower, more habitual, more smoothly flowing rhythm of the sensory-mental phase of small
town and rural existence. Thereby the essentially intellectualistic character of the mental life of the
metropolis becomes intelligible as over against that of the small town which rests more on feelings
and emotional relationships. (Simmel 1971:325)

The first effect that Milgram notes is the need for the urbanites to set
priorities regarding the phenomena in their everyday lives that they are
willing to take into account. Principles of selectivity must be established in
order to evaluate how much time and energy will be devoted to various
inputs. In this regard, for example, the failure of urbanites to help the
homeless or alcoholics on the city streets becomes understandable. Such
daily events must be given low priority because, were we to attend to every
such occurrence, we would soon find ourselves doing nothing but helping
people on the street. The frequency of that situation is simply too great for
us to deal with it in any kind of continuous fashion. The anonymity of the
city and the relative indifference to others in public places becomes
meaningful as a necessary response to the overstimulation of the city. It is
in this regard that the lessening of social responsibility can be made sense
of.
Milgram argues that urbanites must generate quite specific norms of
“noninvolvement.” The failure of city dwellers to help others in trouble can
be understood in terms of a norm of noninvolvement. Urbanites are less
willing to assist strangers than their rural counterparts are. Milgram’s
students demonstrated this by comparing the number of persons in urban
and town areas who were willing to allow strangers into their homes.
Investigators claimed to have lost the address of a friend living nearby and
asked if it was possible to use the phone of the persons approached. The
question that Milgram sought to answer was whether researchers would
gain more entries in towns than in cities. He reports that “in all cases there
was a sharp increase in the proportion of entries achieved by an
experimenter when he moved from the city to the small town” (1970:1463).
Part of this general norm of noninvolvement is that the traditional
courtesies or civilities of social life are less apparent in the city. Persons
bumping into one another seldom stop to offer their apologies. Indeed, the
norms of noninvolvement are so strong in the city that “men are actually
embarrassed to give up a seat on a subway to an old woman” (Milgram
1970:1464). All these instances of noninvolvement, in their totality,
constitute for Milgram the essence of urban anonymity. He is quick to point
out that the kind of anonymity he describes is not all bad. It is because of
this anonymity that persons with various eccentricities are tolerated in the
city. Because of norms of noninvolvement, stigmatized persons generally
find greater acceptance within urban contexts. The general idea raised by
Milgram is that the city offers many “protective benefits” not offered in the
small town.
In a general sense, city persons learn to protect themselves from
unwanted intrusions while in public places. To do this we sometimes use
props such as newspapers to shield ourselves from others and to indicate
our inaccessibility for interaction. In effect, we learn to “tune others out.” In
this regard, we might see the smartphone as the quintessential urban prop in
that it allows us to be tuned in and tuned out at the same time. It is a device
that allows us to enter our own private world and thereby effectively to
close off encounters with others. DeNora (2000:58) has similarly observed
that urban dwellers could make use of their Walkman (now replaced by
iPods and music apps on smartphones) to insulate themselves from the
noisy world around them. The use of such devices to protect our “personal
space,” along with our body demeanor and facial expression (the passive
“mask” or even scowl that persons adopt on subways), ensures that others
will not bother us. One of the chief claims or rights that urban persons
maintain in public places is the right to be left alone. In most instances
people respect that right and behave mutually in a fashion to sustain it.
 It is also interesting to observe that one feature of city life is that
mechanisms are established that filter out stimuli before they have a chance
to reach individuals. Doormen and receptionists serve the function of
screening those who wish to gain access to people living in urban buildings
(Bearman 2005). And in most cities one must have a transit card or exact
change to ride on public buses. While this requirement has the practical
value of cutting down on crime because the drivers do not carry money to
make change, it has the additional consequence of dramatically reducing the
number of interactions drivers must deal with, and thereby insulates them
from stimulus overload.
We have been speaking primarily about the ways in which persons
minimize the interactional claims that others may make on them. In a series
of experiments, Bibb Latane and John Darley (1970) investigated one
dramatic instance of urbanites’ noninvolvement, those cases where persons
fail to intervene when others appear to be in trouble. In a book titled The
Unresponsive Bystander, these investigators provide evidence that the
failure of urbanites to intervene in “trouble” situations is not a function of
gross alienation, indifference, or apathy singularly produced by cities and
city life. In a number of ingeniously conceived studies, Latane and Darley
offer strong support for the nonobvious hypothesis that the more bystanders
to an emergency, the less likely, or more slowly, any one bystander will
intervene to provide aid. Their argument is that the failure of persons to
intervene derives from what they call a “diffusion of responsibility.” Each
person, aware that others are witnessing the event, assumes that one or
more of these others will take the responsibility to intervene. The result of
this “pluralistic ignorance” is that no one steps forward to intervene. Their
work amply illustrates that we must not stop our analysis of the city with
the simple description of events. To do that is to make us susceptible to the
beliefs about city life that it is our task to question.
Both Milgram’s and Latane and Darley’s analyses raise another important
point. It seems clear from these writings that theories postulating a
distinctive urban personality type may be substantially in error. Rather, we
must see that the behavior of urbanites is situationally defined. In
Milgram’s words, “contrasts between city and rural behavior probably
reflect the responses of similar people to very different situations, rather
than intrinsic differences in the personalities of rural and city dwellers. The
city is a situation to which individuals respond adaptively” (1970:1465). We
would hypothesize, for example, that people from small towns who find
themselves in cities would begin to adopt, perhaps within a matter of hours,
the mechanisms urbanites use to protect themselves. Conversely, people
who have lived their whole lives within cities and then move to small towns
would quickly adopt behaviors consistent with small-town living.
While the studies we have cited are intriguing, they do not adequately
explain how the norm of noninvolvement is maintained. It is to that issue
that we now turn.

A MINIMAX HYPOTHESIS OF URBAN LIFE

To this point our characterization of urbanites’ public encounters still
seems somewhat hazy and elusive. Urbanites seem to shun encounters with
one another, minimizing their involvement whenever possible. They are
constrained to generate a norm of noninvolvement because of the social
risks that are tied to stranger interaction and because of the inability to cope
with the sheer volume and complexity of potential encounters in the city. At
the same time we have asserted, following Goffman, that persons have an
investment in appearing “correct” in front of others—even strangers—so as
to preserve their self-images. Persons seek to pick up information about
others; this information may facilitate interaction and may be used to avoid
interaction. There seems to be a dialectical relationship between
indifference and involvement. A paradox of public urban interaction is that
persons must systematically take one another into account in order to avoid
unwanted encounters.
The sociologist Lyn Lofland (1971b) has suggested that public ordered
life between strangers is possible because urbanites have successfully
created a workable social contract, a kind of public social bargain. Indeed,
she says that “all social life may be viewed as a kind of social bargain, a
whispered enjoinder to let us all protect each other so that we can carry on
the business of living” (1971b:226). Persons in public settings are expected
to exert some effort to preserve both their own and others’ public identities.
The effort expended in this type of mutual protection is evident in one of
Lofland’s examples. She cites the case of an older man, sitting in a
restaurant booth, carrying on an active conversation with an imaginary
other. The conversation was quite complete as the man animatedly made a
statement and then listened intently as the “other” made his or her reply. As
the waitress approached to take the order, the man happened to be in the
midst of a rather lengthy reply to a point made by the other. The waitress
waited patiently until a break in the conversation and only then asked if he
was ready to order. During this whole time she showed no evidence that
anything extraordinary was occurring. Unless persons pose some type of
direct threat, urbanites are willing to tolerate, and to treat as normal, quite
eccentric public behaviors.
In urban contexts this social bargain seems to demand that persons
cooperate with one another enough to ensure some intelligibility and order
in their everyday lives while seeking to keep at a minimum their
involvement with one another. We are offering, then, a kind of minimax
description of urban encounters. Urbanites seek to minimize involvement
and to maximize social order. Persons must act in concert. Persons must
take one another into account. At the same time, persons must protect their
personal privacy, a commodity hard to come by in urban settings. Urbanites
must, in other words, create a kind of “public privacy.” They are required to
strike a balance between involvement, indifference, and cooperation with
one another.
These descriptions of city interaction may seem strange, if not
contradictory—intimate anonymity, public privacy, involved indifference—
yet these subtle combinations of apparently opposite ideas do capture the
quality of a good deal of city life. They suggest that while urban persons
may spend relatively little time engaged in direct verbal interactions with
one another, they are nevertheless deliberately acting in awareness of, and
adjusting their own behaviors to, the possible response of others.
It is easy enough to say that city persons must consistently take one
another into account in order to create the proper balance of indifference
and involvement as they move through urban public places. If public
encounters are to be carried off successfully, however, persons must have an
enormous amount of social knowledge in common—must share a large
number of meanings about city life. There must be some degree of
consensus among persons relative to the meanings that they attribute to both
their own and others’ behaviors. Persons must share some notion of what
constitutes appropriate involvement with others in public settings. As a
continuing step in our analysis, we must specify the knowledge that persons
acquire and use in anonymous situations.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF PUBLIC LIFE: A LOOK AT SOME
LITERATURE
To this point our discussion has been on a fairly abstract level. The time
has come to be more concrete, and in this section we shall review some
studies illustrating the categories of norms within which everyday life is
carried out. Our question is this: What are the types of normative
conventions followed by city persons that maximize intelligibility and
predictability in their relations with others while simultaneously
maximizing their own sense of privacy in public? With the aid of research
done by others, it is possible to describe some of the constraints typically
imposed on persons as they encounter others within the city. Data in the
following section of the chapter illustrate that urban contexts vary in terms
of persons’ felt need for privacy and anonymity. Some encounters are very
fleeting and require little attention, while others are of longer duration.
Contexts also differ in terms of the nature of the behaviors going on in
them, with some demanding rigorous rules to maintain anonymity while
others allowing for the suspension of the usual norms of noninvolvement.
We shall try to provide examples from the literature indicating some of the
complexity and variability inherent in creating and maintaining urban social
order.

Cooperating to Produce and Sustain Social Order

Some of the most influential and far-ranging work on city life has been
accomplished by researchers utilizing experimental and quasi-experimental
methods. Very frequently in this kind of work the strategy is somehow to
disrupt the normal, natural processes of everyday life. If researchers are
correct in understanding how everyday urban life is normally conducted,
they should, then, be able to predict how persons will behave once these
“normal” routines have been disrupted. Put more directly, if the researcher
believes that certain norms are important in guiding some aspect of social
life, the best way to establish the norms’ existence is to transgress the
alleged norms and to note the reaction of persons to the transgression. A
combination of close, careful, naturalistic observation and the purposive
manipulation of social settings can reveal a great deal about how everyday
urban life is constructed, ordered, and typically carried out. This is nicely
demonstrated, for example, in work on pedestrian behavior.
 Since the 1970s, a number of studies have described the myriad ways in
which individual pedestrians are involved in a constant process of delicate
(and sometimes not-so-delicate) interactions. In reviewing this literature for
the National Academy of Sciences, Daamen and Hoogendoorn (2003)
described a number of such findings. Foremost, they note that “a high
degree of cooperation between pedestrians is an intrinsic part of pedestrian
behavior, without which walking would be impossible” (2; emphasis in
original). That cooperation comes in several forms. Pedestrians must scan
the sidewalks that they walk for obstructions, be those other pedestrians or
objects that could get in their way. Individuals do this scanning in a
relatively narrow ellipse, such that they pay more attention to that which is
in front of them or which will be directly to their sides in the course of their
progress. They pay hardly any attention to anything more than a body’s
width away from their current path.
Upon encountering another individual within her ellipse, the pedestrian
engages in an encounter that evolves the emission of a critical sign. This
sign is generally something quite subtle, such as the turn of a shoulder.
When the other pedestrian reciprocates with her own critical sign, they
arrive at an establishing moment. From that point, they can take the
necessary steps to adjust their paths and avoid collision (though sometimes,
of course, signals are confused, leading to a bit of a “dance” before the
pedestrians can get around each other).
Often, the steps taken to avoid collision involve a move described as a
“step-and-slide” (3). Rather than making a wide detour around the other
pedestrian, one will often barely turn his shoulder and effect a sort of side
step. In so doing, a collision is narrowly averted. Some researchers even
describe brushes as part and parcel of the process. Given an unwillingness
to unilaterally cede sidewalk space, pedestrians appear to sanction others
who do not cooperatively make the slight adjustments conventional to
pedestrian interaction by more rubbing shoulders with them as they pass.
Finally, Daamen and Hoogendoorn note that basic social variables play
an important role in pedestrian interactions as well:
Pedestrians grant more space to approaching male than to female pedestrians … Beautiful women
were given more space than unattractive women … persons or groups moved for larger groups;
younger groups tended to move for older groups; women do not tend to move for men, nor do blacks
tend to move for whites. (3)
 These observations demonstrate that a set of behaviors that we wholly
take for granted as urbanites is really well organized and dependent upon a
distinctive normative cooperation among actors.

Practicing Civil Inattention

Our discussion throughout this chapter is premised on the idea that
urbanites acknowledge others’ presence in public places while generally
avoiding overt interaction with them. This double-edged task of
acknowledgment and avoidance is captured in Erving Goffman’s notion of
“civil inattention.” Practicing civil inattention in public places means “that
one gives to another enough visual notice to demonstrate that one
appreciates that the other is present, while at the next moment withdrawing
one’s attention from him so as to express that he does not constitute a target
of special curiosity or design” (Goffman 1963:84). In her wide-ranging
review of literature on social life in the public realm, Lyn Lofland argues
that civil inattention may be the sine qua non of city life, in that it “makes
possible co-presence without co-mingling, awareness without engrossment,
courtesy without conversation” (Lofland 1989:462).
As might be expected, one urban setting in which civil inattention is
easily seen is the subway. Systematic observations in subways (Levine,
Vinson, and Wood 1973) have shown how persons indicate that they do not
wish to be communicated with. Persons in this face-to-face situation place a
high premium on avoiding unnecessary encounters. As in many other public
contexts, persons are forced to recognize each other’s presence while trying
to minimize the possibility of having a “focused” interaction. Persons, in
other words, try to minimize the interactional claims that others might make
on them. This interactional work is, of course, reciprocal, as all the actors in
the setting are doing the same. Subway riders will always choose a seat that
maximizes their distance from fellow travelers; they will limit their visual
attention to props that they may have with them (books, magazines,
newspapers) or to advertising cards over the windows. They will take great
pains to avoid physical contact, will keep their hands very visible to defeat
any possible charge of a sexual impropriety once the subway car begins to
get crowded, and the like. These regulations, shared and known by all
participants in the setting, are designed to “protect unacquainted individuals
from accessibility to one another” (216).
 In some contexts, however, individuals feel the need to move beyond
civil inattention by treating others in a setting as “nonpersons.” Another
well-known distinction made by Erving Goffman is that between what he
terms “back” and “front” regions. Front regions are those social areas where
persons feel the need to construct performances and manage impressions in
front of an audience. Back regions, on the other hand, are those places
where persons can more easily relax, be themselves, and suspend contrived
performances. The next time you go into a restaurant, take note of the
changes in the demeanor and facial expressions of servers as they move
between the kitchen area (the back region) and the dining area (the front
region). As they move into the dining area, their bodies become more erect
and they smile as they approach customers. As they move through the
swinging door into the kitchen, the smile may be replaced by a scowl
indicating their “true” feelings about their customers and their job. Places
such as bathrooms might be termed “institutionalized back regions” because
they are contexts where we normally require clear privacy.
In his study of homeless book vendors, Duneier (1999) provides several
fascinating insights into the construction of civil inattention. Particularly
interesting are his observations of how these book vendors ignore the
normal rules of civil inattention by paying focused attention to pedestrians
(especially women). While normally pedestrians ignore others on the street,
and are ignored in turn, Duneier observed many instances where vendors
went out of their way to try to engage in conversations with passersby.
Using Conversation Analysis, a technique for parsing the structure of verbal
exchanges that grew out of symbolic interactionism, Duneier shows that the
conversations started by certain vendors with women are in violation of
implicit norms of interaction. For example, one vendor asks a series of
questions of a passing woman—“You all right?” “You married?” “Can I get
your name?” Her responses are all terse—she either replies “Yeah,” or she
doesn’t reply at all (196–198). But beyond the content of the responses,
Duneier is able to show through Conversation Analysis that their delivery is
a signal that the woman is trying to end the interaction. Through their
terseness, the responses do not invite further conversation. And they are
delivered after a significant pause, while normal responses in conversation
follow close on the heels of what the previous speaker has said. All this
points to the exceptional nature of these street exchanges. In addition to the
somewhat off-putting nature of the unsolicited flirtations, the exchanges
clearly counter norms that people on the street normally expect not to
interact with each other. When that expectation is challenged, pedestrians
do their best to reestablish their noninteractive bubble so they may proceed
to their destination unencumbered.
In a study by Spencer Cahill and his colleagues (1985), behaviors of
persons in public bathrooms were examined. The concern was to learn the
mechanisms people employ to carry off backstage behaviors in a public
context. This research found that individuals engage in a number of rituals
that go beyond civil inattention. Persons go to great lengths to ignore the
behaviors and even the presence of other people. Order is sustained in this
context because everyone in the situation cooperates in the construction of
the fiction that they are alone. As an example, men standing near each other
at urinals will studiously avert their gaze from each other. Cahill notes that
“[w]hat men typically give one another when using adjacent urinals is not,
therefore, civil inattention but ‘non person treatment’; that is, they treat one
another as if they were part of the setting’s physical equipment, as ‘objects
not worthy of a glance’ ” (1985:41).
As many of the examples in this book illustrate, sociologists studying
urban life find interesting the behaviors of persons in contexts that others
might find trivial or even embarrassing to study. Cahill’s study, like others
we shall report on momentarily, is premised on the idea that one can learn a
great deal about the organization of social life by investigating such
contexts. He argues persuasively that “the systematic study of bathroom
behavior [yields] valuable insights into the character and the requirements
of our routine public performances” (1985:34). Consistent with the aim of
this chapter, the study illustrates that maintaining order in everyday life
requires that all of us know the norms and rituals demanded of us in
different contexts and that we feel a strong obligation to cooperate in their
maintenance. In this respect we might say that there is an underlying
morality to everyday performances in that we all feel the obligation to do
our part in maintaining social order and preserving the integrity of social
situations. Consistent with the underlying point of this chapter, Cahill
states:
The systematic study of routine bathroom behavior reveals just how loyal members of this society are
to the central values and behavioral standards that hold our collective lives together. Whatever else
they may do, users of public bathrooms continue to bear the “cross of personal character” … and, as
long as they continue to carry this burden, remain self regulating participants in the “interaction
order.” (1985:56)
Protecting Personal Identities
Frequently the order of public life is best seen in those situations in
which persons’ moral identities are most potentially called into question.
Karp (1973) studied the behaviors of persons in Times Square pornographic
bookstores and movie theaters. Times Square was a useful context for
investigation because it epitomizes the anonymous inner city. As such, it
was a good testing ground for a number of assumptions found in the urban
literature about urban interpersonal relations. Karp’s Times Square data
show that persons engaging in unconventional behaviors in a typically
anonymous sector of the city are concerned with being defined as “social”
or “proper,” even by total strangers. Despite the fact that persons were not
engaged in direct verbal interaction, they were very much taking one
another into account in this setting. Karp describes a number of maneuvers
engaged in by persons involved in these settings.
He reports that persons frequenting bookstores have available and use a
number of devices for hiding, shielding, or obscuring the nature of their
“deviant” involvement from outsiders (nonparticipants in bookstore
pornography) as well as from persons similarly involved in buying or using
pornographic materials. In order to ensure that the nature of their dominant
involvement (that is, buying or using pornographic materials) will be
hidden from those around them, persons utilize a kind of “waiting”
behavior. Before entering a store, persons spend a long time looking in the
window or hanging around outside the store. In doing so, they hope to
communicate to those around them that they are “merely curious” or “idly
curious” about the contents of the store. Such behavior also serves the
purpose of checking out the environment before entering the store.
Once in the store, persons maintain a strict impersonality toward one
another. There is a conscious avoidance of any overt, focused interaction.
Under no circumstances do customers in these stores make physical or
verbal contact with one another. The normative structure appears to demand
silence and a careful avoidance of either eye or physical contact. The
workers in the store complement these behaviors by quickly ejecting any
individual who interferes with the privacy of other customers.
There are, as well, regular behaviors engaged in by persons purchasing
pornographic materials. Persons adopt techniques that allow them to
complete purchases as quickly and unobtrusively as possible. That
customers are best left alone in terms of buying potential is illustrated by a
datum from Karp’s work. A store manager told him the following:
“You couldn’t have noticed this because you haven’t spent enough time in the store. There are guys
who come into the store who just look at the highline but don’t touch anything.”
“The highline?”
“The highline is the long table in the middle of the room that has the most current, most expensive
items. These guys make a circle around the table, never touching anything. Then they go to the back
of the store and spend a little time there. They aren’t really interested in what’s in the back. On their
way out they make their selections … 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You can’t say a word to these guys or you will
lose a sale.” (1973:442)

The attempt clearly is to minimize the amount of time that one must
spend in making the purchase and thereby to appear as disinterested as
possible.
The import of the data suggests that persons in this semipublic urban
setting are involved in a highly structured social situation in which privacy
norms are highly standardized and readily understood. The system works so
that each person’s bid for privacy is complemented by the behavior of other
persons in the store. We must, then, see that even in highly anonymous
public places such as Times Square, persons are very much constrained in
the production of their behavior. Despite the ability of cities to support a
diversity of simultaneous activities that, in the flow of daily life, are likely
to go generally unnoticed; despite the impersonality and anonymity of city
life; and despite the fact that the overwhelming bulk of our actions in the
public domain is performed in front of strangers, it is still our task to be
perpetually engaged in the business of impression management. In short,
when it comes to maintaining a proper image of ourselves, everyone counts.
In another study of a similar context, Peter Donnelly (1981) has
documented the behaviors of persons attending X-rated movies in small-
town settings. One central difference between his study and Karp’s is that
participation in the Times Square scene is virtually a solitary one, while
those attending the cinemas in the college towns often do so in groups.
Notwithstanding this difference, many of the behaviors designed to
maximize privacy and minimize social risk are similar in the two contexts.
The authors do, however, differ somewhat in their interpretations of the
behaviors of individuals. Karp stresses the idea that participants in such
settings are concerned with being seen as social or proper, while Donnelly
suggests that the main task of participants is not to be seen at all. Such
subtle differences in interpretation should not mask the deeper agreement
suggested by the data in both studies. Both studies illustrate that
participants are deeply concerned with the protection of personal identities
in a situation that potentially compromises their claim to respectability.
Another way to speak about the processes illustrated by the studies we
have cited is to say that in some contexts people have a need to produce and
manage a kind of social invisibility. Once again, the means through which
potentially compromised identities are protected is illustrated by a study of
a somewhat offbeat, but interesting, setting. Robert Lilly and Richard Ball
(1981) studied the operation of a “no-tell motel,” a facility that specializes
in renting rooms by the hour to people who wish to engage in illicit
heterosexual trysts. Just as in pornographic bookstores, the staff of the
motel cooperates with customers by going to great lengths to ensure the
absolute privacy of those using the facility. Everything from the way that
potential customers are screened to the placement of garages that allows
easy and inconspicuous entrance to rooms is designed to facilitate
engagement in “deviant” behaviors requiring identity protection. The issue
here is not to make a moral judgment about those who use such
establishments or those who run them. Rather, the point is that the context
once again illustrates how institutions can be set up and norms created to
maintain a kind of public fiction “where each set of participants knows
what is going on but pretends that something different is occurring, where
each has access to much knowledge but strives to remain ignorant so as to
maintain a certain uninvolved posture” (Lilly and Ball 1981:195). None of
us need ever have visited a “no-tell motel” to recognize the variety of
situations in which we, too, pretend ignorance in order to facilitate the
smooth management of our own and others’ behaviors in public.

Self-Management in Public Settings

We suggest that the mechanisms used by persons in these “unique” urban
social settings designed to protect personal identities, to minimize social
risk, and to let participants appear “proper” are not unlike the procedures
used by urban strangers in more usual settings. That the same or similar
kinds of “self-management” mechanisms are used by strangers in routine
public encounters is demonstrated in the work of Lyn Lofland. In an article
appropriately titled “Self-Management in Public Settings,” Lofland (1971a)
describes the various mechanisms and devices used by persons to protect
their self-esteem when in the presence of strangers in public places. She
agrees with one of our earlier assertions when she states: “If a person is to
exist as a social being, as an organism with a self, there must be some
minimal guarantees that in interaction with others he will receive the
affirmation and confirmation of himself as ‘right’ ” (1971a:95). The danger
in confronting strangers in public places may be the inability of certain
persons to provide this needed confirmation. At the extreme there is the
ever-present possibility that persons may provide disconfirmation of one’s
“rightness.” Remember that the problem of strangers’ interacting in public
stems from their relative lack of knowledge about one another. Lofland is
concerned with the way that public actors compensate for this uncertainty
and inherent risk imposed by the urban public place. Her observations are,
we think, confirmed by our own everyday experiences.
Although suggesting that there are many strategies used by strangers in
public to insure their self-images under the scrutiny of others, Lofland
names the following major techniques or maneuvers:
Checking for readiness: Actors prepared themselves before entering a
potential encounter situation by checking their appearance, making sure that
hair is in place, that zippers are zipped, and so on.
Taking a reading. Here the person essentially stops to take stock of the
social setting. Persons may briefly delay entering a room until they have
had a chance to scan it with their eyes, noting the placement of furniture,
and the like.
Reaching a position. The final step in this sequence is to reach a stopping
point. Persons seek to enter the situation as inconspicuously as possible—to
minimize the time during which they are under the social spotlight. Once
having decided on the spot or territory they wish to occupy, persons may
make a no-nonsense, direct beeline to the spot, or approach the chosen
position slowly and by degrees, stopping briefly at various points until the
destination is reached.
It is worth noting that the tactics described by Lofland in routine settings
are not unlike the waiting or stalling behaviors described by Karp and by
Donnelly in the relatively unusual situations of the pornographic bookstore
and pornographic movies. Again, we see that there are clear uniformities,
crosscutting a number of urban settings, in the ways that persons present
themselves to others.
PRACTICING SOCIABILITY
So far in this chapter, we have stressed the ways in which urbanites
protect themselves in public places from the intrusions of others. Among
other things we discussed the importance of maintaining a distinctive
“public privacy,” and we suggested that there is an “anonymous intimacy”
of sorts in public places. We agreed with Goffman that persons maintain a
social distance through the operation of what he calls “civil inattention.” We
characterized urban social relations as constituting a combination of
involvement and indifference.
Overall, we have argued that while urban persons spend relatively little
time engaged in direct verbal interactions with one another, they are
nevertheless quite deliberately and consistently taking one another into
account in public settings. We have tried to outline the methods through
which actors cooperatively and consensually maintain a social/moral
“public bargain.” There is an unwritten social contract that governs a good
deal of everyday urban life. While thus far we have stressed the
mechanisms through which urbanites maintain this fine balance between
indifference, silent cooperation, and involvement, we must not overlook the
vibrant, active, public life in cities. There are many public contexts in which
urban strangers can suspend the normal rules of disengagement and
participate in at least quasi-intimate relationships. Studies of such diverse
settings as bars (Cavan 1966; Katovich and Reese 1987), laundromats
(Kenen 1982), and racetracks (Scott 1968; Rosencrance 1986) suggest the
wide range of public settings conducive to the suspension of the normal
requirements of urban anonymity.
In a more general sense, cities seem to vary in their capacity to support
direct interactions among strangers. Part of this undoubtedly has to do with
differences in city tone, tempo, and mood (for example, walking rates vary
from city to city); differences in architectural layouts of cities (the shape of
cities, the patterning of streets, the placement of public parks); and
differences in the historically developed images that residents of various
cities hold. Goffman makes this observation in comparing the “tightness” of
city street life in different settings:
The same kind of social setting in different communities will be differently defined as regards
tightness. Thus, public streets in Paris seem to be more loosely defined than those in Britain or
America. On many Parisian streets one can eat from a loaf of bread while walking to and from work,
become heatedly involved in a peripatetic conversation … etc. (1963:200)
 As an extension of Goffman’s observations, we may note not only that
cities appear to vary in the degree to which persons feel the need to
maintain a norm of noninvolvement but also that there are differences
within cities. In any city there seem to be areas known by all city residents
(and frequently known to outsiders as well) as places teeming with a
diversity of activities—Chicago’s Wicker Park, Greenwich Village in New
York, or North Beach in San Francisco. It is precisely the street life in such
areas that draws persons to them. Observations of such city areas confirms
Jane Jacobs’s statement that “a good city street achieves a marvel of
balance between its people’s determination to have essential privacy and
their simultaneous wishes for differing degrees of contact, enjoyment or
help from people around” (Jacobs 1961:59).
Much the same view on these issues is expressed about New York in a
book by William H. Whyte (1988). Whyte reports on many years of study
of street life in that city. Rather than concentrating his efforts on selected
areas of the city that traditionally have a good deal of street action, such as
Greenwich Village and Brooklyn Heights, Whyte concentrated his
observations specifically on the downtown and midtown areas. Despite the
dominant image that such downtown areas of large cities support little in
the way of sociability, careful and detailed observation indicates an
extraordinary ordering of activities and a tremendous amount of sociable
activity. Whyte’s study calls into question the image of the city as a center
of insensate crowding, a place of squeezed-up masses of anonymous
individuals who are unable to take pleasure in each other’s presence. His
data show that people enjoy the city’s open spaces, converse in parks,
spontaneously engage in impromptu street conferences, and have fun eating
outdoors. There is, in other words, a viable and intensely pleasurable street
life in New York.
Beyond making the observation, like that made by Jacobs, that one key to
an active, interesting street life is the creation of diversity, Whyte goes on to
make practical suggestions for the use of city space. Like Jacobs, he argues
that simply providing space will not create greater interaction among
strangers in the city. It is the use of space, the way that space is laid out, and
how it is managed that are most important. He notes that in New York some
plazas and parks seem to generate a good deal of activity, whereas others do
not. Such a comparison is useful to the extent that it calls attention to how
space is used differently to create more or less activity. He notes that the
widely used plazas are those which have considerable seating (in some
instances movable seats)—places where the seats are strategically placed so
that those using them can easily view any activity occurring. Widely used
plazas or parks allow food vendors to ply their trade, and they are places
with pleasing greenery. In general, Whyte advocates widening sidewalks to
create more pedestrian space, putting more street benches in areas of
highest activity, and the like. We also have much to learn from the layout of
such cities as Paris, Florence, and Venice. These are cities that stimulate the
pedestrian and thus stimulate interaction between persons. These are cities
made for people. Spaces are designed in such a way that persons are not
insulated from human contact. Paris, for example,
is known as a city in which the outdoors has been made attractive to people and where it is not only
possible but pleasurable to stretch one’s legs, breathe, sniff the air, and take in the people and the city.
The sidewalks along the Champs-Elysees engender a wonderful expansive feeling associated with a
hundred foot separation of one’s self from the traffic. It is noteworthy that the little streets and alleys
too narrow to accept most vehicles not only provide variety but are a constant reminder that Paris is
for people. (Hall 1966:175)

As we noted in the previous chapter, the New Urbanist school of

planning and architecture has taken these lessons about urban sociability to
heart. Many designers have worked to make urban spaces more inviting to
casual interactions, and a number of American cities have explicitly taken
cues from European cities to enhance their public spaces. In Chicago, for
example, under the reign of Mayor Richard M. Daley in the 1990s and
2000s, the city worked to be more like Paris. Examples of this emulation
include ample plantings of trees and flowers, extensive use of wrought iron,
more benches, and enhanced bus shelters, all with an eye to making streets
more inviting to people as places to spend time and interact (Cawthon
1999). Daley also took steps to establish rooftop gardens and make Chicago
a more bike-friendly city, with an eye to reducing pollution and further
making the city an enticing place to be—not just a place to work between
trips to and from the suburbs (Kass 2009).
Statistics on biking suggest that this latter scheme for the better use of
city streets has captured the collective imagination of many American
commuters. For example, in New York City, the Department of
Transportation states that
[i]n 2009, DOT’s strategic plan laid out the accelerated goal of doubling bicycle commuting between
2007 and 2012 and tripling it by 2017. The City reached the goal of doubling bicycle commuting in
2011, a year early. (New York City DOT, n.d.)

In real numbers, this means that at the half dozen sites the DOT sampled
from (places like the Williamsburg Bridge and Staten Island Ferry),
ridership rose from roughly 10,100 cyclists in 2008 to over 16,000 in 2012
(New York City DOT, 2013). We mention these increases in biking as
significant to street interaction as it shows that municipalities are actively
working to build bike ridership in large part to make city streets better,
safer, less polluted sites for human activities, including interaction.

ESTABLISHING RELATIONSHIPS WITH STRANGERS2

While the city provides a setting in which strangers can protect
themselves from the intrusions of others, too much emphasis can be placed
on the lack of direct interaction with others. As Whyte (1988) observes,
there are occasions when strangers come together and interact freely. There
are situations in which people can begin to dissolve the strangeness between
them. The usual conception of risk and uncertainty in interactions with
strangers can be reduced in certain circumstances. In this last section of the
chapter, we shall speculate, on the basis of casual observation of everyday
city life, on the conditions most likely to give rise to stranger encounters.
Plainly, strangers are more likely to meet and begin relationships in some
settings or situations than in others. In some settings, such as cocktail
parties, such meetings are very likely, and in others, such as bus stops, they
are very unlikely. Between these extremes there is a range of contexts
where the likelihood of strangers meeting is greater or lesser (classrooms,
sports events, plays, laundromats, and so forth). Why is it easier for
strangers at a baseball game to strike up conversations than those in, say, an
elevator? To answer this question we will briefly consider the effects of
settings, contexts, or situations on interactions with strangers.
Settings cannot be defined only in physical terms. A bookstore is a place
with lots of books, salespersons, a cash register, and so forth, but such a
description would not capture the distinction between a college bookstore
and a pornographic bookstore. Even if someone were to describe the
contents of the books, we would not fully appreciate how the two places
differ. A more accurate way to define these places would be in terms of the
social conventions governing the nature of the interactions that occur in
them.
 We cannot understand the meaning of another’s behaviors without
considering the setting in which they occur. For example, in order to assign
meaning to the behavior of one person striking another with a fist, we
would have to know whether it happens in a neighborhood bar, the middle
of Times Square, or a ring in Las Vegas. The very same behavior can
assume quite different meanings in different places.
Extraordinary events can change the character of settings. When the
normal character of a setting becomes abnormal, or an ordinary setting
becomes somehow extraordinary, and all involved recognize that fact,
definitions of behavior change. It may be perfectly appropriate to begin
conversations when ordinarily this would be considered improper.
Conversations between strangers become allowable in stalled subway trains
or elevators or when motorists are stuck in traffic, for example. Goffman
notes that
[d]uring occasions of recognized natural disaster, when individuals suddenly find themselves in a
clearly similar predicament and suddenly become mutually dependent for information and help,
ordinary communication constraints can break down. … What is occurring in the situation guarantees
that encounters aren’t being initiated for what can be improperly gained by them. And to the extent
that this is assured, contact prohibitions can break down. (1963:36)

The context of a situation provides information that helps define the

meaning of behavior. It may also indicate certain aspects of individuals’
identities or details of their biographies that can make it easier to initiate
interactions. Sometimes a person’s mere presence in a setting gives a good
deal of information about that person. When you encounter a group of
strangers in a university classroom, you can safely assume a good deal
about them, such as their social class, occupational aspirations, and values.
Seeing a crowd of people standing on a street corner waiting for a red light
to change, however, would tell you very little about such strangers.
The difference that the social setting or context makes in an interaction is
related to the amount of information it provides about the individuals taking
part. Some contexts provide more information about those in them than
others do. In fact, an anonymous place can be thought of as one that
provides little or no information about the people in it. We propose, as a
theoretical proposition, that the likelihood of strangers meeting and
beginning interactions is greatest in those settings that provide the most
information. The more information we possess about others, the more easily
and correctly can we assess whether those with whom we begin a
transaction will reciprocate in an acceptable fashion. Some settings give
enough information about the persons in them to reduce substantially the
uncertainties normally accompanying interactions with strangers.
Once people decide to begin an interaction, they must find some way to
initiate it. In the usual case, talk is preceded by a series of nonverbal
gestures indicating the individuals’ openness to interaction. This
preparatory stage preceding verbal interaction is in effect a risk-reducing
mechanism. Without directly committing themselves to an interaction,
people use nonverbal communications to obtain a reading of others’
willingness to respond. At this stage the level of their involvement is very
slight, and if their own gestures are not positively responded to, they may
gracefully discontinue their invitational efforts.
People who want to engage in interaction can let this be known with
various types of nonverbal gestures. In full view of those around them and
in a quite deliberate fashion, they may make a point of removing territorial
markers (clothes, books, and so forth) from areas close to them. Thus, they
indicate that their personal space will not be violated should someone
choose to approach them. They may engage others in eye contact and smile,
or make a show of not being involved in any activity that demands all of
their attention.
On occasion, people go beyond these purely nonverbal gestures by
making statements aloud, ostensibly to themselves but clearly directed to
those around them. The following occurrence in a laundromat, reported in a
student term paper, is a typical example:
One girl sat down next to me and started biting her nails. A few minutes later she opened a textbook
of New Testament something or other and flipped through it. She put the book down, as if really
bored with it, and she got up and read the notices on the wall. Then she blurted out to no one in
particular, “They (the machines) take forever.”

Another laundromat conversation began this way:

I sat down next to a guy who was reading something and I began reading an essay in Time magazine.
Every once in a while this fellow would start to laugh out loud to himself. At one point he started to
laugh very hard. And so I said, “All right now, what’s so funny? What are you reading?” He replied,
“Finnegans Wake. It’s so full of puns.”

According to the norm of noninvolvement, the usual procedure for

strangers in public places is to communicate systematically that they do not
wish to become involved in an interaction (Henderson 1975). The kinds of
nonverbal and verbal initiatives just discussed here, which are based on the
commonly understood rules of noninvolvement, are designed to
communicate just the opposite. They communicate to others an openness to
interaction. When these moves for opening interaction succeed, they do so
precisely because the procedures for closing oneself off from interaction are
so widely used and understood.
When conversations are begun, very ordinary issues such as weather,
work, traffic, and the price of food are typical topics. No one can pretend
ignorance of such things. People are normally constrained to respond when
such issues have been raised, and just mentioning them is taken as an
indication of openness to interaction. These openings are specifically used
and understood as ritualized throwaway lines whose only purpose is to
initiate conversation. Such topics also serve as vehicles for probing the
willingness of others to engage in conversation. Should they decline, their
reluctance can be communicated without personally discrediting or
embarrassing those who make the probe.
One strategy for those who wish to begin an encounter is to make things
go wrong purposely. People may pretend to be lost when they are not; they
may show puzzlement about what is happening around them; or they may
purposely bump into another person, so that some kind of remedial
interaction is necessary. These strategies are used to create a situation where
the ordinary becomes extraordinary and interaction is more acceptable.
Of course, on the other hand, there are contexts that people seek out
precisely because they are given to interactions with strangers. One of the
great attractions of urban living is that it provides people with myriad
opportunities for new experiences and for meeting new and interesting
people. The jam sessions observed by Dempsey (2008) provide an example
of such a context. Here, musicians and fans of jazz would congregate to
listen to and play jazz. Many were aware that different sessions would be
populated by people who were more or less like themselves in terms of their
musical tastes. As they all shared a great interest in the music, they had a
ready-made topic for conversation. But conversation could quickly stray to
other topics, from relationships to religion or politics. And friends are often
made at these sessions, as returning musicians and audience members go
from being occasional attendees to being “regulars.” And those regulars
could become people who saw each other in contexts outside the sessions,
either playing music on each other’s gigs or seeing different musical
performances together or engaging in non-music-related activities, from
birthday parties to romances.
Romance itself can be a goal for focused interactions in particular
contexts between strangers. David Grazian (2008) asked his undergraduate
students at the University of Pennsylvania to write about their experiences
going to bars and nightclubs for his study On the Make. Grazian
characterizes young men’s trips to night clubs as “the girl hunt, in which
heterosexual males aggressively seek out female sexual partners in
nightclubs, bars, and other public arenas of commercialized entertainment”
(134). Both young men and women understand that these locations provide
a context for these sexualized activities, in which attendees start the night in
a group of friends and go on to interact with strangers. The institutions
themselves work to lubricate sociability through dark lighting, loud music,
and copious alcohol. Though in actuality, Grazian finds that relatively few
quick sexual partnerships are initiated in these contexts, it is clear that they
do provide an important site for urban strangers to interact with one another.
Importantly, Grazian goes on to argue that this activity is also important to
these young men and women as late adolescent efforts at refining their
gender identities and establishing cohesion with their peer groups, the
people with whom they go out on the town.

CONCLUSION
The data discussed throughout this chapter show that although persons in
cities are typically operating in highly anonymous situations, their
behaviors are not without social character; that is, anonymity does not
preclude the existence of patterned, highly structured, predictable social
relationships. Quite the contrary, the studies reviewed allow us to argue,
somewhat paradoxically, that anonymity demands social relationships.
Persons must work to maintain anonymity, and that work is of a highly
social nature.
Anonymity cannot be considered a given, existing spontaneously and
wholly independently of social action. Anonymity is, rather, produced by
actors. Instead of defining a situation in which there are no interpersonal
relations, as it would seem to do, anonymity can obtain only because there
are interacting agents. Contrary to some images of urban life, anonymity
does not define a situation of enormously decreased social control.
Although anonymity does increase the potential for personal freedom of
action, we must at the same time recognize that in those situations
characterized as anonymous, anonymity itself constitutes a norm to be
maintained. There are rules for preserving anonymity, which, like all other
rules, if broken, cause the transgressor to be subject to negative sanctions.
Breaking the rules of anonymity, where they apply, constitutes the basis for
being defined as improper or nonsocial.
This leads us to say that the urban sociologists who stressed the
relationship between anonymity and the absence of social controls, as well
as the absence of social relations, erred in their too simple equation of
anonymity and normlessness. These writers were misled in their view of
urban life by their failure to look behind the concrete signs of anonymity.
One can never see the social character of relations in an anonymous
situation simply by describing what an anonymous situation “looks like.” In
other words, it is the very special characteristic of anonymity that it is the
result of a normatively guided social production giving the appearance of
normlessness and the absence of social character. To see the social character
of anonymity, therefore, one must see how anonymity is produced.
Our intent here is not to suggest that the city is a highly personal place.
We do, however, believe that the equation of anonymity and normlessness
found in a good deal of the urban literature misses an important point. An
important quality of the city has been missed by the failure of the social
scientist to view interaction in the urban setting on a microsociological
level. Such an analysis reveals that anonymity is socially produced in
accordance with a system of rules that constrain individuals. An
examination of face-to-face behavior in the midst of large cities indicates
that urban persons are not in a state of detached normlessness. That actors
will strive to preserve their image as proper persons in front of total
strangers is a strong statement of urbanites’ relations with one another.
We have also tried to suggest that too much emphasis can be placed on
strangers’ lack of direct interaction with one another in urban settings.
Urban life is a well-controlled blend of indifference and involvement.
While we still subscribe to the idea that most urban relations are
characterized by a need for privacy and an attempt to preserve and maintain
the protection of urban anonymity, it is still possible for urban persons to
have much to do with one another in a direct way. There are occasions
when persons come together and begin to construct ongoing interactions in
public places. There are situations wherein persons can begin to dissolve
the strangeness that exists between them. In some situations the normal
considerations of public risk become minimized, and interaction between
urbanites assumes a much more intimate tone. There are conditions where
urbanites need not engage in their usual practice of extensive civil
inattention. There are conditions where needs for privacy and anonymity
seem to diminish somewhat. There are situations where urban strangers are
able to become more familiar with one another. There are conditions where
anonymity seems to become more intimate.
The city can be a humane, personal place. If we agree upon the value of
creating even more humane cities, we must understand the normative
demands of public interaction. We must understand the limits and
potentialities of public city life. To do that, we must not casually take at
face value the readily accessible and commonly expressed images of city
life promoted by the mass media and frequently sustained by our most
distinguished literary and philosophical figures. If our conceptualizations of
the urban environment become too rigid, we severely restrict the range of
possible experiences that urban residents may undergo. We have sought to
show in this chapter and in Chapter 3 that one function of an urban social
psychology is to call to our attention how some of our images of the city
may too severely restrict our conception of the ways in which urbanites can
and do relate to one another.

NOTES
1. Our thinking in this section has been heavily influenced by Lyn Lofland’s (1985) penetrating
study of the historical transformation of urban life. She argues that the basis for public order in
preindustrial cities was persons’ appearances. With the emergence of industrial cities, public order
was determined by persons’ geographical location.
2. The following section has been adapted from Karp and Yoels (1986:116–119).
 CHAPTER 5

Lifestyle Diversity and Urban Tolerance

One of the hallmarks of a great city is that it fosters a tolerance for

differences in behavior and group lifestyle. Urbanites learn to cope with,
adapt to, and often enjoy lifestyle differences; they seem to have developed
a sophistication about lifestyle diversity. As we have noted several times
throughout this book, whatever else a city may be, it is a place that brings
together people representing an extraordinary array of cultural differences.
While, as we shall see, serious conflicts do sometimes erupt among these
groups, a central fact of city life is that urbanites learn to live with and to
appreciate human diversity. The very notions of urbanity and
cosmopolitanism are caught up with the ideas of sophistication about and
tolerance for a wide range of differences in behavior, attitude, and beliefs.
In an essay celebrating New York as the symbol of modern urban life
because it embodies the potentialities for personal freedom, Peter Berger
playfully defines a true metropolis as “a place where an individual can
march down the street wearing a purple robe and a hat with bells on,
beating a drum and leading an elephant by the leash—and only get casual
glances from passers-by” (Berger 1978:30).
To be sure, every large city has its own characters who may put on
impromptu song and dance acts, helpfully direct traffic, preach religious or
political “truths,” warn us about the imminent end of the world, or stop us
on the street asking for change so that “I might get my Rolls Royce out of
hock.” In some areas of the city we are likely to be stopped by those who
will “give us a great deal on a genuine diamond-studded watch.” If we
choose, we can watch hipsters play cycle polo on their fixed-speed bikes.
There are also those who want us to read their handbills, those who solicit
customers for massage parlors, or those who bellow gospel tunes for
themselves and for anyone who stops to listen.
In this chapter we want to explore the basis for this sophistication and
tolerance. To disregard the varieties of culture that flourish within cities
would be to miss one of the important essences of the city. The city is large,
dense, and composed of groups with heterogeneous lifestyles. Each of these
diverse groups undoubtedly interprets the nature of the city differently; for
each, the city, in its various aspects, is likely to carry a different meaning.
The city, to use Anselm Strauss’s (1975) term, is made up of a series of
distinctive yet interdependent “social worlds.” Another sociologist, Everett
Hughes, put it nicely:
The city is a place of crises for many persons. There may be enough people who share one
peculiarity to allow them to join together to make a cult of it. Esoteric cults burgeon. But so do
organization of alcoholics, of parents of retarded children, of fatties who plan on getting thin. Older
people form Golden Years clubs, which become matrimonial bureaus. The reorganization of life in
the city proceeds in part by the rise of peculiar institutions which resolve personal crises. (Hughes
1969:246)

Hughes’s description immediately indicates one feature of urban life that

allows the formation of diverse, special-interest groups. Such groups can
arise because the population size of cities ensures a “critical mass” of
persons with a particular interest or need. In the small town, someone
interested in ballet, for example, may be hard-pressed to find another person
with the same interest. In cities, however, even those with relatively rare
needs and concerns can find each other. Art lovers, stamp collectors,
photography buffs, and baseball card collectors easily find each other. And
so do transvestites, witches, and dwarfs. During a visit to New York, one of
the authors came across an advertisement in one of the city’s alternative
newspapers for a group of people who share two characteristics: they are
insomniacs and bicycling enthusiasts. In New York, if you can’t sleep and
like riding a bike, you can regularly join others who meet in downtown
Manhattan in the early hours of the morning to tour the city.
The point is that one can scarcely think of a human activity that cannot
be indulged in large cities. The city fosters the development of subcultures
that provide social support and a context in which nearly every imaginable
human behavior can be enacted. The result in cities is an enormous increase
in the number and visibility of what might be termed “moral deviances,”
that is, deviances that contravene conventional standards but do not break
the law. To some, the freedom cities provide individuals to practice their
often idiosyncratic lifestyles is evidence of the humane influences of urban
life. To others, it is evidence of the moral decay fostered by an urban way of
life. As we move along in this chapter, we will, through a review of salient
literature, try to parse out the factors that fashion people’s views of lifestyle
diversity as something to be either applauded or, if not eliminated, at least
avoided.
In trying to account for the extent of tolerance and freedom provided to
subcultures in the city, we pick up on a theme consistently found in some of
the writing reviewed in earlier chapters. Classical thinkers and early
observers of city life recognized the greater potential for freedom of action
in cities than in small towns. Simmel, despite his distaste for what he saw as
the rationalized, intellectualized, anonymous character of metropolitan
relations, certainly did allow that the city, precisely because of these
characteristics, made possible a degree of freedom that could not be found
in the small town. The indifference, anonymity, intellectualization, and
cosmopolitanism of urban life provided an independence of action and
thought that the “pettiness and prejudices” of small-town life precluded.
In Chapter 3 we reviewed the theoretical and empirical writings of
Robert Park and his students and colleagues at the University of Chicago.
They, too, were concerned with documenting and understanding the
tolerance for diversity in large cities. At base, they tried to understand the
connection between the ecological characteristics of the city and the social
psychology of urban persons. A consistent argument in the writings of Park
and Louis Wirth claimed that the growth of secondary, and the weakening
of primary, relations in cities permitted a greater diversity of individual
expression than could be found in the small town. Park (1925) commented:
“The small community often tolerates eccentricity. The city, on the contrary,
rewards it. Neither the criminal, the defective, nor the genius has the same
opportunity to develop his innate disposition in a small town that he
invariably finds in a great city” (41). The city was seen as supporting a
variety of groups, each with its distinctive behaviors, attitudes, and
lifestyles; groups that ecologically segregated themselves into their own
“moral region.” Persons with characteristics in common—color, ethnicity,
social status, and lifestyle preferences—find each other in cities, are drawn
together, and create their own living space together.
Evidence that the city is composed of a number of distinctive social
worlds—a mosaic of separate cultures that stand in sharp contrast with each
other—was provided in the ethnographies of Park’s students. Studies of
“hobohemia,” the rooming-house districts, the inhabitants of both the “Gold
Coast” and the slum, the world of the immigrant, and various ethnic
enclaves substantiated the existence of distinctive urban worlds. Each of
these worlds generated its own distinctive values and lifestyles in response
to the particular contingencies confronting persons in the urban
environment.
More recent research has followed the tradition of documenting the inner
life of distinctive urban subcultures. Sociologists have, for example,
produced ethnographies describing in detail such diverse urban worlds as
those of cops (Moskos 2008), drug dealers (Venkatesh 2008), graffiti artists
(Snyder 2009), boxers (Wacquant 2004), and Goths and evangelical
Christians (Wilkins 2008). In addition, we documented in earlier chapters
the research of those who analyzed the internal dynamics of the
homogeneous ethnic communities found in all large cities (Gans 1962a;
Liebow 1967; Suttles 1968; Venkatesh 2006; Whyte 1943). All this research
contains, if only implicitly, the same message as the ethnographies of Park’s
students do. It is, again, that cities provide persons—whatever their
idiosyncratic tastes, needs, values, or lifestyles—the opportunity to find
others who share the same tastes, needs, values, or lifestyles. Moreover, the
city provides individuals a degree of freedom and tolerance to engage in
their preferred lifestyles that would not exist in a small community.
Before continuing, it is important to say a few words about terms used in
this chapter. The reader should note that we have chosen to speak of
tolerance for “subcultures” rather than for “deviant” groups. This choice is
dictated by the belief that the term “deviance” has been much abused.
Despite sociologists’ efforts to make clear that theirs is a morally neutral
position, when they speak of deviance, the term has come to have a
distinctly pejorative, negative connotation. While a simple change of labels
will not fully solve the problem, we shall use the term “subculture” to
signal our interest in any group with a “different” or “distinctive” lifestyles
(cf. Fischer 1975; Hebdige 1979; Williams 2011). We will deviate
somewhat from others’ use of the term inasmuch as subcultural theorists
often emphasize groups that are youthful and explicitly oppositional to
broader cultural values. Certainly we are interested in how groups that
transgress laws are dealt with in cities. We are, however, also interested in
the treatment of groups whose behaviors may be questionably moral rather
than illegal. Finally, we intend the term “subculture” to encompass groups
expressing values and ideologies that may be contrary to dominant values
or ideologies. Any explanation of city tolerance must extend to all these
groups, regardless of whether the term “deviance” can appropriately be
attached to their behaviors. Our interest must go beyond tolerance for
deviance to tolerance for diversity more generally.
Having made this point, we now present the questions that will guide our
analysis in this chapter. Among other questions, we want to ask: What is it
about the structure of the city that makes tolerance for subcultures possible?
What is it about urbanites’ social psychology that leads to greater tolerance
than would likely exist in less citified, more homogeneous areas? Are there
degrees of tolerance? Does the nature of tolerance vary for different types
of groups? How is tolerance related to political processes in cities? And,
very important, what are the conditions under which tolerance for
subcultures breaks down? Our focus, then, will be on the processes through
which tolerance is gained and lost.

IS THE CITY A CULTURE OF CIVILITY?

The general tone of our discussion has been that there is a direct
relationship between urbanism and tolerance; that, as a generalization, the
level of tolerance for subcultures is greater in highly urbanized areas than in
noncity places. Such a position can, of course, be overstated. It is clear that
there are many instances of intolerance in cities. Political groups are
harassed, prostitutes are routinely arrested for soliciting, and racial conflicts
are not uncommon. On particular issues, whether in rural or urban areas, it
is difficult for groups to sustain a temperate attitude toward other groups
defined as adversaries. This is especially so if groups’ direct economic
interests are involved. Economic inequities are so basic to persons’ daily
life conditions that a degree of hostility between certain city groups
becomes nearly inevitable. This is most obviously a frequently dominant
factor in the animosity between city ethnic and racial groups. Working-class
whites may become fearful when they see blacks climbing the
social/economic ladder. They become afraid that they will be deprived of
jobs and other scarce resources. The history of school busing in cities such
as Boston (Lukas 1986) reveals just how tenuous and fragile the
relationships are between racial groups in cities. A degree of tolerance, or at
least nonintervention, is maintained as long as minority groups do not
“invade” particular, homogeneous ethnic communities. There are, to use
Suttles’s (1972) term, “defended neighborhoods” within cities whose
boundaries are not to be trespassed by alien groups. Suttles notes:
Cities inevitably bring together populations that are too large and composed of too many conflicting
elements for their residents to find cultural solutions to the problems of social control. The result
seems to be a partitioning of the city into several village-like areas where the actual groupings of
people are of more manageable proportions. (1972:21)

A study of a community’s response to racial minorities’ presence in

“their” area illustrates how easily tolerance disappears when people
perceive that their sense of territoriality and economic interests are
threatened. In their study mentioned in Chapter 3, Wilson and Taub (2006)
found that neighborhood communities were not only sources of pleasant
communitarian Gemeinschaft. In particular, in the older, majority white
Chicago neighborhood they dubbed Beltway, Wilson and Taub noted
profound, racially tinged resistance to any influx of newcomers. The
neighborhood lies toward the southwest edge of the city, and is seen by
many residents as a sort of last stand against the takeover of Chicago
neighborhoods by immigrant groups and African-Americans. Indeed, they
write, “[W]hite residents perceived such neighborhoods as an endangered
species” (18).
Many residents of the neighborhood must live within the city, because
they are employed by the city. In order to maintain their white (and to a
certain extent, native-born Latino) majority in the neighborhood, many
residents work through institutions like a neighborhood organization and
with the police, advocating for policies that will contribute to residential
stability, or make black youths feel unwelcome in their neighborhood.
Residents particularly remain embittered by school integration
—“Community leaders often publicly proclaimed that busing and ‘the
blacks’ had caused the decline of the neighborhood school” (22). Many,
particularly in the older generation, wistfully look back to a time when the
boundaries of neighborhoods were racial as well as spatial, and when
institutional racism was an explicit norm. One, expressing displeasure with
the status of the parks, refers back to the regime of Richard J. Daley (1955–
1976):
Old man Daley, he was for the blue-collar worker. Used to be that when you had those jobs you had
‘em for life and you could raise a family. It’s all different now, taxes and all that shit is killing the
workingman. We’re paying to support all the fucking niggers and minorities. … I mean niggers don’t
pay taxes, spics don’t pay taxes. If we leave there’ll be nothing in this goddamn city. (23–24)

Though they note that such explicit racism is attenuated in the younger
generation, Wilson and Taub’s study of Beltway clearly demonstrates how
intolerance can characterize a group of urban dwellers. Faced with a
changing demographic and political reality in their community, residents
trumpeted their distaste for people different than themselves and did what
they could to defend the neighborhood from “those people.”

Community Size and Tolerance

While studies such as Wilson and Taub’s point out the types of urban
situations in which contact among groups dramatically increases hostile
feelings, the bulk of the research on tolerance strongly shows that as the
size of community increases, the degree of tolerance toward a variety of
unconventional behaviors increases. As is often the case in social science
writing, one path-breaking study sets the course for future research. In the
case of tolerance such a landmark study was Samuel Stouffer’s (1955)
research on attitudes toward civil liberties in the United States. In his book
Communism, Conformity and Civil Liberties, Stouffer reported on national
survey data collected from several thousand persons. The data clearly show
that urbanites are far more likely to grant civil liberties to groups expressing
politically and socially unconventional attitudes (for example, communists,
socialists, atheists) than those living in smaller communities. Stouffer’s
central explanation of the findings is that the heterogeneity of the city
dramatically increases the likelihood that persons will have contact with
social or cultural diversity and that such contact will persuade them that
such differences are neither harmful nor dangerous. In effect, Stouffer
argued that the culture shock induced by contact with groups different from
one’s own was a factor in increasing tolerance. The place of contact in
maximizing tolerance is reflected in his explanation that
[t]he citizen of a metropolitan community is more likely to rub shoulders with a variety of people
whose values are different from his own and even repugnant to him than a man or woman in a
village. The city man has to learn to live and let live in his heterogeneous community to an extent not
necessary for the villager. (1955:127)

Since Stouffer’s study, numerous pieces of research (Carter, Steelman,

Mulkey, and Borch 2005; Fischer 1971, 1984; Fischer and Hout 2006;
Smith and Peterson 1980; Stephan and McMullin 1982; Tuch 1987;
Williams, Nunn, and Peter 1976; Wilson 1985, 1986) have replicated the
general finding that tolerance for different ethnic groups and for such
behaviors as premarital sex, abortion, and drug use is greatest in urban
contexts. However, the complexity of the relationship between urbanism
and tolerance is not captured with the simple observation that they are
correlated. Many of the more recent studies on tolerance are concerned with
specifying how, why, and under what conditions urban places generate
greater levels of tolerance for nonconformity. A number of these studies
have explicitly tested Stouffer’s culture shock hypothesis, have tried to
specify how city size is connected to tolerance, and have explored whether
region of the country is a more powerful predictor of tolerance than city
size. While we are not interested in getting caught up in all of the
methodological debates and theoretical intricacies raised by the literature on
urbanism and tolerance, we should at least consider some of the
complexities involved in interpreting the consistent community
size/tolerance relationship. Anyone who has studied statistics knows that
simple findings of correlation do not prove causation. At issue, then, is
understanding more fully the relationship between community size and
tolerance, specifying the mechanism(s) through which this relationship is
sustained.
There are three competing interpretations (Fischer 1984) of the
relationship between urbanism and a range of behaviors, of which tolerance
is only one. First are those who advocate a kind of “urban determinism”
that posits a direct relationship between urbanism and a range of behaviors.
The determinist position is best expressed in the writings of Louis Wirth
described in Chapter 2. In his essay “Urbanism as a Way of Life” (1938),
Wirth proposed that there was a direct, causal relationship between the
ecological characteristics of urban life and such features of urban life as
depersonalization and the weakening of social bonds. This position has it
that urbanism (as measured by size, density, and heterogeneity) itself causes
a particular constellation of attitudes, values, and lifestyles. Some critics
(Gans 1962a) of the Wirthian position argue that more important than
urbanism per se is the demographic composition of urban dwellers. That is,
such factors as the age, race, ethnicity, religion, and social class of urbanites
are most consequential in explaining variations in urban and nonurban
behaviors. It is these attributes, compositional theorists argue, that
determine regularities of behavior often mistaken as being caused by the
city itself. A third position that represents a synthesis of deterministic and
compositional theories (Fischer 1975, 1984) has it that in the large, dense,
and heterogeneous urban environment a variety of subcultures flourish,
each of which provides social support for particular beliefs and behaviors.
This third argument coincides with our earlier observation that because of
their sheer population density, cities provide a “critical mass” of individuals
who can come together and form a subculture. As Fischer notes, such
subcultures often center on unconventional behavior:
Among the subcultures spawned or intensified by urbanism are those usually considered to be either
downright “deviant” by the larger society—such as delinquents, professional criminals, and
homosexuals; or to be at least “odd”—such as artists, missionaries of new religious sects, and
intellectuals; or to be breakers of tradition—such as life-style experimenters, radicals, and scientists.
(1984:38)

In an early study, Claude Fischer (1971) examined the extent of racial

and ethnic tolerance in cities. Through his research Fischer wanted to
determine whether there is, in fact, a direct relationship between urbanism
and tolerance, as suggested in the writings of Louis Wirth and others, or
whether the extent of city tolerance is more a function of the particular
demographic characteristics of persons living in large urban areas. Would
he find, as claimed by Wirth, that the extent to which a place is urban is
related to the degree of freedom and tolerance experienced by ethnic and
racial minorities? Following Wirth, Fischer set out two hypotheses he
wished to test:

1. The more urban a person’s place of residence, the more likely that
person is to be tolerant of racial and ethnic differences.
2. Community size will be directly related to tolerance of racial and
ethnic groups.

To test these hypotheses, Fischer made use of data from five Gallup polls
conducted between September 1958 and July 1965. These polls contained
data on 7,714 persons who responded to the question, “Would you vote for
a Negro, Jew, or Catholic for President?” His data indicate that while there
is a general increase of tolerance as areas become larger and more urban,
this relationship may have less to do with the city itself and more to do with
the social characteristics of persons who inhabit larger, more urban
communities. Once Fischer takes into account the demographic population
variables of class and ethnicity, he is able to report that tolerance tends to
increase as the percentage of non-Southerners, non-Protestants, and higher
economic-status persons in an area increases. Fischer goes on to explain
that the relatively greater tolerance in cities for racial and ethnic groups is a
function of the fact that cities draw persons with certain social
characteristics. There is, moreover, a kind of contextual effect. If persons
are surrounded by others who are tolerant, they are themselves likely to
become more tolerant. Fischer claims, therefore—contrary to the theorizing
of Wirth and others—that we cannot impute a direct relationship between
urbanism and tolerance. He concludes that “while urbanites are less likely
to be prejudiced than rural residents, the implications of Wirth’s theory that
urban life directly leads to ‘universalistic’ attitudes is not supported”
(Fischer 1971:855). In other words, Fischer argues that if noncity areas
were inhabited predominantly by high-status, non-Protestant, and non-
Southern persons, they would be just as tolerant of ethnic and racial
minorities as city areas with similar populations.
Fischer’s study did not, however, resolve the matter. One line of criticism
of his work is that racial tolerance may be a unique issue and that the
relationship between urbanism and tolerance needs to be tested concerning
a range of diverse behaviors and attitudes. In a subsequent study, Thomas
Wilson (1985) set out explicitly to test hypotheses suggested by the writings
of Wirth and Stouffer. This study focused on tolerance for a wide range of
target groups and provided support for the argument claiming a direct
connection between urbanism and tolerance. Wilson found that when he
took into consideration the social characteristics of the persons in his
sample (social status, life cycle stage, and race), the pure relationship
between urbanism and tolerance remained undiminished.
More recent work by Carter et al. (2005) suggests that urbanism remains
a salient predictor of tolerance. Specifically considering racial tolerance
using variables from the General Social Survey (GSS) from 1972 to 1996,
the authors hypothesized that the effects of urbanism would dwindle as the
United States has become a more tolerant nation as a whole. But their
findings did not support their hypothesis: On a battery of questions
regarding aspects of tolerance such as whether interracial marriage should
be permitted or housing segregation should remain intact, urban dwellers
displayed significantly greater tolerance than their rural counterparts even
when holding constant various other aspects of people’s demographic
characteristics. Such a finding runs directly opposite Fischer’s and suggests
that urbanism per se increases tolerance.
Wilson’s study, along with several others, was also concerned with
explicitly testing features of Stouffer’s “culture shock” explanation of urban
tolerance. One of Stouffer’s central ideas was that migrants to new areas
inevitably experience contact with new cultures and that such contact
increases tolerance for diversity. It is important to note that while most
migration has been from rural to urban areas, Stouffer’s theory predicts that
urbanites who migrate to rural areas will also display an increase in tolerant
attitudes. That is, Stouffer’s social psychological perspective leads to the
prediction that those who migrate, whether from rural to urban areas or vice
versa, will be more tolerant than those who stay put. In terms of this
hypothesis, Wilson’s data concur with those collected by Leslie Smith and
Karen Peterson (1980), who found that those who move to cities become
more tolerant of a range of subcultures, while urbanites who move to rural
areas do not become any more tolerant than their urban counterparts who do
not move. It appears from these data that movement to an urban area does
have a significant effect on attitudes, while urbanites maintain existing
belief systems wherever they migrate. These studies sustain the general
finding that urbanism increases tolerance while undercutting the validity of
Stouffer’s contention that culture shock is the medium through which
tolerance is increased. While the question is still an open one, the failure of
studies to support Stouffer’s hypotheses suggests that the shock of contact
with different groups may be less consequential in fostering urban tolerance
than the ecological features of the city itself, along with the increased
opportunity in cities to form insulating subcultures.
Before ending our review of the literature on the community
size/tolerance connection, we should mention one additional direction of
studies of tolerance. These studies (Abrahamson and Carter 1986; Tuch
1987) have tested the idea that regional differences may be a more critical
dimension than community size in explaining tolerance. Such a notion is
founded on the well-documented idea that different regions of the country
are in large measure distinguished from each other in terms of the
distinctive subcultural values they generate (Reed 1983). Social scientists
are always looking for the most powerful explanation of a phenomenon,
and the suggestion here is that living in the South compared, say, with the
West Coast may be more consequential in shaping attitudes than city living
itself. Here, too, the data are not thoroughly clear-cut. In their study
focusing on issues of civil liberties, the right to die, and people’s
willingness to accommodate disabled individuals in the workplace,
Abrahamson and Carter (1986) found that between 1947 and 1982 the
effects of city size on tolerance have declined, whereas those connected to
region have not declined and appear to exceed the impact of city size. In
contrast, Steven Tuch’s (1987) study, which focused on racial prejudice,
showed that the effects of urbanism on racial tolerance had increased
between 1972 and 1985 while regional effects decreased. Similarly,
researching the effects of region through 1996, Carter et al. (2005) found
that though people from all regions of the United States are more tolerant of
different ethnic groups, Southerners remain less tolerant than Americans
from other regions of the country. Such contradictory findings suggest that
the impact of community size and region on tolerance is a complicated
matter and that the effects are not uniform across all behaviors, attitudes,
and lifestyles. In the future, additional analyses will be required to specify
the areas of social life where city life increases tolerance and those that
seem more resistant to the development of tolerant attitudes. While Fischer
and Hout’s (2006) most recent findings seem to suggest that the differences
between urbanites and others are attenuating or leveling off, we need more
time to see if that trend will continue.

San Francisco: A Case Study

The studies reviewed in the previous section largely report on statistical
data and document broad trends. As important as these studies are, it is
often theoretically enlightening to pursue a more in-depth study of a
particular city to learn about the dynamics of certain urban processes. One
strategy in pursuing such case studies is to choose a city that is
distinguished by the presence or absence of the characteristics under
investigation. In terms of tolerance, one city in the United States has
established the reputation of having enormously expanded limits of
tolerance. In their book on the “culture of civility” in San Francisco,
Howard Becker and Irving Louis Horowitz (1972) attempt to account for
the unusual tolerance shown for “deviance” in San Francisco. They begin
their article with some examples of the expanded limits of toleration in San
Francisco:
Walking in the Tenderloin on a summer evening, a block from the Hilton, you hear a black prostitute
cursing at a policeman: “I wasn’t either blocking the sidewalk! Why don’t you motherfucking fuzz
mind your own goddamn business!” The visiting New Yorker expects to see her arrested, if not shot,
but the cop smiles good naturedly and moves on, having got her back in the doorway where she is
supposed to be. …
You enter one of the famous rock ballrooms and, as you stand getting used to the noise and lights,
someone puts a lit joint of marijuana in your hand. The tourist looks for someplace to hide, not
wishing to be caught in the mass arrests he expects to follow. No need to worry. The police will not
come in, knowing that if they do they will have to arrest people and create disorder. …
The media report (tongue in cheek) the annual Halloween Drag Ball, for which hundreds of
homosexuals turn out at one of the city’s major hotels in full regalia, unharrassed by police. (Becker
and Horowitz 1972:4)

Becker and Horowitz argue that city tolerance in San Francisco is based
on a specific type of interaction between members of conventional groups
and members of the larger community. Members of quite diverse groups,
they suggest, strike a silent, unwritten bargain, a kind of social contract. The
essence of this bargain is that members of the minority lifestyle group
moderate their behaviors in certain ways so as to be acceptable to the
groups around them. There are, in other words, implicitly agreed-upon
boundaries—social behavior boundaries—beyond which the several groups
“promise” not to go. In effect, Becker and Horowitz present a modified
exchange theory (Blau 1967; Homans 1961). They speak of a reciprocity
between various city groups.
Each group, they suggest, seeks to maximize its opportunities for a
peaceful, free, ordered life. In order to accomplish this end, members of
different groups learn to keep their moral and value judgments to
themselves; they learn not to impose their own behavior standards and
values on each other. It is a true reciprocity, since each group is willing to
give up something to maximize order. The police will not break up groups
congregated on street corners, as might be the normal practice elsewhere. In
turn, members of the congregated group will police themselves so as not to
engage in behaviors that may be interpreted as troublesome. In short, an
accommodation has been developed between the police and community
“straights,” on the one hand, and members of marginal groups, on the other.
All concerned benefit. “Straights” do not become outraged by “freaks,” and
the latter are provided a greater freedom to engage in their preferred
lifestyle than would otherwise be possible in the absence of the “live and let
live” bargain.
There is a quality of the self-fulfilling prophecy to the social bargain
described. As different groups abide by the social bargain, they
simultaneously begin to recognize that the stereotypes and images they may
previously have held of each other are incorrect. In this socialization
process, members of the conventional community come, for example, to
understand that gay persons are not necessarily child molesters or that punk
rockers are not necessarily drug addicts. This further increases their civility
toward such groups. The city consequently becomes known for its civility
—as a desirable place to live if one wishes to maximize freedom for a
subcultural existence. It follows that such persons gravitate to the city to
live and settle down. Finally, once these persons find a place where they can
live relatively unharassed, they become less likely to engage in erratic or
undesirable behaviors. The result of this process is an upward spiraling of
tolerance.
The natural question to ask is, “Why San Francisco?” Here the authors
are required to speculate about the demographic and historical factors in
this city’s growth that may have contributed to the development of a culture
of civility. They indicate three historical antecedents that might have been
instrumental. First, San Francisco has always been a major seaport, catering
from the beginning to the vices traditionally engaged in by sailors. Second,
a history of trade unionism has left the city with a “left wing, honest base
which gives the city a working-class democracy and even eccentricity,
rather than the customary pattern of authoritarianism” (Becker and
Horowitz 1972:10). Finally, San Francisco has an unusually high proportion
of single persons, who need not worry about what effects the activities of
subcultures may have on their children.
This last point leads us to suggest a hypothesis about urban tolerance
worthy of further empirical investigation. We might argue that in addition to
the kinds of socioeconomic variables (for example, education, occupation,
and income) traditionally studied, it is equally important to take into
account the age and family life cycle characteristics of urbanites. It appears
that those urban areas with high percentages of young, single persons and
young married couples without children are the most likely places for high
degrees of tolerance to be sustained (cf. Florida 2002). Indeed, Eric
Klinenberg (2012) notes that as the single population has grown to be
greater than 50 percent of the adult population, and they are
disproportionately concentrated in cities, they are driven to build
communities to support one another.
Despite their generally optimistic image of this one city, Becker and
Horowitz are careful to point out that there are situations in which the
parties involved are unable to create a set of negotiated accommodations.
As mentioned earlier, these most likely involve economic inequities.
Moreover, in some situations it is extremely difficult to work out a bargain
whereby both sides give up equal amounts and gain equal amounts. In some
conflict situations between city groups, in other words, it is difficult to
create a fully reciprocal arrangement of costs and rewards. Often these
situations—in which equitable arrangements are difficult to create—involve
the relationship between minority racial groups and majority groups.
Becker and Horowitz offer examples:
It may be possible to improve the education of poor black children, for instance, only by taking away
some of the privileges of white teachers. It may be possible to give black youths a chance at
apprenticeships in skilled trades only by removing the privileged access to those positions of the sons
of present white union members. When whites lose these privileges, they may feel strongly enough to
fracture the consensus of civility. (1972:15)

Although San Francisco presents a somewhat unusual case, we can learn

several things from Becker and Horowitz’s discussion that will facilitate our
own analysis. We may presume that in all cities, members of different
groups have some notions about acceptable boundaries of subcultural
behaviors. If we learn the general dimensions of those boundaries of
regulative norms, we may better understand the conditions under which
tolerance is most likely to exist. If only implicitly, Becker and Horowitz
indicate the necessity for analyzing the role of political processes in the
development or hindrance of tolerant attitudes. Finally, although it is
beyond the province of this chapter, their study indicates the need to
investigate the distinctive histories of cities to understand why they support
higher or lower levels of tolerance.
Despite the insight provided in the analysis we have described, there are
a number of points in Becker and Horowitz’s discussion that we believe
may be misleading. Becker and Horowitz have implied too rigid a notion of
tolerance. They have only, it appears, a positive notion. They imply that
tolerance exists only because the different groups involved consciously
value it. While this is undeniably often so, it may equally be the case that
tolerance in cities is a by-product of avoidance. This is to say (as we noted
in Chapter 4) that persons develop social procedures to minimize the
probability of their coming into intimate contact with those whom they do
not find particularly congenial. In still other cases, tolerance may be the
unintended consequence of persons not even knowing of the presence of
subcultures. These authors also fail to describe the situation when the
relationship between groups is an obligatory one.
More important still, Becker and Horowitz appear to have a rather static
view of the bargains created between groups. One gets the impression that
once the bargain is understood by all parties, it remains indefinitely the
basis for interaction between groups. What happens, we might ask, when
groups come to feel that the bargain is no longer equitable; when
subcultures develop the collective idea that others’ definition of them and
their behaviors is inappropriate? What are the processes, in other words,
through which accommodations are renegotiated? What happens when
subcultures begin to test the limits of a community’s tolerance? Becker and
Horowitz do not extend their analysis to the elements responsible for the
disintegration of tolerance. In fact, as San Francisco real estate became
increasingly desirable through the 1990s, the city’s famous tolerance was
tested—and arguably failed, at least with respect to the homeless. As
Bourgois and Schonberg (2009) and Teresa Gowan (2010) argue in separate
ethnographic reports, neighborhoods have become increasingly antagonistic
to the homeless, and police have stepped up actions against the homeless.
Bourgois and Schonberg observe that
[o]ur fieldnotes include dozens of accounts of police sweeps that sent the Edgewater homeless into
survival crisis mode. … Repeatedly all the blankets, sleeping bags, clothing, and tarps were ground
up in garbage trucks as if they were useless trash. Only the moral economy of sharing kept the
Edgewater homeless from total mayhem on these occasions when they suddenly lost everything.
(112)

In addition to the work of Becker and Horowitz we should mention the

research of two historians who provide a specification of the evolution of
San Francisco’s tolerance. Looking at the city’s history since the Civil War
indicates that it would be a mistake to believe tolerance in San Francisco
has been equally extended to all city groups. Data gathered by Robert
Cherney (1986) and William Issel (1986) indicate that San Francisco’s
tolerance for different religious groups, for eccentric individuals, and for
vice-related activities has been historically striking. However, the city’s
history also reveals a virulent hostility toward the Chinese in the nineteenth
century and toward political radicals during the early part of the twentieth
century. Both Cherney’s and Issel’s studies illustrate that tolerance is often a
product of the demographic composition of cities. Because of their
relatively large numbers in San Francisco, Catholics and Jews were able to
gain entry to political, economic, and cultural spheres of city life that were
denied them in cities with a much larger Protestant majority. Further,
sociologists Armstrong and Crage’s (2006) study of the origins of the gay
rights movement in the United States suggests that San Francisco, now
famous particularly for its tolerance of homosexuality, was not always so.
Indeed, police were violently disrupting gatherings of gays there well into
the 1960s. These different studies remind us that particular patterns of
toleration and discrimination are city specific and must be understood in
terms of each city’s unique history.

CREATING AND MAINTAINING TOLERANCE

In previous pages we have described two apparently contradictory
interpretations of the basis of city tolerance. We remarked that social
ecologists provide a picture of the city in which different groups are
segregated and isolated from each other, and consequently have little
contact with one another. There are, according to this view, clear territorial
groupings composed of persons with similar characteristics who largely
restrict their activities to well-defined territories. Suttles (1972) describes
the “defended neighborhood” as a “residential group which seals itself off
through the efforts of delinquent gangs, by restrictive covenants, by sharp
boundaries, or by a forbidding reputation” (21). The defended
neighborhood, by providing rules governing spatial movement, helps to
preserve order by segregating groups that might otherwise come into
conflict. And Louis Wirth made explicit the relationship between ecological
segregation and the production of tolerance for the quite diverse groups
drawn to cities:
The voluntary segregation of Jews in ghettoes had much in common with the segregation of Negroes
and immigrants in modern cities, and was identical in many respects with the development of
Bohemian and Hobohemian quarters in the urban community of today. The tolerance that strange
ways of living find in immigrant colonies, in Latin Quarters, in vice districts and in other localities is
a powerful factor in the shifting of the population and its allocation in separate cultural areas where
one obtains freedom from hostile criticism and the backing of a group of kindred spirits. (Wirth
1969:20)

The literature stressing ecological segregation of groups seems to imply

that tolerance is possible in cities because groups are isolated from one
another, because groups have little or no contact with one another. Yet we
have seen that Stouffer, and Becker and Horowitz, offer a quite different
explanation for tolerance. They have suggested that tolerance is produced
and maintained through a special type of interaction; that different lifestyle
groups do indeed come into contact with each other but must learn to
moderate their behaviors in each other’s presence. Is this an insoluble
theoretical dilemma? Must we choose between the alternative explanation
—one stressing isolation and the other stressing interaction? We shall argue
that ecological segregation of subcultures does exist and operates to
produce a controlled contact between these different city groups.

Spatial Segregation and Controlled Contact

Appropriate to our present interest is Lyn Lofland’s book A World of
Strangers (1985). In that book Lofland tries to answer these questions:
What is the basis for public social order in cities? How is the potentially
chaotic world of strangers transformed into a system of predictable social
relationships? The central thesis of her historical research is that the way
urban order is achieved in modern cities is different from that in
preindustrial and early industrial cities. The transition has been from an
order based primarily on appearance in the latter cities to an order based on
space in present-day cities: “In the pre-industrial city, space was chaotic,
appearances were ordered. In the pre-industrial city a man was what he
wore. In the modern city a man is where he stands” (Lofland 1985:82).
Before we think about the nature of this spatial ordering and how it
functions, we might briefly raise a methodological question. Why did
Lofland choose to frame her analysis of modern cities in historical terms?
Why not simply present data on modern cities and leave it at that? Lofland
does not answer that question directly in her book, but were this question
put to her, she would probably respond that the historical comparison helps
us better to see how our own lives are unique. Because we tend to take for
granted how our lives are organized, we need the “shock” provided by
history to recognize this uniqueness. We have continually argued in this
book that persons are capable of transforming the social world—the urban
world—as their changing needs dictate. Lofland’s book is about the value
that persons place on order and intelligibility in their lives. It is through the
historical comparison given by Lofland that we most clearly see how urban
persons have transformed the urban place to produce this order.
There is, then, a spatial ordering to city activities. If we are properly
socialized urbanites, we know that certain types of persons—persons
engaging in certain behaviors and practicing distinctive lifestyles—will be
found in certain areas of the city. Lofland defines what she calls locational
socialization as the process by which the urbanite continually “learns about
the meaning of locations, about what is expected to go on where and who is
expected to be doing it” (1985:69). The ecological segregation and
concomitant locational socialization are important because they give
urbanites knowledge. They may choose to be in areas of the city that put
them in contact with different lifestyle groups, or they can choose to avoid
such contact. Urbanites have, in other words, a certain autonomy over the
contact that they will have with various lifestyle or marginal groups. Such
contact is a controlled contact.
If, for example, one wants to avoid contact with homosexuals or
prostitutes or those selling pornography, one simply avoids those areas of
the city that such persons are likely to frequent. Tolerance is contingent on
this controlled contact. Spatial segregation is a primary requisite for
tolerance, for we must be able to choose how, when, and where groups
different from our own will touch our lives. Spatial segregation of groups
and activities, then, provides a comforting predictability relative to the
encounters we have with cultural strangers. In this regard, it follows that
tolerance will likely begin to break down when the conditions for controlled
contact are not met. It frequently happens that a public clamor is raised
when members of subcultures begin to appear in city areas where they
“don’t belong.” In several cities, for example, a certain section of the
downtown area is informally designated a sort of “grownup playground”
replete with bass-thumping nightclubs, young men loudly cruising in
“candy painted whips,” plenty of alcohol, and more-or-less open narcotics
use. For example in Atlanta’s Bucktown neighborhood, the noise and
occasional violence that accompany these activities periodically spur
residents to call for, and receive, additional policing in the form of
“crackdowns” (see, for example, Mayeux 2011; Shalhoup 2010).
 We noted earlier than urbanites do not always wish to avoid contact with
those whom they perceive as having unusual lifestyles. The opportunity to
observe, and even on occasion to participate in, the behaviors of such
persons is part of the life and character of a city. Every city has its areas to
which persons may go for their observations: their urban sightseeing.
Certain public parks normally come to serve this function. In such places
persons may stroll and watch the “antics” of those with whom they would
otherwise have no contact. In these places persons representing a fairly
large range of lifestyles may come into moderate contact. Like the
anthropologist who ventures into different societies to observe the “strange”
cultural patterns of the natives, urban persons know where they may learn
about culturally diverse city dwellers. Unlike the anthropologist, however,
urban observers do not have to gain the acceptance of the “natives” by
meeting, as far as possible, their cultural standards.
In one study, Richard Lloyd (2010) described the rising popularity of
Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood, which he dubbed a “neo-Bohemia.”
Though it was once a solidly working-class neighborhood, by the late
1980s, Wicker Park had become a mostly low-income, crime-ridden
neighborhood, ravaged by the effects deindustrialization had upon Chicago.
The low rents and large spaces of the area attracted artists and other
bohemians. Soon the bars and galleries opened by these vanguard
bohemians attracted more affluent, mainstream patrons. These mainstream,
upper-class employees of downtown firms came to Wicker Park to
experience some of the “edginess” of this urban space, replete with the
“hipster” subculture, prostitutes, and drug dealers. Some of those patrons
eventually became residents of the neighborhood, driving up real estate
prices, and driving the “grit” further from the center of the neighborhood,
toward the edges. Lloyd finds that the true neo-Bohemians of Wicker Park
are thus caught in a balancing act, trying to stay on the edge:
For to be on “the edge,” with all the valences that attach to this term, is crucial to neo-bohemian
identification. As one West Side gallery owner put it, echoing a familiar bon mot, “If you’re not
living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.” This space of the edge is narrow, resists
crowds, and entails a precarious balancing act. … Historically emergent themes of bohemia inflect
the experience of the local street, in which a range of normative associations take shape: hipness,
intensity, diversity, authenticity. (100)

In sum, it is the spatial ordering of activities in cities that allows persons

to distance or align themselves to certain levels of intimacy with
subcultures. “The distinctive feature of distancing as against territoriality
seems to be that it does not simply divide individuals or groups into
mutually exclusive affiliations, but defines their associations at discrete
points along a continuum” (Suttles 1972:176). Another way to speak of
controlled contact, then, is as contact that allows persons to determine
carefully the degree of the intimacy of that contact—which allows them a
degree of autonomy over the depth of their involvement with others. By
being able to control the place and timing of contact with subcultures and
by knowing what kinds of behaviors to expect of persons in different city
spaces, urbanites can monitor the extent of their involvement with persons
from culturally different groups.
The idea that tolerance is contingent upon a subtly negotiated set of
interactions is nicely illustrated in Ruth Horowitz’s (1987) study of a
community’s tolerance for gang violence. Her observational study centered
on the organization and place of youth gangs within a largely Hispanic
community. The central question of the study asked how parents and other
community members experienced their community as ordered and why they
tolerated gang violence that accounted for several murders each year. Her
argument is that continued tolerance for gang violence is contingent upon a
precarious negotiated order through which gang members clearly separate
their gang-related activity from more conventional community contexts. For
example, within the context of their families, the young men displayed a
great deal of respect for parents and were defined by them as “good boys.”
The boys operated in terms of a set of norms requiring them rigidly to
compartmentalize their gang-related behaviors to places and times that
would allow parents to maintain that their children are uninvolved with
gang violence. In effect, parents are able to create and to sustain the fiction
that their sons are uninvolved with gangs as long as the boys rigidly restrict
their gang-related behaviors to contexts inaccessible to their parents. Of
course, there were occasions in which gang-related violence spilled over
into family or community events in ways that threatened the community’s
negotiated order and made it impossible for parents to sustain the definition
of their children as unaligned with gangs. Consistent with our general
argument is the finding that tolerance for “deviant” behavior is maintained
as long as it remains effectively invisible to parents, an invisibility
constructed through the concerted efforts of both gang members and the rest
of the community.
When there is little that they feel they can do to deter violence and the perpetrators are people whom
they love, parents have little choice but to cooperate with gang members in negotiating a sense of
order. As long as violence is ecologically segregated from “parental space,” parents can do their part
to maintain a pretense of unawareness of the gang identity of their children. … This cannot be
achieved without the cooperation of the gang members who respect the need to segregate their
violent actions by time and place and who offer reasonable accounts for their conduct that can be
accepted by their parents. (Horowitz 1987:449)

So far in our discussion of ecological ordering of city activities, we have

discussed city spaces in rather objective terms. The reader has likely
pictured the city as broken up into clearly delineated and bounded spaces,
each of which supports a different set of persons and activities. To view city
space as made up of a number of neat, self-contained areal packages
somewhat simplifies urbanites’ sense of space, however. We want to carry
our analysis of the relationship between the spatial ordering of behavior and
the maintenance of lifestyle freedom one additional step. We propose,
following the writing particularly of Kevin Lynch (1960, 1972), that for
many urban persons, the areas of the city inhabited by different groups are,
in fact, not even considered part of what they define as the “real city.”
Lynch and others have suggested that the city environment is conceived
differently by different groups, that persons carry in their heads images of
what the city is. For some, the areas of the city inhabited by subcultures
may not appear on these cognitive maps of the city. One cannot feel
particularly threatened by down-and-outers on skid row, for example, if that
area of the city is not part of one’s consciousness. To expand on this idea,
we must consider how urbanites conceive of city space. Here we shall argue
that tolerance is maintained not because of specific forms of contact with
subcultures but through what we might term a “spatial myopia” that may,
for some, make subcultures essentially invisible, or at least blur their
existence.

Tolerance and Urbanites’ Sense of Place

In his book The Image of the City (1960), Kevin Lynch created what he
called a cognitive map of Boston by interviewing a sample of that city’s
residents. While nearly all persons interviewed mentioned certain
landmarks (such as Paul Revere’s house and Boston Common), the most
salient finding of his effort was that the individual city images of each
person interviewed were quite different. He also found that their sense of
their own location in city space was quite different, and (most closely
related to our interests here) that, for each person interviewed, vast areas of
the city were simply unknown. Subsequent research has continued to
substantiate Lynch’s findings, noting, among other things, that there is
significant cross-cultural variation in the way that people map their locales.
For example, while people in some cultures make more note of the physical
aspects of urban geography, others pay more attention to the functional role
places play in their lives (Caswell and Kennison 2013).
In one study (Hurst 1975) the urban images of two distinct class groups
living in Vancouver, British Columbia, were compared. The groups
compared were, on the one hand, professionals and businessmen living in
the city’s exclusive areas and welfare recipients living in the nonexclusive
East Side of the city, on the other hand. Again, while both groups
mentioned a number of city landmarks in common, their overall images of
the city were quite different. The professional group’s image was bounded
by the central business district, certain clubs, and the immediate area of
residence. The welfare group had an even more localized image of the city,
centering on the rooming-house district and a few local bars, stores, and
community facilities.
The research recently cited indicates that urban persons in
communication with others define their own unique sense of city space.
Resonating with the LeFebvre’s theory of “differential space” as discussed
in Chapter 2, empirical findings show how certain locations come to be
invested with particular meanings. The city is defined psychologically by
the symbolically meaningful, familiar, and comfortable spaces within which
one’s daily round of activities is carried out. In addition, certain groups of
persons are likely to share the same general cognitive map of the city. As
Edward Hall (1966) puts it, different persons and different groups “inhabit
different sensory worlds” (2).
There are a number of ways that urban sociologists might construct
persons’ and groups’ mental maps of the city. One could, for example,
sample a number of geographical points in any city and then ask persons to
try identifying photos of these points. It would then be possible to create an
index for each geographical area simply by counting the proportion of
persons interviewed who correctly identified the point, object, or area. As
an alternative method, one could stop persons on the street and ask
directions to a particular point or area. What percentage will know how to
get there? What consistencies will there be in the landmarks mentioned?
How frequently was each landmark mentioned?
Toward the end of his article on the experience of city life, Stanley
Milgram (1970) comments on the potential importance that such
constructed maps could have in gaining insight into the very different
conceptions held of the city by its various groups. Cognitive maps may be
used to determine how persons’ image of the city and sense of city space
may be affected by age, ethnicity, social class, sex, and the like. Could it be,
for example, as Milgram speculates, that ghettoization may hamper the
expansion of black teenagers’ sense of the city? While such research
remains to be done, we can safely agree with the urban geographer Michael
Hurst, who writes:
Since there is a variety of life experiences in the city, there will be varieties of urban experiences that
arise from the ways people sense different places in the urban environment. The Afro-American,
Chinese or Indian’s knowledge of the city, life experiences and sense of place will differ from those
of the Anglo-American; the fortunate elite will differ from the working poor; teenagers will differ
from adults. … Each will have highly individualized conceptions of what we commonly think of as
the same urban world. (Hurst 1975:44)

We can further specify the nature of persons’ cognitive maps—the way

that they are constructed and how they will vary for different persons and
different groups—by looking at the elements involved in the creation of a
sense of place. Researchers interested in the social organization and
perception of space have distinguished among personal space, home or
territorial space, and lived space. A person’s total sense of space is a
function of these three elements, which we can briefly discuss in turn.
Edward Hall (1966) and Robert Sommer (1969) have paid special
attention in their research to the protective bubble of personal space that
surrounds our immediate bodies. They suggest that in our daily encounters
with others we carefully regulate the distances between ourselves and
others. In American society, for example, normal conversational distance is
about two feet. If persons come any closer than that, we feel that our
personal space has been violated. Personal space does not remain constant
but will vary in different social situations and different contexts. Sommer
distinguishes personal space from “territory,” in that personal space has no
geographic reference points; it moves with the individual and, unlike
territory, expands and contracts under varying circumstances.
 In addition to one’s sense of personal space, we may speak of a person’s
immediate territorial space. In cities this territorial space is made up of the
person’s home and immediate neighborhood. This is, of course, the space
where the urban person spends most of his or her time and is the most
familiar, comfortable space for the individual. The collective home bases
(or territorial space) of groups may take the form of the small ethnic
community or a gang’s “turf.” Relatively fixed and clearly delineated, the
person’s or group’s territorial space does not expand and contract in
different situations.
Third, there is the urban person’s lived space. Lived space is fairly
elastic, created by paths of interaction between home territories and the
various city places where urbanites spend their time—workplace, movie
theaters, schools, parks, local stores, friends’ homes, and the like.
Urbanites’ activities and interactional networks will dictate which city
objects, areas, and elements will be invested with special symbolic
significance. Depending upon activities and interactional networks, “parts
of city reality are excluded, distorted, crushed, converged, elongated, and
stretched out” (Hurst 1975:145).
To say that urbanites have their own distinctive lived space is not to
suggest that they are unaware of, ignorant of, or not knowledgeable about
city areas outside of this lived space. Typically, however, these outside
areas are known only at second hand and are invested with slight symbolic
significance. Middle-class whites certainly know about the predominantly
black areas that likely exist in their cities. These areas are not, however, part
of their cognitive maps of the city; they do not constitute part of what they
know as the real city. “Unable to experience first-hand most of the built
environment, we tend to rely on other people and the media to inform us
about the large portion of the city that may not be directly accessible [to
us]” (Hurst 1975:161). Our restricted mental images of the city are, in
addition, reinforced by other features of the modern city, such as the
automobile that wraps its occupants in a “cocoon of privacy” as they move
through the city. Persons may pass through certain areas and come to
perceive those spaces “only in terms of city streets which are traversed by
automobile and which provide access to the various little private and
semiprivate spaces that make up their world” (Hurst 1975:164).
In many cases persons who have lived in cities all their lives have never
passed through certain areas. While teaching for a time in New York, one of
the authors was somewhat surprised to learn that many of his students had
never been to areas other than those in which they were brought up and
presently lived. Many students who lived in Queens, for example, had never
been to Brooklyn, and still others had spent little time in Manhattan. These
areas were not part of their conception of the city. Their lives were
contained within a living space that did not extend beyond Queens. This
pattern of spatial provincialism, we maintain, describes most urbanites’
experience and perception of the city.
The point of our description of a city person’s sense of place is that
marginal groups restricting their activities to specific city areas are
effectively invisible in a psychological sense to large numbers of persons—
to all those urbanites whose conception of the city does not include the
areas where these groups are found. Urban persons, we suggest, normally
become concerned only about those subcultures operating within the
boundaries of their lived space. This has important consequences for
tolerance. Only in rare instances will a large number of persons mobilize to
restrict the activities of any one group. Because of the wide variation in
cognitive images of the city, relatively few persons will be moved to action
against some group commonly defined as undesirable. Persons living in a
particular city area may feel a distant antipathy toward homosexuals,
prostitutes, or certain political groups, but they are unlikely to translate that
dislike into action against these groups as long as they remain immediately
unaffected by them.
Mark Grannis (1998) provides an important specification of how such a
cognitive map of a neighborhood is produced. Grannis notes that U.S. urban
design is generally limited to a few different kinds of streets, from
highways down to pedestrian-friendly residential or “tertiary” streets,
“streets that have one lane on each side with no divider” (1533). He finds
that
[i]f one represents tertiary streets as lines on a graph and connects their endpoints if and only if they
meet at a tertiary intersection, then one can define a tertiary street community, (hereafter referred to
as a t-community) to be the maximal subgraph of lines and points that are mutually reachable. Thus,
every household within a t-community is reachable from every other household by only using tertiary
streets. By this definition, therefore, a t-community is a place designed by cities primarily for
pedestrian, rather than automobile, traffic and where “close-knit communities” with permeable
“boundaries between house and street space” can emerge. (1533)
And indeed, Grannis finds that it is these contiguous sets of walkable streets
that form people’s notion of what “their” neighborhood is. He goes on to
demonstrate how this conjunction of cognitive and spatial ordering of the
city aligns very closely with patterns of racial and ethnic segregation.
To this point we have discussed the relationship between persons’ sense
of spatial or ecological reality in cities and the maintenance of tolerance for
subcultures. We may extend the idea of urbanites’ sense of reality in yet
another direction. Before groups of persons will take action against other
groups, these latter groups must somehow be seen as a threat to the first
groups’ collective, shared version of reality—a threat to a view of the world
that they share in common. We want to use the idea of “reality
construction” to account more fully for the differences between urban and
nonurban areas in the extent of freedom allowed subcultures.

Tolerance and the Diffusion of Social Reality

Discussions of deviance in sociological literature have emphasized the
idea that conceptions of morality, respectability, and deviance are social
constructions and that no behaviors are intrinsically immoral or deviant
(Becker 1963; Douglas 1970b; Erikson 1962; Kitsuse 1962). Morality is,
according to this view, a relative notion. An individual’s or group’s
behaviors are identified as wrong, evil, immoral, or threateningly different
only in terms of the current, commonly held construction of reality of some
dominant group in a given setting. Immoral behavior is immoral only
because it has been so defined in terms of some prevailing notion of social
reality. Moreover, as pointed out by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman in
their book The Social Construction of Reality (1967), persons develop an
investment, a commitment to their own idea of morality, propriety, or reality
in general, and may in some cases take action against those individuals or
groups representing an alternative or contrary version of reality. This is, of
course, most likely to happen if the different or alternative reality is
conceived as threatening to one’s own. Berger and Luckman (1967)
comment that “the appearance of an alternative symbolic universe (version
of reality) poses a threat because its very existence demonstrates
empirically that one’s own universe is less than inevitable” (108).
We must now consider that subcultures are composed of persons whose
behaviors are motivated by beliefs, attitudes, ideologies, or values different
from those of some majority group in a setting. Subcultures are those
groups, in other words, whose members hold to a version of social reality
that departs identifiably from some existing, more widely accepted
definition of reality. In the case of homosexuals it is primarily a sexual
reality that is different. In other cases, subcultures advocate political,
economic, religious, or moral realities that depart significantly from
prevailing standards.
The likelihood that persons in some setting will become intolerant of
those practicing unconventional lifestyles is a function of a number of
factors. First, it would seem, is the sheer number of such persons. A few
persons engaging in unusual behaviors may not pose much of a threat.
Should the number increase substantially, however, they might possibly be
seen as “taking over.” Second is the visibility of such groups. If they
maintain a low enough profile, their activities are less likely to be called
into question. We have already discussed the relationship between
urbanites’ sense of space and the visibility of certain “different” groups.
We now ask, Under what conditions is a high degree of consensus about
proper values, beliefs, and lifestyles likely to develop? Or, still more closely
related to the direction of our analysis here, Is there a difference between
city and noncity areas in the consistency, clarity, and rigidity of persons’
ideas about what is right, proper, and moral, and therefore agreement about
boundaries of acceptable behavior?
As Durkheim pointed out in his Division of Labor in Society (1984), the
basis for social solidarity and integration in small, relatively well-contained
communities is persons’ similarities. He referred to the social solidarity
based on persons’ similarity or likeness as mechanical solidarity. In a
homogeneous, undifferentiated society, individuality is at a minimum. Here
a single, coherent, well-defined collective consciousness guides, motivates,
constrains, and controls persons’ behaviors. Persons are guided by a rigid
set of traditional criteria relative to proper behavior. In such a society of
similarly socialized persons—and, therefore, one of uniformity of moral
beliefs and practices—deviation is easily observed, clearly visible to all,
and stands in naked contrast to the otherwise profoundly regular standards
of conformity. Because those whose behaviors mark them as different are so
easily seen, repressive measures are swiftly taken against them. Views
about the values, beliefs, and attitudes that one ought to have will be clearly
delineated in the small, homogeneous society or community. There will be a
most obvious dominant, official version of reality that sets the mark all
must toe. One’s behaviors in the well-contained, homogeneous community
are subject to rigid, traditional controls.
The city, as we have so frequently noted, is characterized by the
heterogeneity of its population. One of its defining characteristics is that it
is made up of a diversity of ethnic, racial, age, class, and religious groups.
While there is little to differentiate persons in the small community, the
populations of cities are highly differentiated. Again, as noted by
Durkheim, this demographic, structural, or morphological difference in the
social organization of cities versus small towns had significant implications
for changing bases of social control. He noted that, in contrast with the
peasant community, the type of solidarity in urbanized areas—organic
solidarity—was based on differences between persons: on the meshing of
individual specializations that characterizes a complex division of labor.
Durkheim argued that as individuals moved away from their place of
origin to larger urbanized areas, the hold on them of traditional, rigid
community values was weakened. In addition, the anonymity of large
population aggregates in urbanized areas allowed for greater individual
variation, with the effect that persons experienced a greater freedom from
the traditional controls that had previously bounded their lives and dictated
their behaviors. “Implicit throughout the Division of Labor is the notion that
the performance of complex differentiated functions in a society with an
advanced division of labor both requires and creates individual variation,
initiative and innovation, whereas undifferentiated segmental societies do
not” (Nisbet 1965:165).
The very same behaviors constituting an outrage in the small town may
be seen as only slightly unusual in cities. In cities, groups must be more
“way out” before they draw singular attention to themselves and become
recognized as a threat to the collective consciousness of city dwellers. The
same behaviors perceived as an affront to “our way of life” in small towns
may be dismissed by sophisticated urbanites as merely one among the many
sets of behaviors vaguely seen as “slightly different.”

CONCLUSION
Consistent with a central motif of this book—to consider positive aspects
of city life often missed in other treatments of urbanism—we have
examined the expanded limits of tolerance in cities for groups practicing
unconventional lifestyles. Our analysis began with the observation that one
of the hallmarks of the great metropolis, in contrast with the small town, is
that it provides individuals a greater opportunity to “do their own thing.”
Because of the size, density, and heterogeneity defining urban life,
individuals can, more easily than in the small town, find subcultures
supporting an extraordinary range of behaviors, beliefs, and lifestyles. The
relatively greater freedom of urbanites to pursue idiosyncratic lifestyles,
moreover, is affirmed in a range of studies focused on the relationship
between community size and tolerance. While the findings and the
interpretations in these studies are not entirely uniform, taken together they
support the notion that the city does produce a distinctive culture of civility.
Theoretically, the central question of the chapter asks about the basis for
tolerance as well as the conditions under which tolerance sometimes breaks
down. A review of the literature reveals two apparently contradictory
explanations for tolerance. One line of thought has it that tolerance is
sustained only because diverse lifestyle groups are spatially segregated
from one another and assiduously avoid contact. A second view is that
tolerance is the product of a distinctive kind of interaction between various
city groups, an interaction through which groups create a negotiated social
contract of sorts. As is often the case in social science writing, competing
explanations of a phenomenon are articulated in an either/or format. Our
position is that we need not choose between these two apparently
competing explanations because there is an element of truth to both. We
propose that the issue is not contact or lack of it, but what we term
“controlled contact.” We maintain that the spatial ordering of group
activities provides individuals the choice of whether to have contact with
culturally diverse groups. By being able to control the place and timing of
contact with subcultures and by knowing what kinds of behaviors to expect
of persons in different city spaces, urbanites can monitor the extent of their
involvement with persons from culturally different groups. In addition, we
explored how urbanites’ subjective sense of urban space, as well as the
extraordinary heterogeneity of cities, contributes to increased tolerance.
At the same time that we have stressed the possibilities for individual
freedom in cities, it is important not to overstate the case. We acknowledge
that in certain instances, tolerance utterly breaks down. In all instances in
which tolerance has broken down, however, it would be shortsighted to
assign the cause of such breakdown to any one set of factors. There is likely
an intertwining of several factors in setting the stage for eventual action
against some group. Some group of persons must come to perceive another
group’s behaviors and continued presence as troublesome—as a social
problem. Perhaps the members of a subculture have ventured into areas of
the city where they are defined as “not belonging.” Groups may behave in
ways that contravene the implicit social bargain that had previously existed
between themselves and members of the conventional community. It could
be that just a few members of some group engage in behaviors that
constitute an outrage to a community’s collective consciousness. And so on.
The breakdown of tolerance may then be hastened once selected persons
recognize how it might be to their advantage to pursue the case further: to
mobilize against the group; to see that “justice” is done; to see that threats
to morality, real or imagined, are done away with.
Implicit in our discussion of tolerance is the idea that one cannot separate
how well a group fares in the urban context from questions of power and its
place in the system of urban stratification. In Chapter 6 we turn our
attention to the different urban experiences of men and women. Despite the
extraordinary volume of writing on gender roles since the 1970s,
sociologists have paid relatively little attention to the distinctive
contingencies that shape the experiences of urban women. In Chapter 6 we
explore some of the historical and structural factors that have dictated the
life chances of women in cities. We are also interested in bringing to the
foreground the important, but often invisible, role played by women in
building and sustaining viable urban communities.
 CHAPTER 6

Women in Cities

In Chapter 5 we focused on how various groups strive to achieve control

over definitions of what may be thought of as conventional or
unconventional modes of behavior. Not all groups in the city, of course, are
in equally strategic locations to have their definitions of morality translated
into actuality. While, as interactionists, we argue that reality is socially and
symbolically constructed, we must also note that not all persons play an
equal role in the construction of social worlds. As Patricia Hill Collins,
former president of the American Sociological Association, has pointed out,
we all exist at the intersection of various dimensions of race, class,
sexuality, citizenship, and gender (Collins 1999). Our status along those
various dimensions in part determines the roles we can play within the city.
In this chapter, we consider in particular the latter dimension, gender, in an
exploration of the ways women experience the city.
In 1975, Lyn Lofland noted a pronounced neglect of women in the works
of urban sociologists. She saw this neglect as rooted in a conceptualization
of community as a spatially bounded entity. Traditional ethnographies of
urban life tended to focus on settings in which women are found in limited,
traditional roles occurring in the private spheres of home and family,
whereas males occupied the center stage in the more visible, more easily
entered worlds of public activity. In such ethnographies women were
simply “there,” much like the paintings on a living room wall.
 Similarly, through the 1980s, urban historians evidenced a taken-for-
granted view of women’s “thereness.” A 1982 examination of 23 popular
American urban history books revealed little mention of women’s roles in
building American cities (Richter 1982). Here again, the issue of how cities
are conceptualized is critical.
Central to the inclusion of women, it seems, is whether the definition of urban the author wishes to
explore is centered about the process of urbanization or … the activities of the city. Women seem to
be generally overlooked where physical growth is a chief interest. Land speculation, bridge-building,
competition for the railroads, control of municipal franchises and mining—where these topics are
important the authors, by their omission, suggest that women are not, except as prostitutes and
entertainers. (Richter 1982:319)

As an alternative, Richter proposed a definition of urban as “being the

activities and events of American history that had their locus in the city”
(1982:323).
Though much work remains to fully capture the scope of activities and
events within urban life, over the last 35 years, a great deal of progress has
been made toward achieving Richter’s goal. Social scientists have made
considerable strides in representing women’s roles in and contributions to
urban life. In this chapter, we will chronicle several of those findings,
crucial to understanding urban life as a whole. We will also discuss the
remarkable progress toward gender equality that American urban women
have made over that period, progress that parallels women’s ascendance in
society in general.

DOING WHAT GETS NOTICED: WOMEN IN THE PAID LABOR

FORCE
In his fascinating book Why Nothing Works, Marvin Harris (1987) makes
the provocative argument that the feminist movement resulted from the
changing nature of women’s involvement in the paid labor force. He argues
that inflationary pressures in the 1960s forced working-class and lower-
middle-class families to seek ways of generating additional income in order
to maintain the lifestyle previously afforded on one income. Critical here is
one of the “invisible” causes of inflation—“the deteriorating quality of
goods and services produced by inefficient bureaucracies and oligopolies”
(Harris 1987:169). With a decrease in the real value of the goods and
services that were being produced in the 1960s, married mothers were
confronted with the problem of being looked to as the main source for
solving the family’s financial squeeze. In response to tremendous
advertising and mass-media emphasis on the possession of consumer goods
as the key to a happy, meaningful, and successful life, married mothers
entered the labor force with a willingness to accept “part-time, temporary,
and dead-end jobs” (Harris 1987:90). While we might question Harris’s
argument concerning women’s willingness to accept such jobs, the fact
remains that, willing or not, these were the kinds of jobs to which they were
likely to be steered. These wives and mothers found themselves working in
the “pink collar” ghettoes of the rapidly expanding service and information
sectors of the urban economy so aptly described by Florence Howe (1977).
Most employed mothers ended up as file clerks, secretaries, similar clerical
workers, dental assistants, elementary school teachers, social workers, and
counselors, to name just a few—all low-prestige, low-paying jobs in
female-dominated occupations.
Over time, this occupational segregation has changed somewhat. Women
now are much better represented in almost all sectors of work—from the
construction industry to manufacturing, business services, retail, etc.; data
from the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission show dramatic
increases in the proportion of women participating in the paid workforce,
especially in various jobs in the service sector, with 78 percent of industries
demonstrating a decline in employment segregation between (white) men
and women from 1990 to 2005 (Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey
2012:242). Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey note, however, that there
remain significant horizontal and vertical aspects of segregation within all
sectors. Vertical in the sense that men tend to be “above” women—“Men
dominate the best jobs” (213). Horizontal in the sense that women within
industries are sorted into different kinds of jobs than men—jobs that
emphasize nonmanual work and service provision. That is to say, they tend
to be placed in jobs that resonate with traditional cultural notions of
women’s work as oriented to the domestic sphere (Stainback and
Tomaskovic-Devey 2012:213). Clearly, while women have made significant
progress, occupational segregation remains an important topic. Let us now
examine this issue as a way of exploring the broad contours of urban life for
contemporary American women.
In thinking about the relationship between American women and work, it
is important to note at the outset that American homemakers have always
worked either in the home or outside, and frequently they have done both
simultaneously. The problem is that housework is not considered work
because it does not command wages, and therefore has not evoked the same
kind of respect and appreciation as work in the paid labor force. In fact, for
poor, and especially immigrant, women, the juggling of two jobs—
homemaker and paid employee outside the home—has always been part of
their life situation. Currently, large numbers of urban middle- and working-
class married, divorced, and single mothers shoulder the main
responsibilities for child care and supervision. Even today, most men do
very little of the actual physical or emotional labor involved in running a
home. Time diary studies show that even in families where both mothers
and fathers are employed outside the home, mothers do one and a half times
as much housework as men—a difference of about eight hours each week
(Lee 2005).1 Thus, working mothers especially are confronted with a
double dilemma—occupational discrimination in the paid labor force and
societal expectations about housework in the home. Such expectations are a
historical legacy of an ideology of domestication in which the “private
sphere” of the home and hearth was viewed as a woman’s “natural place”
(Rothman 1978). This double dilemma of work obligations both at home
and on the paid job led, according to Harris (1987), to the initial
dissatisfactions that helped usher in the full-fledged postwar feminist
movement.
The uniqueness of the contemporary situation can be seen in the
following finding:
A fundamental change over the last century has been the vast increase in female labor force
participation. In particular, married women’s participation in the formal labor market increased
dramatically—from around 2% in 1880 to over 70% in 2000. (Fernandez 2007:1)

Data on female participation rates also indicate that 65 percent of all

mothers with children under 18 worked in 2011, compared with only 28
percent in 1940—a 300 percent increase (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
2013:16; Weiner 1985:6). These data, of course, tell us nothing about the
situation faced by single women or female-headed families, who now make
up about 28 percent of all American families and 60 percent of all African-
American households in the United States (Lofquist, Lugaila, O’Connell,
and Feliz 2012). We will discuss this issue in more detail in Chapter 7.
In their exhaustive study analyzing the changing lives of American
women, McLaughlin et al. note:
When the United States was primarily an agricultural society, the family served as the locus of both
production and consumption. As such, it enabled women to be major participants in the productive
process. With industrialization and urbanization, the production role shifted outside the family and
was assumed by the male, while the family became the unit of consumption. The return of women to
the labor force and the recent trend toward being employed over the life course represents women’s
regaining a central role in the productive process, which they lost during the Industrial Revolution.
(McLaughlin 1988:7)

While women’s wages are still only about 80 percent of their male
counterparts’, the wage gap is narrowing considerably for younger women
compared with older women, reflecting the impact that higher education
and increasing work opportunities have on women’s lives. The wage gap
difference by female age groups is particularly striking: in 2012 the ratio of
weekly earnings for full-time women workers relative to men in the same
age group was 89 percent for ages 20–24, 90 percent for ages 25–34, 78
percent for ages 35–44, and 75 percent for ages 45–54 (U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics 2013). While the wage gap has consistently narrowed over
the last 30 years, that narrowing slowed in the 1990s and 2000s compared
to the 1980s (Blau 2014).
The lesser educational credentials for older women compared with their
younger counterparts is largely a result of the restricted educational
opportunities available to women in earlier periods. As a result, earlier
generations of women were steered or “tracked” into job routes that landed
them in occupationally segregated lines of employment. Social scientists
have expended a considerable amount of energy trying to ascertain what
percent of the wage gap between men and women can be attributed to the
changing structure of the workforce, skill, experience, and credentials and
what portion to discrimination. Considering the slowing in gains against the
gender wage gap, Blau contends that it may be due to rapid deunionization
that occurred in the 1980s, which disproportionately benefitted women, and
to women slowing their movement into new job sectors after the 1980s. But
she also notes that a good deal of the wage gap’s persistence is likely rooted
in discrimination. Taking account of various human capital variables—
aspects of personal background like education, job type, and work
experience—fails to account for all the differences between men’s and
women’s wages. This leads Blau to the following conclusion: the
contribution of the unexplained gap to the gender differential was far more
important than the human capital variables, suggesting at least the
possibility that discrimination was a more important factor than differences
in human capital in accounting for the gender wage gap (Blau 2014:936)

Occupational Segregation in the Urban Context

In studying the relationships between labor supply/demand
characteristics and women’s relative equality to men’s labor force
participation in the United States’ largest local labor markets, scholars have
found that some features of the local labor force improve the overall
workforce share for women (Baunach and Barnes 2003). Women stand a
better chance where there are (1) fewer women with young children; (2)
more women with college degrees; (3) fewer poor people; (4) lower average
wages; (5) more industries where women dominate the workforce; and (6)
in the Northeast or Midwest (2003:426–427). An important conclusion of
Baunach and Barnes’s study is that “[w]omen’s and men’s work are not
independent, but interdependent; that is, they are in competition with each
other, not segregated from each other” (2003:435). This finding supports
our broader conclusion that women have, by all measures, increased their
degree of equality with men. We should bear in mind, however, that many
employed urban women, whether married, divorced, or single, still work in
low-prestige, low-paying, occupationally segregated labor markets.
Another study focused on this issue of occupational segregation, to test
for its broader effects on the social dynamics of metropolitan areas. Cotter
et al. (1998) investigated the effects of the demand specifically for female
labor, that is, for labor in jobs that are overwhelmingly held by women, in
261 metropolitan areas in the United States. Interestingly, they noted those
areas with a greater demand for female jobs also demonstrate a greater level
of occupational integration overall. “Thus,” the authors note, “labor markets
with more female occupations are, paradoxically, more integrated, not more
segregated as we would expect from the high concentration of (segregated)
female occupations” (1693). Women in those metros also have greater
levels of labor participation and smaller wage gaps. Further investigation
reveals that there appears to be a positive causal relation between greater
numbers of female jobs and women’s educational attainment: in cities
where there are more female jobs, young women are more likely to
complete high school; they are also more likely to get some or complete
college education. Overall, the findings of Cotter et al. seem to suggest that
broader economic transitions, to the extent that they favor the creation of
female jobs like clerical, medical, or service work, tend to benefit women.
Some scholars argue that overall those are the kind of transitions our
society is increasingly experiencing. Some went so far as to argue that the
recent Great Recession of 2007–2009 could aptly be called a “Man-
cession.” Apparently popularized by the University of Michigan-Flint
economics professor Mark J. Perry, the term refers to the fact that during
the past recession, men lost jobs at considerably greater rates than women.
This prompted Perry to write the following in December 2009:
It’s not a recession, it’s a man-cession. And the lipstick economy may have only just begun. The U.S.
recession has been a catastrophe for men, but merely a downturn for women. According to Friday’s
payrolls report, eight out of every 10 pink slips in the past year have gone to men. (Perry 2008)

The key to women faring better than men in this downturn, again, is that
the kinds of jobs that continue to be disproportionately male are often jobs
of the “old economy,” in industries like manufacturing and construction.
Women’s greatest gains in employment have been in growth industries such
as education, health care, and government (Peterson 2012).
Though significant progress has been made in jobs recovery for both men
and women in the several years since the recession’s heights, men’s larger
gains have not been large enough to counter the fact that over 49 percent of
the workforce is now composed of women. Researchers at the St. Louis
Federal Reserve Bank point out the following:
Interestingly, as with job loss during the recession, the lion’s share of job growth during the recovery
has gone to men, but the gap between the employment growth rates for men and women is shrinking .
… The recovery initially created more jobs for men than for women as manufacturing and—to a
lesser extent—construction, bounced back. More recently, however, job growth for women is
approaching that for men, though at a slow pace. One important factor is that post-recession state and
local government budgets are limiting job growth in certain public sectors—for example, education
—in which women represent the majority of the workforce. As the recovery continues, the slow job
growth in the public sector is somewhat compensated by disproportionate job growth in brain-
intensive industries that employ a large number of new college graduates, the majority of whom are
women. (Contessi and Li 2013)

Though, of course, this does not speak to the continuing gender wage gap
described above, it is striking evidence of an economy transformed. To
continue to ascertain the chances for equal work opportunities for American
urban women, we must conduct studies synthesizing the approaches of
Baunach and Barnes (2003), Contessi and Li (2013), and Cotter et al.
(1998). That is, we should survey a broad range of organizations and the
occupational categories within them, across the various metropolitan locales
of the United States. Such studies will clarify the linkages between the
organizational and metropolitan contexts of occupational segregation, and
document our ongoing transition toward a more egalitarian job structure.
Metropolitan regions differ, as we have seen, in their degree of
occupational segregation. But they also differ in terms of the kinds of jobs
women and men do, as well as how supportive they are to working women.
Thus, for some time, various sources have sought to produce lists of the
“best” cities for working women. One such recent list, produced by Forbes
magazine (Goudreau 2013), shows the best-paying cities for American
women (Table 6.1).
It is interesting to note from this list that all the best-paying cities are
either in the megalopolis stretching from Washington, D.C. to Boston or in
the west. Notable too is that many of these cities are home to concentrations
for the information technology industry, government work, and medical
research. These are all industries that we have mentioned as being relatively
feminized. Finally, it is interesting to note that although some cities
demonstrate a relatively great degree of wage equality between men and
women, many do not. Still, in none of these cities do women make, on
average, as much as men.

Table 6.1
Forbes list of the United States’ best-paying cities for women, 2013
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2013/02/01/the-best-paying-cities-for-women-
2013/

BEING THERE: INVISIBLE WORK AND COMMUNITY LIFE

As our discussion of occupational segregation indicated, women still face
considerable obstacles in the paid labor force. Some metropolitan areas,
however, offer better conditions for employment than do others. In focusing
on the paid labor force we must not lose sight of the very significant fact
that many of women’s contributions to the quality of life in general, and of
urban life in particular, entail what might be termed “invisible work”
(Daniels 1987, 1988). Activities such as the upkeep of the home, caring for
children and the elderly, maintaining family ties, and community
volunteering, to name just a few, often pass unnoticed in the larger order of
things because of their seemingly “natural” and “unplanned” nature. Since
these activities are not rewarded financially, they are devalued vis-à-vis the
“real” work of holding a job and producing something tangible and visible.
 We might also add, as testimony to our blinders on definitions of what
constitutes work, that a glance through any current textbook on the
sociology of work and occupations will reveal no listing for activities
relating to the maintenance of kinship ties, caregiving, or community
volunteer work. Occasionally one will see a treatment of housework as a
form of work discussed in such texts, but even that recognition is a
relatively recent one.
This section of the chapter will focus on the critical importance of
women’s underappreciated activities. To borrow a metaphor from Erving
Goffman, if society may be conceived of as comparable to a building with
its bricks and mortar, then we intend to investigate the mortar holding those
bricks together. Indeed, while the bricks may constitute the most obvious
and visible features of the structure, without the mortar, that substance
between the bricks, the structure would instantly collapse. Similarly, while
male-dominated activities, such as highly paid executive work, attract our
most immediate attention in terms of obvious importance, the entire
structure of society, if you will, would erode if women did not do the
genuine work of maintaining the house, rearing the children, keeping
families intact through caregiving and kinship work, and participating in
community organizations. In short, without the “mortar” supplied by female
labor in the invisible spheres of life, the social structures constituting our
taken-for-granted world would be thrown into dramatic upheaval.

The Early History of Women’s Voluntary Associations

In viewing the problem of women’s invisibility historically, perhaps the
best place to begin is a provocative essay by Ann Firor Scott (1987),
delivered as the Presidential Address to the Organization of American
Historians and published in the prestigious Journal of American History.
We mention these details for a specific reason—as an illustration of how
scholarly concerns with women’s activities are now, after many decades of
neglect, beginning to merit the attention of scholars in all social science
fields. We can thank the preceding generations of feminist scholars, both
men and women, for their efforts to make it possible for women to achieve
the presidencies of major scholarly associations.
Scott begins her essay by asking, “What are the characteristics of the
things we are able to perceive? What makes other things invisible to
scholars? And what must happen to bring some hitherto unseen part of past
reality into visibility?” (1987:8). She then proceeds to focus on the
significant role voluntary associations have played in American history.
These are organizations that people freely form to achieve a wide range of
goals. They constitute everything from a local stamp collector’s club to the
Girl Scouts and the League of Women Voters. Data on these kinds of
associations have been available to scholars for a considerable amount of
time, yet only recently has women’s participation been scrutinized. For a
society often viewed as a nation of joiners this is indeed a puzzling
phenomenon.
In the nineteenth century, women were banned from entering the most
prestigious fields of endeavor, such as the professions, the upper
management echelon of business and industry, and the higher levels of
educational and religious institutions. As industrialization gained
momentum in the mid- to late 1800s, women increasingly found themselves
relegated to the “private” sphere of home and hearth (Lasch 1977; Lopata,
Miller, and Barnewolt 1986). In response to such restrictive environments,
“women who wanted to do more than float with the tide created among
themselves organizations through which they formed social values and
created social institutions, all the while developing their own skills and self-
confidence. What business and public life were to aspiring nineteenth-
century men, the voluntary association was to aspiring women” (Scott
1987:9).
The post-Civil War period in American history witnessed the large-scale
urbanization of the country and the emergence of a metropolitan nation. In
the developing urban centers, women were deeply involved in numerous
associations formed to deal with the changes brought about by urbanization.
These associations did not simply respond to such changes but instead
proposed imaginative solutions for the emerging problems of an urban
nation. “By the early 1900s women’s societies formed a dense web in many
communities and—linked in federations—formed also a national network
through which ideas spread with astonishing speed” (Scott 1987:15). The
problem-solving efforts of urban women in the early 1900s encompassed an
amazingly impressive range of public issues. They were involved in the
establishment of public health programs for clean water and pure milk,
housing reform, trade union organizing, and trying to get legislation passed
that banned child labor. They could also be seen
engaging in factory inspection and intensive fact-finding with respect to women and children
workers; inventing the school lunch program, the juvenile court, and the bookmobile; creating parks
and playgrounds; investigating tenement houses and employment agencies—the list seems endless.
Of course, men took part in some of those efforts, but the kinds of things … listed were most often
the result of women’s initiatives. That part of the Progressive Movement that focused on practical
improvement of community life, was by and large, women’s work. (Scott 1987:15)

Scott ends her probing essay by drawing on her personal experiences

with the issue of women’s invisibility. Her work as a young woman with the
National League of Women Voters in Washington, D.C., in 1944 led her
many years later to study American political history. Failing to encounter
any material about women’s political associations in her graduate school
classes, she wrote a seminar paper on the League of Women Voters. Her
male professor, a leading figure in American political history, awarded her a
“B” on the grounds that what she “was arguing about—the importance of a
woman’s organization in community life—was improbable” (1987:20). She
delayed writing about this topic until years later, when she “found
overwhelming evidence in the primary sources that women had used their
voluntary associations to create a beleaguered Progressive movement in the
South” (1987:20). We might also note here that Scott was able to find a
more receptive audience for her work in the scholarly community, not only
when the evidence became “overwhelming” but also, when decades of
activity by post-World War II feminist organizations and scholars had
achieved some success in influencing the larger institutional structures of
American society.
Before focusing on women’s contemporary urban activities, let us briefly
highlight the considerable success achieved by one particularly noteworthy
women’s voluntary association—Hull House in Chicago during the late
1890s and early 1900s. Hull House has been termed “one of the most
politically effective groups of women reformers in U.S. history” (Sklar
1985:658). In establishing one of the first American social settlement
houses in 1889, Hull House’s founders, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr,
along with Florence Kelley, played key roles in the writing and passage of
legislation outlawing urban sweatshops and mandating an eight-hour day
for women and children working in manufacturing plants in Illinois. All of
us working today, both men and women, who take an eight-hour day as a
given, much like a fact of nature, owe an enormous debt to these female
activists and their male allies who jointly fought for what are now our
current working conditions.
 The leaders of Hull House were highly educated daughters of male
political figures who encouraged them to take an active interest in politics.
When they graduated from college in the early 1880s—being among the
relatively few women allowed to achieve that distinction in those times—
they encountered numerous barriers to entering fields such as law, politics,
and university teaching. Seeking an outlet for their talents, they created the
1890s urban settlement movement, where they found
a perfect structure for women seeking secular means of influencing society because it collectivized
their talents; it placed and protected them among the working-class immigrants whose lives
demanded amelioration, and it provided them with access to the male political arena while preserving
their independence from male-dominated institutions. (Sklar 1985:664)

We should also note that these women were not only important in
crafting the social life of the city but also played key roles in developing
urban sociology (Deegan 2001). Hull House had a particularly close
relationship with the urban sociologists at the University of Chicago. In
addition to its myriad community-building activities, the settlement kept
careful records on the people it helped, records that proved useful for the
research of those Chicago school sociologists. As Mary Jo Deegan notes,
Mary McDowell, a former Hull-House resident, sponsored [Nels] Anderson’s initial work.
Organizations founded and maintained by Hull-House residents provided data for many authors
([Louis] Wirth, [Clifford] Shaw, Anderson and [Harvey] Zorbaugh, among others) … . Hull-House
and its residents contributed directly to the Chicago ethnographies sponsored by [Robert] Park—
albeit recognition of this fact is muted in most scholarship on the Chicago School. (Deegan 2001:18)

Thus, even within our own discipline, we have too often been guilty of
allowing women’s vital work to remain “invisible.”

Participation in Voluntary Associations

In the contemporary United States, while women are moving into the
paid labor force in increasing numbers, urban women are also active in
voluntary associations. As in earlier periods, however, women still face sex
segregation in associational memberships. The structure of the larger
society can be seen in the community memberships of persons at the local
level. In a study of 10 Nebraska communities ranging in size from 1,300 to
312,000 persons, sociologists found an extremely high level of sex
segregation, with memberships in “one-half of the organizations …
exclusively female, while one-fifth are exclusively male” (McPherson and
Smith-Lovin 1986:65). In view of our earlier discussion of occupational
segregation, it is most disheartening to note that “in fact, the level of sex
segregation in voluntary association organizations is greater than the level
of occupational sex segregation in the workplace” (McPherson and Smith-
Lovin 1986:65). Though over time this segregation is declining, research
shows that it persists, and is in large part tied to women’s exclusion from
some social networks due to occupational segregation: people tend to
volunteer with people they know from work. To the extent that occupations
are segregated by gender, this contributes to segregation in voluntary
organizations as well (Rotolo and Wharton 2003).
Are women in larger cities more likely to participate in less-sex-
segregated associations than their small-town counterparts? Here the data
give the nod to large city residents, with city size having an inverse
relationship to segregation; that is, the larger the city, the less the sex
segregation in associations. The cosmopolitanism and, we might add, the
urbanity of larger locales contribute to greater opportunities for gender
integration. This finding recalls our earlier discussion about the more
attractive workplace opportunities for women in larger cities.
What kinds of voluntary associations are men and women most likely to
join? McPherson and Smith-Lovin’s data indicate that business and
professional groups are the most likely to be gender integrated, while
organizations such as veterans’ club and lodges and social associations such
as hobby clubs are the most likely to be sex segregated. Even in the gender-
integrated associations, however, female respondents are likely to belong to
business/professional groups having only about one-third male members.
For male respondents, their business/professional groups have only about
one-fifth female members. In the largest sense, male respondents tend to
have both more numerous contacts than females and more heterogeneous
ones. These “weak ties” of men are important in providing them with the
kinds of information needed for getting jobs, pursuing business
opportunities, and furthering career advancement. Women, by contrast,
through their organizational memberships are largely relegated to
informational networks that pertain to the “domestic sphere” and the local
community.
The larger implications of sex segregation in the voluntary association
can be seen in the fact that
the voluntary sector tends to reflect the sex segregation in other domains in our society. It divides
men and women into separate domains even more effectively than does the occupational structure.
Furthermore, it acts to maintain the status differences that such segregation implies, by creating
networks of weak ties that restrict men’s and women’s information and resources to the domains that
are traditional for each. In this arena, as in so many others, separate is probably not equal. The few
members of either sex who belong to sex-integrated voluntary associations may have key positions,
which may provide bridges between the male and female domains. Only presently unavailable
dynamic evidence will reveal whether these bridges will become beachheads for the future mingling
of the sexes or remain lonely outposts for token members. (McPherson and Lovin-Smith 1986:77)

A particularly intriguing finding concerning the significance of

memberships in voluntary associations is presented in a study of the types
of work engaged in by men and women in voluntary organizations. Rotolo
and Wilson (2007) used data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to
assess the different kinds of work done by men and women within
organizations. While noting that the findings of McPherson and Smith-
Lovin still ring true, that men and women tend to be more or less
concentrated in some types of volunteer organizations, their findings go on
to show that gender segregation is further practiced within voluntary
organizations. Their research suggests that
[a]long the vertical dimension, sorting jobs by their authority and status, men are indeed more likely
to serve on boards and committees, the single exception being in areas (culture and education) that
have become closely associated with women’s work of caring for children and for the more
expressive activities in the community. Along the horizontal dimension, sorting equal-status jobs by
their gender associations in other forms of productive labor, we uncovered a clear pattern of men
doing maintenance work and women doing food and clothing preparation and delivery, an almost
exact parallel to that found in the household and, to a lesser extent, in paid employment. (Rotolo and
Wilson 2007:578)

We might go on to suggest that this further perpetuates a tendency to keep

women in invisible work—for example, making snacks at home for the
little league team or affixing patches on girl and boy scouts’ sashes—while
men in leadership positions put the visible, public face on organizations.
Another study of women community leaders (Daniels 1988) further
illustrates that such women face a considerable dilemma in doing unpaid
work that is not seen as work by the larger society.
Women like those interviewed by Daniels in her study of a large Pacific
Coast city provide the labor power that makes for the smooth and efficient
operation of many community-based organizations. Such organizations
create the conditions for what we call the quality of life. While their
husbands are usually in charge of the key financial decisions connected
with organizations like the United Way, city zoos, symphonies, and art
museums, it is the women who raise the funds and keep the organizations
functioning on a daily basis.
Since the community leaders studied by Daniels donate their labor, and
since a good deal of what they do falls into the area of managing
interpersonal relations—keeping relationships pleasant, creating an
atmosphere of sociability—what they do is not seen by others as involving
work and skill. Indeed, these women themselves express great ambivalence
over the value of their efforts and whether it really is or is not work. Their
interpersonal efforts are, of course, in addition to considerable involvements
in more instrumental tasks such as organization-building and fund-raising.
When we brag to out-of-town friends, for example, about our city’s zoo or
its wonderful symphony orchestra and art museums, we are paying our
usually unacknowledged respect to the work done by community leaders
like the women interviewed in Pacific City. In fact, the sense of belonging
to an entity called “our city” perhaps is at root possible only because some
citizens are willing to devote their unpaid efforts to volunteer work in the
public, not-for-profit sector. In the final analysis,
the civic leaders provide opportunities for others to be creative, make contributions that benefit their
respective communities as well as the city at large. Finally, these women, like their colleagues in
other classes and other communities, provide the ambience, as well as channels for actions, that
affect the quality of life in the cities and towns of our society. When they divert their energies
elsewhere, much of what has been termed “municipal housekeeping” … doesn’t get done. That our
society is willing to accept this work as volunteer effort or else live without it reflects the ultimate
value of this contribution to the quality of life around us: the members of society would like to have
it, but there is no systematic provision for it and the governing bodies won’t pay for it. In the future,
perhaps, we shall all have to take responsibility for the quality of life in our cities. (Daniels
1988:277)

Daniels’s study calls attention to how social class operates to knit upper-
class women into their class niche while performing services for the
community at large. Their philanthropic and cultural activities are part of a
noblesse oblige ideology that deflects attention away from the class interest
served by such volunteer activity. As representatives of an established upper
class, they are quite cognizant of the need to steer clear of confrontations
with the business community. They are also hesitant to propose programs
that might dramatically alter the distribution of economic resources in urban
communities.
 Class and its related privileges is an important issue creating difficulties
for activist women throughout the urban United States. The national
leadership of the Women’s Movement in the 1970s and 1980s tended to
have middle- and upper-middle-class origins, while the leaders of many
community-based organizations came from low-income, working-class, or
minority backgrounds. In this regard a study of women activists and
community organizers in several large metropolitan centers found real
divergences between local-level leaders and those active in national
women’s organizations (Naples 1998).
Leaders of community organizations defined problems in terms of the
entire community and had a view of community life that cut across gender
lines while focusing on the class- and ethnicity-based needs of low-income
residents. They were interested in the problems faced by men and women as
well as children. Issues such as education, employment, housing, and health
care were uppermost on their agendas. Leaders of the national women’s
movements, by contrast, focused their attention almost exclusively on
women-based issues. They placed less emphasis on problems that were
class based and a result of the lack of economic resources.
This study demonstrates the extent to which women leaders of different
kinds of organizations viewed the world through different prisms. For
example, a group of Latina Community workers in New York
who were active in struggles to protect and improve the lives of family and neighbors in the Lower
East Side in the early 1970s were aware of the gender inequalities within their community. They
developed a feminist consciousness through their organizing work. Yet, because of the saliency of
race and class in their analyses, their feminism differed from that defined by those who were
identified with the dominant Women’s Movement. (Naples 1998:333–334)

However, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Naples points out that
considerable changes were afoot. So by the turn of the twenty-first century,
Naples could write that “Women’s Movement activists have developed
deeper sensitivity to the multiplicity of women’s lives” (Naples 1998:334).
And indeed, women from a number of different class, race, and ethnic
positions had become leaders in grassroots organizations, advocating for
everything from fair and adequate housing for poor children and mothers, to
the eradication of homophobia, to better treatment of immigrant
communities by the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) (Naples
1998).
 Efforts by women political activists of diverse backgrounds have yielded
considerable gains in the formal political power held by women in the
United States. Recent data indicate, for example, that women now comprise
24.2 percent of the nation’s state legislators, compared with 5 percent in
1971. The news at the local political level is also somewhat heartening,
with women mayors now comprising 18.4 percent of all the mayors of cities
with populations of more than 30,000, compared with less than 1 percent in
1971. Even at the federal level, women have made considerable inroads,
with women comprising 18.5 percent of the total members of the House and
Senate (including Nancy Pelosi, who has served as both the first female
Speaker of the House and the House Minority Leader). This compares with
women comprising only about 3 percent of the total in 1971 (Center for
American Women and Politics 2014; Dionne 1989:A6). At the highest
levels of political power, then, women have made considerable inroads, to
the extent that it is now well within the realm of imagination that we will
witness the first female American president within our lifetimes.

GENDERED SPACES: WOMEN IN PUBLIC SETTINGS

In the previous section we discussed issues relating to community
organizations. We illustrated how the often unnoticed activities of urban
women play a critical role in providing and maintaining the quality of life.
In the final section of this chapter we turn our attention to a unique feature
of urban life, the nature of the relations between strangers in the public
arena. Indeed, one noted urban sociologist, Lyn Lofland (1989), sees the
“public realm” as the sine qua non of urban life, as the basic characteristic
differentiating it most dramatically from rural and small-town life.
In Chapters 4 and 5 we discussed the fact that the city is a place where
strangers are likely to meet, thereby making possible a stimulating, exciting,
and diverse cosmopolitanism. In the large urban centers of the country, one
encounters a truly fascinating assortment of “characters” and lifestyles. The
downside, however, to the urbane life in cities lies in this same
phenomenon; that is, a world in which one frequently encounters strangers
on public streets, in restaurants, and in shops is a world that poses questions
about possible dangers and personal harm. In this regard, women are
particularly disadvantaged by both the larger cultural traditions of Western
societies and the structural features of urban life. Women’s greater physical
vulnerability vis-à-vis men in such situations is also a factor of great import.
 In many large cities throughout North America, women are heavily
dependent upon public transportation, and this reliance creates serious
limits on where and when women can travel. In many urban areas, sizable
numbers of persons comprise what has been called the “transportation
disadvantaged” because they have few transportation options and possess
minimal personal resources (Schlossberg 2004). It is a category made up of
the poor, the elderly, racial minorities, and the physically disabled. Though
noting that women’s transportation habits have begun to look more like
men’s as they have taken advantage of increased opportunities in realms
like work and education, Rosenbloom writes:
First, societal trends such as increasing employment among women do not always close the travel
gap between men and women, although they may superficially appear to do so. Second, household
roles are not changing that much or that rapidly; although the direction is clear, neither the speed nor
the magnitude of change is as dramatic as one might assume given the talk of growing equality
between the sexes. Third, the growing number of new household structures often significantly
involves, and more likely disadvantages, women than men. (Rosenbloom 2006:12)

Including gender as a variable in transportation studies is critical because

the literature clearly reveals that men and women use public transportation
in significantly different ways. Particularly crucial is the study of how
family and income dynamics intersect with gender and transportation needs.
For example, Evelyn Blumenberg considered the problem of “spatial
mismatch” between the residences of low-income women and places where
they may find jobs. While Blumenberg’s work challenges the assumption
that jobs have almost entirely disappeared from the United States’ central
city areas, she does show that many poor urban women live in
neighborhoods at a great remove from potential jobs. For instance, in Los
Angeles
data reveal that in central-city neighborhoods adjacent to the central business district, such as the
Pico-Union neighborhood, welfare recipients are able to reach many jobs within a reasonable
commute by either car or public transit. In contrast, other welfare recipients, such as those living in
Watts, reside in job-poor, central-city neighborhoods where, if they are transit-dependent, they likely
face long and difficult commutes that limit their likelihood of finding and sustaining employment,
even if traveling to destinations within the central city. (Blumenberg 2004:272)

What is especially problematic are the difficulties of automobile

ownership for women in poverty—only 7 percent of welfare recipients (85
percent of whom are women) own a car (Blumenberg 2004; U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services 2012). Many states further limit
the options of welfare recipients by stipulating that their cars be worth less
than about $5,000—a prescription for unreliable or even dangerous
transportation (Blumenberg 2004).
Blumenberg goes on to note that the transportation needs of poor single
mothers are more diverse than those of the general population. While
getting to a job is certainly as important for these women as for other adults,
low-income women have other reasons for preferring jobs closer to home. For single mothers who
typically have sole responsibility for the functioning of their households, the ability to sustain
employment rests on access to a variety of household-supporting destinations, only one of which is
work. Long commutes are especially difficult for welfare participants who must balance the costs of
traveling to and from low-wage jobs with the need to make trips that serve their children and other
household needs.

Thus, to the extent that a single mom is isolated in a neighborhood like

Watts, far from work, her use of public transportation, like all uses of public
space, exposes her to the possibility of harassment by men. In a culture such
as ours, which, until fairly recently, placed severe restrictions on women’s
opportunities in the occupational world, women have had to endure being
portrayed as sexual objects. Certainly, our mass media constantly
emphasizes that domestic work is a woman’s “natural” work and that a
woman’s worth is intimately connected to physical attractiveness and
seductiveness. Many commercials appeal to men by suggesting that if they
purchase the product being advertised, not only will their lives be made
better and more comfortable, but they will also have the commodities
needed to attract beautiful, exciting women. Such gender advertisements
(Goffman 1976) start very early in life. The message is that “[l]ittle girls
must be prepared for a life of buying clothes and cosmetics and all those
other wonderful things that will make them irresistibly alluring objects.
Life, it seems is a look” (O’Connor 1989:A5).
A trip through any city in the country will also reveal to the traveler
billboards portraying the “good life” via material accumulation and
beautiful appearances—especially those of women. Women in this society
are raised, then, in an environment that urges them to appear physically
attractive and desirable in the eyes of men. Such appeals are also part of a
cultural infrastructure that makes women “fair game” for the suggestive and
disturbing remarks made by male strangers in the urban setting.
Given the pervasiveness of street hassling and sexual harassment in the
lives of women (see Sullivan, Lord, and McHugh 2000), it is surprising that
few empirically based observational studies of this phenomenon have been
conducted. The most important and detailed treatment remains Carol
Brooks Gardner’s (1995) study of men and women’s interactions in public
settings. Gardner spent five years observing interactions in a wide range of
public settings such as bars, restaurants, stores, and residential streets in
Indianapolis, Indiana. She and her research assistants also interviewed 293
women and 213 men about public harassment. This included discussion of
the issue of what she terms “access information,” that is, “information given
that would lead to discovery of an individual’s immediate or ultimate
destination or a place where the individual can later reliably be found”
(1995:122). The notion of future time is especially salient here because
urban women are particularly conscious of the fact that casual, unwanted
interaction with males may result in the possibility of being tracked down
later, perhaps harassed on the phone, or, even more frightening, may result
in rape. We will discuss the issue of rape and its significance for women
later in this chapter.
In Chapter 4 we highlighted the strategies used by strangers in public
settings to cooperate and produce what we called “public privacy.” We
remarked on the paradox of urban interaction whereby persons must
systematically take one another into account in order to avoid unwanted
encounters. Gardner’s studies, it is interesting to note, suggest that similar
dynamics of a controlled blend of indifference and involvement are at play
in women’s encounters with male strangers. Women face conflicting
pressures in that they may sometimes want to communicate an openness
toward meeting men they find interesting, but simultaneously they have to
be very concerned about how such chance encounters can go dangerously
awry if not handled adroitly. As a result of this dilemma, female
respondents created a number of “reaction strategies.” They made
calculated distinctions, for example, about the degree of riskiness associated
with flirting with strangers in public. For example, they might react to
entice a man following on the street by “switching their butts” (220), or
might alternately dump a beer over the head of a man they felt was being
rude to them in public (216). Women also made distinctions about the level
of danger involved in going alone in public in different settings. While
downtown might be perfectly safe for a woman during daylight hours, some
women felt they could legitimately be mistaken for a “whore” if they were
walking the streets along past 11 pm (203).
 The men interviewed by Gardner saw the issue of public encounters in
ways fundamentally different from women. Males indicated that public
spaces were a safe domain over which they enjoyed a great degree of
mastery. And in public encounters with anonymous women, men generally
framed their catcalls or unsolicited compliments as “romantic.” Gardner
writes:
Action—public harassment—on the romantic frontier was interpreted [by men] as playful or sportive
competition. One man, when asked how he judged incidents of public harassment, noted that they
made public places lively and enjoyable: “Are those incidents acceptable? Let me just put it this way:
If they weren’t, the world would be a very dull place.”

For women, however, the fact is that these incidents of harassment can
make the world of public places into a very scary place. To some degree,
their fear is bolstered by the reality of crime: in Gardner’s sample, over 20
percent of the women had some experience with violence at the hands of
men, or near-misses: “12 had been stranger-raped; 22 had been in a
situation that they thought was likely to turn into stranger-rape but had not;
and 32 had experienced serious physical harassment from a stranger … .
[W]omen were simply and casually punched by passing strangers”
(1995:7). The male respondents seemed to be insensitive to, and unaware
of, the dilemmas faced by women in public settings. She found that “90
percent of the men interviewed … began by denying that they committed
public harassment, even when quite innocuous examples were discussed. …
However by the end of the interview, each of those men had given a
‘justified’ (or unjustified) example that identified him as the author of
public harassment” (1995:110). We see here two very different definitions
of reality and ways of experiencing urban life.
How reasonable is it, we might ask, for women to be trusting in public?
The social science literature on fear of crime indicates that women and the
elderly are likely to have both the greatest fears and the lowest
victimization rates (Warr 2000). While some point to fear among those
groups as thus “irrational,” Warr notes that the disproportionate fear of
crime among women is largely a factor of their fear of rape: “What for men
is the perceived risk of robbery would for many women be the perceived
risk of robbery, plus rape, plus additional injury” (Warr 2000:478). Figures
from a survey by the U.S. Department of Justice indicate that 17.6 percent
of American women over 18 have been the victims of rape or an attempted
rape (U.S. Department of Justice 2000).
 Data cited earlier in reference to Gardner’s work reveal the way in which
remarks from male strangers can escalate into far more frightening and
dangerous consequences for women—including an incident of rape in her
own sample. If we think about street hassling as comparable with an
“invasion of intimacy,” we can see how the “ritual of harassment” operates:
By its seeming harmlessness, it blurs the borders of women’s right to personal integrity, and
encourages men who would never commit a violent crime against a strange woman to engage in
minor transgressions against her right to move freely, to choose which interaction to participate in
and which people to communicate with. By making the average “man in the street” a minor sex
offender, it also makes him an accomplice in the more massive forms of violence against women.
(Bernard and Schlaffer 1981:19)

Women’s fear of crime, of rape in particular, has very important

consequences in terms of their mobility in urban areas. In examining how
women’s worries about crime affect their actual behaviors, some dramatic
findings have been presented by social scientists (for example, MacMillan,
Nierobisz, and Welsh 2000; Reid and Konrad 2004). These are findings, we
might add, that are revealing of the gendered nature of urban space when
seen in comparison with the responses and behaviors of men.
Reid and Konrad’s (2004) analysis of survey data collected from
residents of New Orleans revealed the very gendered structure of crime
fears. While they did not find a significant difference between men and
women’s fears of burglary, women reported being significantly more afraid
of both being robbed (outside the home) and of being the victim of sexual
assault. These findings are especially notable from an urbanist’s
perspective, because they show that while women and men tend to feel
about the same level of safety from crime within their home, women are
considerably less at ease about crime that may occur when out and about in
the city.
Reid and Konrad emphasize that this perception is influenced both by
women’s and men’s experiences of the city, and by our culture’s broader
norms with respect to gender socialization,
women are socialized to expect to be victims of crime at some time in their lives. Hence while
women’s fear of crime is greater than their actual risk of public versus private victimization, it is
commensurate with their perceived risk of public victimization as informed by society, schools, and
the media. When women feel themselves to be at a high risk of victimization their fear is not
necessarily inflated; the role of the victim is one that they are used to occupying. By contrast men are
socialized not to expect to be victims of crime and not to be fearful of crime. Masculinity entails
being the protector, the one in control. Experiencing a high perception of possible victimization is
likely an unexpected role for men. (2004:421)

What kinds of locations are more likely to be “user-friendly” for women,

so to speak, in terms of the likelihood of crimes? A study of the 40 largest
Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) in the United States finds that the
younger cities—those with larger populations in the 15–29 age range—have
higher rates of violence toward women (Xie, Heimer, and Lauritsen 2012).
So do cities where there is a marked degree of income inequality.
Fascinatingly, the study also finds evidence that women’s labor force
participation is not only empowering in a social and economic sense but
actually is associated with lower rates of violent crime among intimate
partners. In cities where greater proportions of women are in the labor force
and have higher levels of education, fewer experience violence at the hands
of known others. Unfortunately, they also find that women in those cities
are more likely to experience violence at the hands of a stranger—yielding a
sort of statistical zero-sum game for women’s safety. The authors theorize
that this increased risk of violence is due at least in part to an increase in
women’s presence in public places, outside the home (Xie, Heimer, and
Lauritsen 2012). Perhaps their most optimistic finding is that the more
women participate in the political sphere, as measured by the proportion of
a city’s voting age women who actually vote, the less likely they are to be
victims of violent crime. This suggests that women exercising their voting
rights may put public safety more solidly on cities’ public policy agenda
(Xie, Heimer, and Lauritsen, 2012). Other studies of urban places remind
us, however, that such big-picture analyses of cities may be somewhat
misleading. As urban sociologists are increasingly emphasizing the
mediating role that neighborhoods have on all kinds of human behaviors
(Sampson 2012), we must look at how neighborhoods affect crime. Raphael
and Sills point out that “within large metropolitan areas, the residents of
poor, largely minority neighborhoods suffer disproportionately” from crime,
including rape and sexual assault (Raphael and Sills 2003:2).
Before ending this section, we should introduce some important
modifiers to the picture of urban unease we have just sketched. In that
regard, we must call attention to the fact that while crime and rape in
particular rank high among fears of women in public—fears that lead
women to restrict their movements—it is critical to note that a sizable
amount of violent crime in this country, including rape, involves persons
known to one another. In the study by Xie, Heimer, and Lauritsen (2012)
cited above, for example, it was over one-and-a-half times more likely that
a woman’s attacker was known to her than it was that the attacker was a
stranger. In addition, studies indicate that almost three quarters of rapists are
individuals previously known by the women they attack (Catalano 2006).
The problems of rape and crimes against women, then, are much larger
than the issue of relations between unacquainted men and women in public
spaces. They are part of a much broader constellation of beliefs, attitudes,
and values that lay the foundation for what scholars have called “the rape
culture” of the United States (Williams 2011). While urban women have
been victimized by violent crimes, they have also taken important steps to
remedy the situation and achieve some autonomy in their lives along with a
greater freedom of movement in the city. In a number of cities around the
world, women have taken to the streets in “slut walks” to counter negative
stereotyping of women’s presence in public places. Large groups dress in
“suggestive” outfits in an effort to help people question the pervasive rape
culture and the idea that a woman may deserve unwanted attention based
simply on her dress or her presence in a public place (Borah and Nandi
2012). Numerous rape crisis hotlines and rape crisis centers have been
established throughout the country, and the efforts of social scientists and
feminist activists have played critical roles in raising the consciousness of
the police, the courts, and medical personnel about the devastating effects
of rape and the need for humane responses to its victims and swift arrests of
its perpetrators (Matthews 1994).

CONCLUSION
Our focus in this chapter has been rather selective in that we have not
attempted to encompass the entire spectrum of things that urban women are
now doing. Instead, we have let the ideas of women’s “thereness” and
overcoming of “invisibility” guide our inquiry. We called attention to
women’s gains in the paid labor force and how the central issue of
occupational segregation continues to set real, although certainly changing,
limits on women’s job attainments. Our discussion of women’s participation
in community voluntary organizations highlighted the important historical
and contemporary contributions that women’s organizations make to the
quality of urban life.
 Finally, we examined the notion of gendered spaces and women’s place
in public settings. As we noted, while urban life, through encounters with
strangers, makes for a stimulating and exciting existence, it also poses a
serious dilemma for women in terms of safety and sexual harassment. Here,
as elsewhere in their urban activities, women are playing a critical role in
developing organizations that have influenced how institutions such as the
courts, the police, and urban hospitals have responded to women’s needs.
In the final section of this book we want to move to a somewhat more
macro, structural analysis of urban life by focusing on some selected
institutional spheres, such as politics and sports, that have important
consequences for being urban.

NOTE
1. We should, however, note that this is a considerable improvement over the situation in the
1980s, when working wives did five times as much housework as their husbands (Steil 1989:142).
 PART III

URBAN INSTITUTIONS AND

SOCIAL CHANGE
 CHAPTER 7

Power, Politics, and Problems

In a classic statement on power, Robert Michels, a German political

sociologist, noted the operation of what he termed the “iron law of
oligarchy.” Michels (1962) argued that no matter how democratic an
organization or a social movement may be in its initial stages, it ultimately
tends toward an organizational structure in which a great deal of power
becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few high-ranking
persons. The debate over community power that has long occupied social
scientists (see, for example, Dahl 1961; Hunter 1953; Hyra 2008; Mills
1959; Stone 1989; Wilson and Taub 2006) may be seen as testimony to the
enduring significance of Michels’s argument. On one side of the issue are
those who see community power in pluralist terms, wherein local groups
compete with each other on various issues, and no one group has
dominance on every issue. On the other side are those who see community
power in terms of elites, wherein small, strategically located groups
exercise major say on issues deemed important to their interests. The elitist
conception of community power tends toward a view of power as
essentially hierarchical and exclusionary, while the pluralist conception is
more conducive to a participatory, multidimensional conception of power.
Our aim in the following discussion is to specify the community processes
contributing to either hierarchical or pluralist power arrangements.
PLAYING WITH A STACKED DECK: PROCESSES PROMOTING
HIERARCHICAL POWER ARRANGEMENTS
Our previous discussions in this book should have sensitized you to the
notion that the social arrangements characterizing any locale are products of
a negotiated symbolic order. The conditions under which such symbolic
negotiations take place, however, are functions of the power at the disposal
of the groups involved. In short, the participants in various social worlds
have differential access to the production and distribution of scarce and
highly valued resources. The definition of what constitutes such highly
valued resources is itself an outcome of a negotiated process, with the
winners laying claim to a monopoly on “legitimate” definitions of reality. In
contemporary American society, access to institutions influential in the
production and distribution of property is a crucial factor in persons’ ability
to establish dominant constructions of reality (see especially Logan and
Molotch (2007)). Let us now examine this issue.
The distribution of wealth in the United States has generated a sizable
body of literature. Writers such as C. Wright Mills (1956, 1959), Gwen
Moore (Moore et al. 2002), Anthony Giddens (2014), and William Domhoff
(2014) have made significant contributions to the analysis of this problem
insofar as they theorize about the political implications of the concentration
of wealth in the hands of a relative few. Table 7.1 nicely summarizes some
of the relevant data.
As Table 7.1 indicates, in the period from 1962 to 2009, relatively little
change occurred in the concentration of wealth in the United States. The
highest 20 percent of earners in the United States took in somewhere
between 40 and 60 percent of the nation’s income, with a certain degree of
fluctuation. Over the same period, the lowest 40 percent of earners took in
roughly 10 percent of the income in the United States. The most recent
numbers, however, indicate that the situation may have worsened for this
group of Americans since the Great Recession, as they now earn less than 8
percent of the annual income in our country (Wolff 2012). Data also
indicate that over the same period the top fifth of American families have
owned between 80 and 90 percent of all the wealth in the United States
(more than four times their proportion in the population), while the bottom
40 percent own less than 1 percent of the wealth. In fact, 2010 data indicate
the net wealth of the bottom two-fifths of Americans is negative: on
average, they owe more than they own (Wolff 2012:58). “Wealth” here
refers to the ownership of consumer goods and financial assets such as
stocks, bonds, and real estate.

Table 7.1
Distribution of Income, 1962–2009

Source: Wolff (2012).

If we break these data down even further, we discover that an incredible

concentration of wealth is in the hands of a much smaller percentage of the
population. Wolff notes, for example, that less than 1 percent of the
population owns over 35 percent of all wealth. If we take housing out of the
equation, that top 1 percent owns over 40 percent of all the wealth in the
United States (Wolff 2012:58)!
Such data describe the nature of the wealth distribution for the nation as a
whole. How do such figures relate to the nature of the urban United States?
In his classic work The Power Elite, C. Wright Mills (1959) called attention
to the existence in major metropolitan areas of a compact and recognizable
upper social class. The members of such an upper class achieved their
“certification” through inclusion in a book known as the Social Register,
which publishes listings for the following cities: Baltimore, Boston,
Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. Mills noted:
In each of the 12 chosen metropolitan areas of the nation, there is an upper social class whose
members were born into families which have been registered since the Social Register began. This
registered social class, as well as newly registered and unregistered classes in other big cities is
composed of groups of ancient families who for two or three or four generations have been
prominent and wealthy. They are set apart from the rest of the community by their manner of origin,
appearance and conduct. (1959:57)

The members of this metropolitan upper class maintain their exclusivity

by participating in social clubs and associations that rigorously exclude
nonclass members. These clubs provide an important vehicle for the
symbolic affirmation of upper-class consciousness, beginning in the
exclusive prep schools the children attend, in day schools that cost more
than $20,000 annually, and boarding schools that average over $40,000
(National Association of Independent Schools 2011). Such clubs continue
to exist at the college and post-college levels, thereby providing an
important source of continuity in class consciousness. Mills observes that
the members of the metropolitan upper class
belong to the same associations at the same set of Ivy League colleges, and they remain in social and
business touch by means of the big-city network of metropolitan clubs. In each of the nation’s
leading cities, they recognize one another, if not strictly as peers, as people with much in common.
(Mills 1959:68)

The work of Gwen Moore and her colleagues (2002) provides more
contemporary evidence of the strong ties between leaders in the upper
echelons of business and government. For their study, the authors
constructed the Elite Directors Database, an invaluable collection of data on
almost 4,000 directorship and trustee positions in organizations in the for-
profit, nonprofit, and government sectors. These data allowed the
researchers to trace the links between different organizations involved in
interlocking directorates—situations in which the same individuals serve on
the boards of multiple organizations. Sociologists are particularly interested
in such interlocking directorates because they provide evidence of a certain
“we-feeling” among elites. To the extent that individuals are interacting
with each other in multiple settings, we have good reason to believe that
they share various interests in common. In particular, we expect that
business leaders favor a good “business climate,” which may include such
things as a low minimum wage, low corporate taxes, and significant
government subsidies of business activities. And to the extent that these
same people serve on panels that formally advise the government on policy
issues, we expect that they make recommendations that further the interests
of the businesses they help direct. One oft-noted example of this
involvement of industry leaders in the crafting of legislation is the Energy
Policy Act of 2005. The task force that laid the blueprint for this legislation
included a number of leaders in the petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas,
and electricity industries (and not of environmental groups, urban planners,
or other such stakeholders). Unsurprisingly, their policy recommendations
led to an act that favors those industries with lax regulations and tax breaks,
while failing to provide for innovative policies such as improved electrical
production that could help prevent urban blackouts (Milligan and Staff
2004; Sherman 2006).
Moore and her colleagues found strong evidence of the pervasive nature
of these kinds of interlocks. Among their other findings, they note that
over 80 percent of the nongovernmental organizations (i.e., businesses and nonprofit organizations)
are connected to at least one other nongovernmental organization via their boards of directors or
trustees. Policy-planning organizations and businesses are especially well networked. (2002:106)

What is more, while noting that there are more than 37,000 positions on
federal advisory committees, the authors find that a very select group of
individuals form links between key advisory bodies and other elite
organizations. For example, they identify eight individuals who “hold a
total of 20 seats on the boards of businesses, 20 positions on federal
advisory boards, eight seats in charities, seven seats in policy-planning
organizations, and one position on a foundation board. Five of the top
linking directors are current or former chief executive officers of large
corporations,” including GTE, Lockheed Martin, Sprint, and AT&T (Moore
et al. 2002:737–739).
Overall, Moore and her colleagues summarize their findings thusly:
Substantial linkages exist between organizations and elites within and across the business, nonprofit,
and government advisory sectors. The 100 largest corporations and their boards of directors are the
best integrated in these interorganizational networks. The governing boards of virtually all of the
largest corporations share one or more directors with other organizations in the business or nonprofit
sectors, and most also have a director who sits on a federal advisory committee. … This study
confirms earlier findings of dense linkages among business, government, and policy-planning groups,
and what appears to be the overwhelming structural dominance of corporations and corporate
directors in the network as a whole. … [T]he crowds and cliques identified by Mills remain resilient
and relatively closed. (2002:740–741)

While the studies referred to in this section are certainly not conclusive
on the subject of the upper class, they do provide empirical evidence
concerning the possible power and influence of this class in both urban and
national affairs. At this point in our analysis we simply want to emphasize
the importance of this class’s access to, and involvement in, the major
institutional bulwarks of property arrangements in the United States—the
worlds of finance and corporate law. Their relationship to these institutions
provides upper-class members with important organizational resources for
influencing the political process in the urban areas of the United States.
Whether they utilize such resources is, of course, an empirical question and
one to be answered only by data from specific cities.
Having briefly sketched some of the broader contours of upper-class life
in the United States, we now want to analyze a number of studies relating to
political participation. In what follows we will examine the
interconnections between the following factors: (1) voting patterns; (2)
electoral reforms; (3) the socioeconomic correlates of political involvement;
(4) campaign financing; and (5) the reelection of incumbents. We will argue
that these factors operate so as to produce a mutually reinforcing pattern of
political activity by the “higher ups” that seriously disadvantages the “lower
downs,” and makes the election of reformers difficult.

Voting Patterns
As we have just seen, despite an ideology that tends to negate the
significance of class differences, American society is in fact characterized
by a very high degree of wealth concentration. As Americans we adhere to
a set of beliefs about political affairs that emphasizes the importance of
citizen participation as well as the easy access to such participation for all
Americans. On a commonsense level, for example, we tend to think of
foreign political systems as much less open than our own. It comes as quite
a surprise, then, when we are confronted with figures such as those
presented by political scientists concerning voting rates of eligible voters.
When compared with 168 other democracies in the world, for example, the
United States ranks 138th in voter turnout percentages in national elections
over the last half-century. Countries such as Belgium, Austria, and Australia
have percentages in the 80-plus range, while the corresponding figure for
the United States is 47.7 percent (Pintor and Gratschew 2002).
The picture improves somewhat if we consider that there have been
historical barriers to voter registration. If we consider the ratio of actual to
registered voters, the United States creeps up to 120th place, as an average
of 66.5 percent of registered voters have voted in U.S. national elections
since 1945. Regardless, these statistics belie notions that the United States
possesses a democratically engaged electorate.
The issue of voting, then, is one of great significance for understanding
American political life. This is true not only at the national level, where, as
we have seen, little more than half the eligible population votes, but also at
the local level, where only about 25 to 30 percent of eligible voters turn out
(Hajnal and Lewis 2003:655; Henry 1987:52). How did this situation
develop? A historical analysis of voter registration policies reveals, we
believe, a set of practices initiated by middle-class reformers, with upper-
class business support, aimed at promoting good government and
eliminating the seeming corruption of the urban machines that dominated
American big-city politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Certainly the motivation of the reformers was well intended and
idealistic, but, as scholars have indicated, political elites involved in the
reform process sought to disenfranchise low-income whites and racial and
ethnic minorities (see Piven and Cloward 2000; Schattschneider 1960). A
major sectional realignment occurred in American politics after the election
of 1896 that had the effect of lessening party competition and “made
possible the near total domination of the Republican party by business in
the North and of the Democratic party by planter interests in the South”
(Piven and Cloward 2000:65). In addition, legal and institutional changes
were introduced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that
diminished the power of the worker-based urban parties to distribute
patronage resources such as jobs and social services.
One important set of changes involved the implementation of voter
registration requirements. While at first glance it may be difficult to argue
with the view that requiring voters to register is a sound and reasonable
policy, the way the policy has been applied is another matter. The ethnic,
immigrant working-class mass base of the big-city political parties was the
first target of urban political reformers. Urbanites experienced a process of
ever more onerous procedural requirements: from nonpersonal registration lists compiled by local
officials to personal registration lists that required citizens to appear before those officials at given
times and places; from permanent registration to periodic and even annual registration; to earlier
closing dates for registration, so that campaigns no longer served to stimulate voters to register, and
toward more centralized administration of voter registration that not only removed registration to less
accessible and less familiar sites, but also was more likely to remove it from the control of local
politicians with an interest in maintaining existing patterns of voter participation. (Piven and Cloward
2000:90)
 These laws often targeted cities specifically. For example, registration
requirements in New Jersey were originally limited to residents in cities
with over 20,000 population; in New York state, the bar was set at 5,000
(Piven and Cloward 2000:91–92). It is probably safe to assume that most of
the disenfranchised were poor and of ethnic minorities—including both
African-Americans but certainly Southern and Eastern Europeans and Irish
(Keyssar 2009). Women, we should note, were disenfranchised nationally
until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
The situation in reference to voter registration did not undergo any really
major changes until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965. But while
that Act clearly broadened racial minorities’ opportunities for political
participation, the obstacles posed by cumbersome registration procedures
still made registration difficult for low-income persons (Clement 1989;
Keyssar 2009; Piven and Cloward 2000). In response, efforts were
successfully made in the 1980s and 1990s to ease the path to voter
registration.
Those efforts, spearheaded in part by sociologists Frances Fox Piven and
Richard A. Cloward, involved several proposals to use extant federal
agencies, such as the U.S. Postal Service, to help people register to vote.
Ultimately, the movement focused on Departments of Motor Vehicles, and
the ensuing legislation became known as the “Motor Voter” law. Initially
vetoed by President George H. Bush in 1992, it was passed by his
successor, Bill Clinton, the next year (Keyssar 2009; Piven and Cloward
2000). As passed, the law ensures that
[s]tates provide three procedures for registration (in addition to any the state already possessed) in
federal elections; the simultaneous application for a driver’s license and voter registration;
registration by mail; and registration by designated public agencies, including those offering public
assistance and services to the disabled. (Keyssar 2009:344)

The success of this legislation, however, has been mixed. Keyssar notes
that after an initial significant bump in registration, many groups remain
underrepresented in the electoral process. In particular, “among the less-
educated and less-affluent, both registration and turnout figures remained
well below average” (344). Piven and Cloward, assessing this law that they
themselves worked for, concluded that “registration rose but turnout did
not” (Piven and Cloward 2000:265).
Obstacles to Americans’ voting rights—particularly those of urban
minorities—remain significant. Keyssar points to a number of efforts,
particularly by Republicans, to constrain the people’s eligibility to cast a
ballot. Such efforts include broad “voter purges” that aim to take felons or
immigrants off the rolls of eligible voters, but catch many legitimate voters
in their dragnets, as well as legislation in a number of states that require
voters to produce government-issued identification (Keyssar 2009). On the
other hand, some degree of progress clearly has been made by minority
voters, as evidenced by the 2008 election of Barack Obama (and his
reelection in 2012). As Keyssar notes, “a half century earlier, not only
would the elevation of an African American to the nation’s highest office
have been unimaginable, but millions of the men and women who ardently
supported Obama would not have been permitted to cast ballots” (391).

Electoral Reforms
In addition to the historical effects of voter registration procedures
discussed above, changes in the structural form of urban elections and
government have had significant consequences for local political life. Three
changes are noteworthy here: nonpartisan elections, the council-manager
form of government, and at-large elections. Each of these has had the effect,
as revealed by empirical studies, of reducing the likelihood of political
participation for large numbers of citizens, especially the poor and racial
minorities. Let us then examine their consequences.
Neal Caren studied 328 municipal elections held in 38 cities between
1978 and 2003 (Caren 2007). Overall, he found that on average, only 27
percent of voters turned out to vote in these elections. But importantly, he
noted pronounced variability between the turnouts in different cities. In
particular, Caren considered two of the key reforms that were introduced in
Progressive Era efforts to reduce corruption in urban politics and kill
political machines. On the one hand, many cities removed political parties
from the process of electing municipal officials, so competition between
candidates is officially nonpartisan. On the other, by professionalizing city
politics through the appointment of a professional administrator as manager
rather than election of a mayor, the council-manager system also works to
depoliticize municipal governments. Overall, Caren’s data show that on
average a city with both of the reform features will have a turnout that is
between 13 and 17 percentage points less than a city that does not display
either feature. Holbrook and Weinschenk argue that such low turnouts are
unsurprising in elections without partisanship: “The lack of partisan cues
makes it more difficult for voters to gather information about candidates
and … makes local governments less responsive to electoral forces and
reduces the range of activities that could be considered political” (Holbrook
and Weinschenk 2014:43).
At-large elections also have important consequences for local politics. An
at-large system elects persons from the city as a whole rather than from
geographically designated subareas known as wards or districts. Thus, the
power of residentially concentrated racial minorities (a common result of
segregated housing patterns) is seriously diminished. While they may be a
numerical majority in their own ward, they are a numerical minority in the
locality as a whole and are unable to gain representatives in municipal
government. In a study of voting patterns in over 7,000 cities, Jessica
Trounstine and Melody Valdini (2008) confirmed that the use of at-large
elections has this deleterious effect. In particular, they note that
representation of both Latinos and African-Americans is more likely when
council members are elected by districts rather than at-large. And this
finding is significantly tied to the segregation of minorities into particular
neighborhoods in the city:
Only when a group is concentrated will districts promote increased descriptive representation on the
council. For African Americans, the effect of districts goes from being negative at very low levels of
concentration to significantly positive at high levels. Districts have the largest effect for cities in the
third quartile, where moving from an at-large system to a district system increases the estimated
probability of electing an African American council member by about 10 percentage points, from
14% to 24%. (Trounstine and Valdini 2008:563)

The critical importance of the factors we have discussed for local

political life is perhaps best shown by asking what difference they make in
terms of how urban governments actually operate. Are there, in fact, any
important contrasts between reformed and unreformed municipalities?
Empirical work in this area suggests that the results of reforming municipal
governments are mixed. On the one hand, reformed governments are less
likely to bet on flashy actions that can yield short-term political points but
burden a city with long-term financial obligations, including high-risk
development projects like stadium construction (Feiock, Jeong, and Kim
2003). On the other hand, many commentators are concerned that reformed
governance structures are less responsive to the needs of citizens. Anirudh
Ruhil (2003) used data on 220 cities over 20 years to investigate the effect
of changing a city’s governance structure from mayor-council to council-
manager. As a measure of the cities’ responsiveness to their citizens, Ruhil
took per-capita spending as his dependent variable: presumably those
governments that are more concerned with the wants and needs of their
citizens will spend more on services and infrastructure to keep those
citizens happy. Indeed, Ruhil discovered that the move to council-manager
governance significantly reduced per-capita spending, and took an average
of 14 years to return to pre-transition levels. In a different study, Lubell et
al. (2009) found that cities with mayors are more likely than cities run by
professional managers to respond to the demands of environmentalists to
preserve land. Though these findings are mixed, on the whole they seem to
point to a reality in which those cities that rely on regular elections, where
politicians must interact more frequently with their constituents to curry
their votes, are also cities that are more likely to act in residents’ interests.

Socioeconomic Correlates of Political Involvement

The municipal electoral arrangements on which we have elaborated
establish the structural parameters, so to speak, within which local political
activity takes place. Of particular relevance here is the role played by
socioeconomic factors such as income, education, and occupation. In
addition, the organizational positions that upper-class groups command
allow them access to valued and scarce resources of a corporate,
organizational kind that have important political consequences. We have
seen that a crucial issue concerning voting in the United States is the
contrast between the percentage of eligible voters who vote and the
percentage of registered voters who vote. Here is where SES
(socioeconomic status), race, level of education, and other dimensions of
stratification take on greater significance. Once people are registered to
vote, a relatively high percentage of them do vote, regardless of social class.
The requirement that individuals register themselves ahead of elections,
however, keeps voter rolls meager in the United States, compared to
countries where registration is automatically handled by the government, as
in Europe (Lowi, Ginsberg, and Shepsle, 2006:432). And despite the gains
made through Motor Voter registration, described above, different social
groups are more or less likely to register and vote. In particular, those with
higher incomes, more education, and older voters are more likely to vote.
For example, while over 82 percent of people who earn more than $150,000
per year are registered to vote, fewer than 50 percent of those who earn less
than $15,000 per year are registered (Lowi et al. 2006:430).
A very extensive literature in the social sciences documents the greater
likelihood of participation in voluntary associations of all kinds by upper
SES groups, especially males (see McPherson and Smith-Lovin 1982, 1986;
McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook 2001). Summarizing several decades
of work on such homophily in organizations, McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and
Cook (2001) note that “higher SES people join more groups and leave them
less frequently, they experience more voluntary organizations over their life
course and have more co-memberships,” and that “the extreme gender
segregation of the voluntary system leads most co-membership ties to be
sex-homogeneous” (432). One particular gender division of note is that men
tend to be more likely to volunteer with political organizations (Bussell and
Forbes 2002). It has also been demonstrated that better educated people and
older people are more likely members of voluntary organizations (Bussell
and Forbes 2002). Further research on specific dimensions of volunteerism
has demonstrated that organizations may be more or less isolated from other
organizations. In other words, while members of some kinds of
organizations join a variety of organizations, others tend to join just one. In
an important example, union participation tends to be negatively associated
with membership in other organizations (Cornwell and Harrison 2004). This
is of sociological concern, because, as Paxton (2002) notes,
[A]ssociations should traverse social boundaries, increase members’ tolerance through contact with
diverse others … , and prevent the creation of pockets of isolated trust and networks. In contrast,
isolated associations could intensify inward-focused behavior, reduce exposure to new ideas, and
exacerbate existing social cleavages. For these reasons, associations that are connected to the larger
community should be more beneficial to democracy than associations that remain isolated. (259)

It is important to note that as poverty tends to be concentrated in certain

neighborhoods, those neighborhoods that are most in need of the capacities
of voluntary organizations tend to have the lowest participation in such
organizations, a finding confirmed by Wilson and Taub (2006) in Chicago,
and by Stoll (2001) in Los Angeles. Stoll further demonstrates that this hits
African-American neighborhoods particularly hard. Though African-
Americans are considerably more likely to participate in voluntary
organizations than individuals of other ethnic backgrounds after controlling
for income, the fact that many African-Americans in Los Angeles are
concentrated in poor neighborhoods means that those neighborhoods
experience overall low rates of participation. Stoll notes that this is
particularly concerning because “engagement in voluntary associations is
likely to expand the social resources available to individuals, which in turn
can help facilitate social and economic mobility and, perhaps, neighborhood
improvement” (551). The lack of such engagement does not bode well for
worse-off neighborhoods.

Campaign Financing
The studies reviewed in the previous section certainly seem to suggest
that upper-class persons participate in a much more “organizationally
dense” environment than their lower-class counterparts. Upper-class
political activity has consequences beyond campaigning for candidates and
belonging to public interest/policy groups. In addition to their personal
wealth, high-status persons command resources of a special kind,
particularly the organizational resources that corporate managers can draw
upon to finance political campaigns. Domhoff (2014) has noted that upper-
class wealth makes it possible for such persons to play an important role in
screening particular candidates through the primary process and to make
large campaign contributions, “to raise name recognition and craft a
winning image” (147). Though wealthy donors tend not to make quid pro
quo demands for policy making from successful candidates, Domhoff posits
that large contributions are experienced as a sort of “gift,” which social
norms suggest deserve some degree of reciprocity (147).
Ties between corporate elites and politicians are further cemented
through broader social associations: they tend to go to the same schools and
participate in the same social activities. And corporations may provide their
favorite politicians with various indirect benefits. Domhoff (2014) notes
that such benefits may include lucrative speaking engagements, where
politicians give something like a pep-talk to employees of a corporation.
They may also include the lending of corporate lobbyists, “to serve as
political strategists, campaign managers, and fundraisers” (156).
Running for political office is a very expensive proposition. In the 2012
elections, for example, the Federal Elections Commission estimated that the
average winning campaign for the U.S. Senate spent roughly $10.3 million.
Obama’s bid for a second term cost a whopping $738.5 million (“Price of
Admission”). The real import of a figure like this can best be seen in terms
of a six-year term in office. Imagine that you are a senator planning on
running for reelection in six years. You would have to have more than
$33,000 coming in every week for each of the 312 weeks covering that six-
year period! One must be well connected indeed to have access to such
campaign contributions.
The metrics of campaigning are further distorted by the wide array of
PACs (political action committees) and contributions by corporations. In a
study examining campaign contributions to candidates by Fortune 500
companies in 1976 and 1980, John Boies (1989) found that “[f]irms with
the richest history of interaction with the state, top defense contractors,
major acquirers of other businesses, and corporations prosecuted for
criminal acts are the most politically active of large firms” (1989:830). In
2002, the McCain-Feingold Act sought to curtail the most egregious of
corporate influences on the electoral process, limiting the amount of “soft
money” corporations could wield in support of candidates (Drew 2012).
Though the Act failed to do much to curtail corporate influence, its
effectiveness was entirely derailed in 2010 by the Supreme Court, in the
case Citizens United v. FEC. In that decision, Ronald Dworkin writes,
“[t]he five conservative justices, on their own initiative, at the request of no
party to the suit, declared that corporations and unions have a constitutional
right to spend as much as they wish on television election commercials
specifically supporting or targeting particular candidates” (Dworkin
2010:n.p.). The effects of this decision were clearly on display in the 2012
elections, when huge amounts of money from wealthy individuals poured
into the presidential elections. As early as the New Hampshire primaries,
and right up to the election night, Americans were bombarded with attack
ads on TV, radio, and the Internet, tearing down certain candidates in the
effort of boosting another (Drew 2012). Until and unless significant
campaign finance legislation or court decisions are handed down, this
mega-money politics is the new status quo, at least for statewide and
national elections.
Still, the question remains—does campaign financing affect elections?
Evidence suggests that the answer is definitely “Yes … but it’s
complicated.” Gary C. Jacobson (2006) reviewed past research on
congressional elections spending, as well as detailed, multi-wave surveys of
voters in the 1996 congressional elections. That research indicated that
there are important differences in the way that incumbents and challengers
spend money. Generally speaking, strong challengers attract more money,
and force their incumbent opponents to spend even more money—to the
extent that losing incumbents tend to spend more money than winning
incumbents. Overall money, as it is spent on campaigning, has the effect of
enhancing candidates’ name recognition and persuading voters to vote one
way or another. But it takes a lot of money to make a seemingly small
difference. Based on some relatively sophisticated statistical modeling,
Jacobson (2006) was able to make the following statements about the
effects of money on electoral success:
If … other variables made the estimated probability of voting for the incumbent .75 with the
challenger spending $5,000, it would fall to .65 if the challenger spent $100,000, to .60 if the
challenger spent $400,000 and to .57 if the challenger spent $800,000. Money spent by the
incumbent would be projected to have a smaller effect; for example, if the other variables made the
estimated probability of voting for the incumbent .50 if the incumbent spent $100,000, it would
increase to .53 at $400,000 and to .55 at $1 million. (Jacobson 2006:215)

Though Jacobson cautions that we take these particular numbers with a

grain of salt, the takeaway is clear: if you want to win an election, be
prepared to spend a lot of money.
New techniques of campaigning have altered the nature of local party
support. At one time, Democratic machines could count on their numerical
superiority among the urban masses to get the vote out, through
neighborhood-based canvassers and other labor-intensive tactics. Such
strategies could be used to offset the organizational resources and wealth
commanded by the generally better-off supporters of the Republican Party.
In today’s political climate, however, new kinds of techniques have
completely altered the nature of traditional campaigning and financing,
resulting in important shifts in the balance of party power in the United
States:
In recent years, the role of parties in political campaigns has been partially supplanted by the use of
new political technologies. These include polling, the broadcast media, phone banks, direct-mail
fund-raising and advertising, professional public relations, and the Internet. These techniques are
enormously expensive and have led to a shift from labor-intensive to capital-intensive politics. This
shift works to the advantage of political forces representing the well-to-do. (Lowi et al. 2006:519)

The Effects of Incumbency

In our previous discussion of voter participation rates, we noted that only
about a quarter of those eligible to vote actually do vote in local elections.
The critical significance of such figures lies in their impact on candidates’
chances for being elected.
As Kenneth Prewitt’s (1970) study of cities in the San Francisco Bay area
during 1955–1965 indicated, the minimum number of votes required to win
a city council seat was astonishingly small. In a city of 71,000 people, less
than 10 percent of the total population was needed to elect a councilman. In
discussing his findings, Prewitt noted:
In a city of more than 13,000 residents, on the average, as few as 810 voters elected a man to office.
Such figures sharply question the validity of thinking that “mass electorates” hold elected officials
accountable. For these councilmen, even if serving in relatively sizeable cities, there is no “mass
electorate;” rather, there are the councilman’s business associates, his friends at church, his
acquaintances in the Rotary Club and so forth, which provide him the electoral support he needs to
gain office. (1970:9)

Prewitt also calls attention to the issue of reelection. In 65 percent of

these cities, more than 50 percent of the councilmen who left office did so
voluntarily rather than through election losses. Moreover,
[o]ver the ten-year period, four out of five incumbent councilmen who stood for reelection were
successful. This figure, though high, is even somewhat lower than one reported for members of the
House of Representatives. During the years 1924–1956, 90 percent of the congressmen who sought
reelection were returned by the voters. (1970:9)

More recent data confirm that Prewitt’s findings still obtain, and are
notable at the level of local elections. Jessica Trounstine (2011) considered
70 years’ worth of election outcomes in the cities of Austin, Dallas, San
Antonio, and San Jose—“All classic ‘reform’ cities that had city manager
charters, nonpartisan, at-large city council elections for most of the time
series” (262). She investigated how much more likely city council
incumbents are to run than to stick to a single term, and how much more
likely they are to win elections when compared to challengers. Her findings
clearly support the idea that incumbency positively influences candidates to
run again, and positively influences their likelihood of winning
—“Incumbents are about 39 percentage points more likely to run and about
32 points more likely to run and win” (Trounstine 2011:272). Trounstine
also notes that these findings seem most significant for those running in
close elections—the positive effect of incumbency seems most pronounced
for those candidates who run in an election with a margin of victory of 10
percent or less (Trounstine 2011:273).
 Nationwide data reinforce the notion that political officeholders gain an
iron grip on their positions. In the congressional elections of 2002, for
example, 98 percent of incumbent representatives were reelected. This is
the outcome of a long-term trend—while in the first half of the twentieth
century, about 55 seats would switch between parties in any given
congressional election, by the turn of the twenty-first century, that number
had dropped to an average of 23 seats (Campbell 2003). James Campbell
(2003) points out that a certain portion of the stagnation in these elections is
tied to the qualitative advantages enjoyed by the incumbent. That is,
incumbents are relatively well known in their home district compared to
challengers, their message has already been proven to be popular with
constituents, and while in office they have had the opportunity to take
political actions that may please voters back home, including bringing home
federal “pork barrel” spending on such things as highways, schools, or
military installations. But Campbell also shows that incumbents enjoy huge
monetary advantages that translate into electoral victories. Considering the
elections between 1990 and 2000, he finds that
[t]he typical incumbent in every year examined spent more than five times what the challenger spent.
In 1998, the typical incumbent spent more than eight times what the challenger spent, and in 2000,
almost thirteen times more. (Campbell 2003:147–148)

The data presented to this point, then, illustrate the cumulative process by
which the better-off, more advantaged sectors of American society,
including powerful business organizations, contribute to the production of a
self-affirming set of social arrangements. This should not be interpreted to
mean, however, that such processes dominate each and every community in
the United States. Rather, we mean to suggest that they function as strong
tendencies that require great effort to mobilize offsetting, countervailing
ones. Our task now is to specify the particular characteristics of urban
communities that may be associated with a set of more inclusionary,
participatory power arrangements.

RESHUFFLING THE DECK: PROCESSES PROMOTING

PLURALIST POWER ARRANGEMENTS
We have discussed the role played by upper-class persons in the general
political process. In large urban areas, however, a number of competing
interests may vie with one another—all of them may be highly organized.
In such milieus, then, the question of upper-class dominance must be
viewed within the context of competing interests. What are the conditions
that seem to promote the concentration or diffusion of power in a city? In a
comparative study that contrasted the inclusive politics of Pittsburgh and of
Harold Washington-era Chicago with the politics of Chicago under less-
inclusive, machine-driven regimes, Barbara Ferman (1996) found that the
degree of pluralism found in a city—and especially the amount of
involvement on the part of neighborhood-based organizations—depends on
several factors.
First, different municipalities may have different governing regimes. In
contrast to the view of solidarity among elites as described above, Ferman
finds that in municipalities, economic elites and political elites may have
different goals. In Pittsburgh, strong business interests maintained some
power alongside political elites, and opened a space for various interest
groups from the public to have some say in the crafting of public policy. On
the other hand, “[i]n Chicago, the early accommodation process catapulted
political elites to a position of dominance. The overriding objective of the
regime was the accumulation of political and electoral power, which often
translated into a perceived need to eliminate and/or preempt potential
rivals” (Ferman 1996:137).
Second, cities possess different institutional frameworks. Whereas in
some cities, like Pittsburgh, decision-making processes are open to a variety
of players and public comment is welcomed, in Chicago and the other
handful of machine-led cities remaining in the United States, decisions tend
to come from on high, generally from the mayor’s office. Resources may be
distributed through open, competitive processes, as with something like
neighborhood grants, or may be distributed more or less based on the will
of individual council members or the mayor. Ferman also notes that city
institutions may tend toward “social production”—nurturing an open civic
sphere in which to debate matters that affect residents—or they may tend
toward institutional closure and “social control.” In Chicago, this social
control is manifested to make sure that power does not devolve to groups
outside the political elite (Ferman 1996:139).
Finally, different cities manifest different political cultures. To some
extent, this is both a cause and an outcome of the first two variables.
Citizens of a city may work across neighborhoods, building social capital,
or they may remain parochial and perceive the political arena as one of
permanent competition. In the latter situation, Ferman observes that the
polity tends toward cynicism about the potential of positive change in a
community. Ultimately, such cynicism results in a low level of what Ferman
calls “civic attachment”: “feelings of attachment to the larger civic
community” (Ferman 1996:140). In a situation such as Chicago’s,
[r]eform is often interpreted as rewarding a new set of friends and punishing a new set of enemies. In
such an environment it is enormously difficult to mobilize the requisite political support to alter the
system. (Ferman 1996:141)

Ferman is thus suggesting that true systemic change, change that would
incorporate diverse voices from across the citizenship of a municipality,
may be difficult to come by. That is particularly true to the extent that the
three dimensions of municipal politics that she identified—governing
regimes, institutional frameworks, and political cultures—reinforce one
another. The outcomes she found in Pittsburgh and Chicago were quite
clear:
Regimes responded quite differently when confronted with neighborhood demands for resources and
inclusion in policy-making activities. In Pittsburgh, the response was quite favorable, resulting in
neighborhood incorporation that ultimately changed the nature of the regime. In Chicago, the
response was resistance as political elites tried desperately, and usually successfully, to protect the
status quo. (Ferman 1996:16)

Writing more than a decade after Ferman, Derek Hyra (2008) found that
little indeed had changed in Chicago. But in comparing neighborhood
politics in Chicago to those in New York City, Hyra took the additional
important step to investigate not only how municipal politics influence
neighborhood dynamics but also how national politics and global
economics influence neighborhoods.
In particular, Hyra was interested in considering how neighborhoods
reacted differently to gentrification. He considered the predominately poor,
black neighborhoods of Bronzeville in Chicago and Harlem in New York
City. In the 2000s, both neighborhoods were undergoing major
redevelopment and seeing influxes of upper-middle class African-
Americans. Thus, a number of poorer residents were being displaced to
further-flung locales, often in their cities’ respective suburbs. But
neighborhood responses to gentrification were different in the two
locations. For example, while high-rise public housing developments in
Chicago were razed, in Harlem they remained vital nodes within the
community. While Chicago tended to pursue a development-at-all-costs
strategy (neighborhood residents be damned), in New York residents had
the opportunity to make public comments on development proposals and
alter plans to better suit the community.
Hyra finds that the different experiences of these two neighborhoods are
tied to how municipal power structures differently mediate between
neighborhoods and the national and global context. First, he notes how each
city plays an important part in the global economy, and each is responding
to forces predicated on global economic developments:
High-wage global economy workers are coming back to the central city from the suburbs. This
dynamic puts new market forces in play in areas surrounding the central business district (CBD). The
population influx to the city center raises real estate values in once economically abandoned African-
American communities. (Hyra 2008:30)

Without such global forces, gentrification would be a non-issue in

Bronzeville or Harlem.
Hyra next considers the different ways in which municipal governments
can mediate national urban policies. One may consider in particular the way
the different municipalities directed funds from the national department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In New York City, which has had
contentious, multiparty city politics for most of a century, federal housing
funds were used to maintain high-rise apartment complexes to a reasonable
degree of integrity. Oversight by members of competing parties helped
ensure that funds were allocated more or less in the manner intended by the
federal government, and genuinely contentious politics meant that citizens,
even poor residents of public housing, could hold politicians accountable
for their decisions. However, in Chicago, one-party politics allowed the
mayor to allocate HUD funding to political cronies within the Chicago
Housing Authority (CHA). Hyra writes:
In the 1980s and 1990s the CHA was marked by political corruption. In one year, although the CHA
owed $33 million to contractors, it increased administrative positions and salaries of mid-level
professionals. … Machine-appointed Chairman Vince Lane … allegedly channeled security contracts
to his former business partners. Under Lane the CHA neglected to perform essential management
procedures, failing at “even basic tasks like collecting rents” … . [W]ithout appropriate management,
the CHA suffered severe budget shortfalls, and buildings deteriorated. (Hyra 2008:99)

Though all taxpayers suffer to some extent from this mismanagement of

public monies, it is of course the residents of public housing who bore the
brunt of the CHA’s misdeeds. The repercussions were not only in the short
term, as residents were stuck living in dilapidated housing. Hyra shows that
the longer term effect was that when both Harlem and Bronzeville were
undergoing rapid gentrification in the 2000s, in Chicago,
[t]he only fiscally sound plan was to raze its high-rise public housing. This action has led to the
displacement of nearly 17,000 low-income residents in Bronzeville. … In New York City, superior
management and tenant activism, associated with the city’s open political system, ensured that
standards were consistently maintained in NYCHA buildings. As a result, the public housing in
Harlem has remained viable, and current redevelopment persists without extensive public housing
tenant displacement. (Hyra 2008:109)

Finally, we should consider the political implications of “growth

machines” (Logan and Molotch 2007) or “growth coalitions” (Gendron and
Domhoff 2009) with respect to pluralist politics. Richard Gendron and
William Domhoff took a close look at the political history of Santa Cruz,
California, focusing in particular on the progressive coalition that took
political control of the city from the 1980s onward. Toward the end of the
twentieth century, Santa Cruz was poised for explosive growth and
development, located as it is in a physically beautiful setting on the Pacific
Ocean, and in an economically propitious one, close to San Francisco and
Silicon Valley. Traditional growth machine models of urban politics (for
example, that of Logan and Molotch (2007)) would have predicted that
growth interests—real estate developers, rentiers, and financiers—would
have dominated the city’s politics, leading to massive development of high
rises, luxury housing, and shopping centers at the expense of neighborhoods
and green spaces. But Gendron and Domhoff show that this did not happen.
Instead, liberal neighborhood activists, along with students and members
of the community of the University of California, Santa Cruz, elected
officials who supported their vision of a less-built-up Santa Cruz and
themselves stood for elections. While the council did support new building
projects after a major earthquake in 1989, after elections in 1992, the
council established a solid record of supporting only “community based
development, meaning projects that are compatible with neighborhood use
values and create jobs with at least living wages and good health benefits”
(Gendron and Domhoff 2009:176). Thus, Santa Cruz’s city council
supported development of things like green spaces, dog parks, and a Costco
(touted as helping families to make affordable grocery purchases). On the
other hand, they have successfully opposed the development of a large hotel
and conference center, as well as the expansion of UC Santa Cruz.
 To Gendron and Domhoff, this all points to the power of pluralist
coalitions to enact policies that are in the expressed interests of
neighborhood residents, often to the chagrin of developer interests. They
further note, however, that such coalitions are unusual, and difficult to
maintain. Their book’s title possesses a double meaning—The Leftmost City
refers both to Santa Cruz’s geographic location near the western extreme of
the continental United States and also to the fact that it is a town populated
by very committed political liberals. “Generally speaking,” they write, “few
activists are able to make [the] transition to politics because their
temperament and experience have led them to believe that their
effectiveness is based on taking principled stands against the established
political order” (Gendron and Domhoff 2009:212). The density of such
activists in Santa Cruz helped enable them to make this transition. But
Gendron and Domhoff further observe that in the context of the United
States as a whole, such activist coalition building is limited to the local
level. At the national level, with lower densities of activists, greater control
by political parties, and greater demands for campaign finances, electoral
politics tend to dictate that such candidates will be unable to compete
(Gendron and Domhoff 2009:213).
Overall, we learn from studies like those of Gendron and Domhoff, Hyra,
Ferman, and numerous others (for example, Aiken 1970; Clavel 1986;
Henig 1982) that where pluralist politics obtain, the interests of a city’s
residents will be represented. But to the extent that machines enforce one-
party rule, or growth coalitions dominate a city’s electoral politics with
clout and campaign financing, citizens may find themselves displaced or
displeased by growth-at-all-costs strategies.

THINKING ABOUT URBAN PROBLEMS: RACE, JOBS,

FAMILIES, AND SCHOOLS
Previously we described the processes promoting or inhibiting grassroots
participation in urban affairs. The data gathered by social scientists seem to
suggest that the tendencies toward exclusionary, hierarchical arrangements
are quite pronounced and pervasive. In the final section of this chapter we
want to illustrate how the problems of our cities are linked to the plight of
an urban ghetto underclass that commands few resources at either the local
or, more important, the national level. Lacking a voice locally and having
no strong organized collective constituency in the highest reaches of power
—Congress and the state legislatures—the seriously disadvantaged are by
and large left to fend for themselves, with disastrous consequences for the
rest of the urban United States in terms of crime, safety, and industrial
productivity vis-à-vis our economic competitors in places like Western
Europe, China, or Japan. In what follows we will focus on a few major
issues that relate to and mutually reinforce one another, resulting in a
vicious cycle of recurring urban problems. We believe that the theoretical
argument we develop here is useful in understanding a broad range of other
issues, such as drug-related problems, homelessness, and crime, although
they are not the prime focus of our discussion.
At the root of contemporary urban problems, we will argue, is a pattern
of intertwined, self-perpetuating processed rooted in our history (see
Lieberson 1980; Wilson 2009) that links race with economic inequality,
thereby creating high levels of minority joblessness. This latter factor
contributes to producing a family structure—female-headed families with
children—that poses serious problems for urban schools, thereby
contributing to the dropout problem. Dropping out of high school condemns
another generation of inner-city youths to reproducing the life experiences
of their poorly educated parents. The consequences of this pattern for
society as a whole are incredibly costly in terms of dollars spent for prisons,
welfare, and crime protection as well as tax revenues lost at the local, state,
and federal levels (Catterall 1987). We have here, then, the classic workings
of a vicious cycle that probably can be broken only by a commitment at the
national level to the kinds of proven, workable programs that we will
discuss in the concluding section of this chapter.
One further point is worth emphasizing before we turn to an examination
of each of the specific elements producing this cycle: the major economic
and industrial shifts that have occurred in the United States since the early
1970s. Prior to the 1970s, as numerous scholars such as Wilson (1987,
1989, 2009), Anderson (1990), Kasarda (1989), and Wacquant (2008) have
demonstrated, even minority high school dropouts were able to get steady,
fairly well-paying jobs in the auto, steel, and rubber industries that
dominated the midwestern and northeastern “Rust Belt” cities. Such jobs
are now scarce, and their elimination has left in its wake a penumbra of
human tragedies and social problems.

Racial Economic Inequality

 It certainly does not come as news that there are serious differences in
one’s life chances depending on one’s race. As mentioned earlier in
reference to social class, there is a marked concentration of wealth in the
United States. The same pattern holds for racial differences. As Table 7.2
indicates, in comparing median income for whites and blacks between 1970
and 2012, there was virtually no change in the relative standing of blacks.
During this 42-year period, black median family income went from 61.3
percent of white median family income in 1970 to 61.4 percent in 2012. For
Hispanics, their income relative to whites declined significantly over the
same period, from 67.1 percent of white income in 1980 to 61.9 percent in
2012. (We should be somewhat cautious in interpreting this finding,
however, as an increasing proportion of Hispanic households since the
1970s are first-generation immigrants with generally poorer job prospects
than native-born Hispanics.)
If we examine the percentages of various age groups below the poverty
line for different races in 2012 (Table 7.3), we can see that almost 38
percent of black youths under 18 live in poverty, compared with 18.5
percent of white youths—a ratio of roughly 2 to 1. The percentages are
somewhat similar for Hispanic youths compared with whites, while Asians
display lower proportions of poverty for all groups but the elderly.

Table 7.2
Median Family Incomes (in Constant [2012] Dollars) by Race of Householder, 1970–2012

1 Data on Hispanic ethnicity not collected before 1974.

2 Data on Asian ethnicity not collected before 2002.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements
(2012).

Table 7.3
Persons below Poverty Level, by Race and Age, 2012
1 Individuals identifying themselves as black or Asian and no other race.
2 Hispanic of any race.
Source: Current Population Survey (2013). Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) Supplement
[machine-readable data file]/conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor
Statistics. Washington: U.S. Census Bureau, 2013.

At the root of such disparities is a historical process of racial

discrimination against nonwhite populations that has created social
problems in our society, especially in terms of crime and incarceration rates.
In recent years social scientists have begun to explore the social
consequences of racial economic inequality, that is, the process whereby
racial discrimination is accompanied by the kinds of disparities in wealth
and income between racial groups that we have just noted. This condition
results from a set of exclusionary procedures instituted by dominant groups
whereby nongroup members (that is, minority races) face structural
obstacles to full participation. Through a combination of overt racial
discrimination and structural legacies of ghetto isolation, disadvantaged
minorities living in cities, blacks and Hispanics in particular, are cast as
what Loïc Wacquant has called “urban outcasts.” He writes:
Cumulation of social ills and the narrowing of the economic horizon explain the atmosphere of
drabness, ennui and despair that pervades communities in large Western cities and the oppressive
climate of insecurity and fear that poisons daily life in the black American ghetto. … Residents of
these derelict districts feel that they and their children have little chance of knowing a future other
than the poverty and exclusion to which they are consigned at present. Added to this sense of social
closure is the rage felt by unemployed urban youths due to the taint befalling residents of decaying
urban areas as their neighbourhoods become denigrated as hellish breeding grounds of ‘social
pathologies’. … They must also bear the weight of the public scorn that is now everywhere attached
to living in locales widely labelled as ‘no-go-areas’, fearsome redoubts rife with crime, lawlessness
and moral degeneracy where only the rejects of society could bear to dwell. (Wacquant 2008:29)

Numerous studies have confirmed a link between such racial and

economic isolation and higher rates of violent crime. Peter Blau and his
colleagues (Blau and Blau 1982; Blau and Schwartz 1984) found in a study
of the 125 largest Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the United
States that violent crime in a metropolitan community is a direct function of
the levels of racial inequality found there. Building on Blau’s work, Steven
Messner conducted an examination of homicide rates in 52 countries,
including the United States. His findings support the argument that “the
structuring of economic inequality on the basis of ascribed characteristics
[such as race] is a particularly important source of lethal violence in
contemporary society” (Messner 1989:597; emphasis added). More
recently, Krivo and Peterson (2000) attempted to disaggregate the effect of
race from other determinants of violent crime in urban settings, such as the
level of homeownership in a neighborhood or the concentrations of persons
living below the poverty line. Though they had data on 124 cities, their
attempt to argue that causes of crime for whites and blacks operate in much
the same way and at comparable rates was complicated by the fact that
blacks and whites seldom have comparable levels of disadvantage. Indeed, racial differences in
disadvantage are so great that it is impossible to assess what the effects for whites would be if they
were as disadvantaged as the average African American in most urban areas. (Krivo and Peterson
2000:557)

Thus, overall their findings continue to support the notion that race matters
in the United States and, in particular, that the continued isolation and
disadvantage experienced by blacks means that many are stuck in high-
crime neighborhoods.
When thinking about emotionally charged issues such as crime, it is quite
easy to focus on the individual personality characteristics of the offenders
and dismiss their actions as the outcomes of bad or immoral characters.
While we certainly do not mean to excuse the actions of criminals,
sociology has an important contribution to make here, we believe, by
directing our attention to the kinds of social conditions that provide the
breeding grounds for such acts. The forms of frustrated rage that
widespread economic inequalities create have been amply demonstrated in
the writings of black scholars (Carter 2005; Clark 1965; Cobb and Grier
1968; Harris-Perry 2011; Pattillo 2008). Despite some claims that we may
live in a “post-racial” society, signaled by the election of a black president,
news stories frequently remind us of the continued significance of race in
the United States—from the police harassment of distinguished Harvard
University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Goodnough 2009) to L. A.
Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s much publicized racist tirades (Lopez
2014). On a much more profound level, consider the following findings
from a study of residential housing segregation in 20 major metropolitan
areas by Denton and Massey (1988). They found that blacks making more
than $50,000 per year had less chance of living in an integrated
neighborhood than Hispanics making less than $2,500 per year and Asians
making less than $10,000 per year! Numerous subsequent studies have
shown that this finding is robust, and that “affluent African Americans live
in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates, higher crime rates, fewer
college graduates, higher unemployment rates, and more vacant housing
than poor whites” (Pattillo 2008). This is one of the most astounding
findings in all social science, since it runs completely counter to the well-
established general pattern whereby increases in socioeconomic status tend
to increase one’s life chances in a wide range of areas—physical health,
mental well-being, and longevity, for example.
Imagine how someone in a situation like that must feel. At a salary of
$50,000 per year you have certainly “made it” in terms of middle-class
American ideas of achievement, and yet someone making 5 percent of your
salary—$2,500—has a better chance than you of living in an integrated
neighborhood. How does one account for such a finding? Denton and
Massey argue that
[t]he fundamental cleavage appears to be between blacks and nonblacks. The accumulated evidence
on patterns and processes of segregation suggest that progressive residential integration is possible,
even likely, for all ethnic and racial groups except blacks. It is being black, not being nonwhite or
non-European that makes the difference. … No matter what their educational or occupational
achievements, and whatever their incomes, blacks are exposed to higher crime rates, less effective
educational systems, higher mortality risks, more dilapidated surroundings, and a poorer
socioeconomic environment than whites, simply because of the persistence of strong barriers to
residential integration. (1988:814)

Works by scholars such as Blau, Messner, Krivo and Peterson, and

Denton and Massey are important in calling attention to the consequences
for us as a nation of the kinds of consolidated racial and income disparities
currently existing in the United States. Since access to income-producing
opportunities is such an important dimension of racial discrimination, let us
examine joblessness in inner-city communities.

The Great Industrial Shift: The Changing Nature of Inner-City

Employment
 As suburbanites commuting to work pass through the inner city on the
way to jobs in the central business district, they are likely to see young
blacks hanging out on street corners. These youths certainly appear
physically healthy and robust, so why are they standing around doing
nothing while others are on their way to eight hours of work? Such
glimpses of social reality can be very misleading, however, when based on
such seemingly commonsensical factors as individual personality and moral
characteristics. What these fleeting glances miss is the kind of history that
goes on behind one’s back—out of one’s consciousness, so to speak. We
refer here to the profound changes in the nature of industrial employment
that have occurred in the United States since the 1970s.
Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Charlie LeDuff has been chronicling the
radical decline in industrial jobs in Detroit, and of the city’s well-being
along with them. In that once-great city, most of the auto plants, and the
plants that made related materials like tires and sheet metal, are now
shuttered. Bustling residential neighborhoods are now mostly vacant lots.
LeDuff’s Detroit: An American Autopsy (2013) offers a series of vignettes
of how far the city and its surroundings have declined since peaking in the
United States’ post-World War II industrial boom times:
South Warren—the part that directly touched Detroit—used to be about the … Dodge factory and the
General Motors plant and the cinder-block mom-and-pop tool-and-die shops that supplied those
factories and also supplied the groceries and the fishing trips and the new car every other year. By the
time I arrived in Detroit, perhaps 75 percent of those shops had died. The industries replacing them
were increasingly drug sales and prostitution. (LeDuff 2013:40)
Detroit reached a peak population of nearly 1.9 million people in the 1950s and was 83 percent
white. Now Detroit has fewer than 700,000 people, is 83 percent black, and is the only American city
that has surpassed a million people only to contract below that threshold. (LeDuff 2013:45)
Back in the early nineties—Detroit was still the nation’s seventh-largest city, with a population of
over 1.2 million. Back then, Detroit was dark and broken and violent. … Studying the city through
the windshield new, it wasn’t frightening anymore. It was empty and forlorn and pathetic. On some
blocks not a single home was occupied, the structures having fallen victim to desertion and the
arsonist’s match. I drove blocks without seeing a single living soul. (LeDuff 2013:71)
Since American Axle was spun off from General Motors and reconstituted in 1994, the UAW
negotiated with American Axle, not General Motors. When I had arrived back home the previous
winter, Local 235 here was on strike. It was a cold, bitter dispute, complete with old-school fires in
the oil drums. The unionized workers, numbering nearly two thousand at the time, lost. They gave in
to deep wage cuts, in some cases from $28 an hour to $14, in exchange for keeping their jobs.
Apparently it was not enough. (LeDuff 2013:172)

Not enough, because, as LeDuff goes on to explain, American Axle

shuttered its plant in 2009. Repeating a story from countless companies in
the American Rust Belt, it sent the machines and jobs from its Detroit plant
to Mexico.
One way to get a quick sense of what has been happening in the
employment area during the shift experienced by Detroit and other Rust
Belt cities over the last several decades is to examine the patterns for the six
major metropolitan areas listed in Table 7.4. Each of these cities has a very
sizable black population.
As can easily be seen, the decline in the size of the manufacturing sector
is remarkable. Though manufacturing is still on top in Detroit and
Cleveland, the proportion of jobs in manufacturing has dropped from 55
percent and 44 percent to 20 percent and 16 percent. If we recall that the
population of Detroit has shrunk considerably over that time, the total
losses in manufacturing jobs are staggering. Losses are similar in the solidly
working-class sectors of retail and “transportation and other public
utilities.”
Table 7.4 also tells us which jobs are becoming more important. In all six
cities, we can observe that jobs in “professional, scientific and technical
services” as well as “health care and social assistance” are ascendant.
Finance and insurance have also made significant gains. For the most parts,
these are jobs for those with at least some college education. Many of the
jobs in professional, scientific, and technical services call for significant
postgraduate education. These are precisely the kinds of jobs for which
inner-city residents are the least qualified. As Kasarda observed, “[M]uch of
the job increase in the college-graduate category for each city was absorbed
by suburban commuters while many job losses in the less-than-high school-
completed category were absorbed by city residents” (1989:31). In the
central cities, then, where low-income blacks, by virtue of their residential
proximity, face the fewest spatial obstacles toward securing work, they are
the least likely, because of educational backgrounds, to qualify for the jobs
that are now expanding.
An important consequence of this industrial employment process has
been to create an inner-city neighborhood phenomenon that is characterized
by a high concentration of poverty-level and unemployed persons living in
close proximity. The other side of this situation, as William Wilson (1987,
1989, 2009; Wilson and Taub 2006) has so powerfully articulated, is an
increase in the social isolation of inner-city residents from metropolitan
residents representing the mainstream. We have witnessed a process of
“hyperghettoization” in our cities due to the social structural “growth in
joblessness and economic exclusion associated with the ongoing spatial and
industrial restructuring of American capitalism” (Wacquant and Wilson
1989:8).

Table 7.4
Main Industry Groups by Share of Total City Payroll, 1977 and 2002 (by County)
Sources: Glaeser and Ponzetto (2007). From U.S. Census County Business Patterns.

By 1980, an examination of the 10 largest American cities showed that

almost 40 percent of the poor blacks in those cities were living in extreme-
poverty census tracts. In the prior decade this figure was 22 percent—
almost half the 1980 figure. In 1980, only 6 percent of poor non-Hispanic
whites, one-seventh the percentage for blacks, were living in extreme-
poverty tracts (Wacquant and Wilson 1989:10).
The social isolation of inner-city residents resulting from both this
industrial employment process and segregated housing practices is
reinforced by the absence of car ownership. Less than 20 percent of those
who reside in extreme-poverty tracts have access to a car (Wacquant and
Wilson 1989:21). The mutually reinforcing effect of living in a socially
isolated, hyperghettoized situation can be seen in the following statement:
In neighborhoods in which nearly every family has at least one person who is steadily employed, the
norms and behavior patterns that emanate from a life of regularized employment become part of the
community gestalt. On the other hand, in neighborhoods in which most families do not have a
steadily employed breadwinner, the norms and behavior patterns associated with steady work
compete with those associated with casual or infrequent work. Accordingly, the less frequent the
regular contact with those who have steady and full-time employment (that is, the greater the degree
of social isolation), the more likely that initial job performance will be characterized by tardiness,
absenteeism, and, thereby, low retention. In other words, a person’s patterns and norms of behavior
tend to be shaped by those with which he or she has had the most frequent or sustained contact and
interaction. (Wilson, 1987:60–61)

Research has continued to show that this pattern remains in the most
socially isolated of neighborhoods. In fact, we need only add a few
significant revisions to the findings Wilson enumerated over 25 years ago.
First, ghettoization is increasingly suburbanized. This pattern has long
been observed in some European cities, like Paris, where the allure of the
central city drives rents up, pushing the poor, especially immigrants, to the
suburban banlieues (Wacquant 2008). The trend has been increasing over
the last 20 years in the United States, as those aforementioned jobs in the
high-end services sector (like finance, insurance, and scientific and
technical services) have grown in cities that act as the command-and-
control centers for a globalized economy (Sassen 2012). Hyra (2008)
keenly observed this when under- and unemployed residents of Chicago and
Manhattan were displaced by an influx of well-to-do workers who desired
housing close to their downtown jobs. Those residents often relocate to
older suburbs located just outside the city limits, places like Yonkers, New
York, or Harvey, Illinois.
Second, in addition to arguments about the problematic work habits, lack
of access to good jobs, and poor educational opportunities afforded to
ghetto residents, literature on the worst-off neighborhoods has increasingly
emphasized the dearth of social connections available to residents. Under
the rubric of “social capital” (for example, Putnam 2000) or “collective
efficacy” (Sampson 2012; Sampson, Morenoff, and Gannon-Rowley 2002),
this literature emphasizes both the distrust that neighborhood residents have
for one another as well as the lack of connections they have to individuals
who might help them with information or recommendations to educational
or work opportunities outside the ghetto. To the extent that neighbors
distrust each other or fail to work cooperatively, they will be generally less
able to combat ills like crime in their neighborhoods, to monitor the
behavior of each other’s children, or to obtain political concessions from
their city’s politicos (Sampson Morenoff, and Gannon-Rowley 2002;
Wilson and Taub 2006).
Finally, sociologists are paying increased attention to the
hypersegregation of minorities beside African-Americans in very poor
neighborhoods. In particular, a number of Latinos live in such
neighborhoods. In some cities, such as Chicago, these Latinos are largely
recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America. They concentrate in
low-income neighborhoods like the one dubbed “Archer Park” by Wilson
and Taub (2006), where rents are cheap and they find others who speak
Spanish and maintain similar cultural traditions. Often planning to return to
their homes, neighborhood organizers find such residents to be generally
uncommitted to improving the conditions in the neighborhood or
developing long-term ties to the municipal and social structure (Wilson and
Taub 2006:104).
In other cities, notably Los Angeles and several other cities in southern
California, there are neighborhoods comprised of mostly U.S.-born Latinos
that experience many of the same problems of poverty, crime, distrust, and
joblessness described in African-American ghetto neighborhoods (see, for
example, Bourgois 2003; Phillips 2012). Portes and Zhou describe such
enclaves as the outcome of “segmented assimilation”—while some
immigrants are able to come to the United States and build lives for
themselves that somewhat resemble the American dream, such that their
children may be upwardly mobile and more or less assimilated to American
culture, other immigrant groups have much different experiences. Groups
like Haitians and Central Americans are more likely to be discriminated
against because of their phenotypic appearances, and often come to the
United States with less than a high school education. In the American
context, second- and third-generation immigrants do not have nearly as
good a chance as groups with better education (like many Asian
immigrants), or the phenotypic characteristics of white America (such as
European immigrants) (Portes and Zhou 2014).
One problematic outcome of the phenomena we have been discussing is
an increasing shortage of steadily employed fathers available to raise
children in hypersegregated neighborhoods. This problem has been
particularly noted in the black community. Let us now examine this issue.

The Rise of Female-Headed Families

In the United States today, about 22 percent of white children under 18
live in single-parent families; the corresponding figures for Hispanic and
black children are 31 percent and 55 percent (Author’s calculations, from
Current Population Survey, March 2013). More important, almost one third
of all children who live in households without both mom and dad live in
poverty. This is about four and a half times the percentage for married-
couple families with children (Danziger and Gottschalk 2005:62).
In viewing such figures historically, it is important to realize that there
has been a remarkable increase in single-parent families. Ellwood and
Jencks (2004) note that “from 1900 until around 1970 about a quarter of
American sixteen year olds did not live with both of their own parents. By
the 1990s the proportion had risen to almost half” (8). That rise has
occurred despite the decreased chances that a parent becomes widowed, and
is based on divorce and, more importantly, since the 1980s, out-of-wedlock
births (Ellwood and Jencks 2004). Data further suggest that for whites,
becoming a single parent usually results from a divorce, while blacks are
more likely to have children before and outside of marriage. According to
Ellwood and Jencks,
Black women show far greater declines in marriage than white women. Only about 68% of black
women in the most recent cohort will have married by age 40, compared to 87% of those born two
decades earlier and 89 percent of whites in the more recent cohort. But while more black than white
women are eschewing marriage, fewer blacks than whites are either delaying or eschewing
motherhood. (Ellwood and Jencks 2004:13)

An understanding of the impact of the economy on marriage patterns is

critical for interpreting these racial differences. Wilson’s (1987, 2009;
Wacquant and Wilson 1989; Wilson and Taub 2006) studies of extreme
poverty tracts in Chicago, mentioned earlier, clearly demonstrated that male
joblessness is an important determinant of female-headed households.
To get a sense of the magnitude of changes in black male unemployment
patterns, consider the following: between 1973 and 2003, the employment
rate among working-age black men dropped from 73.7 percent to 64.1
percent. (White men experienced a drop over the same period, though
smaller: from 78.6 percent to 71.7 percent.) Black women’s employment
rose over the same period—even outpacing that of other races. Black
women’s employment rose from 47.2 percent in 1973 to 58.6 percent in
2003. Young black women, then, are clearly faced with a serious problem in
terms of finding steadily employed marriage candidates of similar age.
Since they, too, face a good deal of racial and gender employment
discrimination, young black women are additionally disadvantaged in terms
of both their own financial achievements and the likelihood of improving
their economic situation through marriage to a steadily employed black
male. Continued research by Wacquant has confirmed what his earlier work
with William Wilson suggested. In studying friendship and kin relationships
in Chicago’s ghettos, he noted that 38 percent of women on the edge of
ghetto neighborhoods had no partner, and 43 percent in the core had none.
Corresponding rates for marriage were at 31 percent and 15 percent,
respectively (Wacquant 2008:115). Wacquant found that this seems largely
to be a function of employment—these few male partners were largely the
few men who were employed. He writes:
The remarkable fact that most male companions have jobs even in neighbourhoods where the vast
majority of men are jobless confirms that being unemployed radically devalues men on the
partnership market in the eyes of lower-class women. (Wacquant 2008:116)

These problems of joblessness are seriously compounded by the high

rates of incarceration for black men in the United States, especially those
who live in urban areas. Not only does incarceration remove a significant
portion of marriage-age men from urban marriage markets—about one in
eight black men in their twenties (Banks 2011:31)—it decreases their
chances of ever being marriageable (Charles and Luoh 2010). On the one
hand, the status of marrying an ex-con carries a stigma that many women
do not wish to bring unto themselves (Banks 2011:32). It also has a
seriously damaging effect on their chances for employment. In a study
auditing which job candidates get interviews, Devah Pager found that in
addition to a high level of racial discrimination by employers, there is
incredibly high discrimination against blacks with criminal records in
particular: “Among blacks without criminal records, only 14% received
callbacks, relative to 34% of white noncriminals (P < .01). In fact, even
whites with criminal records received more favorable treatment (17%) than
blacks without criminal records (14%).” Blacks with criminal records
received callbacks only in 5 percent of her cases (Pager 2003:955–956).
While the absence of a male role model may be a contributing factor to
the problems faced by children, especially boys, in female-headed families,
scholars argue that economic deprivation is the most critical issue facing
these families. In reviewing over 20 years’ worth of studies on the effects of
living in a single-parent home, Wendy Sigle-Rushton and Sara McLanahan
(2004) came to several stark conclusions.

1. Academic success: Children in single-parent families perform lower

on academic tests than those in two-parent homes, and are less
 likely to graduate. In one study, “high school graduation rates were
90 percent for those in two-parent families, 75 for those in
divorced-mother families, and 69 for those in never-married-mother
families” (Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan 2004:121).
2. Behavioral and psychological problems: Children in single-parent
families are more likely to act out in school, and exhibit depression
and anxiety. Some of these effects appear to carry through to
adulthood, with children of divorced parents reporting lower self-
esteem and higher rates of seeing mental health professionals.
3. Substance abuse and contact with the police: Children in single-
parent families are more likely to use drugs (besides alcohol), and
are about 70 percent more likely to have a criminal conviction than
those in two-parent families.
4. Relationship problems: Evidence suggests that children from
single-parent families are more likely to divorce their own partners
as adults.
5. Economic well-being: As adults, people who grew up with just one
parent tend to have lower-paying occupations, experience
unemployment, and rely on public assistance. A 2001 study
suggested a wage gap of about $5,000 between those who grew up
with only one parent and those who grew up with two.

What seems especially important, then, about the absence of a father is

not just the loss of role-modeling opportunities for the children, but the
serious decline in a family’s economic situation as a result of the employed
male’s departure. In the face of such a phenomenon, Sigle-Rushton and
McLanahan (2004) argue that it is important for policymakers to think
about the economic implications of female-headed families living in
poverty in addition to seeing these negative outcomes as functions of family
structure or personal deficiencies per se. Since a critical part of the inter
generational transmission of poverty in such families lies in the greater
likelihood of children dropping out of school, let us now examine this issue.

Dropping Out of School

Perhaps the best way to think about the consequences for the entire
society of dropping out of school is to pose the issue in terms of “bottom
line” dollars and cents. In short, what does it cost our society? In an appeal
to the nation’s leaders to do something about the staggering numbers of
dropouts in the United States, researchers from Northeastern University and
the Chicago Alternative Schools Network (Center for Labor Market Studies
2009) highlighted several points:

1. In 2007, 16.0 percent of persons between 16 and 24 years of age

(nearly 6.2 million people) were high school dropouts.
2. Blacks and Hispanics have much higher dropout rates than whites
—in the population of 16–24-year-olds, 21.0 percent of blacks are
dropouts, 27.5 percent of Hispanics, and 12.2 percent of whites.
3. Low-income youth are more likely than their better-off peers to
drop out.
4. Though many dropouts eventually earn a GED, it does not carry the
same positive implications as a diploma: less than 10 percent of
those who earned a GED in 1992 obtained a postsecondary degree
by 2000.
5. There are substantial fiscal implications of these high dropout rates:
“Over a working lifetime from ages 18–64, high school dropouts
are estimated to earn $400,000 less than those that graduated from
high school. For males, the lifetime earnings loss is nearly
$485,000 and exceeds $500,000 in many large states. Due to their
lower lifetime earnings and other sources of market incomes,
dropouts will contribute far less in federal, state, and local taxes
than they will receive in cash benefits, in-kind transfers, and
correctional costs.” (Center for Labor Market Studies 2009:3)

Given such a wide range of social problems engendered by dropping out,

how much is the United States spending on education? “Pitifully little” is
the unfortunate answer. At the national level, 19 cents of every federal tax
dollar goes for military- and defense-related matters, 24 cents goes to Social
Security, 22 cents to Medicare and other health care programs, while only
about one cent is devoted to education (Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities 2014). Of course, within the country, states and local school
districts vary dramatically in the degree of economic support given to
education. For the 2011–2012 academic year, for example, education
expenditures ranged from a low of $6,683 per pupil in Arizona to $18,616
per pupil in New York (U.S. National Education Association 2013). In
general, wealthier states and local school districts tend to spend more per
pupil. As a result, low-income communities, especially the kinds of
hyperghettoized inner-city ones described earlier, face serious problems in
attracting financial resources to improve the schools.
A study of the effects of a wide range of variables on dropping out was
conducted using data from 1980 for all 50 states (Fitzpatrick and Yoels
1992). State expenditures per pupil were found to be an important predictor
of classroom size—the more money spent per pupil, the fewer pupils per
teacher. The pupil/teacher ratio, in turn, was found to be a significant
predictor of state-level dropout rates. States with smaller classes tended to
have lower dropout rates. This finding resonates with work by other
scholars who argue that the more individualized attention made possible by
smaller classes contributes to lower dropout rates (see, for example, Fine
1986; Rumberger and Thomas 2000; Toles, Schultz, and Rice 1986).
The most powerful direct predictor of dropout rates found by Fitzpatrick
and Yoels (1992) is the variable dealing with female-headed families. (More
recent research by Rumberger and Thomas (2000) finds that living in a
“nontraditional family” is the most important individual characteristic
predicting dropout after Native American ethnicity.) States with a high
percentage of such families are considerably more likely to have high
dropout rates. In addition, such states are likely to have larger classes,
which also raises the dropout rates. Female-headed families may represent
just one of several at-risk groups within a state with considerable
socioeconomic needs, thereby competing with schools for available fiscal
resources. States may be forced, then, to allocate disproportionately more
resources to public assistance and welfare, thus constituting a drain on state
monies for education.
Like Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan’s (2004) work mentioned earlier,
Fitzpatrick and Yoels’s study calls attention to the critical factor linking the
lives of one generation with the next—dropping out of school. Such
dropouts are quite likely to experience in their own lives the kinds of
blocked opportunities and vanishing job situations faced by their parents. In
the wake of such a process, the rage and frustration culminating in violent
crime are likely to continue in succeeding generations. Are we as a nation
locked, then, into a frightening deterministic scenario beyond human
action? Is there nothing we can do besides condemn the “bad” people who
seem destined to carry out these seemingly assigned roles, like figures in a
Greek tragedy?
We want to conclude this chapter by arguing strongly against such a
position. As sociologists we believe that persons’ behaviors are a result of
their interpretations and assessments of the social conditions in which they
find themselves. If they see those conditions as promising hope and
improvement, their behaviors will follow along those lines. If the kinds of
conditions characterizing the social isolation and hyperghettoization of our
inner cities continue unabated, we will all pay the costs. Let us examine
some documented successful programs that hold out the promise, given a
commitment at the national level, for breaking the vicious circle we have
just described.

PROGRAMS THAT WORK

It is now a commonplace position within American political discourse to
rail against federally funded social programs. Academics like Charles
Murray (1984, 2008), libertarians, and Tea Party politicians argue that such
programs may exacerbate rather than remedy the nation’s social problems.
Certainly, such arguments have found a ready audience in the more
conservative sections of society. Lisbeth Schorr (1989) eloquently argues,
however, in her book Within Our Reach: Breaking the Cycle of
Disadvantage that there is much evidence to counter the claims of critics
like Murray. She documents a wide range of programs in areas such as
prenatal care for low-income mothers, child health services, family support,
and the strengthening of schools that have made appreciable differences in
the lives of the less fortunate. Subsequent studies have shown the value of
government interventions in various domains, such as enhancing cognitive
and physical health (Anderson et al. 2003), alleviating poverty (Smeeding
2014), and enhancing early childhood education (Heckman 2000). Rather
than focus on all of these programs, let us turn to some noteworthy
successes in inner-city school programs since, as we have just argued,
education and dropping out are the critical transmission belts for the
reproduction of poverty from one generation to the next.
Dr. James Comer, a child psychiatrist at the Yale Child Study Center, has
achieved some remarkable success in turning around schools in New
Haven’s inner city that ranked among the lowest in the city in terms of
academic achievement, attendance, and behavior problems. Between 1968
and 1983 the two inner-city schools in which his demonstration project
unfolded—one of which was in the Brookside Public Housing Project—
moved from 32nd and 33rd in reading and math achievement out of 33 New
Haven elementary schools to third and fifth in composite fourth-grade
scores (Schorr 1989:231).
Dr. Comer espouses a philosophy of education that stresses caring and
involvement on the part of the school and all its staff, coupled with
participation of the parents in school processes. The schools become a kind
of substitute parent, so to speak, and as such provide an important system of
advocacy and support for the children. On an organizational level, Dr.
Corner created two key units that continually interact with and supplement
one another. He established a school planning and management team,
directed by the principal, that includes teachers, teachers’ aides, and, most
important, parents. This team’s goal is to “establish an orderly, effective
process of education in the building” (Schorr 1989:233).
A second key unit involves the school’s support staff, such as counselors,
social workers, and psychologists. This unit is available to offer
individualized direct help to students and teachers while also making their
child development skills available to the planning and management team.
Corner’s model stresses the interdependence between the home
environment and the school atmosphere. The involvement of parents
provides an important source of educational continuity for the children as
they move back and forth between home and school. As Schorr notes in this
regard, such a program benefits both the children and the parents. In fact, as
a result of this program “it turned out that some parents, their own
confidence bolstered by their school activity, went back to school
themselves and some took jobs they previously thought they couldn’t
handle” (1989:233–234).
Another success story may be found in the Harlem Children’s Zone.
Brainchild of educator Geoffrey Canada, the children’s zone includes
various interventions in the neighborhood and children’s families in
addition to a rigorous charter school to ensure that children from
disadvantaged urban backgrounds have chances at success (Tough 2008).
The primary focus of the Children’s Zone is its charter school, the Promise
Academy, which runs from kindergarten through the tenth grade. The
school’s “promise” is that its students, who attend for free as they would
any public school, would find success after graduation, which generally
means college attendance. To fulfill that promise, the school has an extra-
long day (8 am to 4 pm), after-school programs until 6 pm, and runs well
into July, when most New York schoolchildren are on summer vacation.
Additionally, the Children’s Zone includes “Baby College” to instruct
young parents and parents-to-be on parenting skills, from basics of nutrition
and discipline to the importance of reading to infants and toddlers. There is
a “Harlem Gems” prekindergarten that also runs an unusually long day
from 8 am to 5:45 pm, and puts a strong emphasis on language skills. All
these programs are to mesh into a “conveyor belt” that carries children from
pre-infancy to high school graduation. Canada’s idea is that this seamless
education will allow poor children in Harlem to avoid the crime and bad
habits identified by Wilson and others, and to gain the skills needed to
compete at the highest levels of our knowledge economy. But does it work?
Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer, Jr. (2011) compared the test results of
children who graduated from the middle and elementary schools in the
Harlem Children’s Zone to the over 1 million other children who attend
schools in New York City. They found that indeed, Canada’s promise is not
an empty one: “The effects of attending an HCZ middle school are enough
to close the black-white achievement gap in mathematics. The effects in
elementary school are large enough to close the racial achievement gap in
both mathematics and ELA (English Language Acts)” (Dobbie and Fryer
2011:158). Extrapolating from those findings, they reach the following
conclusions about the chances at long-term success afforded to students in
the Promise Academy: “[A]ttending the Promise Academy for middle
school is associated with a 4.8 to 7.5 percent increase in earnings … a 1.65
to 2.25 percent decrease in the probability of committing a property or
violent crime … and a 7.5 to 11.25 decrease in the probability of having a
health disability” (Dobbie and Fryer 2011:180).
In reviewing a wide range of successful programs running the gamut
from income support to health to education, Schorr (1989:257–260) argues
that several key elements seem to be common to all:

1. Traditional professional and bureaucratic boundaries are

transcended.
2. Staff and programs are flexible.
3. The child is seen in terms of the family, which in turn is seen in
terms of the social environment.
 4. Students and parents in the programs view the professionals as
persons who care about and respect them; mutual trust is
established.
5. The services are coherent and easy to use.
6. In all of these programs the needs of those being served are
paramount, and protecting traditional professional and bureaucratic
“turfs” is secondary.
7. Professionals in the programs respond creatively by redefining their
roles so as to better serve persons’ needs.

In terms of dollars and cents, many of these programs are quite cost-
effective. In Homebuilders, a program providing outside support for
families, the social policy interventions resulted in “savings [that] were
calculated to amount to three to three and a half times the expenditures”
(Schorr 1989:271). The Yale Child Study Center’s day care family support
program in New Haven led to savings in welfare costs that came to more
than $60,000 at the time of a 10-year follow-up study (Schorr 1989:272).
Canada’s programs for students in the Promise Academy cost about
$19,272 per student annually, while the median expenditure in New York
State school districts is $16,171, and schools at the 95th percentile spend
$33,521 (Dobbie and Fryer 2011:180).
When one compares the fact that the yearly costs for incarceration run
about $31,000 per inmate (and over $167,000 in New York City!) (Santora
2013:A16), it certainly seems sensible to consider the kinds of successful
program interventions described by Schorr.

CONCLUSION
This chapter has explored a broad range of political issues affecting
urban life. We elaborated on the rather pervasive and pronounced effects of
hierarchical, exclusionary processes that seem to promote a self-sustaining
pattern of political dominance by better-off sectors of the population.
Through their superior socioeconomic and corporate, organizational
resources higher-class persons are able to set the agendas for political
debate in American cities. We also noted, however, that even in the face of
such tendencies, countervailing ones promoting grassroots participation
may also be found. Local organizations in numerous cities have been able
to achieve some successes in areas such as employment opportunities and
rent control.
The exclusion of the “lower downs,” especially low-income racial
minorities, from the political process relegates them to a situation of
powerlessness vis-à-vis the problems they are experiencing in our cities.
The process of hyperghettoization continues to isolate large numbers of
inner-city residents spatially and socially from the mainstream. As a result
of their poor educational backgrounds and meager job skills, these people
are certainly the last hired and first fired. We also delineated the great
industrial shift that is producing such a job–skill mismatch in major urban
centers.
Finally, we called attention to the ways in which committed
professionals, along with community residents, can overcome formidable
barriers with the backing of key institutional players such as local school
districts. All is not lost in our cities, and there are workable models for us to
emulate in dealing with these issues.
While political institutions are certainly major determinants of the quality
of urban life, as students of the urban experience we want to cast a broad
net in our approach to this subject. Such a goal leads us to explore other
institutional arenas that are important in the lives of urbanites. Certainly,
perusal of any daily newspaper or viewing of any local television news
broadcast will remind us that urbanites are vitally interested in sports. Let
us, then, turn to an examination of sports’ role in urban life.
 CHAPTER 8

Sports and Urban Life

In 1957 the Brooklyn Dodgers left New York for Los Angeles, and there
are still Brooklynites who have never forgiven Walter O’Malley for taking
away “their” team. In 1977, New York Mayor Abraham Beame went to
court to prevent the football Jets from playing their first two home games in
New Jersey. In 1987 the New York Giants won the Super Bowl but were
not, as custom normally demands, given a public parade because the team,
although retaining the New York label, operated out of East Rutherford,
New Jersey. In 1984, when the Baltimore Colts surreptitiously left that city
in the middle of the night to resettle in Indianapolis, it created an
outpouring of outrage and dismay. The move itself, however, did not come
as a surprise, since it was common knowledge that the team was looking to
relocate, a fact not lost on the residents of cities without a professional
football team. During one exhibition game in Jacksonville, Florida, some
50,000 fans chanted in unison, “We want the Colts.” In 2002 the Charlotte
Hornets were moved to New Orleans. But fan ardor and a stadium finance
deal brought an NBA franchise back to Charlotte in 2004 as the Bobcats—
who eventually became the Hornets once again in 2014 when New Orleans
relinquished the trademark and became the Pelicans. “Buzz city” fans were
happy to have their “old” franchise back.
If a factory employing several hundred people were to close, it would no
doubt make the headlines of local papers. However, when a city is in danger
of losing a sports team or possibly gaining a franchise, it is big news for
months, even years. It is apparent that the economic, political, and cultural
vitality of urban life is tied up with the range of its institutions—museums,
zoos, public parks, symphony orchestras, and shopping malls. Certainly,
sports teams are among such critical urban institutions. Yet despite the
obvious centrality of athletic teams in reflecting the state and stature of
American cities, the analysis of sports has generated relatively little interest
among urban sociologists. Most texts on urban life either neglect the role of
sports in urban development altogether or relegate the treatment of sports to
passing comment. This chapter pursues the idea that a serious treatment of
sports yields important insight into the dynamics of the modern urban
world, helps to highlight some of the forces that have shaped American
cities, and illuminates important aspects of the social psychology of
urbanites.
Sports are surely a pervasive feature of everyday urban life. Most
metropolitan newspapers allocate more than 20 percent of each day’s
edition to sports news. A huge swath of cable television channels are
devoted to sports, some exclusively purveying games and news of single
sports such as football, baseball, and soccer. Casual conversation often
reveals that people maintain an emotional allegiance to the sports teams
representing the city where they grew up, regardless of where they currently
reside. “Team loyalties formed in adolescence and maintained through
adulthood may serve to remind one, in a nostalgic way, that there are areas
of comfortable stability in life—that some things are permanent amid the
harrassing interruptions and transitions of daily experience” (Stone
1973:73). And when a local professional team wins a championship, it is
the cause of major civic celebrations. When baseball’s Boston Red Sox
ended their long streak without a World Series win in 2004, for example,
over 3 million people came to celebrate at the team’s victory parade. It was
a salute to the team, but it was also a moment symbolically representing the
success of the city. In the authors’ respective colleges and universities, there
are students from all over the country. When we engage them in discussion
of the relative merits of their home cities, they often spontaneously mention
the quality of their sports teams. The success of sports teams is emblematic
of the success of the cities in which they play.
We should also recognize that professional sports is big business
involving huge amounts of money. Cities now routinely invest millions of
dollars building stadia in order to keep teams in town or to entice teams to
the city. Such stadia are often financed by floating public bonds and thus
are built at taxpayers’ expense. Cities such as Saint Petersburg, Florida
(which built its stadium in the hopes of luring a professional team to the
area), and Pittsburgh have gone substantially into debt in order to build their
stadia. Investing in sports franchises has been an integral part of urban
development in St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Houston. While the argument is
often made that the huge investment in sports teams is a good one because
it ultimately energizes the economy, economic analyses call this assumption
into question (Matheson 2006). In fact, there is a strong argument that
forces of supply and demand put cities at a disadvantage in their negotiation
with teams. “The control of the number and location of franchises has given
sports entrepreneurs leverage to exact concessions from those cities
desirous of attracting a franchise as well as those desperate to retain an
existing franchise” (Johnson 1984:212). Indeed, frightened by the departure
of its team, the city of Oakland loaned the A’s baseball team $15 million
and the city of Pittsburgh has loaned the Pirates more than $30 million, to
be paid back only if the team leaves the city.
Why are cities willing to go to such great lengths to acquire and retain
sports teams? Part of the answer certainly is the belief that sports teams
benefit cities economically. However, to stress only the economic impact of
sports teams on cities and city life would be shortsighted. Equally important
is the fact that civic pride and identity are caught up with sports. There is an
inextricable link between sports and people’s image of their cities. Having a
big league sports team is a validation that a city is a big league place.
Perhaps such a linkage is especially true for medium to small cities.
Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, Green Bay, and Charlotte, although not
among the biggest American cities in population, have achieved recognition
through their sports teams. Having a sports team, you might say, is part of
the “civic ego” (Fulton 1988). Although the economic benefits to cities of
having professional sports franchises is arguable, there is undeniably an
emotional benefit provided by sports. While we will explore in greater
detail the social psychological functions of sport in the urban context, it is
enough right now to note that there is a deeply symbiotic connection
between cities and sports. In this chapter we shall pursue the idea that such
a connection has always existed. While we certainly need to think about the
role of sports in contemporary urban places, we must also adopt the larger
historical view allowing us to see how the rise of sports and the rise of the
industrial city were coincidental.
The sociologist Harry Edwards (1959) argued that “sport recapitulates
society.” By this he meant that sports closely reflect the structure of society
and are, therefore, one useful barometer for analyzing society. Edwards’s
point is that if you want to understand such issues as race relations,
inequality, power, and cultural values, you ought to turn your attention to
sports. This chapter is also based on the premise that sports provide a
window for viewing the nature, structure, and values of a society. More
specifically still, the argument pursued here is that sports are deeply
associated with processes of urban growth, development, and change. We
can, though, use a stronger word than “association” in describing the
relationship between sports and the growth of cities. We maintain in this
chapter that sports not only reflected processes of urbanization and
industrialization, but also helped foster such changes. We see sports as both
a cause and an effect of the growth of industrialized cities. Sports reflected
the growth of industrial cities. They also hastened that growth and
channeled it in certain directions. Our main hypothesis, if you will, is that
there was a dialectical relationship, a mutually transformative relationship,
between sports and the growth of American cities during the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Sports grew alongside cities, and also facilitated
the emergence of values concerning work and leisure that were consistent
with the development of industrial capitalism. To study the growth and
development of sports is simultaneously to trace the growth and
transformations of modern American cities.
Another overall goal of this chapter is to consider some of the ways that a
closer look at sports may be a useful medium for thinking about a number
of different features of urban life. We shall consider the connections
between sports and social mobility, sports and race in the urban context,
sports and community identification, and the place of city games as part of
self-expression in a potentially anonymous urban world. Our most
immediate task, however, is to consider sports within the broad frame of
history.

SPORTS AND THE URBAN REVOLUTION

There is always a connection between a society’s general cultural values
and the shape of its institutions. In a classic theoretical treatise, the
sociologist Max Weber (1958c) argued that capitalism emerged out of
religious values. His observation was that the “spirit of capitalism” and the
“Protestant ethic” emerged out of Calvinistic religious beliefs that equated
worldly success with the likelihood of eventually going to heaven.
Calvinists believed that economic success was a sign from God that one
was among the “elect” rather than the “reprobate.” Hence the impulse
toward capitalistic accumulation. Such a view of the world was consistent
with a Protestant ethic that stressed the primacy of work in one’s life. Under
the spell of the Protestant ethic, one lived to work, whereas some have
observed that in contemporary society one “works only to live.” The spirit
of a work ethic was captured in the maxims of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor
Richard, who advised, among other things, that “[a] penny saved is a penny
earned.”
It should not be surprising that such a worldview denigrated the role of
play in human affairs. An achievement ethic was at odds with a play ethic,
and Puritan America was deeply suspicious of any activities that seemed to
divert human energy from the higher tasks of “doing God’s work.” A
religious emphasis on asceticism ran headlong into any activity that looked
frivolous. Weber explicitly commented on the Puritans’ aversion to sports,
the only goal of which was pleasure and self-expression:
Sport was accepted if it served a rational purpose, that of recreation necessary for physical efficiency.
But as a means for the spontaneous expression of undisciplined impulses, it was under suspicion; and
in so far as it became purely a means of enjoyment, or awakened pride … it was of course strictly
condemned. Impulsive enjoyment of life, which leads away both from work in a calling and from
religion, was as such the enemy of rational asceticism. (Weber 1958b:167)

The Puritan work ethic was coupled with an agrarian way of life that was
extremely demanding physically. Because of the twin factors of ascetic
religious beliefs and an occupational way of life that left little time for
amusement, the notion of leisure time, as we understand it, was not part of
the lived experience of colonial Americans. Indeed, before sports could
emerge in any unified way or become a mode of self-expression on a wide
scale, there had to be a revolution in people’s basic ideas about the meaning
and matter of leisure. The rise of sports is correlated with a fundamental
reorientation toward the meaning of work, play, and leisure in cities, a
reorientation that was interwoven with the effects of the Industrial
Revolution.
 The experience of the Puritans was a far cry from that of contemporary
Americans, who work a 40-hour week and who view the weekend as a time
for play of all sorts. Advertising agencies today sell leisure and play and the
products associated with them. Advertising for such products as golf clubs,
yoga mats, and running shoes are premised on the idea, contrary to the
Protestant ethic, that work is something to be endured from Monday to
Friday in order that one’s “real life” might begin on the weekend. We are
suggesting that, in part, to appreciate the rise and place of sports in
contemporary society, we need to trace such basic transformations in
American life as the emergence of urban industrial cities that fundamentally
altered our value systems, our images of work, and the existence of and
meaning accorded to the idea of leisure.
Historians of sports generally agree that the period beginning roughly
with the Civil War ushered in a period of revolutionary growth in the
public’s interest in and demand for sports. This was, of course, coincidental
with the beginnings of the transformation of the United States from a rural
to an industrialized society. It was during the postbellum period that the
society began to realize dramatically the effects of the technological and
industrial revolutions that had begun in late eighteenth-century England.
Prior to the Civil War there were no organized sports teams. But as huge
numbers of people settled in the newly emerging industrial cities in the
decades immediately following the war, there developed a growing interest
in both participatory and commercialized spectator sports. Prior to 1850 the
enjoyment of sports was largely restricted to the leisured classes, who could
involve themselves in such pursuits as fox hunting and horse racing.
However, as multitudes of persons settled in cities from the close of the
Civil War to the turn of the century, new forms of entertainment for the
masses were required. Workers in the cities now found themselves with
periods of leisure that had not been part of life in agrarian communities. In
short, the period from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth
century saw the twin processes of industrialization and urbanization
transform sports from unorganized rural pastimes to a commercialized
urban business. With industrialization there arose a leisured mass along
with the leisured class. Rader comments on the connection between
urbanism and the growth of commercialized sport:
Although American sports continued to have deep roots in rural life and in smaller towns, it was in
the cities that sports grew most rapidly. Not only could people gather more easily in cities for playing
and watching games, but also news of sporting events could be conveyed far more quickly than in the
countryside. By preserving elements of the older, festive culture in a new urban setting, games helped
to compensate for some of the impersonality and loneliness of modern life. (Rader 1999:20)

The Technological Revolution and the Rise of Sports

While we have commented in general on the connection between
urbanization, population shifts, new patterns of leisure, and the growth of
demand for organized sports, there is another general idea that needs
expansion here. Among historians of sports, one writer stands out in his
effort to trace the factors essential to the rise of sports between 1850 and
1900. John Rickard Betts (1984) has detailed how a range of revolutionary
inventions, most notably in transportation and communication, made
possible the extraordinary development and expansion of sports during the
second half of the nineteenth century. In his seminal essay “The
Technological Revolution and the Rise of Sport, 1850–1900,” Betts traces
the impact of a range of inventions that not only were instrumental in the
growth of industrial cities but also made possible the growth of sports.
Following Betts, we can mention some of the inventions that transformed
the urban world and the place of sports in that world. Of course, it would be
possible to describe in detail the series of social changes occasioned by any
one invention. Here we shall provide only a broad description of the key
inventions whose effects Betts described. We shall elaborate on Betts’s
comment that “[t]he technological revolution is not the sole determining
factor in the rise of sport, but to ignore its influence would result only in a
more or less superficial understanding of the history of one of the
prominent social institutions of modern America” (1984:157).
Of special importance was the growth of rail travel. By 1850 the railroad
was quickly becoming the major mode of transportation in the United
States. Whereas there had been only 23 miles of rails in 1830, by 1880
more than 90,000 miles crisscrossed the nation (Lucas and Smith 1978).
The growth of rail transportation made it possible to bring spectators long
distances to view horse races, regattas, cycling races, track and field events,
and prizefights. As the public became interested in prizefighting, for
example, the railroads capitalized on this interest by selling tickets on
excursion trains to the bouts, and such fighters as John L. Sullivan went on
grand tours in the 1880s. But, as Betts notes, a range of sports was
encouraged by the improved transportation of the postbellum era. The
growth of intercollegiate sports (the first intercollegiate football game was
between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869) was made possible by the railroad,
which could transport students to the event. Most important to our interests
here, however, was the fact that the railroad made possible a number of
intercity rivalries and thus contributed mightily to the growth of baseball as
the national sport. There was a rapid expansion of baseball clubs throughout
the East and Midwest during the 1870s. The first professional baseball team
—the Cincinnati Red Stockings—was established in 1869, and in 1876 the
National League was founded. Within 10 years of that date, Chicago,
Boston, New York, Washington, Kansas City, Detroit, St. Louis, and
Philadelphia had baseball teams contending for the pennant.
Concurrent with improved transportation technologies were new
communications technologies. Following the invention of the telegraph by
Samuel F. B. Morse, the first line was built between Baltimore and
Washington, D.C., in 1844. The telegraph ushered in an era of virtually
instantaneous communication over great distances. If the railroad allowed
teams to travel to each other’s cities, the telegraph made it possible for fans
to learn how their teams were doing. Obviously the telegraph revolutionized
the dissemination of news, since it made possible instantaneous reporting of
baseball games, horse races, prizefights, and other events. By 1846 The
New York Herald and The New York Tribune had installed wireless
telegraph, and by 1870 daily reports of box scores and other sporting
information were routinely found in most metropolitan dailies. Betts reports
that by the 1880s “poolrooms and saloons were often equipped with
receiving sets to keep customers and bettors posted on baseball scores and
track results, while newspapers set up bulletin boards for the crowds to
linger around” (1984:147).
The use of the telegraph had a profound effect on the development of
urban newspapers, whose sports pages, in turn, stimulated even greater
growth in fan interest. There was, in other words, a mutually reinforcing
relationship between the emergence of urban mass media and urbanites’
interest in sports. Betts observes that the numerous inventions that
revolutionized printing processes (for example, presses that allowed the
printing of 20,000 sheets an hour) fostered the growth of urban newspapers.
These same processes, along with growing literacy among the urban
population, were responsible for the publication of dime novels and sports
almanacs of various sorts. By the 1870s sports was a dominant theme in
fiction as young boys read about the extraordinary exploits of characters
such as Frank Merriwell. Of course, the later and extraordinary impact of
radio on sports, beginning in the 1920s, and television, beginning in the late
1940s, has been obvious.
We have commented on the key communications and transportation
inventions that revolutionized sports spectatorship in the United States.
Beyond this, Betts suggests how a range of other inventions contributed to
the emergence of commercialized sports. His analysis is striking because
we might not ordinarily think to make the linkages he does between several
products of the technological revolution and sports. For example, mass
production of goods in factories led to the standardized production of
baseball equipment, bicycles, billiard tables, fishing rods, and sporting
rifles, among other pieces of equipment. The sewing machine was one of
several inventions that helped to standardize sporting goods. Of paramount
importance was Thomas Edison’s development in 1879 of the incandescent
light bulb, which “inaugurated a new era in the social life of our cities”
(Betts 1984:151). The development of electrification generally paralleled
improvements in transportation and made indoor sporting events possible.
Numerous other inventions, such as the stopwatch, vulcanized rubber, the
camera, the bicycle, motion pictures, and rapid transit, were part of the
technological revolution that revolutionized sports. Betts summarizes the
findings of his own work thus:
Technological developments in the latter half of the nineteenth century transformed the social habits
of the Western World, and sport was but one of many institutions which felt their full impact.
Fashions, food, journalism, home appliances, commercialized entertainment, architecture, and city
planning were only a few of the facets of life which underwent rapid change as transportation and
communication were revolutionized and as new materials were made available. … While athletics
and outdoor recreation were sought as a release from the confinements of city life, industrialization
and the urban movement were the basic causes for the rise of organized sports. (1984:156–157)

SPORTS AND THE RISE OF MODERN CITY CULTURE

Thus far we have traced the connections between the urbanization,
industrialization, and technologizing of the United States and the growth of
sports. We have been commenting on how these related changes “caused”
that growth. Were we to use the language of science, it might be said that
the growth of cities was the independent variable (the cause) and the
emergence of sports was the dependent variable (the effect). However, to
characterize the relationship between urban growth and sports as
unidirectional oversimplifies matters. In seeing sports as resulting from
urban growth, we have examined only half of the equation. This is so
because, as noted at the outset of this chapter, sports played a reciprocal part
in fostering the growth of cities. Sports, we maintain along with a number
of historians, served a vital role in socializing millions of immigrants into
the folkways and values of the United States. In what follows we describe
how games and play were integrally connected with the assimilation of a
range of ethnic groups to the American way. We need to consider how
interactions in the realm of sports facilitated individuals’ development of
ideals and values that were compatible with the production and
maintenance of a particular form of economic social organization—
industrial capitalism.
Certainly one of the primary forces shaping the United States from the
middle of the nineteenth century through World War I was the immigration
of foreigners to the country. About 10 million immigrants arrived in the
country between 1820 and 1880. During the next 20 years another 9 million
arrived, and between 1900 and World War I an additional 12 million came
to the country. Immigrants from all over the world brought their indigenous
games with them and so contributed to the evolution of sports. More
critical, though, was the role of sports in preparing immigrants for
participation in a new urban world. Just as sociologists have shown that
religious values reflect the social structures in which particular religions are
found, so do sports reflect and help to sustain the cultural values of the
societies that produce them.
In the following section of this chapter we will once more offer a
historical perspective. At this point, though, our focus shifts to the
Progressive Era in American history, the period from 1900 to 1930, during
which social structures consistent with corporate capitalism were emerging.
Economic historians describe the Progressive Era as the period during
which both professional sports and the modern corporate economy assumed
their current forms. As such it is a particularly critical moment for
understanding the linkages between sports and modern capitalist society. A
number of studies of sports and play during this era (Goodman 1979; Hardy
1982; Pope 1997; Rader 1999; Riess 1984; Vincent 1981) seem united in
the view that sports served the critical function of Americanizing
immigrants and ensuring that they were imbued with values consistent with
the demands of the urban workplace. (Though, as Pope (1997:14) points
out, immigrant participation in sports could take on a boozy aura, or even
reinforce old-country traditions such as hurling and Gaelic football. Such
uses of sport were in tension with American bourgeois capitalist values.)
We must consider in general the role of sports, games, and play in this
socialization process. However, given the unique place of baseball in our
national consciousness, we do well to begin by considering its articulation
with the requirements of an emerging urban order.

Baseball and the Americanization Process

Baseball is often described as the national game. The notion of a deep
compatibility between baseball and American values has been variously
stated. The social critic Jacques Barzun has commented: “Whoever wants to
know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball” (quoted in
Warshay 1982:225). And, close to the point of our exposition here, Mark
Twain offered the opinion: “Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and
visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging,
tearing, booming nineteenth century” (quoted in Huffer 1985:22). That
being so, it makes sense to pay particular attention to the congruences
between the structure of this game and the structure of the society it both
reflected and helped to create. In this pursuit we are fortunate to be able to
rely upon a wonderfully imaginative social history of the rise of the modern
city culture by Gunther Barth. In his book City People, Barth (1980)
examines, among other things, the relationship between baseball and the
rise of modern cities.
Barth’s central premise is that aside from providing a source of recreation
and diversion to the urban masses, baseball provided Americans with “a
new perspective on life in the modern city” (1980:149). Spectator sports
held the possibility of educating people as well as entertaining them.
Baseball “developed early within an urbanizing society, a society
increasingly valuing organized leisure as well as business, competition as
well as cooperation, and individualism as well as teamwork” (Warshay
1982:266). Baseball taught lessons about discipline, the meaning and place
of rules in human conduct, patterns of response to authority, the importance
of commitment to excellence, the value of competition, the balance between
individual achievement and group expectations, and the relationship
between efficiency and excellence. These were all messages implicit in the
structure of the game that corresponded well to the demands of the urban
workplace and the daily experiences of urbanites. It was this
correspondence between the game and urbanites’ daily lives that invested
the game with its power.
Modern baseball was … drawing crowds of city dwellers because it spoke to them as a game that
reflected aspects of their own lives. … More and more spectators became convinced that the game
fitted uniquely into their modern world. “Anything goes” was the message they eagerly distilled from
the behavior on the baseball diamond because their familiarity with the rules of the game indicated to
them that certain plays reflected actions they experienced daily in the modern city. The rules of the
game seemed strict, but the etiquette governing the players’ behavior seemed lax. The game’s
enormous success as the most popular spectator sport in the closing decades of the nineteenth century
was based on this relationship between baseball and the larger society. (Barth 1980:172)

Baseball reflected the individualism intrinsic to capital accumulation

while reaffirming the underlying democracy of American life. We should
not, however, overstate the case. It was not that immigrants arrived at the
ballpark with the idea of seeing the egalitarian principles of the society in
action. They came fundamentally because the game harkened back to their
pastoral origins and provided a respite from the demands of modern living.
At the same time, the game seemed quintessentially to fit the democratic
spirit and promise of American life. With the important exception of the
exclusion of blacks from major league professional baseball until 1947,
when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, baseball was early
open to gifted players from among the array of newly arrived ethnic groups.
Baseball taught a lesson consistent with the general American emphasis on
an individual entrepreneurial spirit. The game placed highest priority on
winning—on success at any price—and while rules were important, it was
the player’s obligation to get around the rules whenever possible in order to
ensure victory. The game, then, spoke to the patterns of authority with
which new immigrants were grappling. Barth astutely observes that
[t]he umpire represented the voice of authority. To the spectators he was a convenient target for their
frequent irritations and deep-seated frustrations both within and outside the ballpark. The umpire
became a personification of the rulers of their lives, who in the workaday world remained hidden
behind the whir of urban life, the faceless corporate structures, the anonymity of technocracy, and the
mystery of public affairs. (1980:173)

Perhaps a most critical function of baseball was to help transcend the

multiplicity of cultural differences that potentially stood as an obstacle to
unifying immigrant groups. Part of its democratizing motif is that baseball
creates a common bond among spectators regardless of their class,
education, or occupation. Baseball was a force in integrating a population
ordinarily divided by wealth, occupation, ancestry, and language. The
common ballpark experience “forged a bond between diverse groups of
people, and watching baseball took precedence over ethnic games because
rooting for a big city team also gave rootless people a sense of belonging”
(Barth 1980:187). We might also say that baseball provided a common
language. It was on the one hand a language of box scores and statistics.
But baseball also generated its own colorful vocabulary that fans shared
regardless of their particular heritage. As social psychologists we are
particularly sensitive to the role of common symbols and language in
forging a common culture, and so we agree with Seymour, who observed
that
[t]he argot of baseball supplied a common means of communication and strengthened the bond which
the game helped to establish among those sorely in need of it—the mass of urban dwellers and
immigrants living in the anonymity and impersonal vortex of large industrial cities. Like the public
school, the settlement house, the YMCA, and other agencies, baseball was a cohesive factor for a
diverse, polyglot population. With the loss of the traditional ties known in rural society, baseball gave
to many a feeling of belonging. (Seymour 1960:350–351)

So far the emphasis has been on the role of baseball in incorporating a

range of peoples into a common culture and imbuing them with common
sensibilities and aspirations. We need to acknowledge, however, that the
role of games in socializing immigrants extended well beyond the
professional ballpark. As the last quote indicates, play occurred in a range
of urban contexts from the school, to the settlement house, to city streets, to
playgrounds. In order to appreciate fully the role of games during the
Progressive Era, we should indicate how reformers explicitly treated play,
especially children’s play, as an arena for shaping the values, ambitions, and
consciousness of young people. Noteworthy is the growth of the
Playground Movement, beginning around the turn of the century. A concern
with creating playgrounds at first seems to perform the simple function of
protecting the lives of children who would otherwise play on dangerous city
streets. However, several historians have argued compellingly that the
Playground Movement served a larger purpose. It was, equally, involved in
a contest for urban space and the leisure time of immigrant children.
Consequently, control over play amounted to control over the hearts, minds,
morals, and values of a new generation of Americans.

The Playground Movement and the Meaning of Play

 In his pioneering work Centuries of Childhood, the French social
historian Philippe Aries (1962) demonstrates that the meanings of children
as a social category and childhood as a life cycle period are shaped by
particular historical circumstances. Specifically, Aries argues that childhood
was “discovered” as a separate life stage during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries in Europe. He ingeniously demonstrates, moreover,
that childhood carried a fundamentally different meaning in the Middle
Ages than in the contemporary world. While we shall not pursue the
complexities of Aries’s argument, we should not be surprised that the social
changes accompanying the emergence of American cities constituted the
historical basis for yet another change in the meaning of childhood. Such an
argument is central to Viviana Zelizer’s (1985) book Pricing the Priceless
Child: The Changing Social Value of Children. Zelizer maintains that by
1930 the definition of children as primarily an economic resource had
shifted to a “sentimentalization of child life”; that as children were
increasingly removed from the economic sphere, there was “a
`sacralization’ of children’s lives.” She explains her thesis this way:
While in the nineteenth century, the market value of children was culturally acceptable, later the new
normative ideal of the child as an exclusively emotional and affective asset precluded instrumental or
fiscal considerations. In an increasingly commercialized world, children were reserved a separate
noncommercial place. The economic and sentimental value of children were thereby declared to be
radically incompatible. Only mercenary or insensitive parents violated the boundary by accepting the
wages or labor contributions of a useful child. Properly loved children, regardless of social class,
belonged in a domesticated, nonproductive world of lessons [and] games. (Zelizer 1985:11)

Such a changing definition of and attitude toward children coincided with

a raised consciousness about the increasing dangers posed to children’s
lives on city streets. By the early decades of the twentieth century, the
deaths of children, especially deaths of children hit by cars while playing on
city streets, were met with indignation rather than resignation. By 1910
accidents had become the leading cause of death for children between 5 and
14, far outstripping deaths from communicable diseases. As Zelizer
describes it, the growing number of childhood deaths, coupled with a new
sentiment about the meaning of childhood, was the genesis of a contest over
urban space.
Reformers wanted to get the children off the streets. However, the street
holds a great deal of enchantment for children. At the turn of the century the
street was a place where a game might be interrupted and children’s
attention diverted by an ambulance, a funeral procession, a fire truck, or a
street fight. The few playgrounds that did exist were normally too distant
from the tenements to make their use sensible. However, this was to change
dramatically by 1930. The Playground Association of America was founded
in 1906, and by 1910 New York had built 250 playgrounds. In the country
as a whole, only 180 cities reported having public playgrounds in 1910; by
1920 the number of such cities rose to 428, and by 1930 the number was
695 (Steiner 1970:15). Another striking statistic is that the number of
employed “play leaders” for urban playgrounds in 1910 was 3,345; 20 years
later the number had increased to 24,949 (Steiner 1970:21).
Correspondingly, the number of children dying on the streets of the city
began to decline rapidly by 1930.
A sharp decrease in the play-related deaths of children affirms the
wisdom of those at the forefront of the Playground Movement. But once
again we should not miss the connections between the reorganization of
urban play space and the construction of another means to socialize
immigrant children. Reformers jumped at the chance to supervise children
on new urban playgrounds because such a reorganization of urban play
space provided a means of social control over them. Cary Goodman (1979),
in his penetrating study of New York’s Lower East Side, persuasively
argues that sports and games played a key role in attempts to Americanize
Jewish immigrants. His argument is that progressive playgrounds were
quite consciously aimed at creating a particular type of “productive” citizen.
In contrast with the unorganized structure of play on the streets, playground
activities emphasized patriotism, punctuality, and obedience to authority, all
traits that were consistent with the demands an industrialized work world
would eventually make on the young people who lost the contest over urban
space.
It was not only on the playgrounds of the cities that new urban values
were instilled through sports. Another direction taken by reformers was the
development of settlement houses around the turn of the century. One such
place in Boston was the West End House, founded in 1906 primarily
through the efforts of James Jackson Storrow, a progressive reformer. The
growth of Boston’s West End neighborhood had been fueled since 1840 by
successive waves of immigrants from Ireland, Russia, Poland, Austria-
Hungary, and Italy. From 1880 to 1920 the city had grown from 362,000 to
748,000; in 1920, 590,000 Bostonians were first- or second-generation
Americans (Ueda 1981). Alarmed by the youth gangs forming regularly on
street corners, social workers founded the West End House. A central
feature of the West End House was the development of a number of athletic
teams and contests. West End House teams helped to increase neighborhood
solidarity through the development of a string of intracity rivalries. Such an
involvement in sports, however, was something that the boys’ parents could
not understand. Indeed, the often intense commitment to their teams was a
source of consternation for the parents, who could not appreciate the central
place of play in their children’s lives. One observer of the West End at the
time recalls his father’s inability to appreciate those features of American
culture so central to his own life.
My father looked upon ice cream as on the whole a shameful thing, and as children’s food at best.
Whenever he’d see any of his children eat it … he’d look … condescendingly and say, “A strange
place America, a very strange place.” … He knew 1 watched baseball games once in a while, but that
didn’t bother him. He apparently thought I would outgrow it when I reached the ripe age of, say,
thirteen or fourteen.
I once brought up the matter of [gymnasium] exercises cautiously to my father. He said, “I don’t
know about that. A poor man who works hard doesn’t need exercise. His life is exercise enough.”
(quoted in Ueda 1981:22)

And commenting on the puzzlement felt by immigrant parents at their

children’s involvement in a yearly race sponsored by the West End House,
Ueda describes this scene:
The Thanksgiving day race was a community event in the West End. Huge crowds lined the streets to
watch the boys run for neighborhood glory. To parents and grandparents from the Old World, the
cross-country run typified the unfathomable effect of the American city upon the values of their
children. Why their sons, who were nearly men, chose to work so hard to win at children’s games
eluded their comprehension. … The anxious mothers of the Old World would gaze from the tenement
windows above, shaking their heads mournfully at this display of American enthusiasm in a new
world. (1981:64)

Settlement houses of this sort multiplied across Boston’s West End

around the turn of the twentieth century, as philanthropists disgusted with
the lack of city services to immigrants worked to fill the gap themselves
(Spain 2001). They saw overcrowding and poor sanitation afforded to
immigrants, as well as the lack of healthy recreation, as a significant social
ill. Eventually, their work shamed the city’s political leaders into action,
inducing them to provide for greater public health, and in particular to
develop sporting facilities for its new citizens. By 1900, Mayor Josiah
Quincy had orchestrated the development of a system of playgrounds in
Boston—“Twenty-one playgrounds were managed under this system,
employing sixty supervisors and serving four thousand children daily at an
annual cost of $4,000” (Spain 2001:185). Similar efforts went on in a
number of cities throughout the country, as the U.S. population swelled
with immigrants, the industrial working army of the Gilded Age.
It should be apparent from our analysis that sports much more thoroughly
encompassed men’s than women’s lives. If sports served the purpose of
integrating men into the larger economic and occupational life of society
during the Progressive Era, the lack of athletic opportunities for women
paralleled and helped to maintain their subordinate role in society. Sports
were only one of several male urban worlds from which women were
excluded. To the extent that sports allegedly functioned to build the
character of young men and to make them fit for the occupational world,
involvement with sports was not seen as necessary for young girls, whose
futures, after all, would be at home raising families. While young girls were
not excluded altogether from playground activities during the early part of
the century, sex-integrated activities, especially after the age of puberty,
were strongly discouraged. Most of the special activities designed for girls
were oriented around the development of poise and the cultivation of
domestic skills (Coakely 1986).
Part of the reason that women have historically been systematically
excluded from participation in sports stems from the idea that sports are
inconsistent with the development of “womanly attributes.” As is so often
the case, discrimination practiced against a group is justified in terms of a
number of faulty beliefs or myths. Today, one still hears that athletic
participation masculinizes women, that women are too frail for competitive
sports, and so on. Of all the changes that have taken place in sports over the
years, the participation of women has been one of the most recent. It has
only been since the early 1970s that many of the obstacles to women’s
participation in school sports have been removed. After federal legislation
was passed in 1972 making it impossible for schools to get federal funds
unless they provide equal opportunities for men and women, the number of
females participating in high school and college sports increased
dramatically. At the 35th anniversary of the Title IX legislation that made
this possible, the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education
(2008) reported: “Before Title IX, only 294,015 girls participated in high
school athletics; in 2006, that number was nearly 3 million, a 904%
increase. At the college level, prior to Title IX, only 29,977 women
participated in athletics compared with 166,728 in 2006, a 456% increase”
(National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education 2008). The place of
women in sports in the last century once again verifies the extent to which
athletics mirrors virtually all patterns of social change.
There is another feature of our review that deserves elaboration. Implicit
in some treatments of the function of sports during the Progressive Era is a
certain anti-urban bias. Involvement in sports and recreation has been
viewed as providing a safety valve, relieving the tensions and stresses
created by the essentially negative demands of urban life. Some of our
earlier discussion suggests that sports helped to initiate individuals into a
world of work that might otherwise be seen as oppressive. Underlying the
analysis of parks, playgrounds, and settlement houses as socializing
agencies is the suggestion that sports helped to create compliant workers
who could be more easily manipulated by those who, in Marx’s terms,
controlled the means of production in cities. There is a nearly conspiratorial
tone to this view of the role of sports in the evolution of American life.
While we believe that these ideas have a great deal of merit, such a view
need not minimize the central and more positive role of sports in creating an
integrated community life in American cities. In Chapter 3 we showed that
community life is quite vibrant in American cities and draws its energy
from unexpected sources. Let us briefly pursue the connection between
sports and a viable community life.

SPORTS AND COMMUNITY IDENTIFICATION

In his treatment of the place of recreation and sports in the growth of the
city of Boston, Stephen Hardy asserts that the range of recreational pursuits
characterizing the city at the beginning of the Twentieth Century
“represented active attempts to develop community in the city” (Hardy
1982:87). Included in Hardy’s analysis are the role of professional sports,
collegiate rivalries, the Boston Marathon, Boston’s representation on
Olympic teams, high school athletics, sports clubs, and the range of
informal games fostered by the development of a public parks system
during the Progressive Era. Hardy’s work conforms to the general thesis
that sports and games played a critical role in the incorporation of
immigrant groups into the mainstream value system. To that idea, he adds
the role of sports in creating a sense of community among Bostonians. His
analysis is directed toward showing how sports and recreation were
“mediums through which Americans could struggle to strengthen
themselves and their communities in the face of larger economic and social
forces” (1982:202).
The notion that sports provide urbanites with a sense of subjective
identification with the larger community is suggested by Hardy’s thesis.
Once we recognize, as pointed out in Chapter 3, the limitations of
conceiving of community only in terms of space or territory, we open our
analysis to the variety of mechanisms that may contribute to a sense of
community, even for those individuals who may objectively seem
unattached to conventional social and spatial groupings. To be sure, as
social psychologists, we have been advocating the idea throughout this
volume that the city—and by extension community—is as much a state of
mind as it is a physical entity. The city is as much tied up with our images
and sentiments as it is connected to matters of geography or legislated
boundaries. We should consider that at the bottom of any definition of
community are ideas of belongings, integration, and solidarity. To belong to
a community implies that one feels a part of something, that one shares with
others a feeling of common identity, consciousness, and emotional
involvement. Sports are one important mechanism in creating such feelings
among city persons.
Following the writings of Gregory Stone (1968, 1972, 1973, 1981), we
conceive of sport as “a community representation.” Stone’s analysis stems
from Emile Durkheim’s (1984) classic view that the reality of society rests
in a “collective consciousness,” in the totality of passionately embraced
beliefs and sentiments held in common by a group of people. On the
negative side, such a passionate identification with sports teams as group
representatives can erupt in aggression and rioting, as has too frequently
been the case among fans of NCAA basketball. In a more benign way, as
Stone’s review of the community literature illustrates, sports create and
sustain community solidarity. In such traditional, classic community studies
as Robert and Helen Lynd’s (1929) Middletown, August Hollingshead’s
(1949) Elmtown’s Youth, John Seeley, R. A. Sim, and Elizabeth Loosely’s
(1956) Crestwood Heights, James West’s (1945) Plainville, U.S.A., and
Arthur Vidich and Joseph Bensman’s (1958) Small Town in Mass Society, a
discussion of the centrality of sports in the life of the community is
inevitable. In Middletown, for example, the Lynds commented on the place
of high school sports in promoting civic loyalty, culminating in an
extraordinary community fervor during the basketball team’s playoff
games. Those of you who went to high school in small communities will no
doubt have experienced what they describe.
Leading citizens give “Bearcat parties” and prior to … the final games, hundreds of people unable to
secure tickets stand in the street cheering a scoreboard, classes are virtually suspended in the high
school, and the children who are unable to go to the state capital to see the game meet in a chapel
service of cheers and songs and sometimes prayers for victory. In the series of games leading up to
“the finals” the city turns out week after week to fill the doors of the largest auditorium available.
(Lynd and Lynd 1929:284)

Almost 100 years later, with small towns continuing to decline, Robert
Wuthnow paints a remarkably similar picture of the importance of sports in
the lives of rural communities: “If the town has a local newspaper, at least a
quarter of it is devoted to the week’s athletic events. … If the home team
has a winning season, the entire community turns out for its games. Towns
in rural areas typically have a highway sign at their edge stating the most
recent year of winning a state championship” (Wuthnow 2013:106).
Just as high school sports solidify smaller communities, Stone maintains
that professional sports teams serve the same kind of quasi-religious
function in larger cities. His argument, offered in a series of articles, is that
sports teams not only identify the cities where they play but also are a
source of people’s identification with and pride in their city. Just as New
York’s skyline, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, and the French
Quarter in New Orleans both identify the city and become the source of
people’s identification with the city, so do sports teams. This view does not
rest on theoretical speculation alone. On the basis of a sample of 515
persons, Stone offers evidence that “involvement with spectator sports
makes for subjective identification with the larger community under
objectively improbable conditions” (1968:8). By “objectively improbable
conditions,” Stone meant that subjective identification with the urban
community through sports would be highest for those who were, according
to purely objective criteria, least integrated into the urban community (those
who had been residents of the city for the shortest time, those who had the
fewest friends in the community, and so on). The data support the
theoretical contention that persons produce a symbolic transformation of
urban institutions to provide a source of identification that may not be
available to them through routine sources of community involvement. His
data allow the conclusion that “sports teams should be thought of as
collective representations of the larger urban world. Significant then are the
names of teams. Such names have in the past designated urban areas. …
Identification with such representations may be transferred to identification
with the larger communities or areas they represent” (1968:10). This
finding appears to be robust over time. For example, a recent study of
Turin, Italy, found that, among those residents who have greater levels of
attachment to their community, the fourth most characteristic word they
uttered when extolling Turin’s virtues was “sports” (Rollero and Piccoli
2010).
We began this chapter by commenting on the trauma to generations of
people who grew up identifying with the Brooklyn Dodgers when that team
relocated to Los Angeles. The consternation felt by those living in New
York at the time was certainly heightened because of the very close
connection that had always existed between the borough of Brooklyn and
the team. In fact, the history of social change in Brooklyn is virtually a case
study of the abiding connection between the fortunes of a city area and the
sports team that represented it from the early 1900s through the 1957
season. The history of the Brooklyn Dodgers testifies to the correctness of
the assertion that sports teams can potently symbolize the range of
sentiments people feel for an urban area. The team played an integral part in
the creation of an enduring sense of neighborhood that characterized
Brooklyn and gave it special charm as a distinctive urban place. We cannot,
of course, undertake here a complete social history of Brooklyn, but we
should note, along with the novelist Philip Roth, that Brooklyn was “the
very symbol of urban wackiness and tumult” (quoted in Laforse and Drake
1988:187) and that the antics and history of the team over the years
reinforced the distinctive imagery of the place. Whatever might have been
the ethnic and class diversity of Brooklyn over the years, it was the ball
club that provided a common community thread. As Laforse and Drake
indicate,
Brooklyn once had a civic identity of its own, and even in a city of such striking divergencies, one
commonality would be devotion to the local professional baseball team. … It is fascinating to
analyze the myth of frantic loyalty [to the Dodgers] erected before the American public. Whatever
the reality might have been, enough people wanted to believe the lore about the Dodgers and their
fans to make the impression lasting. There was something quaint, off-beat and ruggedly
individualistic about the antics of fans in Ebbets Field, and the legend was national in scope. …
Perhaps, too, the charm was a symbolic exemplification of continuity, community, and comradeship
in an increasingly anomic urban world. (1988:177, 216)

Because the emphasis of our comments has been on the role of sports
during the early part of the twentieth century, we should acknowledge that
the nature of professional athletics has changed quite dramatically since the
1960s. The sports pages of 2015 have a different tone. Today the
knowledgeable sports fan must know something about antitrust legislation,
tax and contract law, and collective bargaining. Where once sportswriters
limited their coverage of the seamier side of sports heroes’ lives, today’s
elite athletes are as likely to provide fodder for gossip sites like TMZ as
they are to be featured for their prowess on ESPN. It is common to see fans
on discussion forums lament the fact that sports have become big business
and that professional athletes today feel little loyalty to their teams, much
less to the communities where they play.
In order for teams truly to serve the function of community
representation, they must exhibit some stability. The number of sports
teams has expanded dramatically since 1950. In 1950, for example, major
league baseball was represented in 10 cities by 16 teams. Currently 30
teams are located in 28 cities. Similar patterns can be described for football,
basketball, and hockey, while NASCAR expands its cup circuit to more
tracks in the north and west. Moreover, since the 1970s we have witnessed a
bewildering array of expansion teams and new leagues, some lasting only
months. Though team relocations have become relatively rare since the
1970s—only two MLB teams have moved since 1970, and a half dozen
NFL teams moved once the league relaxed their rules on location in the
1980s (Leeds 2006)—the threat of relocation is constantly used by team
owners to extract public subsidies from state and local governments (Davies
2007). How much can fans afford to identify the local squad as “our team,”
when owners like the Colts’ Robert Irsay quip, “This is my team. I own it,
and I’ll do whatever I want with it” (Davies 2007:286)?
To the extent that there has been a diffusion of sports, there has been a
weakening of the role of sports in the creation of a distinctive community
consciousness. As the movements or threats of movements of teams
become more and more dictated by the market arrangements created by the
demographics of television audiences, it becomes harder for fans to identify
with and commit themselves emotionally to teams. Ever more frequently
the businesspeople who own the teams see them as sources of tax
depreciation and feel no particular attachment to the cities in which their
teams are housed. James Michener, in his wide-ranging analysis of sports in
the United States, makes the point that increasingly “teams have been
owned not by local people interested in the welfare of both the team and the
community, but by outsiders, sometimes from the opposite end of the
nation, who happened to be in a financial position in which ownership was
a practical rather than an athletic consideration” (Michener 1976:363).
Among urban institutions, sports are unique in being both a cultural
resource and a business. As economic considerations more exclusively
determine where teams play and for how long, it becomes increasingly
difficult for sports to serve the cultural function of creating community
integration as powerfully as they did during the formative years of city and
sports building in the United States.

MONEY AND MOBILITY: CLASS, RACE, AND SPORTS

Throughout this chapter we have been guided by the notion that sports
reflect major social currents and values. This is perhaps nowhere more plain
than in thinking about patterns of class, race, and mobility in the United
States. As indicated in Chapter 7, any consideration of the modern urban
world that left unanalyzed the accessibility to different groups of society’s
“goodies”—power, prestige, status, and wealth—would be incomplete.
Certainly one important issue raised in a discussion of class in the United
States is the degree to which we have an open class structure, the degree to
which the rhetoric of the American dream fits the reality of the
contemporary situation. The idea of the American dream is that the United
States, and especially the urban United States, is a place of boundless
opportunity where hard work and talent alone dictate one’s chances for
success. The American dream in its purest form describes the “rags to
riches” stories of those with exceptional talent and motivation who move
from the bottom of the stratification system to the top. Moreover, sports are
often mentioned as proving the vitality of the American dream. After all,
one need only consider the extraordinary salaries paid to professional
athletes, a large number of whom are members of minority groups and
come from poor circumstances. In this section we shall consider not only
how sports have provided an avenue of mobility but also their role in
keeping alive what becomes, unfortunately, a painful and illusory dream for
far too many minority youths.
 There is little doubt that members of minority groups have always
viewed sports as a route to success when other avenues have been closed to
them. In their classic study “The Occupational Culture of the Boxer,”
Weinberg and Arond (1952) documented the nearly perfect relationship
between the ethnic and racial composition of urban slums and the
backgrounds of successful fighters. Boxing has always drawn its talent from
the most financially deprived segments of the society. In the early part of
the century, Irish boxers dominated the sport. By 1928 Jews were the most
visible fighters, only to be replaced by Italian boxers in the late 1930s. In
the post-World War II era, boxing was dominated by black and Hispanic
fighters, and now world title holders increasingly come from the Global
South—Latin America and Africa in particular. Although the poor often
turn to boxing in hopes of social mobility, baseball historian and statistician
Bill James has made the same observations about that sport. In his decade-
by-decade account of the major leagues, he traces the changes in the
backgrounds of the players. For example, of the 1900s he writes:
Whereas baseball in the nineteenth century was in danger of becoming a game of the Irish, by the
Irish, and for the Irish, it now appealed to a broader cross-section of the public. In a nation of
immigrants, ethnic identity was important; when you knew a man, you knew where his family came
from and when they got off the boat. Many of the game’s biggest stars were the heavily accented
sons of immigrants, and in particular German and French immigrants. (James 2001:73)

He concludes his discussion of 1960s players (increasingly black and

Latino) by noting that “[i]t will probably always be true that star athletes
come predominantly from the bottom of the economic spectrum” (James
2001:251).
While it would be possible to document the place of athletics in the
experiences of a number of different groups, the most outstanding feature of
the American professional sports scene since the 1950s has been the
extraordinary role played by black athletes. We should first observe that
prior to World War II, black participation in professional sports was
virtually nonexistent. Boxing was one of the few sports open to blacks
before the mid-1940s (Jack Johnson was heavyweight champion from 1908
to 1915, and Joe Louis became a black folk hero during the 1930s and
1940s). As mentioned earlier in the chapter, blacks were absolutely
excluded from major league professional baseball until 1947. The color line
was not broken in professional basketball until 1950, and very few blacks
played professional football even in the 1950s. Such historical exclusion of
blacks makes their current involvement in major sports even more
remarkable. Although blacks constitute about 13 percent of the nation’s
population, 67 percent of players in the National Football League are black,
about 80 percent of the rosters of professional basketball teams are black,
and about 18 percent of professional baseball players are black. As the
statistics above indicate, blacks have become most particularly prominent in
basketball. At the collegiate level only 10 percent of basketball teams had
one or more black players in 1948. That proportion was 45 percent in 1962
and 95 percent in 1985 (Eitzen 1989). By 1999, black players were in the
majority on NCAA Division I teams, at 55 percent, and by the 2009–2010
season, they comprised 61 percent of the basketball players (“Blacks Now a
Majority on Football Teams,” 2010). Moreover, the success of black players
within the major sports has been equally dramatic, as indicated by their
extraordinary overrepresentation as statistical leaders, all-star players, and
MVP award winners.
It is not surprising, in light of the statistics offered and the high visibility
of black athletes in the media, that black youngsters are far more likely than
their white counterparts to see sports as a route to social mobility. While
these aspirants may be aware of their heroes’ statistics, they tend to ignore
the statistics concerning their own chances of making it to the professional
level. In fact, young athletes are wildly off the mark in terms of evaluating
their chances of becoming professionals. Many studies have documented
that playing for the NBA is a serious goal for a number of young minority
men, especially those from poorer backgrounds (for example, Carter 2005;
Dubrow and Adams 2012). Their actual chances are far less than that.
According to a 2013 report from the NCAA (NCAA Research 2013)
1,086,627 boys played high school football, 538,676 played basketball, and
474,791 played baseball. At the college level, the total number of athletes
competing in all these sports was 120,581. Of those students, only about 1.2
percent of basketball players and 1.6 percent of football players go on to
play professionally. 9.4 percent of NCAA baseball players go on to play
some professional ball, but we must remember that most of those players
will be farm hands in the MLB’s myriad minor league teams. Of course,
only a proportion of those who play professionally will do so at the highest
level of their sport. Prudence Carter put these numbers in perspective of the
lives of the high schoolers she studied in Yonkers, NY:
Some thinkers have suggested that a fixation with excelling in sports has become an alternative to
classroom success for minority—particularly Black males. … The love of sports does not mean that
these young men did not acknowledge the value of a high-school diploma. But it does suggest that
these young men, influenced by normative cultural values about work and manhood, sought a high-
school credential as a path to financial success. Unfortunately, most desired to obtain this success
through one of the few avenues that an exclusionary limited opportunity structure opens to many men
of color—professional sports and the hip-hop entertainment industry—even though less than one
percent of college athletes make the cut into professional sports, and few break into fame in the
music world. (Carter 2005:88)

Famed black historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., quoting his grandfather, puts
it more succinctly: “If our people studied calculus like we studied
basketball …we’d be running M.I.T” (Gates 2004).
The picture is more discouraging still when we consider that the financial
pot of gold at the end of the professional sports rainbow is not as great as
many might think. Some superstars like Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, and
Derrick Rose in basketball make extraordinary amounts of money. It is also
true that in 2008 the average NFL player earned $1.1 million, the average
NBA player made $5.85 million, and the average major league baseball
player earned $2.93 million (Conrad 2011). However, the most usual career
route is for an athlete to play his sport several years at the minor league
level without ever making it to the “bigs.” In contrast with those who make
it, most minor league baseball players earn between $3,000 and $5,000 per
season (McCann 2014), and players in the NBA’s development league earn
from $12,000 to $24,000 annually (Koutroupis, 2014). It is also important
that the typical player making it to the NBA or the NFL can expect to play
less than four years, and the average career of major league baseball players
is only slightly longer. The vast majority of players, whether or not they
make it to the big leagues, will be retired before they are 30 years old, and
all too often they are without the academic and occupational skills
necessary to ensure meaningful work for the remainder of their lives. And
to put a final nail in the coffin of any poor inner city kid’s hoop dreams, a
2010 study found that poor kids are the least likely in any racial group to
make it to the NBA—66 percent of black players came from a middle class
background or higher, and less than 8 percent of white players came from a
lower class background (Dubrow and Adams 2012).
We would also be misled to believe that the large numbers of black
professional athletes is evidence that racism has been erased in sports. LA
Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s comments confirm that even for a
personage like Magic Johnson whose talents have been proven on the court
and off, there is virulent racism in certain offices in pro sports. Despite the
large number of black players, sociologist Earl Smith points out that, since
Jackie Robinson’s signing in 1947, “[t]here have been only three African
American managers in professional baseball, no more than a handful of
head coaches in professional basketball, and fewer than ten head coaches in
professional football” (Smith 2007:41). Very few nonwhites are employed
in the front offices of pro sports teams, and even in the NCAA, as of 2006
there were only 4 black presidents and 10 black athletic directors at the
roughly 100 Division IA campuses (Smith 2007). This situation has led
some to describe college and professional sports as operating under a
“plantation model.”
The contemporary situation resembles a plantation in that almost all the overseers are white … and
almost all the top players are black. Moreover, when the professional basketball playoff games roll
into town, we are faced with the odd situation of predominantly black teams playing before
predominantly white suburban audiences. … This is … highly reminiscent of the Roman
amphitheater gladiator contests in which African and Greek slaves performed for the predominantly
Roman audiences. (Hoch 1974:382)

It is often said that in order to be successful at the higher levels of the

occupational world, members of minority groups must perform better than
members of the majority group. Such an assertion, difficult to prove in most
conventional occupations, can be more plainly tested in sports. Using
statistics from 1986, Richard Lapchick (reported in Rosellini 1989) showed
that twice as many black baseball players as whites had career batting
averages greater than .281, while three times as many whites as blacks had
averages below .241. The same study reported that among veterans in the
NBA (those who played five years or longer) blacks had a much higher
scoring average than whites. Through the 1980s, it was fairly clear that
there was significant wage discrimination by race in the MLB. But since the
1990s, the picture seems to have changed. Several studies (for example,
Bellemore 2001; Palmer and King 2006) find little evidence for continued
wage discrimination in baseball. If there is any, it is at the very lowest
salary levels—that is, the most marginal black and Latino players still seem
to earn less than whites (Palmer and King 2006). When it comes to hiring
and compensating players, Lapchick now gives both the MLB and the NBA
“A” ratings (Lapchick 2012a, 2012b).
Still, the story of discrimination in professional sports is not done. In a
series of studies beginning with a paper by John Loy and Joseph
McElvogue (1972), a number of researchers have documented what they
call “stacking” in professional sports. “Stacking” refers to the fact that
players are not assigned randomly to positions on their teams. Instead,
consistent with the stereotype that black athletes are not smart enough to
hold leadership positions, data indicate that white players in baseball and
football are overrepresented in the most organizationally central roles (those
requiring the most thinking, communication, and responsibility), while
blacks are overly represented in positions requiring speed and dexterity. In
football, for example, this means that on offense, kickers, quarterbacks, and
linemen tend to be white, while wide receivers and running backs are more
often black. In baseball, blacks are overrepresented in the outfield positions,
which are the “most peripheral and socially isolated positions in the
organizational structure of a baseball team” (Loy and McElvogue
1972:311), and greatly underrepresented as pitchers and catchers, for
example. More recent evidence (Lapchick 2013) suggests that this is still a
problem for professional sports.
While we must entertain the hypothesis that black players voluntarily
select themselves into certain positions, the more reasonable interpretation
is that allocation of positions in both football and baseball is premised on
the belief that blacks are not intellectually fit to occupy leadership positions
within sports organizations. Such a view excludes blacks from leadership
positions in a range of occupations and institutions. Notwithstanding the
gains that blacks have made in the realm of professional sports, data on
stacking remind us not to underestimate the degree of institutionalized
racism that remains.
As sociologists, our intellectual bias is to look beneath apparent social
reality, to question critically prevailing wisdoms. Such a perspective on
sports has caused us to consider whether the participation and great success
of relatively few minorities in professional sports can be taken as evidence
that equality of opportunity accurately describes fundamental American
values. We are inclined to agree with Howard Nixon that “[t]he tendency
for black athletes to dream longer and harder about sport as their route to
success … [reflects] the fact that black people have been denied so many
other routes to success in American society … [and] explains why
successful black professional and college athletes have encouraged the
belief in sport as a significant mobility lever” (Nixon 1984:133). Indeed, we
think it not too cynical to suggest that sports indirectly help to maintain the
disquieting view that when members of minorities do not make it in
mainstream society, it is their fault. The few startling successes of minority
individuals in sports, government, entertainment, and the professions allow
the continuing view that if these individuals can make it, those who don’t
are responsible for their own condition. In this respect we might view sports
as, in fact, ultimately helping to maintain the status quo that guarantees the
persistence of inequality along class, ethnic, and racial lines. Were it not for
the highly visible successes of a few minority individuals in sports and
other institutions, it would be much harder for even the most conservative
ideologue to maintain the belief that the American dream is alive and well.

SPORTS, ANONYMITY, AND INDIVIDUALISM

In his engaging book of the same title, Pete Axthelm (1970) describes
basketball as “the city game.” We have already looked at statistics
indicating the degree to which professional basketball has come to be
dominated by black players. In large part this is explained by the fact that
basketball is the most immediately accessible game to city youth. Sports
like golf and tennis belong to the suburbs and the country club. Baseball,
however much it might reflect urban values, requires open space and is
played at a pace that is nearly inconsistent with the hustle and bustle of
inner-city life. Football, although having captured the imagination of
Americans since the 1970s, demands a degree of planning and institutional
support that makes it incompatible with spontaneous urban play. Basketball,
in contrast, requires sneakers, shorts, a ball, and two baskets. It fits the city
well. In most cities one doesn’t have to go very far to find a court and a
pickup game.
One certainly can take the popularity of the game at face value as a fast-
paced, exciting sport. However, along with Axthelm, we think the game and
its meaning to participants must be understood in social psychological
terms as well. One has only to witness the intensity and involvement with
which the game is played, and then to listen to the comments of those
watching, to realize that more is riding on the game than continued control
of the court. Those waiting appraise the talent of those playing, and much of
the sideline talk is of particular players’ extraordinary abilities, some of
them present on the court and others more legendary. The playground is a
place where particularly graceful efforts are applauded; it is a place where
reputations are made and identities fashioned. As such, the game is the
medium through which a certain ritualized drama is enacted, one that
centers on competition, competence, and coolness.
In the face of an impersonal, anonymous urban world, persons have a
need to create forums for the expression of their individuality and
uniqueness. Urbanites are creative in finding ways to express and assert
their distinctiveness, especially in those anonymous situations where one
seems most in danger of losing one’s self. To use the metaphor suggested in
the writings of Erving Goffman (1959), we can liken social life to a series
of stages on which we perform roles and offer various presentations of self.
We are not suggesting that sports are the only means through which
individuals try to express publicly a valued sense of self. Urban sociologists
would do well to detail how neighborhood bars, restaurants, pool halls, and
even street corners become platforms on which persons vie for status,
esteem, and recognition. From among the several possibilities, however,
sports are a particularly compelling means through which young men can
achieve a degree of fame within their neighborhoods, and in some instances
throughout the city. “Street ballplayers develop their own elaborate word-
of-mouth system. One spectacular performance or one backwards, twisting
stuff shot can be the seed of an athlete’s reputation. If he can repeat it a few
times in a park where the competition is tough, the word goes out that he
may be something special” (Axthelm 1972:199).
While we want to avoid painting an overly bleak picture of the lives of
poor, inner-city youngsters, we must nevertheless acknowledge once more
that their opportunities for achievement in the larger society are often
limited. To be sure, a tradition of sociological literature concerns itself with
the mechanisms of adaptation employed by individuals who have
internalized society’s standards of success but do not have available the
usual means for realizing economic and occupational success (Liebow
1967; Merton 1938). For example, one line of argument offered in the
literature on the poor school performance of poor minority youth is that the
school is a socially sanctioned place for young people to achieve status.
However, according to this view (Carter 2005), the school is a middle-class
institution run by middle-class teachers and administrators who reward
behaviors most reflecting white middle-class standards of intelligence and
achievement. As such, the school is not an especially hospitable place for
black and Latino working- or lower-class youth. Unable to compete easily
in school and often fearing social retaliation if they “act white” by
following teachers’ expectations, they act out and work to look tough as an
alternative competitive system. In an analogous but more positive fashion,
city games lift some players above the ordinary anonymity of their lives and
provide them a context for status-enhancing achievement.
The point is that in social worlds where occupational and educational
achievement is elusive, persons must find alternative ways to express a
competent and valued self. The playground is one of the few places where
many inner-city young people can establish the sense of individuality,
status, and manhood that too often seems denied them by the larger society.
Moreover, aside from its easy availability, we suggest that the game of
basketball is itself structured in a way that allows the expression of unique
talents. It is a team sport that does not diminish the colorful performances
of individuals who go one-on-one with opposing players and create
“moves” that become, in neighborhood lore, equivalent to personal
signatures. We also agree with Axthelm that in a world in which inner-city
youth may feel buffeted by forces that seem beyond their control, the game
is a source of order and provides the possibility for momentarily
transcending the more mundane reality of their lives. Here is Axthelm’s
lyrical description of the game’s significance in the lives of street players:
The game is simple, an act of one man challenging another, twisting, feinting, then perhaps breaking
free to leap upward, directing a ball toward a target, a metal hoop ten feet above the ground. But its
simple motions swirl into intricate patterns, its variations become almost endless, its brief soaring
moments merge into a fascinating dance. To the uninitiated, the patterns may seem fleeting, elusive,
even confusing; but on a city playground, a classic play is frozen in the minds of those who see it—a
moment of order and achievement in a turbulent, frustrating existence. Basketball is more than a
sport or a diversion in the cities. It is a part, often a major part, of the fabric of life. … Other athletes
may learn basketball, but city kids live it. (1972:188)

Just as among the pros, there comes a time when one is too old to
compete successfully on the playground. One rarely sees players beyond
their mid-thirties on playgrounds. However, involvement with sports,
especially for men, hardly ends when they hang up their spikes. Although
one might no longer be able to play a good game, it is possible to talk a
good game throughout life. On its most obvious level, sports provide a
universal language for people and thereby lubricate the gears of social
interaction. Sports give even strangers access to each other. While, as
pointed out in Chapter 4, norms of noninvolvement characterize public
places, sports are one of the few topics that seem to legitimate strangers’
initiating contact with each other. It is hard to imagine someone reading a
newspaper in a public place spontaneously beginning a conversation about
Eastern Europe, the president’s latest speech, or the state of the economy. It
is not, however, uncommon for someone checking sports scores on their
smart phone to spontaneously comment to a stranger on a home team’s
recent win or loss. Such openness may partly be attributed to the relative
“safety” of sports talk. Discussion of topics such as abortion, religion, or
politics is somewhat dangerous because they may easily cause expression
of deeply felt emotions and animosities. Sports talk, however, normally
engenders friendly disagreements. As radio sports shows illustrate, talk is
easily generated for hours at a time on the wisdom of decisions made by
managers or coaches, the reason one or another player is performing badly,
or the player acquisitions necessary to make the local team a playoff
contender.
Just as participating in playground games provides inner-city youth with
a sense of personhood, we think it not too far afield to suggest that sports
talk provides many men the opportunity to demonstrate a degree of
expertise and knowledgeability that is status-enhancing. While we
recognize the speculative nature of these comments, we feel persuaded that
involvement in sports, whether making a great playground move or being
applauded for one’s incisive sports knowledge, provides those who might
otherwise be undifferentiated in the urban crowd with the opportunity to
assert themselves and to display their individuality.

CONCLUSION
As is too often the case in social science research, discussions of different
institutions, behaviors, or life spheres remain separate. There are, for
example, voluminous literatures on family and work, but relatively little
effort has been expended in analyzing how the worlds of work and family
life intersect and transform each other. In Chapter 6 we integrated
literatures on gender roles, occupations, and urban life to understand how
the urban context shapes the experiences of women, a neglected topic in the
literature on cities. This chapter proceeded from the similar observation that
discussions of the role of sports in the United States have been artificially
separated from treatments of the growth and development of urban life.
Consequently, the overall purpose of this chapter has been to review the
sociological literature on sports with an eye to understanding the connection
between the development of sports and of the city itself. In making this
connection our aim was to introduce into the dialogue about city life the
important place of sports, play, and games. Sports, however, are more than a
convenient tool for reflecting on urban processes. The central thesis of the
chapter has been that the growth of cities and of sports is coincidental and,
even more pointedly, that sports facilitated the emergence of the industrial
city.
Institutions, of course, do not come into existence spontaneously, and to
appreciate how the form of city life and the form of sports are intertwined,
we adopted a broad historical view. Analysis shows that the emergence of
sports on a large scale could not have happened apart from a number of
technological innovations that were intrinsic to the process of
industrialization. Especially critical in this regard were the communications
and travel technologies that promoted the development of intracity team
rivalries. The work of historians was used to illustrate the significance of
sports in contributing to the development of an emerging capitalist order,
especially during the Progressive Era (1900–1930). Our central argument
here was that sports, most particularly baseball, fostered values that were
instrumental in socializing immigrants to the requirements of the newly
emerging industrial order. Implicit in this discussion is the idea that sports
were used by reformers as a means of social control. Such an idea is most
compellingly affirmed in a number of historical analyses of the Playground
Movement. Although the manifest function of the Playground Movement
was to ensure the safety of children who would otherwise play on
dangerous city streets, an important latent function was to shape young
people by inculcating in them values, behaviors, and consciousness
consistent with the needs of an industrialized work world.
The historical processes described in the chapter, it should be understood,
refer to global, structural, institutional, or macro aspects of American urban
culture. Throughout this text, however, we have insisted that such elements
of social structure always be related to the day-to-day experiences of
urbanites. In the second half of this chapter, therefore, we used sports as a
medium for analyzing a number of social psychological processes. Sports,
we maintained, provide urban persons with a sense of subjective
community identification. In making this argument we picked up on a
central theme of our discussion in Chapter 3. There we suggested the
importance of seeing community in other than strictly territorial terms. A
sense of community can rise out of identification with urban places, objects,
events, and institutions. Once we recognize community as tied up with
images, sentiments, and feelings, it is a short step to realize the extent to
which many urbanites equate pride of place with pride of local sports teams.
In the two remaining sections of the chapter we examined the particularly
significant role that sports play in shaping the identities and aspirations of
minority youngsters. Faced with limitations on their mobility through
conventional routes, minority youth have always looked to sports as a
system through which they might achieve the American dream of wealth
and status. A look at appropriate statistics reveals, however, that the dream
is an illusory one except for a precious few and, indeed, that
institutionalized racism permeates what at first seems a wholly meritocratic
system. Finally, we offered some speculative thoughts on the notion that
playground athletics can provide a forum for the expression of self, identity,
and individuality in an urban world where anonymity appears at first glance
to rob us of our uniqueness.
Let us now turn to one more great urban institution to further flesh out
our understandings of the myriad forces at play in cities. The arts have long
made their home in the city, and demonstrate how works of art contrary to
being the products of lone geniuses as we often imagine, are in fact social
products. Without an array of supporters, art could not happen. And while
the production of art often depends on cities, we must also consider how
city dwellers consume art in its various forms, to the extent that many
municipal governments now worry as much about budgetary appropriations
for the arts as they do about keeping the water flowing.
 CHAPTER 9

Arts in the City

While most of us now live in suburbs, almost any kid who grows up in
the United States is loaded onto a yellow school bus at several points in his
or her youth and trekked into “the city.” When the schoolchildren get there,
they are disgorged upon marble steps, perhaps flanked by snarling lions.
Whether they are at the opera, a theater, the symphony, or an art museum,
these trips make it clear to us from an early age that cities are where art is
and where artistic creation happens.
In this chapter we will explore several dimensions of the arts’
relationship to cities. We will see that it is no accident that the arts are
largely an urban phenomenon and that the enshrinement of the high arts in
great museums and performance spaces was a highly deliberate process on
the part of civic leaders who have sought, since the nineteenth century, to
provide a buffer against barbarianism and mass entertainment. Not only will
we find that powerful forces in the city promote the arts for aesthetic
purposes—today municipal leaders are heeding the findings of urban
researchers that suggest that artistic institutions like galleries, music venues,
and theaters draw tourist dollars as well as longer-term residents to cities.
Today, the arts are big business.
First, in keeping with our interactionist focus, we will investigate why it
is that cities are usually the key sites for artistic production. Though we
often tend to think about artists as disconnected geniuses, laboring in
painful isolation while meticulously crafting masterworks, the sociology of
art has taught us that art is in fact a social affair. Even works with a sole
“author” rely upon a network of others for their realization, not to mention
their dissemination to a broader public. Generally, cities are the places
where such creation and dissemination happen. To that end, we must
consider both the institutional supports that often cluster in cities as well as
the networks of artists that encourage each other, critique each other’s work,
and spark new ideas and movements in art. We will look at how this process
has played out at different times in several cities, from Vienna to Berlin,
Paris, Chicago, and New York.
We then go on to consider the consumption of art in cities. Both as a
means to enshrining certain objects as monuments to great culture for all
time and as a diversion for troubled city dwellers, powerful forces have
ensured that since the nineteenth century, cities have provided art to the
public in museums, galleries, symphonies, and operas. Many cities have
also provided homes to bohemian art scenes that prove attractive to starving
artists as well as well-off urban professionals. We will see how in cities like
Chicago and Austin, Texas, people with disposable incomes actively seek
out the pleasures of funky art scenes. People enjoy art for art’s sake, but
also because it can provide a quintessentially local experience. Thus, blues
music carries connotations of authentic Chicago, as traditional jazz does for
New Orleans, and R&B in Memphis.
Finally, we will investigate how many cities have begun to actively
cultivate the arts in hope of attracting tourist dollars and well-to-do
residents. Based on readings of the works of researchers like Terry Nichols
Clark and Richard Florida, who regard urban amenities like art galleries,
coffee shops, and nightclubs as attractive to the kind of knowledge workers
who drive our contemporary economy, many municipalities have made
significant investments in their arts sectors. We will see how those
investments have played out, for better and possibly for worse.

CITIES AS ART WORLDS

A popular image of an artist depicts her as working alone in a studio. We
imagine that someone like an O’Keefe or Picasso is an individual of
extraordinary genius. The ideas for the artist’s masterworks spring forth
from their mind as if from the firmament—unprecedented, inimitable,
beyond category. The signature she puts to a piece establishes that it is the
work of just one person.
Thus, it may seem that the production of artworks is unsusceptible to
sociological analysis. After all, is there really anything social in this deeply
individual act of creation? Until the 1970s, most sociologists seemed
content to accept this image of isolated artistry, and to leave art out of
sociology. But since that time there has been what we often refer to as the
“cultural turn” in sociology (Bonnell and Hunt 1999)—sociologists pay a
lot of attention to culture and to how it is consumed and created by groups
of people, and in fact we now realize that the apparently individual act of
artistic creation is highly dependent upon the involvement of many different
actors. We have further come to understand that people have to come
together in physical places to make art happen, and cities generally provide
a very amenable space for such coming together.
The sociology of art is probably best introduced by interactionist Howard
Becker’s seminal work Art Worlds (Becker 2008[1983]). In this work, he
provides us with a generalizable framework for understanding the social
production of works of art in everything from paintings and photographs to
symphony performances and movies. In general, Becker notes that the
following things must happen for any work of art to appear:

1. Somebody has to have the idea to make a particular piece of art. It

is generally the person we call the “artist” who does this. The idea
could be anything from a musical composition to a sculpture or
painting.
2. Somebody has to execute the idea. In the case of a painting, this
can be the same person who had the idea for it in the first place. But
in the case of a symphonic composition, the various musicians of a
symphony orchestra, under the direction of a conductor, must
execute the composer’s idea. In the visual arts, a sculptor may
require a foundry to cast a bronze sculpture, or a print maker may
require a lithographer to execute prints.
3. Somebody has to make all the materials for making the artwork.
While it was once common practice for painters to mix their own
pigments, and some still do, most purchase their paints from an art
store. Similarly, filmmakers buy cameras and sound equipment,
 musicians buy their guitars and saxophones, and sculptors buy
chisels and mallets.
4. Artwork must be distributed. While in some transcendent sense, a
piece of music that nobody but the composer ever hears may count
as “art,” in a social sense, art is not fully realized until it reaches an
audience. For any artwork, there may be diverse avenues of
distribution. Music can be distributed through live performances,
recordings available on the Internet, or physical recordings on vinyl
or compact discs. Paintings can be displayed in museums or
galleries, or may be reproduced by lithography for a mass audience.
5. Becker describes myriad activities that qualify as support activities
that enable art to be produced and received. This may include a
number of mundane activities such as ensuring a musical group
receives beer and food backstage, transporting artworks from one
place to another, or generating the electricity required to light a
theater. Becker notes that, in this sense, the art world is without
boundaries (Becker 2008[1983]:35)—to some extent almost
everyone is an unwitting participant in an art world at one point or
another.
6. Artworks need audiences, at a minimum pay to attention to the
artworks, if not to pay for them outright.
7. Art requires people to create and maintain the rationale according
to which works of art are or should be produced. This role is
generally filled by critics and academics whose critiques and
research provide an important arbiter of what is “good” art, and
give some instruction to neophyte producers and audiences about
the art they are making or consuming.
8. Everyone involved in producing works of art requires some degree
of training. While numerous artists are self-taught, as art worlds are
established, schools increasingly take on the job of teaching the
techniques required to produce works of art.
9. Finally, Becker notes that there needs to be a broad civic order to
allow art worlds to survive and thrive.

While none of Becker’s points specifically refer to the necessity of cities

for producing works of art, it should be clear that cities are ideal locations
for this constellation of activities and order. Cities amass dense collections
of people who can provide all of the inputs necessary to the creation of a
piece of art, and crucially include enough people that there are audiences
for a diverse range of artistic genres. If one wishes to build an art gallery, it
makes sense to do so in a place where one may be reasonably certain
enough people will visit to make it financially viable. Further, as we have
seen in previous chapters, cities are known for their tolerance of somewhat
unusual lifestyles, and artists with unusual temperaments can more easily fit
in. Recall the flamboyance of Basquiat, or Warhol’s shocking white mop-
top, or the brash attitudes of film actors, and consider how much more in
place they seem in New York and Los Angeles than they would in most
small towns or suburbs.
This is not to say that art is not made in out-of-the-way places. Indeed,
some of the best-known art worlds are rural arts colonies, like Big Sur in
California or the Byrdcliffe colony in upstate New York. But while the
dramatic output of such places is dependent on the thick networks of artists
who live there, we should also note that these places tend to be reasonably
close to big cities—Big Sur and Byrdcliffe are just a couple hours’ drive
from San Francisco and New York City, respectively. Residents who need
supplies or access to markets or performance venues depend in part on the
big city art worlds.
A number of sociological studies of artistic production have highlighted
the important role that particular cities play in the creation of great art. In
describing the constitution of particular art worlds, they show us how these
worlds make use of the densities of cities. Even the constitution of a genius
artist, like Beethoven, can be shown to be dependent in part on the city
where he lived—Vienna.
Tia DeNora (1995) traces Beethoven’s biography in her masterly
sociological study of his artistic output, Beethoven and the Construction of
Genius. Subtitled “Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792–1803,” DeNora’s work
shows how Beethoven’s move from Bonn to the more cosmopolitan Vienna
was absolutely crucial to the development of his compositional style, as
well as to the fame he enjoyed in his lifetime and his canonization as a
musical genius in subsequent years. A particularly crucial dimension of
Vienna’s musical art world was the significant number of private patrons
who could provide money and an audience to a composer like Beethoven
—“twenty-one families of princes, seventy of counts, and fifty of barons
(altogether about a thousand individuals); this group, plus members of the
then growing newly ennobled ‘second society,’ made up approximately …
2,611 people” (DeNora 1995:20). Coupled with a new ideology among the
upper classes that saw “serious music” as an important pursuit, Vienna was
an ideal location for Beethoven to disseminate his musical ideas and make a
reasonable living.
Additional organizational changes served to enhance the possibilities of
Beethoven presenting more complicated music and finding a wider
audience. First, the patronage of music by Vienna’s upper-class citizens—
not only royalty but an expanding middle class—allowed for the
development of a professional class of musicians. Rather than being house
servants who happened to be reasonably proficient at playing an instrument,
concert musicians were now “emancipated” musicians (46). Such
professionals could now play the more technically demanding pieces
Beethoven was composing. Second, public concerts began to take shape—
music moved out of the small social events of aristocrats who had their own
performing groups and into a realm approachable by the middle class.
“Now,” DeNora writes, “with less of an economic barrier to music
participation, those who would not have been able to keep any form of
kapelle [musical group] … could engage in musical life by purchasing a
subscription ticket or by hosting or attending a private concert” (46). Thus,
Beethoven’s music was exposed to a broader—not to mention more
lucrative—audience.
As the audiences for music grew, aristocrats took an even greater interest
in aligning themselves with the best music, composers, and musicians.
Through his social ties to Haydn and others, Beethoven was able to position
himself as uniquely suited to taking on the mantle of an artistic genius, to
compose and perform works that would receive broad acclaim in Viennese
society.
Another dimension of Vienna’s musical art world helped to cement
Beethoven’s reputation and further his creation: the musical instrument
industry. Vienna was one of a handful of centers in Europe for the
production of pianos. Beethoven’s playing called for an instrument louder
and more tolerant of heavy-handed playing than he found contemporary
pianos. In Vienna, he had access to piano maker Andreas Streicher.
Streicher custom made pianos for Beethoven, and Beethoven was
increasingly pleased with the results, writing to Streicher that “I am
delighted, my dear fellow, that you are one of the few who realize and
perceive that, provided one can feel the music, one can also make the
pianoforte sing” (DeNora 1995:176). DeNora writes:
What Beethoven wanted was a piano capable of a more resonating (less harplike) tone, of registering
nuances of touch (“to produce my own tone”), and of withstanding a greater force. Eventually, this
led to triple-strung pianos with a firmer action. (DeNora 1995:176)

And her broader point here is that the piano thus developed became
Streicher’s model for future pianos. As Beethoven’s reputation grew, so did
the importance of this new, more robust piano in Western music.
Altogether, DeNora shows us how important the city of Vienna was to
the constitution of Beethoven’s music and its subsequent reception. He
cannot be adequately understood, she notes, “without examining the
construction of a cultural, organizational, and technological environment for
Beethoven’s talent and its perception in Vienna” (DeNora 1995:187).
So as DeNora’s work makes clear, cities were key to artistic production
in the early modern era. This only became more true as industrialization
created great metropolises and as a culture industry grew to feed the
increasing leisure time needs of the industrial workers and a burgeoning
middle class. Studies of the industrial era show further how cities cemented
their reputation as centers of the arts. One study that focuses on Berlin at
the same time that Simmel was observing it (as we discussed in Chapter 2)
makes clear that while Berlin was indeed a cacophonous, bustling
metropolis that engendered a blasé attitude in many of its denizens, it was
also an important center for the passionate practices of artists.
Eric Weitz’s Weimar Germany shows how Berlin provided fertile ground
for a flourishing art world in the early twentieth century. Weitz observes
that the Weimar period in Germany, from the end of World War I in 1919
until the economic crisis and rise of the Nazis in 1933, was one of immense
artistic production. Its artists, writers, and architects have had a long-lasting
influence on Western culture, and many are still held up as exemplars of
their craft.
The churning metropolis of Berlin was central in the cultural life of
Germany in this era. Of the city, Weitz writes:
Weimar was Berlin, Berlin Weimar. With more than four million residents, the capital was by far the
largest city in Germany, the second largest in Europe, a megalopolis that charmed and frightened,
attracted and repelled Germans and foreigners alike. In the 1920s it was one of Germany’s and
Europe’s great cultural centers, the home of the Philharmonie, the State Opera, the Comic Opera,
scores of theaters, and a cluster of great museums, all located in the center of the city. Berlin was a
magnet for artists and poets, the young and ambitious. (Weitz 2007:41)

Among the artists and poets who lived or worked in Berlin during the
Weimar republic were playwright Bertolt Brecht; composer Kurt Weill;
collagists Hannah Höch and John Heartfield; photographer László Moholy-
Nagy; painters Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Wassily Kandinsky; authors
Thomas Mann and Erich Maria Remarque; critic-philosophers Walter
Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, and Siegfried Kracauer; and architects Erich
Mendelsohn and Walter Gropius. These artists fed off of—and fed on
conflicts with—each other’s ideas, and benefitted from Germany’s
economic upswing in the 1920s as well as its excellent educational system.
And frequently, they did so in close proximity to each other, especially in
Berlin:
They inhabited a social world that prized erudition and was not, after all, so very large. Brecht and
Weill moved in theatrical, musical, and literary circles where, it seems, everyone knew everyone else.
They and Bloch, Benjamin, Kracauer, and others sat in cafes together and talked; sometimes they
lived in the very same neighborhoods in Berlin. … And virtually all of them … were connected to a
larger European world of cultural creativity. (Weitz 2007:293)

This last point is especially telling and important. Like Simmel (1971),
Weitz here is recognizing the importance of the cosmopolitan outlook
engendered by city life. Many urban denizens have a tendency to shed their
provincial ties and lead lives as citizens of the world. This is particularly
important to artists, who are often trying to confront transcendent issues of
the human condition. It is not surprising that the artists who we remember,
whose books we continue to read, whose paintings or collages hang in
galleries around the world, whose plays are translated and performed many
years after their death, are those who lived in cities like Berlin and took on
a cosmopolitan attitude.
A study of a different city—Paris—from the same time period, makes
even clearer the role that urban institutions play in fomenting an art world.
Among the varied subcultures described by Mark Abrahamson in his book
Urban Enclaves are the American artists and writers who flocked to Paris in
the 1920s. American residents of Paris in this period, and in the
Montparnasse neighborhood in particular, included “the young Alexander
Calder, Josephine Baker, Man Ray, William Faulkner, Aaron Copland, and
other of the twentieth century’s most notable American artists, and
composers” (Abrahamson 2006:139). In part because they had helped
France defeat the Germans in World War I, in part because the city was
beautiful and relatively inexpensive, and in part because they found less
bigotry against racial minorities and homosexuals, American artists found
Paris quite welcoming. But Paris also offered certain institutions necessary
to the Americans’ artistic production. Some of these were formal
institutions, such as the American Baptist Center, where expats could use
the gym, or the American Conservatory of Music, where Copland studied
composition. But Abrahamson argues that even more important were some
less formal organizations. Places that artists could get together, exchange
ideas, drink, and argue gave them spaces in which to hone their creative
proclivities.
Such other places included the bookstore Shakespeare and Co. The
store’s proprietor, American expat Sylvia Beach, allowed patrons to browse
freely and read without purchasing new works in English. She also used her
connections to help authors, as when she facilitated the publication of
James Joyce’s Ulysses. Cafes and bars were also central to the interactions
that helped the American artistic community in Paris flourish. In particular,
Abrahamson singles out the Dome Café and the Dingo Bar. The Dome
provided a cheap repast to impoverished artists as well as a sort of
community center. Certain Americans, such as painters George Biddle and
Jules Pascin, made the Dome such a regular haunt that they sent “messages,
gifts, keys, and so on to each other” at the Dome, so sure were they that
their compatriots could be found there sooner or later (Abrahamson
2006:144). On a typical evening, painters could be found “arguing about
geometric shapes and the true meaning of love” (Abrahamson 2006:145).
The Dingo Bar, with its amicable English bartender Jimmy Charters also,
proved a popular destination for Americans, writers in particular. Not only
did the Dingo provide a bartender’s sympathetic ear and a venue for
drunken shenanigans. It also was a key location for network building
among the writers: Abrahamson notes that Hemingway first met F. Scott
Fitzgerald at the Dingo. Though their relationship would prove somewhat
tumultuous, it is also among the more storied friendships in the history of
English literature.
Though Abrahamson goes on to note that in later years, the community
of American artists in Paris exhibited a disturbingly high degree of
disorganization and concomitantly high suicide rates, his sketch also
demonstrates the importance the community had to American culture in the
twentieth century. While it lasted, the enclave of Americans made the most
of their network of friends and institutions, a network that depended on the
density of a city like Paris. Again, this example demonstrates how
important a city can be to the development and cohesion of an art world.
Studies of more contemporary urban art worlds continue to find that
cities play a vital role in artistic production. Nicholas Dempsey’s (2008,
2010) work on jazz musicians in Chicago shows how that city provides a
vital center for jazz musicians to hone their craft. In particular, jazz’s
institution of the jam session provides a space for musicians to learn from
each other, meet new collaborators, and practice their art. Dempsey writes
that jam sessions are
[i]mportant to jazz musicians, not only as a space to have fun and collaborate with each other but also
as a place to learn the art of jazz and a place to network with other musicians. In jazz, jam sessions
involve musicians getting together and playing compositions. These are often arcane jazz pieces
written by past masters like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, but they are just as likely to include
compositions from the Great American Songbook—easily recognized songs of yesteryear like All of
Me or I’ve Got Rhythm. At the weekly jam sessions … any musician off the street is free to
participate in the performance. (Dempsey 2008:59)

While Dempsey regularly attended three of these weekly sessions, there are
over a half dozen such sessions in Chicago, and even more in jazz meccas
like New York and New Orleans. Ample evidence from the history of jazz
performance shows that the urban agglomeration of jazz musicians has
enabled the existence of these sessions, and in turn, they have provided the
loci for major innovations in the music. Cities provide dense enough
audiences to give a community of musicians employment. But those paid
gigs tend to demand that musicians refrain from much deviation from
familiar melodies. By providing safe spaces for experimentation, jam
sessions have allowed jazz to remain a breathing, ever-changing art form. In
New York, innovations have ranged from the bebop innovations of the
1940s by players such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie (Lopes 2002)
to avant-garde experimentation in downtown lofts in the 1970s and beyond
(Osby 2003).
This latter loft scene also provides us one last example of the vitality
cities give to art worlds. Anne Fensterstock has documented the transitions
of various neighborhoods in New York, the SoHo loft scene being one of
the most important. In part, artists were pulled to SoHo because of the wide
open loft spaces and the low rents:
Artist refugees from Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side therefore eagerly sought out the
open, unpartitioned working spaces of the abandoned factories and sweatshops of SoHo. Old,
dilapidated and small by modern industry standards, they were huge in comparison to the tenement
alternatives and, despite their lack of adequate heat, ventilation, plumbing or electrical systems, they
were not that much less comfortable to live in. And the price was right. With their properties no
longer in demand by the legitimate tenants they were zoned for, landlords of the empty spaces were
in no position to drive a hard bargain with the only bidder on an essentially illegal deal. As a result,
up until the mid-1960s, 2,500 square feet of unobstructed, light-filled space could often be had for as
little as $90 a month. (Fensterstock 2013:53)

Fensterstock demonstrates throughout her book how such migrations to

neighborhoods are a common theme throughout the history of various art
scenes in New York, with relatively poor artists moving to low-rent
districts. The artists are then driven out by gentrification in subsequent
years, as the now-hip neighborhoods become hot tickets on the real estate
market.
But Fensterstock also shows us that the story is a bit more complicated
than rent. After all, if it was just cheap rent they were after, myriad artists’
individual real estate decisions would likely drive them to various spots on
a city’s fringe, isolating one from another. But Fensterstock notes that “if an
artist’s studio, a gallery or a not-for-profit exhibition program is situated in
a hopelessly inaccessible location, very few in the art world audience will
go there” (Fensterstock 2013:23). And perhaps more to the point, harkening
back to our discussion in Chapter 3, artists, like other city residents, desire
community. Fensterstock drives this point home:
One of the strongest factors that surfaced during my five years of researching this topic is the notion
of arts professionals colonizing in like-minded communities. In my own interviews with present-day
artists (struggling and no-longer-struggling), with directors of both underfunded nonprofit
organizations and megamillion-dollar revenue dealers, the need for proximity, collegiality, and
mutual support was palpable.
Visual arts workers’ stock-in-trade is essentially ephemeral, not concrete; it is psychic rather than
physical. The worth of the “product” is measured in aesthetic, intellectual or otherwise intangible
terms. For many artists working alone in their studios, the result is an interiority and isolation that
proves unsettling at best and terrifying at worst. Fundamentally visual communicators, artists still
need language (their own or that of a studio visitor), reaction (from collectors or critics visiting their
exhibitions), debate (about the process, not just the product), support (when a work is floundering or
a show bombs) and confirmation (when the reverse is happily the case). (Fensterstock 2013:21–22)

Thus, her findings gel with Becker’s notion of art worlds: arts are not just
produced in isolation, but rather within a network of amicable producers.
These findings also fit our more general understandings of the important
role community plays in cities, providing a buffer against anomie and
isolation. And this allows Fensterstock to understand why, though the
specific neighborhoods where art is centered have continually changed
since the 1950s, artists have continually gravitated toward each other. As
the subtitle to her book notes, a number of iconic neighborhoods have been
home to important artists and galleries, “from SoHo to the Bowery,
Bushwick and Beyond.” But throughout, New York has remained an art
mecca.
As our brief review has shown here, cities are often homes for artists. But
we should also keep sight of the fact that they are destinations for the lovers
of art, and that art has provided a welcome respite for many from the
troubles of workaday urban life. As we will explore in the next section,
sociologists have increasingly been paying attention to the importance of
the arts in drawing people to cities and particular neighborhoods, and to
how the consumption of the arts is a crucial dimension of many people’s
experience of the city.

ARTS CONSUMPTION IN CITIES

First, if we look back to how early urbanists thought they could cure the
ills they considered endemic to cities, we will find that the arts have been
perceived as an important aspect of being urban for some time. While
settlement houses were often focused on maintaining the health and well-
being of immigrants, providing vocational education and lessons in home
economics, we will also find that arts and crafts were an important
dimension of settlement house programs. Such activities were seen as a
wholesome alternative to participation in the various vices cities had to
offer and as counters to the debilitating conditions endemic to factory labor.
For example, Jane Addams’s Hull House settlement in Chicago offered a
variety of artistic programs, from displays of photographs and paintings
curated by the Art Institute of Chicago to classes in engraving and drama.
Of her perception of the importance of the arts in people’s lives, Addams
wrote:
It has been pointed out many times that Art lives by devouring her own offspring and the world has
come to justify even that sacrifice, but we are unfortified and unsolaced when we see the children of
Art devoured, not by her, but by the uncouth stranger, Modern Industry, who, needlessly ruthless and
brutal to her own children, is quickly fatal to the offspring of the gentler mother. And so schools in
art for those who go to work at the age when more fortunate young people are still sheltered and
educated, constantly epitomize one of the haunting problems of life; why do we permit the waste of
this most precious human faculty, this consummate possession of civilization? When we fail to
provide the vessel in which it may be treasured, it runs out upon the ground and is irretrievably lost.
(Addams 1912:382–383)

On a perhaps grander scale, the scions of the Gilded Age also worried
that urban life in the United States was too focused on the pursuit of the
almighty dollar, and that serious culture was being neglected in lieu of petty
entertainment. Lawrence Levine (1988) observed that the need for fine art
was often framed in religious or quasi-religious terms. Levine cites a
Reverand Frederick W. Sawyer, who in 1860 opined that “[i]f we want to
drive far from us, vice and crime—if we want to outbid the wine-cup and
the gaming-table we must adorn … We must adorn our parks and gardens;
adorn our churches and public edifices. We must have something to claim
the attention, to mould the taste, to cultivate” (quoted in Levine 1988:150).
To that end, many cities saw the founding of important institutions for the
presentations of the arts in the late nineteenth century. Though Levine
argues that the broader aim of using such institutions as the Boston
Atheneum and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art was often
corrupted from providing a public good to defending and enshrining the
culture enjoyed by the upper classes, urban publics continued to demand,
and often receive, access to these collections. The Met, at the urging of New
York politicos and the editorializing of the New York Times, opened its
doors to the public on Sundays in 1891 (at which time few working people
had any day beside Sunday for leisure). The initial opening was greeted
with a crowd of 12,000 people. Though some were disturbed at their lack of
upper-class decorum, the Times noted that the crowds’ enjoyment of the art
was palpable, and ultimately not much different than those of the Met’s
weekday patrons (Levine 1988:183). By the turn of the twentieth century,
many cities were offering arts destinations such as these, offering high-
culture diversions to educate and delight urban denizens, many of whom
were otherwise toiling in the factories that were casting the United States as
an industrial superpower.
While cities like New York and Boston of the nineteenth and much of the
twentieth centuries used art as a diversion from their more important
economic bases as manufacturing and transportation hubs, in the late
twentieth century, those traditional industrial economies largely broke
down. Contemporary cities in the United States and other developed nations
now largely base their economies in the service sector, and industrial
production has moved offshore (see, for example, Sassen 2012). Now, the
arts and entertainment form a vibrant part of cities’ economic core, and they
attract new residents and tourists to cities to partake of artistic offerings.
Sociologist Terry Nichols Clark has gone so far as to call cities
“entertainment machines” (Clark 2011). In response to arguments by Logan
and Molotch and others that a city is a “growth machine” (see Chapter 7),
perceived by various rentiers and others as gaining vitality by constant
growth in terms of real estate and business development, Clark argues that
others perceive the city as a site to be consumed. While part of that
consumption is wrapped up in experiences like hanging out in the park or a
coffee shop, or ogling and buying the wares of a city’s shopping districts, a
powerful aspect of that consumption involves taking in the arts that a city
has to offer. Clark is able to quantify this effect—considering population
growth from 1977 to 1995, he finds that after natural factors (warm
temperatures, light rainfall, and proximity to the coast), the next most
important predictors of growth are consumption venues—in particular
restaurants and live venues for artistic performances (Clark
2011:139).Various studies have investigated how artistic consumption plays
out in the lives of urban residents and visitors alike.
In a pair of books on urban nightlife, David Grazian has explored the
ways that people consume the city by going out to clubs and bars. In
Chapter 4, we discussed his book On the Make, which traced the various
ways young people find enjoyment in each other’s company in nights out
on the town. In the spaces discussed in that book, while clearly people’s
focus is their efforts at finding interesting mates, it is noteworthy that this
often takes place while consuming musical performances. In his previous
book, Blue Chicago, Grazian (2003) trained his sociological eye
specifically on the role of music in a city’s nightlife. In Blue Chicago,
Grazian writes of Chicago’s blues music scene and of how it is consumed
by different groups of fans, both casual and devoted. Here he makes clear
that for many listeners, music is a crucial dimension of the Chicago
experience.
Grazian argues that the blues are seen as part of the “authentic”
experience of Chicago—a sort of essential, home-grown facet of the culture
of the city. As one may go to New Orleans to enjoy Dixieland and
jambalaya, or seek out barbecue and R&B in Memphis, blues music is
perceived as an important avenue through which to experience Chicago, on
par with a trip to the lakefront or eating deep-dish pizza. The city sells the
blues to residents and tourists alike. The city government sponsors blues
performances at the Chicago Cultural Center, hosts a large annual festival in
Grant Park, and even offers a blues- and jazz-oriented bus tour among its
offerings of local neighborhood tours.
For a twenty-six-dollar ticket price, tour buses escort guests from the Chicago Cultural Center to the
ethnic enclave of their choice. Upon arrival, such travelers explore the urban terrain of the city as
they consume … the blues heritage of the South Side’s Bronzeville district. By capitalizing on
exoticized notions of ethnicity, community, and urban space, these “motorcoach expeditions”
transform local communities and their landscapes of everyday social interaction into commodified
tourist attractions. (Grazian 2005:201)

Such experiences are highly desirable, to both locals and out-of-towners.

Through their enjoyment of homegrown arts—here, the blues in particular
—people come to gain a sense that they have gotten in touch with the “real”
Chicago. Grazian judiciously advises us to be aware of the very crafted,
racialized, and commodified presentation of the blues—he describes a
number of ways in which the music, far from being an unfiltered
presentation by an indigenous folk, is outrageously crafted to excite and
titillate paying audiences. But he also shows that it is a very real and
important part of many people’s experience of Chicago. Describing a
typical out-of-towner’s experience at a blues club, Grazian notes that club
visitors are valuing not just the music itself, but the entire context of its
performance as Chicago blues—“By drawing on celebrated images of
Chicago’s authenticity, Dave [a business traveler] consumes the blues club
as a means of experiencing that legacy firsthand, and in some ways, such an
experience overshadows the significance he places on the actual music
performed there” (Grazian 2005:69).
A different consideration of Chicago also shows how the arts can draw
people to a neighborhood, and indeed to transform it relatively rapidly. In
Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City, Richard Lloyd
(2010) traces how one particular neighborhood in Chicago, Wicker Park,
was transformed from a rundown, hardscrabble neighborhood to a hip,
bourgeois destination in large part through the efforts of artists. While we
looked at the subcultural status of this neighborhood’s denizens in Chapter
5, here we should consider how subcultural cache can be commodified.
While some argue that urban spaces have undergone a standardizing
process of “Disneyfication,” wherein different cities are made into
relatively similar playgrounds for adults (Lloyd 2010:129), Lloyd shows us
that the process is somewhat different on the ground in Wicker Park. As
bohemians—artists, poets, musicians, and various other kinds of
nonconformists—moved into the neighborhood, they brought with them
eclectic restaurants, nightclubs, cafes, and various performance spaces. Far
from the chain “Disneyfied” venues like Planet Hollywood or Hard Rock
Café located near Chicago’s downtown Loop, these places pride themselves
on their eclecticism and ties to the local neighborhood community. The
various artists and bohemians who own and staff these venues often deride
“yuppies,” the young urbanite professionals who work in downtown office
buildings as accountants, bond traders, or perhaps in advertising. The
yuppies are perceived as materialists, uninterested in arts or community
values. But Lloyd observes that the yuppies are an essential part of the
economic makeup of the neighborhood, buying art at the galleries, coffee at
the cafes, drinks at the nightclubs that provide the artists with the jobs they
need to pay the rent while they try to make it as artists.
Such patronage is part and parcel of the contemporary city. Lloyd writes
that “the ability of the global city to capture and retain ‘talent’ hinges in
part on responsiveness to the aesthetic dispositions, typically ‘omnivorous’
tastes that include fondness for the Chicago Bulls as well as off-Loop
theater, or at least the idea of off-Loop theater” (Lloyd 2010:130). “Off-
loop” theater is Chicago’s equivalent to off-Broadway: low budget
productions with few if any “name” actors. Here, Lloyd is using it as a
synecdoche for the broader eclectic, off-mainstream arts tendered in
neighborhoods like Wicker Park. The implication is that for many residents
of the contemporary city, such arts are a vital experience, a powerful draw
to a new kind of urbanism.
A similar process is going on in some smaller cities like Albuquerque,
Asheville, and Austin. Joshua Long (2010) looked at the movement to
“Keep Austin Weird” in the face of an influx of well-paid tech workers. The
weirdness of Austin, much like that found by Lloyd in Wicker Park, is tied
to locally owned bars and stores, and also to the arts and music. Austin
particularly has gained renown for its music scene. The storied nightclub
dubbed Armadillo World Headquarters; the long-running PBS music
program Austin City Limits; artists like Steve Miller, Willie Nelson, and
Stevie Ray Vaughan; and the huge South by Southwest music festival all
helped to brand Austin as one of the nation’s premier sites for musical
production. The city in fact calls itself the “Live Music Capital of the
World” (Long 2010:144). Combined with a thriving university and several
tech businesses, the artsy city began to attract a large class of educated,
well-off residents. But it came with a cost:
The Austin mystique attracts new jobs and new immigrants to the city. … The affluent can afford the
rising cost of living and rising property taxes. New residents, attracted by the city’s artistic
idiosyncrasies, end up displacing the musicians, artists, and creative slackers, who are suddenly
forced to spend more time worrying about paying the rent and less time creating music, alleyway
murals, and bizarre yard art displays. (Long 2010:84)

To resist this change, a movement to “Keep Austin Weird”—to retain its

off-kilter, artsy bent—was begun. But Long shows that in general, the
displacement seems almost inevitable.
This new kind of urbanism, with its focus on arts and lifestyles, has
become something of a tail that now wags the dog. Rather than the arts
following behind economic development, or filling in the edges of cities
where the core has been populated by moneymaking concerns, in recent
years, urban leaders have recognized the power of the arts to drive
development. As Lloyd showed in Wicker Park, and Long in Austin, arts
can attract a rich population to a given neighborhood. Others have argued
that the arts can drive talented professionals to choose to live in one city
over another with fewer interesting offerings. In the next section, we will
consider the impact of such thinking on contemporary cities.

THE ARTS AND URBAN PUBLIC POLICY

Beyond the fact that people in cities are clearly making use of cities’ arts
and cultural resources, that experiencing art is for many a crucial dimension
of the experience of the contemporary city, many thinkers are now realizing
that the arts may be in many respects a driver of urban economies. In The
City as an Entertainment Machine, Terry Nichols Clark (2011) details how
this view has come to drive certain aspects of public policy, as economists,
geographers, sociologists, and urban planners become increasingly attuned
to the fact that arts provide destinations for tourist dollars, and drive well-
paid residents to live in certain cities or neighborhoods. This contrasts with
a traditional economic or materialist view that the drivers of urban growth
are primarily work and production (that is, the production of goods or
services or even less tangible products like financial instruments such as
bonds and derivatives). Clark and others focus upon “consumption,
amenities, and culture as drivers of urban policy” (2011:2), and
considerable evidence has mounted to show that these kinds of drivers
really do matter for economic and population growth in cities.
Another leading advocate of this position is Richard Florida. Florida,
particularly in his book The Rise of the Creative Class, argues that a strong
core of creative people is necessary for a city to succeed in today’s
economic and cultural landscape. This so-called creative class includes
artists and musicians, but also people in intellectual careers such as
advertising or even the law. Florida’s studies have demonstrated a link
between the presence of these creatives within a city and rises in income,
employment levels, real estate development, and home values. In general,
Florida identifies at least two mechanisms linking the presence of members
of the creative class to these phenomena.
In part, the link is due to the attraction that people have to the works of
various kinds of artists—art galleries and musical performances are among
the urban amenities that well-off people seek out during their free time. For
example, in a focus group Florida held with a group of people in creative
industries, he questioned how they made locational decisions, such as how
they chose to consider working for a firm in one city over another city.
They told him that among other factors like the natural environment and
community spirit, a quality place has interesting things going on—“street
life, café culture, arts, music, and people engaging in outdoor activities”
(Florida 2002:232). In particular, Florida, like Grazian, focuses on music’s
ability to craft a city’s identity as a home that members of the creative class
enjoy:
Music is a key part of what makes a place authentic, in effect providing a sound or “audio identity.”
Audio identity refers to the identifiable musical genre or sound associated with local bands, clubs and
so on that make up a city’s music scene: blues in Chicago, Motown in Detroit, grunge in Seattle,
Austin’s Sixth Street … Music regularly soundtracks our search for ourselves and for spaces in which
we can feel at home. (Florida 2002:228–229)

Florida also proposes that the presence of artists within a city acts as a
signal that the city is relatively open or welcoming to diverse groups of
people. In essence, signaling such openness broadens the attraction of a city
to diverse populations, including ethnic minorities, immigrants, and
LGBTQ populations. Florida shows, for example, that cities with larger
high-tech economic centers, with firms involved in designing things like
computer hardware and software, also tend to be places that are tolerant of
people who participate in different subcultures. His explanation:
It is not because high-tech industries are populated by great numbers of bohemians and gay people.
Rather, artists, musicians, gay people and the members of the Creative Class in general prefer places
that are open and diverse. Low entry barriers are especially important because today places grow not
just through higher birth rates (in fact virtually all U.S. cities are declining on this measure), but by
their ability to attract people from the outside. (Florida 2002:250)

Interestingly, elsewhere Florida has pointed out that big-ticket, traditional

high-culture venues like operas, symphonies, and large art museums don’t
seem to be highly correlated with a city having a sizeable creative class or
growing tech industry (Florida 2002:71). Rather, more grounded, populist
art creation in small galleries, or local music played at nightclubs, seems to
be the sort of production that goes hand in hand with the general mix of
amenities most attractive to the creative class.
That said, the simplified message that has been received by many cities
inspired by the work of Florida, Clark, and others is that the arts drive
growth. Indeed, municipal leaders can be found touting the message that
they must provide significant support to the arts if the city wishes to
compete in today’s consumer-oriented economy. In a report commissioned
by the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, a group that includes
representatives from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the
United States Conference of Mayors, researchers put an exclamation point
on the enthusiasm many municipalities have for rebuilding cities using arts
and culture amenities (Markusen and Gadwa 2010). The report, entitled
Creative Placemaking, encourages municipal leaders to revitalize places
with attractions like art festivals, galleries, artists’ studios, and theaters. The
authors describe the process of creative placemaking thusly:
Public, private, non-profit, and community sectors strategically shape the physical and social
character of a neighborhood, town, city, or region around arts and cultural activities. Creative
placemaking animates public and private spaces, rejuvenates structures and streetscapes, improves
local business viability and public safety, and brings diverse people together to celebrate, inspire, and
be inspired. In turn, these creative locales foster entrepreneurs and cultural industries that generate
jobs and income, spin off new products and services, and attract and retain unrelated businesses and
skilled workers. Together, creative placemaking’s livability and economic development outcomes
have to potential to radically change the future of American towns and cities. (Markusen and Gadwa
2010:3)

Much of the economic impact described by Markusen and Gadwa in their

report would come from the direct contributions that American arts make to
our exports—by their estimates over $45 million in 2008. They encourage
places to tap into this export market by making places for artists and other
creative individuals. But like Florida, they also point to the indirect effects
the arts have in attracting young, hip, creative workers in hot industries like
software development. To that end, Creative Placemaking includes
numerous recommendations to civic leaders: designing programs that
accentuate distinctive local practices or places (like Grazian’s blues clubs
above); garnering popular support for cultural initiatives; getting financial
support from local private sector actors; forging links between politicians,
business, and artists. Their case studies of places like Paducah, Kentucky,
and Cleveland, Ohio, make it seem like these kind of creative place
initiatives might be panaceas for contemporary American cities.
Saint Petersburg, Florida, provides an interesting case of a city that takes
these kind of messages to heart. In in 2010, the local paper remarked that
the city administration was reading The Rise of the Creative Class. They
noted that the book “made its rounds at St. Petersburg city hall this year,
wending all the way to Mayor Bill Foster’s desk” (Van Sickler 2010). The
city has devoted considerable tax dollars toward trying to polish their image
as an arts city. From 2000 through 2011 the city doled out $3.3 million to
support a range of nonprofit arts groups in the city, including everything
from the city’s Museum of Fine Arts, to children’s theater groups, to a
literary festival at a local college (Dempsey 2011).
In a somewhat extraordinary move, the Saint Petersburg city government
also provided a sizeable contribution to the building of a new space for a
museum devoted to the art of Salvador Dali. After roughly 20 years in its
previous location, the museum secured a new location, closer to downtown,
in 2004. The museum began building an ambitious new home for the
collection without having completed the capital fundraising campaign.
After the economic downturn in 2008, the institution was about $5 million
short of the $36 million needed to complete the already-begun building.
The city made up $2.5 million of that difference, while the rest came from
county funds (Dempsey 2011).
In addition to arguing for the indirect positive effects of generating an
artistic climate, per Florida, Saint Petersburg also commissioned a study
touting the direct benefits of artistic institutions to the local economy,
arguing that these institutions contribute over $23 million to the local
economy each year (Ebrahimpour, Collins, and Corton 2010). Such studies
tend to suggest that the presence of arts institutions in a city significantly
boosts the economy by drawing in people who pay for tickets as well as
giftshop swag and thus payroll a museum staff that pays taxes to the city.
They also assume that the people who visit museums often spend money in
other venues in the city—they may stay overnight at a hotel, purchase
souvenirs at local shops, and eat their meals at downtown restaurants. The
generation of this additional money is referred to as a “multiplier effect,”
so-called because the dollars spent at the museum are “multiplied” when
patrons also spend money at other venues. While some multiplier effects are
certainly plausible, a number of economists have serious doubts about their
accuracy (Markusen and Schrock 2006; Seaman 1987). They point out that
a significant proportion of the money included in multiplier effects may
have been spent in the city anyway—if a couple comes to Saint Petersburg
to visit their Aunt Bea, the trip to the museum may just be an aside. They
could have gone on a fishing trip or to the movies instead, and in any case,
would have had to buy food and stay at a hotel because there is no guest
room in Aunt Bea’s condo.
But regardless of the voices of doubters, it is undeniable that Saint
Petersburg is far from alone among cities who see the arts as the key to
future economic prosperity. At Chicago’s Cultural Policy Center,
researchers found that there was a “boom” in the building of museums,
theaters, and performing arts centers in U.S. cities from the 1990s through
the 2000s, especially between 1998 and 2001 (Woronkowicz et al. 2012).
The motivations for such buildings were diverse—while some were built
because a symphony or a ballet felt that they could not perform up to world-
class standards in the existing facilities to which they had access, others
were clearly built out of a motivation to positively impact the surrounding
community. In some cases that meant using a performing arts center to try
to boost a neighborhood with a flagging economy. Looking specifically at
multi-use performing arts centers, the authors noted that
a large majority of these projects used economic impact arguments as rationales for building.
Included in these arguments was the implicit assumption that by building a cultural facility in a
blighted area, it would automatically attract and sustain a substantial audience who would not
otherwise have ventured there. (Woronkowicz et al. 2012:21)

Unfortunately, they also found that “[n]ine times out of ten, these
assumptions were not accurately tested, and when the facility project was
completed, the desired swarm of activity never materialized”
(Woronkowicz et al. 2012:21–22).
Other cities, like Roanoke, Virginia, had even loftier goals. Wishing to
emulate the so-called “Bilbao effect,” where the Frank Gehry-designed
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, ignited a cultural and economic
renaissance for that city, some American cities spent big on large, flashy
museums. In Roanoke that meant spending $68 million to expand the
Taubman Museum of Art into an “architectural landmark so as to redefine
the city’s identity and boost economic development” (Woronkowicz et al.
2012:26). Unfortunately, the museum, not unlike Saint Petersburg’s Dali,
was not able to raise adequate funds to pay for this renovation. This led to
operating budgets in the red, drastic increases in admissions feeds, and
extensive layoffs.
Overall, the researchers from the Cultural Policy Center found that
between 1994 and 2008, there were 725 arts-oriented building projects with
values over $4 million each, projects that either enhanced the facilities of an
existing institution or built a new institution altogether. The median cost of
these projects was $11.3 million, and the total expenditure on these projects
was over $15.5 billion (Woronkowicz et al. 2012:9). Though enthusiasm for
these projects was always high at the start, the effects the projects have had
on their cities were quite mixed.
With respect to how the projects were funded, perhaps the best
immediate measure of the fiscal impact a project has on a city, the
researchers found that, in a subsample of projects, 60 percent of funding
came from outside sources such as foundation grants. Those projects
represent a direct injection of money to a local economy, but we must also
note that 40 percent of those funds came from local sources that would
likely have been put to different uses close to home. To measure broader
community effects, the authors surveyed 444 different arts organizations
about the impact that new building projects had on their cities. Though the
respondents in these organizations might be expected to be strong boosters
for arts spending, the results of the survey were decidedly mixed. While 88
percent of respondents agreed that a new project “makes the city a more
attractive place to live,” less than 70 percent saw the projects as having an
overall positive impact on the community (Woronkowicz et al. 2012:28–
29). And ultimately only 23 percent of respondents “believed the project
opening was the key cause of new businesses in the area” (29).
 Such results are surely disappointing to those who read of Florida’s or
Clark’s findings, and believe that arts are a sort of silver bullet that can kill
a city’s woes and promote a city to the creative class. But a closer read of
Florida’s work suggests that art is part of a total package—a city needs
various amenities to attract people, and often the institutions that draw or
keep the creative class are longstanding organizations like colleges and
universities (Florida 2002). More pointedly, economic geographer Enrico
Moretti has criticized narrow readings of Florida’s perspective and
municipal leaders who invest heavily in art while paying inadequate
attention to other economic sectors. He writes:
Florida’s prescription became a popular remedy as scores of public officials and local policymakers
embraced the idea that public redevelopment resources should be mainly focused on improving city
amenities to attract the “creative.” Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent and are still being
spent in communities across America, from Pittsburgh to Detroit, Cleveland to Mobile. … It is
certainly true that cities that have built a solid economic base in the innovation sector are often lively,
interesting, and culturally open-minded. However, it is important to distinguish cause from effect.
The history of successful innovation clusters suggests that in many cases, cities became attractive
because they succeeded in building a solid economic base. (Moretti 2012:142)

Moretti goes on to cite examples—Seattle developed as a tech

powerhouse before it became a really cool place. Austin had a strong
educational sector long before the Sixth Street scene gained national
notoriety. Despite big and splashy cultural institutions, Cleveland still
wallows in economic stagnation. Internationally, Berlin is awash in
interesting cultural offerings, from late night dance clubs to multiple
orchestras and zoos—but it suffers from higher unemployment than
anywhere else in Germany (Moretti 2012:144). Moretti does not deny that
the arts are an important part of the mix of a successful city—certainly the
most successful cities, from San Francisco to Boston to New York, have
amazing art scenes—but his findings suggest that the arts cannot act alone
to revitalize a place. Where an economic base thrives, the arts will thrive as
well.

CONCLUSION
Even if the arts do not provide a miracle cure to cities that are lagging
economically, it is clear that for many city dwellers, the arts are vital to the
experience of urban life. Not only have cities proven to be key sites in the
production of art, providing artists with dense networks of like-minded
artists as well as institutions that support their creativity. Cities have acted
as the hubs for presenting the arts to the public, from grand, well-financed
venues such as fine art museums, operas, theaters, and symphonies to small
galleries, cafés, and nightclubs presenting experimental drama and music.
While our review of art worlds in cities has given us a sense that art has a
long history in the cities, it is clear that its role in a postindustrial society is
perhaps more important than ever. Now we witness the active plannings of
arts districts, and the expenditure of remarkable sums to make cities into
arts destinations, aiming to attract both well-off residents and tourists.
Though the results of such efforts to spur growth through the arts are mixed,
it is clear that this developmental strategy is a major force that will change
the face of cities for years to come.
In Chapter 10 we must consider still other powerful demographic,
political, and cultural forces that are reshaping cities. Perhaps the
outstanding cultural transition in the United States since the 1940s has been
the suburbanization of the country. There has been so much population
movement to the suburbs since World War II that many have wondered
whether older cities can survive, or whether we even need cities at all in a
society so infused by information technologies. Social scientists have been
obliged to consider the consequences for American cities as we move into a
postindustrial era. In Chapter 10 we focus on suburbanization and the
problems it has created for many cities, as well as evidence that cities may
be becoming more vital than ever to contemporary society. As social
scientists who see the health of the nation as inseparable from the well-
being of cities, we will need to think pragmatically about how to ensure a
vibrant future for our cities.
 CHAPTER 10

New Urban Dynamics: Gentrification,

Suburbanization, Globalization, and the
Federal Divestiture

Throughout Being Urban, we have worked to demonstrate a fairly simple

thesis: that life in cities constitutes a special form of human existence.
Though we have shown throughout the text that various social forces affect
our experiences in cities, we have also worked to show that it is small-scale
interactions that form the greater structures that constitute city life. Those
interactions take place in finite communities, for the poor as well as the
rich, in ways conditioned by gender and race, on street corners, in art
galleries and nightclubs, at sports stadiums, and at the corner bodega.
We have also found a great deal of continuity in how city life affects
people’s interactions. From the earliest writings of Simmel or Park to
contemporary analyses of gentrifying neighborhoods and nightlife, we have
observed that cities bring together diverse groups of people who must
negotiate a public order. In so doing, they often pursue a more cosmopolitan
outlook than their rural or exurban counterparts, and—excepting those most
isolated in poor neighborhoods—enjoy access to a broad range of
opportunities: economic, culinary, diversionary, or otherwise.
 That said, a further key dimension of cities is that they are in a constant
state of change. Of course, Park and Burgess recognized this early on, as
they discussed the changes that occurred in each of their concentric rings as
cities grew, as some neighborhoods grew in size or value, as other areas
declined. Though we do not see cities changing in the same way that they
tended to in the 1920s when Park and Burgess observed them, we can point
to certain characteristic dimensions of change we can observe in many
cities in the early part of the twenty-first century.
In this chapter, we detail several of what sociologists believe are the most
important dynamics affecting cities today. First, we discuss globalization—
the increased interconnectedness of economies, information, and culture on
a global scale. The dynamics of globalization have fundamentally
transformed cities: some have become centers for a new economic order,
some industrial cities like Detroit have lost much of their productive
economy to foreign nations, and increased transnational flows have also
ignited new waves of migration. Second, we address the increased
inequality in cities. While inequality has been on the rise since the 1970s, it
appears particularly pronounced in cities, and is often especially notable in
a job structure that is bifurcated between highly compensated skilled
service professions and unskilled service jobs that barely pay subsistence
wages. Next, we consider issues of federal divestiture from financing urban
programs in the United States. Where once cities could rely on a relatively
great degree of support from the national tax base, that is no longer the
case. Fourth, we consider the resilience of mid-sized cities. Often forgotten
in urban sociologies, or consigned to failure as being unable to compete in a
global economy, some researchers are finding that mid-sized cities are in
fact quite viable, and may even be an ideal size for many of the functions of
a postindustrial economy. Finally, we consider the movement of the U.S.
population in and out of inner-city areas and suburbs. Where once we
observed massive out-migration from cities to suburbs, that trend has
recently reversed. And where we could once assume that suburbs were
reasonably well-to-do, we have in recent years observed the rise of low-
income suburbs.
Let us first turn to our consideration of globalization. This greater
interconnectedness across the globe, in particular in the economic sphere,
has powerful implications for all the other changes we discuss in this
conclusion.
GLOBALIZATION
Perhaps the foremost force changing our urban dynamics is globalization.
The forces of globalization have been with us for centuries—Marx already
understood that capital was a force that could obliterate national
boundaries:
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to
production and consumption in every country. … In place of the old local and national seclusion and
self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. (Marx
and Engels 1948:12–13)

In recent years, this universal interdependence of nations has become

nothing if not more pronounced. The global ramifications of the United
States’ mortgage crisis, natural gas disruptions in the Russia-Ukraine
dispute, or of Greece’s credit crisis have shown us all that economies
worldwide are inextricably linked.
Some commentators, like geographer David Harvey (2006), see the
global economy trending toward greater regionalization, as international
governmental associations take a larger role in regulating economic
transactions and as capital seeks new markets—both of labor and for
commodities—and new supply chains. Harvey posits that capital functions
more or less the same the world over, and seeks these markets and supplies
in order to counter the inevitable shocks produced by overproduction (as
evinced in the housing crisis) or, less frequently, shortages. He also notes
that certain cities have gained particular importance in these recent
reshufflings of economic organization. Of the ramifications for places,
Harvey writes:
Capitalistic hegemonic power has steadily shifted scales over time from the Italian City States (like
Venice and Genoa), through the intermediate organizational forms of Holland and Britain, and,
finally, to the United States. The most recent bout of capitalist globalization has been accompanied
by strong currents of reterritorialization reflecting changing transportation and scale pressures.
Organizations like the European Union, NAFTA, Mercosur, have become more salient at the same
time as urban regions (like Catalonia) and in some instances even quasi-city states (Singapore and
Hong Kong) have become vigorous centers of capitalist endeavor. … Traditional nation-states have
become … much more porous (particularly with respect to capital flow) and they have in some
important respects changed their functions (mainly towards the neo-liberal goal of establishing a
“good business climate” …). (Harvey 2006:105–106)

Harvey’s analysis suggests that the role of cities has changed considerably
during these latter waves of globalization. While some places now function
quasi-independently, almost as city-states, it is clear that the nation-state
grants cities more direct access to global in general. In a world where
economic focus is trained on the regional level, cities may not be able to
rely on a place in a national economic system. Nor may they rely on the
assistance of a national government in their own times of fiscal crisis, if
indeed the nation-state is more concentrated on aiding capitalist
accumulation than on maintaining the welfare of the polity.
Saskia Sassen’s research has further investigated the effects of
globalization on cities throughout the world (Sassen 2001, 2012). Sassen,
rather than focusing on capitalism in general as Harvey does, points
specifically to the effects of high finance on changing urban dynamics. She
notes that the tertiary sector of the economy—the service sector—has
grown rapidly in all places in the world since the 1970s. She notes that the
part of the tertiary sector that deals in services to high finance has grown
particularly rapidly. These so-called “producer services” include “legal,
financial, advertising, consulting, and accounting services” (Sassen
2012:129). While we might imagine that as this sector has taken off, cities
in general would matter less: if the important parts of the economy are
concentrated in knowledge work, on services that may be performed at the
click of a button or consultations over a conference call, won’t corporations
simply move their offices to far-flung suburbs where the rents are cheap?
Sassen’s answer is a resounding “No.”
In fact, Sassen finds that certain cities have gained a more important role
than, perhaps, they ever have in terms of their contribution to the global
economy. She dubs a number of such cities “Global Cities,” and describes
them thusly:
Global cities are strategic sites for the management of the global economy and the production of the
most advanced services and financial operations that have become key inputs for that work of
managing global economic operations. The growth of international investment and trade and the need
to finance and service such activities have fed the growth of these functions in major cities … [I]t is
precisely the combination of geographic dispersal of economic activities with simultaneous system
integration that gave cities a strategic role in the current phase of the world economy. (Sassen
2012:34–35)

Sassen shows that these high-level services work best when they are
nearby to each other in space. But she also discusses the important caveat
that only certain cities can take on this role of the global city. In the United
States, such successful cities include New York, Chicago, and Miami.
These cities concentrate banks, corporate headquarters, and the various
producer services they demand. On the other hand, old industrial cities in
the United States and Europe that do not have strong ties to the global
economy have fallen behind. This is not simply a coincidence. Sassen
observes that the same globalization that makes New York so important as a
financial hub also allows industrial concerns like car companies to use
foreign labor to craft their goods. Thus, she writes that “when Detroit lost
many of its manufacturing jobs, New York City gained specialized service
jobs. This was in response to the work of major auto manufacturing
headquarters becoming increasingly complicated and the increased demand
for state-of-the-art legal, accounting, finance, and insurance advice” (Sassen
2012:34).
This bifurcation of cities engendered by globalization is necessary for
contemporary and future urbanists to understand the new dynamics of city
systems (though, as we will see below, it may be a bit overstated). A further
dynamic of globalization affecting cities is the increased participation of
immigrants in the fabric of urban life. While this was commonplace to
observe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and helped
spark early interest in urban sociology as we saw in Chapter 3, immigration
subsided notably for most of the last century. Within the last 30 or so years,
however, global dynamics have once more encouraged a profound increase
in immigration worldwide. In the United States, particularly after the
relaxation of immigration quotas in 1965, immigration dramatically
increased. In particular, the United States saw substantial waves of
immigrants from Latin America and Asia, amounting to about 11 million
immigrants in the 1990s (Fischer and Hout 2006). As of 2010, the U.S.
Census estimated that about 40 million Americans were foreign born,
roughly 13 percent of the population (Grieco et al. 2012). While an
increasing proportion of those immigrants are settling in the United States’
hinterland (Wuthnow 2013), cities are still the primary destination for most
immigrants. Sassen has pointed out that they form a significant proportion
of the many low-wage jobs that serve the very well-paid workers in the
producer services industry in global cities (Sassen 2001). But immigrants
also form an increasingly important part of the fabric of many smaller
cities, like Nashville. Unused to this new diversity, such cities are faced
with important challenges in incorporating new communities into the fabric
of urban life (Winders 2013).
BIFURCATION OF THE JOB STRUCTURE
As we detailed in Chapter 7, good jobs for working-class people have
been fleeing cities for almost 50 years now. While authors like Richard
Florida tout the rise of a “creative class” of knowledge workers who are
highly paid and experience a great level of autonomy in their positions
(Florida 2002), others point to the increasingly desperate situation
experienced by working-class laborers (for example, Newman 1999;
Venkatesh 2006). As good-paying jobs in manufacturing have disappeared,
inner-city workers with poor educational credentials are left with few
decent options for earning money. The jobs that are open to them run from
work in fast food restaurants to jobs in the shadow economy, such as
providing childcare at home, to outright illicit activities such as drug
dealing.
We may argue that this is in fact a structural part of the contemporary
urban economy. Sassen has pointed to this in her work on the global city: as
manufacturing jobs have disappeared, global cities concentrate not only
those very well-paid jobs in producer services. They also demand low-paid
service work—anything from the baristas who serve coffee to accountants,
to office building cleaning staff, to the nannies that allow executive moms
to return to work soon after having children (Sassen 2012). John Koval
writes of the effects this has on the urban economy:
As wrenching as the transformation from a manufacturing economy to a service- and information-
based economy may be—in terms of occupational obsolescence, re-training, learning new
occupational and economic systems, and the like—it might well be tolerable if the middle-class
lifestyle of the majority could be maintained. This does not appear to be the case. Wage gaps and
increasing inequality in the economy have been an item of public discussion and media focus for
some time now. The economic hourglass of the new economy greatly exacerbates that trend. (Koval
2006:5)

Without some sustained public policy response to the challenges of this

extremely disparate distribution of wealth and income in our cities, there
can be little doubt that many children will continue to grow up in dangerous
neighborhoods, with poor educational chances and poor life chances.
Without significant interventions from the public and private sectors, those
children will grow up to face the same hopeless lives filled with deprivation
and despair faced by their parents. Some cities are facing up to this task.
In Seattle, Washington, D.C., Santa Fe, and San Francisco, local
governments have implemented significant raises to the minimum wage,
ranging up to $15 per hour in Seattle by 2018 (Wallace 2014). Though some
commentators worry that such increases in wages will cause businesses to
lay off workers or take their business to lower wage cities, evidence so far
has suggested that this scenario has not obtained. Reviewing the effects of
over 10 years of raised minimum wages in San Francisco, Arindrajit Dube
notes that “[t]hat city currently requires a minimum wage of $10.55 per
hour for all workers within city limits and this new minimum wage has
raised pay in the bottom of the distribution. Yet employment growth does
not appear to have been adversely affected in that city relative to its
surrounding areas, even in a high-impact sector like restaurants” (Dube
2014:141).
Again, such moves are not uncontroversial. Many in the business
community strongly oppose increasing wages, and there is a certain logic to
the argument that business can simply look elsewhere. On the other hand,
we clearly cannot afford to simply allow generations to trickle to the bottom
of the economic hourglass. For many urban residents, the status quo is
simply not good enough, and will not ensure the production of a viable
urban United States in the years to come.

FEDERAL DIVESTITURE
In part, the need to solve urban problems at the municipal level has been
engendered by a radical degree of divestiture from urban spending by the
federal government. Until the 1980s, the federal government played a
significant role in urban finances, through various block grants and by
funding agencies like the Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD), which worked to enhance housing options for poor people. Since
the Reagan administration, however, the funds made available to cities from
the federal government have steadily declined. In part, this reflects a move
away from cities and toward suburbs by the American population—and
politicians tend to steer tax dollars toward the places where their
constituencies live. In part, this also represents a more general change in
political philosophy in the United States, toward a privatization of public
problems.
An example of such privatization can be found in our policies for
housing the worst-off poor. The federal government was once directly
involved in providing housing for poor Americans, particularly in cities.
Through HUD, numerous projects replaced dilapidated tenement housing
through the 1950s and 1960s. Unfortunately, much of it was poorly
designed, and the maintenance of projects was often underfunded, to the
extent that by the 1970s, some of these projects were already being
demolished (see, for example, Hyra 2008; Jacobs 1961; Logan and Molotch
2007). The names of some of these projects, like Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis or
Cabrini Green in Chicago, still induce cringes in residents of those cities
who remember the crime, broken windows, and broken dreams associated
with these failed projects. Beginning in the 1970s, and expanded
considerably since then, the federal government largely replaced its place as
a home builder with the provision of housing vouchers, often known as
“Section 8.” Thus, many of the former dwellers of housing projects are
allowed to seek apartments on the private market. However, the unfortunate
reality for many of those who receive the vouchers is that they do not
provide adequate money to rent housing in middle-class neighborhoods.
Further, landlords may reject applications from potential tenants who
receive the vouchers, either fearing additional burdens of government
inspections of housing quality or fearing the stigmatized population of aid
recipients. Thus, recipients often cannot escape neighborhoods of chronic
poverty, and continue to lose the chance to strive for a better life (Hyra
2008).
More general federal funding for community development has also
declined. One key federal support for cities comes in the form of the
Community Development Block Grant (CDBG). Begun during the Nixon
era, these grants were used for various projects to enhance cities. Grants in
the program are given directly to municipal governments, and those
governments have a great degree of leeway in choosing how to spend the
money. Thus, it can pay for anything from capital improvement projects
like streetscaping or park building to neighborhood community
organizations. (Of course, the program is not without its abuses, as Ferman
found in Chicago, where the grants were used to maintain structures of
political patronage (Ferman 1996).) These grants have been declining since
the 1980s (Finegold, Wherry, and Schardin 2004), and continued their
decline in the Obama administration. In 2011, the New York Times
chronicled the impact of declining block grants in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
The article noted that in that year, “the federal government is giving out just
$2.9 billion—a billion dollars less than it gave [in 2009], and even less than
it gave during the Carter administration, when the money went much
farther” (Cooper 2011:A16). In cities like Allentown, a once-thriving steel
town that has seen its tax base decline precipitously in the wake of
globalization, the shrinking of block grants means a reduction in their
abilities to provide basic city services like home inspections. Services to the
poor, such as after-school education and mental health services, also were
cut. Any efforts to rebuild the community into a more attractive place for
the creative class were also curtailed by the loss in funds. The mayor
ruefully observed that the city’s block grant funds “really helped us limit
blight, and rebuilt some of our poorest neighborhoods. … With the
continual reduction of this funding, we’re able to do less and less” (Cooper
2011:A16).
Though the overall story of our nation’s commitment to urban problems
thus appears bleak, there is at least one noteworthy exception: help to the
homeless. Homelessness attained epidemic proportions in the 1980s, as cuts
to mental health facilities coupled with job losses in industrial businesses
literally put many people on the street, especially in deindustrialized cities.
However, attention to the problem at the local, state, and federal level has
meant that since roughly 1988, homelessness has been on the decline in the
United States. The Obama administration has enacted a “Federal Strategic
Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness,” since 2010, and evidence from
both the federal government and homeless advocates suggest that, though
we are far from beating homelessness altogether, we have made significant
inroads in combatting homelessness. For example, a government report
notes that the “number of individuals experiencing chronic homelessness
declined by 16 percent, or 17,219 people, between 2010 and 2013” (U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development 2013:3). It is in that
population—the chronically homeless—as well as the population of
homeless veterans that declines have been greatest (National Alliance to
End Homelessness 2013). While we continue to see a disturbing total
number of homeless people at any given time—over 600,000 in 2013—the
good news is that few of those people will remain homeless for even one
year (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 2013).

THE RESILIENCE OF SMALL- AND MID-SIZED CITIES

With all our discussion of cities like Allentown and Detroit, with the
focus of authors like Sassen on the importance of fewer, bigger cities that
are central to the global network of finance, it may be tempting to write off
smaller cities as obsolete relics of a bygone era. This would be a mistake. In
fact, some of our most vibrant and sustainable urban places are cities of less
than 1 million people.
If the findings of Richard Florida that we discussed in Chapter 9
regarding the attraction of workers in the best-paid industries to cities ripe
with amenities like arts institutions, entertainment venues, and access to
natural beauty are correct, we should not be surprised that certain smaller
cities are poised for success. Thus, among the places that score high on
Florida’s “creativity index,” alongside the big cities in dense regions like
San Francisco, Atlanta, and Boston, we find smaller, relatively isolated
cities like Albuquerque and Madison, Wisconsin. These cities all rank high
on the proportion of residents who are in creative occupations, on the
number of patents filed per capita, the size of the local technology industry,
and the size of the local gay population (a proxy measure of tolerance in
general) (Florida 2002). Though these cities are clearly not participating as
control centers of the global economy, it is clear that they are successful by
other means—including a strong emphasis on fostering educational
facilities and on home-grown arts communities.
Jon Norman, a sociologist inspired by his experiences growing up in
another smaller city—Green Bay, Wisconsin—has investigated the
divergent fates of the United States’ small- and mid-sized cities in his book
Small Cities, USA. As a “small” city, Norman focuses on those cities with
populations between 100,000 and 200,000 people that the Census defined
as centers of metro areas. While he finds that there are certainly cities that
have suffered through an inability to compete in a postindustrial world,
others are doing just fine, even continuing to grow. Summarizing how these
cities fit into the national and international arenas, Norman writes:
Smaller places have some of the same economic characteristics that global cities possess, and they
also function as the center of local regional areas. However, smaller cities are generally not
significant players in the international arena. Instead, these smaller places are perhaps best thought of
as “glocal cities” … places that are most successful because they look like global cities in terms of
economic diversity and activities, but operate on a much more local level, be it regional or national.
(Norman 2013:9)

He also notes that though they may not function as the central command
hubs of the global economy in the way that Sassen’s global cities do, they
are still important places for large firms in the United States: in Norman’s
study, 20–40 percent of the smaller cities he studied acted at some point as
home to a Fortune 500 company (Norman 2013:9). And he further shows
that while some cities certainly benefit from embracing the kind of new
economy jobs highlighted by Florida and others, older manufacturing
industries can be compatible with continued success.
Norman writes that places like his old home town of Green Bay are still
relatively successful, despite the fact that they have held on to their role as
manufacturing cities. In Green Bay that has meant continued devotion to
the paper industry, while diversifying into high-end services, “mostly from
growing firms such as AMS (an insurance firm) and Humana (a managed
health care company” (Norman 2013:127). But, of course, certain other
cities are certainly struggling. He notes that poverty is on the rise in
Providence, Rhode Island, while the population stagnates. That city has lost
work in the higher-end service industries as well as seeing the decline of
older manufacturing work in metals and jewelry production.

SUBURBANIZATION, GENTRIFICATION, AND CHURNING

In our previous edition of Being Urban, we focused a great deal of
attention on processes of suburbanization. As the economy of Western
nations moved away from manufacturing in the 1970s and 1980s, many
urbanists were concerned that we may see the death of cities. Suburbs
appeared to provide the right setting for newer, higher-end service
businesses. Earlier writers like Park and Burgess saw manufacturing
businesses locating near central city areas because they provided dense
transportation networks that bring raw materials for assembly, and later
deliver assembled products to markets. They benefitted as well from dense
populations of unskilled workers—without access to cars—who provided
cheap labor. As manufacturing jobs went offshore, it made sense that the
service businesses would locate in suburbs: they had no need for
transporting bulky items. Their business was insurance policies and banking
transactions, business that could be conducted through the mail or,
increasingly, electronically. Their more skilled employees drove to work,
commuting on interstates largely built by the federal government. Those
employees lived in those same suburbs in single-family, detached homes
subsidized by the GI Bill, government-guaranteed mortgages, and tax
rebates for mortgage interest payments.
As those suburbs grew, unskilled workers were left behind in the inner
city. As we saw in many of the studies described throughout this book
(particularly in Chapter 7), those left behind were often the most
impoverished members of ethnic minority groups, especially African-
Americans and Latinos (see, for example, Duneier 1999; Pattillo 2008;
Sampson, Morenoff, and Gannon-Rowley 2002; Venkatesh 2006; Wacquant
2008; Wilson 2009; Wilson and Taub 2006). Certainly some cities have
proven, so far, to be unable to bounce back from the decline that came with
deindustrialization. LeDuff’s (2013) renderings of Detroit make clear that
the city is over the brink, and may never bounce back from its abandonment
by Big Auto and the failure of its leaders to make a successful transition to
new industries.
But other cities and suburbs are now following quite different narratives.
In some instances, we can see urban core areas in postindustrial cities being
revitalized by new development. As work like Hyra’s (2008) shows, areas
of certain cities that had once been centers for dilapidated housing, poverty,
and crime can undergo the process of gentrification. These areas, like
Bronzeville in Chicago and Harlem in New York, are now residential
destinations for well-paid workers in the knowledge economy. Where once
we may have expected such workers to flee to the suburbs, cities are now
(again) seen as highly desirable places for people to live, even raise
families, during the prime years of their lives.
This is not to say that suburbs are on their way out—far from it. Overall,
demographic trends in the United States still favor suburbs overall, at least
in terms of population growth. It is certainly still true that the average
American does not live within the boundaries of a central city, but rather
within a suburban municipality. Nor is it to say that inner-city areas are
being entirely purged of the poor. They continue to be shifted in many
places to intraurban neighborhoods that have seen declines in the quality of
housing stock, as well as aging residents (see Wilson and Taub 2006).
But it is rather to say that the dynamics of urban change have changed.
Just 20 or 30 years ago it appeared to many of us that big American (and
European) cities were failing. In their place, the suburbs had risen—or
“Edge Cities” to use Joel Garreau’s (1991) term for sprawling suburban
centers like Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, or Schaumburg, Illinois, smaller cities
just outside Washington, D.C., and Chicago, respectively. In the book of the
same name, Garreau comes off as quite certain that the downtowns of big
American cities are dead. In their place, the United States had reinvented
itself around these new kinds of places, home to shopping malls, low-rise
office complexes, industrial parks, and some higher-end residential
neighborhoods. Given the dynamics of suburban growth and urban decline
that characterized the nation for the 40 or so years prior to the 1990s, the
thesis seemed pretty reasonable. But the subsequent 20 years have shown
that it wasn’t quite right.
While suburbs have continued to grow, inner cities have bounced back,
sometimes in unlikely places. In Chicago, for example, by the early 1990s,
State Street in the downtown area had become a shadow of its former self.
Once it had been heralded in song as “that Great Street,” but now it was not
so great. While certain department stores like Marshall Fields and Carson
Pirie Scott held on, many storefronts, like F. W. Woolworths were shuttered,
and others housed down-market retailers of discount clothes and handbags.
The street was closed to most traffic, and often had the feel of an abandoned
shopping mall. But over the course of the late 1990s and 2000s, State
Street, along with the rest of downtown Chicago, experienced a
considerable renaissance. New retailers like Old Navy moved in, old
storefronts were revitalized, the long-vacant Block 37 was developed, and
as a further sign of the times, the Pacific Garden Mission, a former beacon
to skid row denizens, was moved to make way for a college prep academy.
Chicago’s story is not unique. Though similar turnarounds have not been
experienced in every rust-belt city, enough places have seen center cities
redevelop since the 1990s that urbanists are taking note. One journalist,
Alan Ehrenhalt, has referred to the process as the “Great Inversion.” It is an
inversion in the sense that, where for most of the post-World War II era we
saw people fleeing cities for suburban homes, downtowns have grown since
the 1990s. In an interview with Richard Florida, Ehrenhalt described the
inversion thusly:
The inversion is a trading of places within major metropolitan areas. For the past half-century, we’ve
gotten used to thinking of central cities as enclaves of the poor, and suburbs as refuges of the affluent.
But in the past decade, suburbs have become the entry points in which immigrants settle when they
first arrive in a metro area, while the center—in places such as Washington, Atlanta, Chicago, and
Boston—have become magnets for a largely affluent and professional class of young adults in their
20s and 30s. In Atlanta, virtually no newcomers from foreign countries settle within the city limits
anymore; they all go to suburbs like Gwinnett and Cobb counties. Meanwhile, neighborhoods in the
center are gaining population and becoming more expensive to live in. (Florida 2012:n.p.)

To be clear, we should be careful not to overstate the degree of inversion

we see here. To observe that central cities are once again growing is not to
say that suburbs are now shrinking. They are, in fact, still growing. They
continued to outpace the growth of central cities for the first decade of the
twenty-first century, though both suburbs and cities grew substantially in
the 1990s and 2000s (Frey 2012). But interestingly, cities do appear to be
growing faster than the suburbs in the first few years of the 2010s. Driven
in part by uncertainty in the housing market, and in part by the attraction of
the Millennial generation to cities, people have moved to cities faster than
they have moved to suburbs since 2010. Studying the latest census data,
William Frey observes that
many cities have gained more people in the three-plus years since the 2010 Census than they gained
for the entire previous decade. This includes three of the five largest cities, New York, Philadelphia
and Chicago (which lost population in the previous decade). Among the 25 largest cities, nine are
already ahead of their previous decade’s gains, including Dallas, Denver, Memphis, San Francisco,
San Jose and Washington, D.C. (Frey 2014:n.p.)

Frey goes on to note that, though suburban growth outpaced cities from
2000 to 2010, “this changed in the each of the three subsequent years. In
2012–2013, 19 of the 51 major metropolitan areas showed faster primary
city than suburb growth including New York, Washington D.C., Denver and
Seattle” (Frey 2014:np). Suburbs are still growing, just at a more modest
rate of about a half percent per year, as opposed to around 1 percent in
cities.
Finally, it is worth noting that the dynamics of suburban population
changes have changed in the last 20 or so years. Historically suburbs have
been the province of the middle classes, and often of whites: Herbert Gans’s
sociological classic The Levittowners explores a suburban development that
was all white by design, not uncommon through the 1960s (Gans 1967).
But now many of those suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s are filled with old,
sometimes dilapidated housing stock. The middle class has moved on, some
back toward the central city, some to newer suburbs or older, more affluent
suburbs with better housing stock. Bernadette Hanlon, in her book Once the
American Dream, has chronicled the decline of these inner-ring suburbs:
“Once the bastion of the middle-class lifestyle, many older inner-ring
suburban communities, especially those built in the immediate postwar
period, have declined into places of desolation and decay” (Hanlon
2010:18). This desolation and decay generally goes along with an overall
decline in population, increases in poverty, and increases in the size of the
minority population. Concomitantly, these suburbs have lost the tax base
needed to make capital improvements to make their communities more
attractive, safer places to live.
Poor blacks and Latinos who have been pushed out by gentrification
from inner cities have apparently found homes in these old inner suburbs,
and the problems of racism, poverty, and joblessness that we observed
plaguing inner cities in Chapter 7 have, in some cities, been exported to
their suburbs. One stark example of such a suburb is Ferguson, Missouri.
Ferguson is an inner-ring suburb like those detailed in Hanlon’s study. And
it has experienced a movement toward poverty and to a black majority in
recent years. A New York Times article notes that “in 1980, the town was 85
percent white and 14 percent black; by 2010, it was 29 percent white and 69
percent black” (The Death of Michael Brown 2014:A22). Yet the powers of
segregation have meant that the remaining white homeowners retain control
of the local political structures. Blacks have moved into rental properties,
and often have not yet come to participate in the political process. This is
reflected in the fact that Ferguson has just three black officers on a 53-
person police force, and five of six city council members, the police chief,
and mayor are all white (The Death of Michael Brown 2014). As most
readers will know, in the summer of 2014, the stark divisions of race and
poverty played out on the streets of Ferguson. Following the shooting death
of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, at the hands of a white police
officer, the suburb played host to weeks of riots protesting racial and
economic injustices. In the Washington Post, Peter Dreier and Todd
Swanstrom worried that these, the first large-scale suburban riots in the U.S.
history, might be a harbinger of things to come:
Today, about 40 percent of the nation’s 46 million poor live in suburbs, up from 20 percent in 1970.
These communities (often inner-ring suburbs) are beset with problems once associated with big
cities: unemployment (especially among young men), crime, homelessness and inadequate schools
and public services. Their populations are disproportionately black and Latino.
Ferguson is a microcosm of these problems and how they can erupt. But without major reforms,
the current upheaval may be the first in a wave of suburban riots. (Dreier and Swanstrom 2014:n.p.)

We can hope that they are wrong. But as sociologists, we believe that their
analysis of the available data is all too right. Without some comprehensive
public policy interventions to give greater voice to minorities in these
suburbs, without jobs to occupy the hands of poor young men and women,
and without hope of a better tomorrow, the future of these inner-ring
suburbs, and the inner-city ghettoes that persist in many cities, is indeed
bleak.
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 Index

Abbott, Andrew, 54
Abrahamson, Mark, 129, 257–59
Addams, Jane, 159, 261–62
Albuquerque, 265, 281
Alienation, 11
Allentown, Pennsylvania, 280
Anderson, Elijah, 197
Anderson, Nels, 60, 62, 160
Anomie, 20, 78
Anonymity: city as world of strangers and, 92–94; freedom and, 121; intimate, 101, 118; norms of
noninvolvement and, 98–100; shared social knowledge and, 101; social production of, 117–18;
sports and, 245–48; suspension of rules of, 110, 117; urban overload and, 97
Antigovernment impulse, 213
Aries, Philippe, 230–31
Armstrong, Elizabeth A., 134
Arond, Henry, 240
Arts: arts-oriented cities and, 265–66, 269–70; as big business, 251, 252; budgetary appropriations
for, 250; building boom for, 270–71; cities as centers of entertainment and, 262–63; class and, 255,
256, 262, 267–68; classical versus popular, 267–68; commodification and, 264; community for
artists and, 260; consumption of, 255, 261–66; creative class and, 266–69, 271; creative
placemaking and, 268; distribution of, 253–54; diversity and, 267; economic development and,
266; in European cities, 255–58, 272; gentrification and, 260, 265–66; importance of for cities,
261–62, 272; multiplier effect of revenue from, 269; music in cities’ identity and, 265–66, 267;
neighborhood art scenes and, 252, 259–61, 264–65; patronage of, 255, 265, 271; public policy and,
266–72; quintessentially local experiences and, 252; residents’ locational decisions and, 267; rural
art colonies and, 254; school field trips and, 251; settlement houses and, 261–62; as social
products, 249–50, 251–54, 260–61; sociology of art and, 253–54; support activities for, 253–54;
urban growth and, 266, 268; urban music scenes and, 259–60
Asheville, North Carolina, 265
Atlanta, Georgia, 136, 281, 285
Austin, Texas, 190, 252, 265–67, 271
Axthelm, Pete, 245, 247
Baker, Josephine, 258
Ball, Richard, 108
Baltimore, Maryland, 156, 177, 219, 225
Barnes, Sandra L., 153–54, 155
Barnstable Town, Massachusetts, 156
Barth, Gunther, 228–29
Barzun, Jacques, 228
Basquiat Jean-Michel, 254
Baunach, Dawn M., 153–54, 155
Beach, Sylvia, 258
Beame, Abraham, 219
Becker, Howard, 60, 130–35, 253–54, 260–61
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 255–56
Bell, Wendell, 67
Benjamin, Walter, 257
Berger, Peter, 53, 94, 119, 143–44
Berlin, 256, 272
Betts, John Rickard, 224–26
Bicycling, 112, 120
Biddle, George, 258
Bilbao effect, 270
Blau, Francine, 153
Blau, Peter, 199, 200
Bloch, Ernst, 257
Blumenberg, Evelyn, 166–67
Boden, Deirdre, 18
Boies, John, 187
Boston, Massachusetts: arts scene in, 272; Boston Atheneum and, 262; cognitive map of, 139;
creativity index and, 281; downtown revitalization in, 285; pay for women in, 156; professional
sports and, 220, 225; recreation and sports in growth of, 235; school busing in, 123; Social
Register and, 177; street-corner gangs in, 78–79, 82; top industry groups in, 203–4; West End
House in, 232–33
Boston Marathon, 235
Boulder, Colorado, 156
Bourgois, Philippe, 133
Brecht, Bertolt, 257
Bridgeport, Connecticut, 156
Brown, Michael, 286
Bryant, Kobe, 242
Buffalo, New York, 177
Burgess, Ernest W., 30, 59, 61–63, 273–74, 283
Bush, George H. W., 182

Cahill, Spencer, 105

Calder, Alexander, 258
Campbell, James, 190
Canada, Geoffrey, 214–15
capitalism: globalization and, 274–76; in history of cities, 42–43
Caren, Neal, 183
Carter, Jimmy, and Carter administration, 280
Carter, J. Scott, 128, 129
Carter, Prudence, 242
Carter, Valerie, 129
Charlotte, North Carolina, 219, 221
Charters, Jimmy, 258
Cherney, Robert, 133–34
Chicago, Illinois: 1995 heat wave in, 84; authenticity and, 263–64; bicycling in, 112; blues in, 252,
263–64, 267; Bronzeville neighborhood of, 193, 194, 283; bus tours of, 263–64; Chicago Cultural
Center and, 263; city planning and, 112; Community Development Block Grants in, 280; defended
neighborhoods in, 124; deindustrialization and, 137; displacement of inner-city residents of, 207;
downtown revitalization in, 284; extreme poverty in, 209; female-headed households in, 209;
funky art scenes and, 252; gangs in, 77; gentrification in, 203, 283; as global city, 276; Hull House
and, 159, 160, 261–62; hypersegregation in, 207; immigrant communities in, 207; inclusive versus
machine politics in, 191–94; jazz in, 259; music festivals and nightlife in, 263; Pacific Garden
Mission in, 284; professional sports and, 225, 265; public housing in, 193–94, 279; as
representative city for urban sociologists, 60–61, 62–63; social order of low-income communities
and, 79–80, 81–82, 186; Social Register and, 177; suburbs of, 284; theater scene in, 265; top
industry groups in, 203; urban geography and, 61–63, 64–65, 86 n.3; Wicker Park neighborhood
of, 111, 137, 264–65, 266
Chicago School of Sociology: city as a research laboratory and, 58; diversity in cities and, 121–22;
ecological conceptions of the city and, 59; Hull House and, 160; individuality in cities and, 29;
negative pictures of city life and, 54–55; urban geography and, 61–63, 64–65, 86 n.3
Cincinnati, Ohio, 177, 221, 225
Cities: cash nexus in, 11–12, 46; cosmopolitanism and, 26, 40, 273; definitions of, 36–38, 49 n.9, 55;
Disneyfication of, 264; distrust in, 88, 90, 94; ecology of, 30–34, 36, 59; as entertainment
machines, 262–63, 266; federal divestiture from, 274, 279–81; freedom in, 26, 27, 121, 122, 145–
46; global, 276–77, 278; as growth machines, 263; as hubs for the arts, 272; as impersonal, 13;
individualism and individualization in, 19, 27–29; latent hostility in, 25–26, 29–30; mimimax
hypothesis of urban life and, 100–101; negative pictures of life in, 54–55, 88–89, 118; as network
of networks, 74; opportunities for women in, 161; resilience of, 274, 281–82; right to the city and,
43–44; secondary versus primary relations in, 33–36, 40, 46–48, 121; social worlds of, 120–22; as
state of mind, 72; status struggle in, 4; stimulus overload in, 96–99; urban personality type and,
24–25, 27–28, 45, 99; as world of strangers, 92–94. See also Norms of everyday city life; Suburbs;
Urban geography; Urbanism; Urbanization
Citizens United v. FEC, 187
City planning: bicycling and, 112; creative placemaking and, 268; nature of street life and, 111–12;
New Urbanism and, 70–71, 112; small community businesses and, 70–71; urban geography and,
63
Clark, Terry Nichols, 252, 262–63, 266, 271
Class: activist women and, 164; the arts and, 255, 256, 262, 267–68; growing inequality in cities and,
274; multidimensional social stratification and, 40–41; as new social category, 3–4; noblesse
oblige and, 163; political involvement and, 185, 186; school performance and, 246; sports and,
239–45, 246; voluntary organizations and, 186; women’s movement versus community
organizations and, 164
Cleveland, Ohio, 177, 202, 203, 268, 271–72
Clinton, Bill, 182
Cloward, Richard A., 182
Collective behavior, 41
Collective conscience and consciousness, 14–16, 19, 144–45, 236
Collins, Patricia Hill, 149
Comer, James, 213
Community: among homeless street vendors, 82–84; for artists, 260; classic community studies and,
236; communication and, 65–66; community organization and, 76–84; definitions of, 56–58, 85;
ecological conceptions of, 57–63, 80; gangs and, 77, 79; invisible community structures and, 82;
nonterritorial bases of, 68–72, 74, 84–85, 86 n.1, 149, 249; nonurban, 57; pigeon flyers in New
York City and, 68–70; residents’ own images of their lives and, 87; singleness and, 132; slums
and, 77, 78–82; small businesses and, 70–71; social functions of, 56; social interaction as primary
feature of, 57; as social psychological production, 72; social systems and, 56–57; solidarity and,
235–36; sports and, 71, 235–39; strangers in organized life and, 93–94; subjective community
identification and, 68–72; as subsocial, 86 nn.2–3; symbolic value of space and, 64–65; as
troublesome concept in sociology, 56; urban networks and, 72–76
Community Development Block Grants, 280
Community organizing, 66
Contessi, Silvio, 155
Contracts: versus customs in history of cities, 42; solidarity and, 17–18, 20; status and, 24; urbanism
and, 47
Conversation Analysis, 105
Cook, James M., 185
Cooley, Charles Horton, 28
Copland, Aaron, 258
Cosmopolitanism: the arts and, 257; as characteristic of cities, 26, 40, 273; encounters between
strangers and, 165; freedom and, 121; gender integration and, 161; urbanites’ appreciation of, 119
Cotter, David A., 154, 155
Crage, Suzanna M., 134
Cressey, Paul, 60, 62
Crime and criminal justice: “broken windows” and, 83; defended neighborhoods and, 124; ecological
structure of the city and, 61; employment rates for ex-cons and, 209–10; fear of crime and, 169–
71; gangs and, 77–79, 82, 137–38, 141; incarceration rates and, 209–10; known offenders and,
171; neighborhoods and, 171; organized crime and community organization and, 77, 79; primary
group nature of, 34–35; racial and economic isolation and, 198–200; rape and rape culture and,
169–70, 171–72; social conditions and, 199–200; tolerance in San Francisco and, 130–31;
unreliable police and, 82; urban geography and, 62, 86 n.3; women’s vulnerability and, 95–96
Cultural Policy Center (Chicago), 270

Daamen, W., 102–3

Daley, Richard M., 112, 124
Dali, Salvador, 269, 270
Dallas, Texas, 190
Daniels, Arlene Kaplan, 162–63
Darley, John, 99
Davis, Miles, 259
Deegan, Mary Jo, 160
Dempsey, Nicholas P., 116, 259
DeNora, Tia, 98, 255–56
Denton, Nancy A., 200
Denver, 285
Depersonalization, 40, 41, 55–56, 60, 68–70
Detroit, Michigan: globalization and, 274; industrial decline in, 201–2, 277, 283; Motown in, 267;
professional sports and, 225; top industry groups in, 205
Deviance: eccentrics and “characters” and, 36; moral deviances and, 120–21; necessity of for
boundary definition, 16; as pejorative term, 122; as social construction, 143; as social problem,
146; versus subcultures, 122; tolerance and, 122, 138; unconventional versus conventional
groupings and, 47; urban geography and, 60–61, 62, 86 n.3. See also Subcultures
Di Leonardo, Micaela, 75–76
Diversity: arts and, 267; cities’ adjustment to, 277; diverse groups’ interpretations of the city and,
120; eccentrics and “characters” and, 36, 100, 119–20, 165; interesting street life and, 111; people
watching and, 136; special interest groups and, 120–21, 122; urbanites’ appreciation of, 119. See
also Tolerance
Dobbie, Will, 215
Domhoff, William, 176, 187, 194–95
Donnelly, Peter, 108, 109
Drake, James A., 238
Dreier, Peter, 286–87
Dube, Arindrajit, 278–79
Duneier, Mitchell, 57, 82–83, 104–5
Dunham, H. Warren, 60
Durkheim, Emile: on the church and sin, 16; on civil lawsuits, 17; on collective conscience or
consciousness, 14–16, 19, 144, 236; on contracts, 17, 20; on deviance, 16; on division of labor,
18–20, 22 n.6, 27, 145; versus Ferdinand Tönnies, 13, 14; influence of, 19, 21, 23, 27, 47, 48;
influences on, 8, 22, 22 n.7; as intellectual father of sociology, 41; negative pictures of city life
and, 54; on occupational specialization, 14; on organic nature of society, 13; population density
and, 38; on religion and individualism, 19; on society as a moral order, 24; on solidarity, 15–21,
23, 34, 144–45; on symbolic interaction, 22 n.5; technology and, 22 n.4
Dworkin, Ronald, 187

Ecology: community and, 80; defended neighborhoods and, 134–35; ecological conceptions of
community and, 57–63; ecological conceptions of the city and, 30–34, 36, 59, 62–63; formal
theory of, 59; human behavior and, 64–68; inadequacy of ecological perspective and, 64–67, 76–
77, 84, 86 nn.2–3; locational socialization and, 136; natural ecological boundaries and, 65; Park
and Burgess’s “Green Book” and, 59; poor adaptation to urban environment and, 60; segregation
and tolerance and, 134–35; social disorganization and, 61; social psychology of city dwellers and,
121; urban geography and, 61–62; urbanites’ sense of place and, 138–43. See also Urban
geography
Economics and money: American dream and, 239–40; anomie and, 20; the arts and, 266, 268, 269–
72; assumptions of classical economists and, 12; as basis of association, 46; bifurcated job
structure and, 274, 277–79; cities as markets and, 31–32; contracts and, 17–18; distribution of
wealth and, 176–77, 180, 197; dropping out of school and, 211–13; economic organization of
cities and, 45–46; exchange value of space and, 43, 44; federal budget and, 211–12; federal
divestiture from cities and, 274, 279–81; Gesellschaft and, 11; global economy and, 193, 275–76;
Great Recession of 2007–2009 and, 154; high finance and changing urban dynamics and, 276;
industrial shifts and, 196–97, 201–2, 206–8; informal economy and, 82; interests replacing
sentiments and, 34; low-income neighborhoods and, 81; marketplaces and identity and, 70, 85;
minimum wage and, 278–79; multiplier effect and, 269; poverty and unemployment and, 202, 206;
professional sports and, 220–21; racial economic inequality and, 197–200; shadow economy and,
278; sports and, 238–44; tax base of cities and, 26; top industry groups and, 203–5; upward
mobility and, 83–84; women in the paid labor force and, 150–51; women’s unpaid work and, 75–
76
Edison, Thomas, 226
Education, 211–14, 246
Edwards, Harry, 221
Ehrenhalt, Alan, 284–85
Elections. See Voting and elections
Ellwood, David T., 208
Enclosure acts, 4
Energy Policy Act of 2005, 178–79
Engels, Friedrich, 42
Erikson, Kai, 16
Ethnography, 61, 121–22

Family and kinship: childhood and, 231; in cities versus small towns, 74–75; disintegration of, 60,
62; female-headed households and, 196, 208–11, 212; as fictitious source of authority, 8;
Gemeinschaft and, 10; versus geographic residence as basis of community organization, 8; versus
individual as unit of society, 7–8; kin work and, 75–76; in low-income neighborhoods, 81; urban
networks and, 74; women’s role in, 74–75
Faris, Robert, E. L., 60
Faulkner, William, 258
Feminism, 150, 152, 157–59, 164
Fensterstock, Anne, 259–61
Ferguson, Missouri, 286–87
Ferman, Barbara, 191–92, 280
Fischer, Claude, 66, 74, 126–28, 129
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 258
Fitzpatrick, Kevin M., 212
Florida, Richard: creativity index and, 281; great inversion and, 284–85; investments in arts sectors
and, 252, 271; on local small businesses, 71; on rise of creative class, 266–69, 271, 277; on
symbolic representations of cities, 72
Form, William H., 66
Foster, Bill, 269
Franklin, Benjamin, 222
Freud, Sigmund, 85
Frey, William, 285
Fryer, Roland, Jr., 215

Gadwa, Anne, 268

Gangs. See Crime and criminal justice
Gans, Herbert, 285–86
Gardner, Carol Brooks, 168–70
Garreau, Joel, 284
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 200, 242
Gehry, Frank, 270
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, 9–13, 21–24, 42, 47, 55
Gender: Great Recession of 2007–2009 and, 154–55; organization membership and, 161, 162–63;
pedestrian behavior and, 103; political involvement and, 185; socialization and, 170; sports and,
233–34. See also Women
Gendron, Richard, 194–95
General Social Survey (GSS), 128
Gentrification, 193, 260, 265–66, 283, 286
Geographical Information Systems (GIS), 68
Giddens, Anthony, 176
Gilded Age, 262
Gillespie, Dizzy, 259
Globalization, 274–77
Goffman, Erving: on civil inattention, 103, 110; on contact with strangers during extraordinary
events, 113–14; on development of the self, 19; dramaturgical view of interaction and, 91, 93; on
everyday urban concerns, 89, 91; on front and back regions, 104; on impression management, 91–
92, 93; influences on, 19; on presentations of self, 246; on preservation of public image, 91, 100;
on society as a building, 157; on tightness of city street life, 110
Goodman, Cary, 232
Gottdiener, Mark, 44
Government. See Power arrangements
Gowan, Teresa, 133
Grannis, Mark, 142–43
Grazian, David, 116, 263, 267
Greece, credit crisis in, 275
Green Bay, Wisconsin, 221, 281–82
Griswold, Wendy, 86 n.1
Gropius, Walter, 257
Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao, Spain), 270
Gulia, Milena, 75

Hall, Edward, 140, 141

Hanlon, Bernadette, 286
Hardy, Stephen, 235
Harlem Children’s Zone, 214–15
Harris, Chauncy, 62
Harris, Marvin, 150–51, 152
Hartford, Connecticut, 156
Harvey, David, 275–76
Hawley, Amos, 59
Haydn, Joseph, 255
Heartfield, John, 257
Heimer, Karen, 170–71
Hemingway, Ernest, 258
Hillery, George, 56, 57–58
Hobbes, Thomas, 9, 11, 25–26
Höch, Hannah, 257
Holbrook, Thomas M., 183
Hollingshead, August, 236
Homebuilders program, 216
Homelessness, 82–84, 133, 280–81
Hoogendoorn, Serge P., 102–3
Horowitz, Irving Louis, 130–35
Horowitz, Ruth, 137–38
Housing: federal investment in, 279–80; mortgage crisis and, 275; public, 193–94. See also
Homelessness
Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 193–94, 279
Houston, Texas, 220
Hout, Michael, 129
Howe, Florence, 151
Hoyt, Homer, 62
Hughes, Everett, 120
Hull House, 159–60
Hurst, Michael, 140
Hutchison, Ray, 44
Hyra, Derek S., 66, 192–94, 207, 283

Ideal types, 9, 10, 22, 63, 64

Identity: cities’ audio identity and, 265–66, 267; community as social psychological production and,
72; gangs and, 79; interaction and, 91–92; in low-income neighborhoods, 81; marketplace and, 70,
85; ordered life between strangers and, 100; protecting personal identities and, 106–8; repertoire of
identities and, 92; sports and, 71–72, 85, 235–39
Immigrants and immigration: globalization and, 277; neighborhood conditions and, 207; Playground
Movement and, 230, 232; segmented assimilation and, 207–8; settlement houses and, 232; in
smaller cities, 277; sports and, 227–30, 232–33, 249; U.S. immigration law and, 277
Indianapolis, Indiana, 168, 219, 239
Individualism and individualization, 19, 27–29, 60, 229, 245–48
Industrialization: arts and, 262; deindustrialization and, 196–97, 201–2, 206–8, 277–78, 283;
globalization and, 274; separation of work from household and, 4–5; sports and, 221–24, 248–49;
top industry groups and, 203–5; urbanization and, 4
Inequality. See Class
Interaction. See Symbolic interactionism
Irsay, Robert, 239
Iseel, William, 133–34

Jacksonville, Florida, 219

Jacobs, Jane, 71, 111
Jacobson, Gary C., 188
James, Bill, 240
James, Lebron, 242
Jencks, Christopher, 208
Jerolmack, Colin, 68–70
Johnson, Jack, 241
Johnson, Magic, 243
Johnson, Richard, 76
Joyce, James, 258

Kandinsky, Wassily, 257

Kansas City, Missouri, 221, 225
Karp, David A., 106–7, 109
Kasarda, John D., 197, 202
Kelley, Florence, 159
Kelling, George L., 83
Keyssar, Alexander, 182–83
kinship. See Family and kinship
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 257
Klinenberg, Eric, 84, 132
Konrad, Miriam, 170
Koval, John, 278
Kracauer, Siegfried, 257
Krivo, Lauren J., 199, 200
Kuhn, Thomas, 54
Labor: of children, 159; division of, 18–20, 32–33, 45, 145; eight-hour day and, 159; identity and,
27; occupational specialization and, 14; separation of work from household and, 4–5; sweatshops
legislation and, 159
Laforse, Martin, 238
Lane, Vince, 194
Lapchick, Richard, 243–44
Laslett, Peter, 4–5
Latane, Bibb, 99
Lauritsen, Janet L., 170–71
Law: basis of social control and, 35; collective conscience and, 15–16; cooperative, 18; customary, 7;
legal fictions and, 7–8; origins of legal codes and, 6–7; repressive, 15–16, 18; restitutive, 16–17;
social solidarity and, 15–16
League of Women Voters, 159
LeDuff, Charlie, 201, 283
Lefebvre, Henri, 41–45, 48, 140
Levine, Lawrence, 262
Levittowns, 285–86
Li, Li, 155
Libertarians, 213
Liebow, Eliot, 80–81
Lilly, Robert, 108
Literacy, 7
Lloyd, Richard, 137, 264–65, 266
Lofland, Lyn: on civil inattention, 103; on locational socialization, 136; on neglect of women in
works of urban sociologists, 149; on public ordered life among strangers, 100, 118 n.1, 135–36; on
the public realm, 165; on self-management in public settings, 109
Logan, John, 44, 263
Long, Joshua, 265, 266
Loosely, Elizabeth, 236
Los Angeles, California: professional sports and, 219, 220, 237–38; riots in, 41; segmented
assimilation in, 207; transportation in, 166; voluntary associations in, 186
Lo Sasso, Anthony, 76
Louis, Joe, 241
Loy, John, 244
Lubell, Mark, 184
Luckman, Thomas, 143–44
Lynch, Kevin, 138–39
Lynd, Helen, 236
Lynd, Robert, 236

Madison, Wisconsin, 281

Maine, Henry Sumner: on familial versus territorial bases of social relations, 22; Gemeinschaft and
Gesellschaft versus theory of, 9; influence of, 8–9, 21–23, 27, 47, 48; on origins of codified law,
6–7; on social contract, 7–8, 13, 22; social solidarity and, 15
Mann, Thomas, 257
Markusen, Ann, 268
Marshall, Gordon, 56
Marx, Karl, and Marxism, 3–4, 11, 41–44, 48, 274–75
Massey, Douglas S., 200
Mayors’ Institute on City Design, 268
McCain-Feingold Act (2002), 187
McDowell, Mary, 160
McElvogue, Joseph, 244
McKenzie, R. D., 59
McLanahan, Sara, 210–11, 212
McLaughlin, Steven D., 152
McPherson, Miller, 161, 185
Mead, George Herbert, 28
Memphis, Tennessee, 252, 263, 285
Mendelsohn, Erich, 257
Mental illness, 60, 62, 86n3, 280
Messner, Steven, 199, 200
Miami, Florida, 276
Michels, Robert, 175
Michener, James, 238–39
Milgram, Stanley, 73, 96–99, 140
Miller, Steve, 265
Mills, C. Wright, 27, 176, 177–78
Minimax hypothesis of urban life, 100–101
Mirowsky, John, 88
Mobility, destruction of primary group life and, 34
Moholy-Nagy, László, 257
Molotch, Harvey, 18, 44, 263
Money. See Economics and money
Moore, Gwen, 176, 178–79
Morality, as social construction, 143
Moretti, Enrico, 271
Morse, Samuel, 225
Motor Voter law, 182, 185
Mowrer, Ernest, 60
Murray, Charles, 213
Napa, California, 156
Naples, Nancy A., 164
Nashville, Tennessee, 277
National Endowment for the Arts, 268
Neighborhoods: city as network of networks and, 74; city employees in, 124; in city politics, 192–95;
cognitive maps of, 142–43; collective efficacy and, 84; crime and, 171; defended, 123–24, 134–35;
destruction of, 34; ecology of the city and, 32; neighborhood art scenes and, 259–61, 264–65;
poverty and unemployment in, 202, 206; small businesses in, 70–71; social isolation in segregated
neighborhoods and, 206, 207; social organization in, 78–82; territorial space and, 141; use versus
exchange value and, 44; vibrancy of in network society, 55–56; walkable, 71; weather disasters
and, 84. See also Gentrification
Nelson, Willie, 265
Network society, 55–56, 73–75, 85, 86 n.1
Newark, New Jersey, 96
New Haven, Connecticut, 156, 213–14, 216
New Orleans, Louisiana: French Quarter in, 72, 237; gender and fear of crime in, 170; jazz in, 252,
259, 263; professional sports and, 219
New Urbanism, 70–71, 112. See also Urbanism
New Urban Sociology, 44
New York City: activist women in, 165; as art mecca, 261; arts scene in, 272; bicycling in, 112, 120;
diamond market in, 13, 17; displacement of inner-city residents of, 207; education spending in,
216; gang conflict in, 77–78; gender and fear of crime in, 95–96; gentrification in, 193, 283; as
global city, 57, 276–77; great inversion and, 285; Harlem Children’s Zone in, 214–15; homeless
street vendors in, 82–84; jazz in, 259; Metropolitan Museum of Art and, 262; neighborhood
politics in, 192–93; number of anonymous encounters in, 96; pay for women in, 156; personal
freedom in, 119; professional sports and, 219, 225, 237–38; public housing in, 194; rooftop pigeon
flyers in, 68–70; rural art colony near, 254; skyline of, 72, 237; Social Register and, 177; SoHo loft
scene in, 259–60; spatial provincialism in, 142; street life in, 111; suburbs of, 207; subways of, 77;
top industry groups in, 204
Nineteenth Amendment, 182
Nisbet, Robert, 3–4
Nixon, Howard, 244
Nixon, Richard, and Nixon administration, 280
Norman, Jon, 281
Norms of everyday city life: anonymity and, 117–18; behavior in public bathrooms and, 105;
behavior of pornography consumers and, 106–8, 109; civil inattention and, 103–6, 110;
communicating openness to interaction and, 115–16; context and, 113–14, 116; cooperating to
produce and sustain social order and, 102–3, 105–6; establishing relationships with strangers and,
113–16; front and back regions and, 104; noninvolvement and, 98, 100, 115; pedestrian behavior
and, 102–3; protecting personal identities and, 106–8; public bargain and, 110; romance and, 116;
self-management in public settings and, 108–9; sociability and, 110–12; social invisibility and,
108; street harassment and, 105; variations in, 110–11; violations of, 104–5

Oakland, California, 221

Obama, Barack, and Obama administration, 182–83, 199–200, 280, 281
Ocean City, New Jersey, 156
Older Women’s League, 76
Oleson, Virginia, 76
Olson, Phillip, 74
Olympia, Washington, 156
O’Malley, Walter, 219
Oxnard, California, 156

Paducah, Kentucky, 268

Paris, 257–59
Park, Robert: agreement among urban sociologists and, 44–46; ambivalence about city life and, 27;
on basis of social control, 35; cities as markets and, 31–32; city as a research laboratory and, 58–
59; on city as state of mind, 72; on communication, 33; on constant state of change in cities, 273–
74; critiques of, 41; on diversity in cities, 121; on division of labor, 32–33, 45; ecology of the city
and, 30–34, 36, 86 n.2; economistic approach to study of urban life and, 34, 46; Georg Simmel
and, 30; “Green Book” by, 59; Hull House and, 160; influence of, 36, 48; methodology of, 58–59;
mosaic of urban life and, 60; negative pictures of city life and, 55; on political machine versus
good government organizations, 35, 46, 47–48; on secondary versus primary relations in the city,
33–36, 47, 121; urban geography and, 283
Parker, Charlie, 259
Parsons, Talcott, 56
Pascin, Jules, 258
Paxton, Pamela, 186
Perry, Mark J., 154
Peterson, Karen, 128
Peterson, Ruth D., 199, 200
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 177, 225, 285
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 177, 191–92, 220–21, 271
Piven, Frances Fox, 182
Playground Movement, 230–35, 249
Police. See Crime and criminal justice
Politics. See Power arrangements; Voting and elections
Population, effects of size and density of, 38–41, 46–47
Portes, Alejandro, 207–8
Power arrangements: campaign finance and, 186–89, 190; competing interests in cities and, 191;
corruption in urban politics and, 183; council-manager form of government and, 183, 184–85, 190;
electoral reforms and, 183–85; governing regimes and, 191; growth coalitions and, 194–95;
hierarchical, 175–80; incumbency and, 189–91; industry leaders in crafting of legislation and,
178–79; institutional frameworks and, 191–92; interlocking directorates and, 178–79; iron law of
oligarchy and, 175; neighborhoods in city politics and, 192–95; one-party rule and, 193–94, 195;
pluralist politics and, 175, 191–95; political cultures and, 192; political machines and, 35, 183,
188–89, 191–92, 194; political patronage and, 181; resource distribution and, 192; socioeconomic
correlates of political involvement and, 185–86; in towns versus cities, 35; voluntary associations
and, 185–86; voting patterns and, 180–83, 184; wealth and, 176–78, 179–80, 186–88, 189, 191
Prewitt, Kenneth, 189–90
Pribesh, Shana, 88
Progressive Era: electoral reforms and, 183; Playground Movement and, 230–35, 249; public park
systems and, 235; sports and, 227–28, 233–34, 249; women and voluntary associations and, 159
Providence, Rhode Island, 282
Public transit. See Transportation
Putnam, Robert, 71

Quincy, Josiah, 233

Race and ethnicity: changing demographics of suburbs and, 285–87; commodified presentation of the
blues and, 264; continued significance of, 199–200; defended neighborhoods and, 123–24;
economic inequality and, 197–200; employment levels and, 209–10; exoticization of, 264; family
composition and, 208–9; gentrification and, 286; incarceration rates and, 209–10; Parisian
tolerance and, 258; pedestrian behavior and, 103; residential segregation and, 200; school
performance and, 246; segmented assimilation and, 207; sports and, 239–45, 246; suburbanization
and, 283; tolerance and intolerance and, 126–29, 132, 133–34; voluntary organizations and, 186;
voting and elections and, 181, 182–84; white-by-design suburbs and, 285–86. See also Segregation
Rader, Benjamin G., 223–24
Raphael, Steven, 171
Ray, Man, 258
Reagan, Ronald, and Reagan administration, 279
Reference-group theory, 68
Reflexivity, 28
Reid, Lesley Williams, 170
Religion, 16, 19, 21, 222–23
Remarque, Erich Maria, 257
Ricardo, David, 12
Richter, Linda, 149–50
Riesman, David, 48 n.1
Roanoke, Virginia, 270
Robinson, Jackie, 229, 243
Rose, Derrick, 242
Rosenbloom, Sandra, 166
Ross, Catherine, 88
Roth, Philip, 238
Rotolo, Thomas, 162
Ruhil, Anirudh, 184
Rumberger, Russell W., 212
Russia, Ukraine and, 275

Saint Petersburg, Florida, 220, 269–70

Sampson, Robert J., 84
San Antonio, Texas, 190
San Francisco, California: arts scene in, 272; creativity index and, 281; economics of, 194; Golden
Gate Bridge and, 237; minimum wage increase in, 278; pay for women in, 156; politics in Bay
area and, 189; rural art colony near, 254; Social Register and, 177; top industry groups in, 204
San Jose, California, 156, 190, 285
Santa Cruz, California, 156, 194–95
Santa Fe, New Mexico, 278
Santa Rosa, California, 156
Sassen, Saskia, 57, 276–77, 278
Sawyer, Frederick W., 262
Schaumburg, Illinois, 284
Schonberg, Jeff, 133
Schorr, Lisbeth, 213, 215
Schutz, Alfred, 93–94
Scott, Ann Firor, 157–58
Scott, John, 56
Seattle, Washington, 267, 271, 278, 285
Seeley, John, 236
Segregation: cognitive maps of the city and, 143; controlled contact and, 135–39; defended
neighborhoods and, 123, 134–35; ethnicity and, 207–8; hypersegregation and, 206–8, 212–13;
locational socialization and, 136; population size and density and, 38–39; in residential housing,
200; social isolation and, 206, 207; social organization and, 80–81; social selection and, 32–33;
tolerance and, 134–39; of women in associational memberships, 160–62; of women in the
workplace, 150–51, 153–56, 161–62. See also Race and ethnicity
Settlement houses, 159–60, 232–33, 261–62
Sexuality: controlled contact and, 136; diversity and tolerance and, 258, 267, 281; intolerance and,
134; night clubs and, 116; reality construction and, 144; urban geography and, 66
Shaw, Clifford, 61, 160
Shevsky, Eshref, 68
Sigle-Rushton, Wendy, 210–11, 212
Sills, Melissa, 171
Sim, R. A., 236
Simmel, Georg: agreement among urban sociologists and, 44–46; Berlin in the time of, 256, 257; on
boundaries of the city, 26, 31; cash nexus in the city and, 11–12, 25, 46; on cosmopolitanism, 26;
critiques of, 41; on devaluation of others, 28; on freedom and loneliness in cities, 26, 27; on
freedom in cities, 121; freedom versus equality and, 48 n.2; on hostility in cities, 25–26, 29–30;
influence of, 30, 48; on membership in small groups, 30; negative pictures of city life and, 54; on
psychic life of city dwellers, 97; on strangers in organized life, 93; on urban personality type, 24–
25, 27–28, 87
Small, Albion W., 30
Smith, Adam, 12
Smith, Earl, 243
Smith, Leslie, 128
Smith-Lovin, Lynn, 161, 185
Snedker, Karen, 95–96
Social area analysis, 67–68
Social contract, 7–8, 110, 130–33, 146
Social control and social order: anonymity and, 117; basis of, 35; collective consciousness and, 144–
45; collective efficacy and, 84; cooperating to produce, 102–3, 105–6; defended neighborhoods
and, 123; formal versus informal, 40, 46–47; organized crime and, 77–78; personal, territorial, and
lived space and, 141; persons’ appearances versus geographical location and, 118 n.1, 135–36;
political machines and, 192
Social media, 85
Social order. See Social control and social order
Sociology: authenticity and, 21; case studies in, 129–30; central questions of, 21; cultural turn in,
252–53; debunking motif of, 53–54; development of as a discipline, 3; everyday social interactions
in, 89–90; experimental methods and, 102; folk society and, 21; inadequacy of prior explanations
in, 54; intellectual fathers of, 41; neglect of interpersonal relations in, 6, 9; quantitative and
qualitative poles in, 54; shifts in social organization and, 5; social disorganization as field and, 61;
society versus community and, 21; study subjects in their own terms and, 87; themes addressed by
early social theorists and, 3–4; urban settlement movement and, 160; viewing city from a distance
in, 58; women in works of sociologists and, 6, 147, 149. See also Symbolic interactionism
Solidarity: community and, 235–36; contracts and, 17–18, 20; division of labor and, 18–19, 20;
heterogeneity and, 145; law and, 15–17; mechanical, 15–18, 21, 34, 144; negative versus positive,
17; organic, 18–19, 21, 23, 145; sanctions for deviance and, 16; unperceived, 24; urbanism and, 47
Sommer, Robert, 141
Sports: aggression and rioting and, 236; American dream and, 239–45, 249; Americanization and,
228–30, 232–33, 249; anonymity and, 245–48; basketball as city game and, 245, 246–47; business
of, 238–39; class and race and, 239–45, 246; community identification and, 235–39; function of in
cities, 71; gender and, 233–34; growing number of teams and, 238; identity and, 71–72, 85;
immigration and, 227–30, 232–33; individualism and, 245–48; industrialization and, 221–24, 248–
49; intercollegiate, 225; Jackie Robinson and, 229; locations of sports franchises and, 219–21,
237–39; modern city culture and, 227–30; money invested in, 220–21; new media and, 238; news
coverage of, 220, 225–26; postbellum growth in, 223–24; production of compliant workers and,
234–35; public subsidies for, 239; quasireligious function of, 236–37; racism and, 243–45, 249; as
recapitulation of society, 221; religious asceticism versus, 222–23; rise of rail travel and, 225;
sports talk and, 247–48; stacking in, 244; team loyalty and, 220; team names and, 71; team
ownership and, 239; technological revolution and, 224–26; Title IX and, 234; urbanization and
industrialization and, 221–24, 227
Stainback, Kevin, 151
Starr, Ellen Gates, 159
Steffens, Lincoln, 77
Sterling, Donald, 200, 243
St. Louis, Missouri: professional sports and, 220, 221, 225; public housing in, 279; Social Register
and, 177
Stoll, Michael A., 186
Stone, Gregory, 71, 236–37
Storrow, James Jackson, 232
Stouffer, Samuel, 125–26, 128–29, 134–35
Strangers: civil inattention on the subway and, 104; eccentricity and “characters” and, 100, 165;
establishing relationships with, 113–16; face information and, 95; information and risk and, 94–96;
norm of noninvolvement and, 98, 100; numbers of encountered, 96; in organized life, 93–94;
public harassment and, 167–70; public ordered life among, 100, 135–36; public privacy and, 101,
168; risk and, 95–96, 100, 113; sports talk and, 247; support of interactions among, 110; women in
public settings and, 165
Strauss, Anselm, 120
Streicher, Andreas, 256
Subcultures: boundaries of behaviors in, 132; controlled contact with, 137; critical mass for, 120,
126; versus deviance, 122; intolerance and, 146; neighborhood art scenes and, 264; reality
construction and, 144; spatial myopia about, 139; tolerance and, 122–23, 139; unconventional
behavior and, 120; urban arts scenes and, 267. See also Deviance
Suburbs: changing demographics of, 285–87; as edge cities, 284; financial challenges for cities and,
26; ghettoization in, 206; great inversion and, 284–85; growth of, 283, 285; population movements
and, 274, 282–83, 286; survival of cities and, 272; urban geography and, 62; white-by-design
suburbs and, 285–86
Sullivan, John L., 225
Sussman, Marvin, 57
Suttles, Gerald, 79–80, 123, 134
Swanstrom, Todd, 286–87
Symbolic interactionism: cities as key sites for artistic production and, 251–52; communication and,
33; construction of social worlds and, 149; definitions of community and, 57; doubt and trust and,
94; dramaturgical view of interaction and, 91–92, 93; economics and, 82; identity and interaction
and, 91–92; impression management and, 91–92, 93, 107; interpretation of environment and, 13;
moral or dynamic density and, 22 n.4; neglect of everyday interaction in cities, 89–91; persistence
of communal ties and, 48; power arrangements and, 176; residents’ definition of own behaviors
and environment and, 78–79, 80, 87; space and human behavior and, 64–65; types of interaction
and, 90–91

Taub, Richard, 64–65, 124, 186, 207

Tea Party, 213
Technology, 85, 86 n.1, 98, 224–26
Thomas, Scott L., 212
Thomas, W. I., 68
Thrasher, Frederick, 60, 77
Title IX, 234
Tolerance: versus avoidance or ignorance of diverse groups, 132–33; classical sociologists on, 121;
controlled contact and, 135–39, 146; diffusion of social reality and, 143–45; for gang violence,
137–38; interaction versus isolation and, 134–36, 142, 146; and intolerance in San Francisco, 129–
34; number and visibility of subculture members and, 144; in Paris, 258; power and, 147; reality
construction and, 143–44; reasons for breakdown of, 146–47; segregation and, 134–39; social
bargain and, 130–33, 146; spatial myopia and, 139; terminology related to, 121; urbanism and,
123, 125–29; urbanites’ sense of place and, 138–40, 142, 146. See also Diversity
Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald, 151
Tönnies, Ferdinand: on authority, 10, 22 n.2; blurring between individual and social phenomena and,
9; on contracts, 17; versus Durkheim, 13, 14; Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft and, 8–13, 21–22,
23–24; influence of, 21–22, 22 n.7, 23–24, 27, 47, 48; influences on, 8–9, 11, 22; on occupational
specialization, 14; psychological level of analysis and, 9, 13
Torrington, Connecticut, 156
Transgender people, 16. See also Gender; Sexuality
Transportation, 104, 165–66, 225
Trenton, New Jersey, 156
Trounstine, Jessica, 184, 190
Tuch, Steven, 129
Twain, Mark, 228
Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, 284

Ueda, Reed, 232–33

Ukraine, 275
Ullman, Edward, 62
Unemployment, 196–97, 200, 206, 209–10, 272, 286–87
United States Conference of Mayors, 268
Urban geography: arbitrary lines of demarcation in, 66–67; census studies and, 67; central business
district and, 61; city boundaries and, 26, 31, 37, 45; city planning and, 63; cognitive maps of the
city and, 140–43; concentric circles and, 61–62, 274; definition of community and, 57–58;
deviance and, 86 n.3; ecology and, 61; exchange value of space and, 43, 44; gentrification and,
286; great inversion in, 284–85; meaning of space for people and, 64–65; multiple nuclei and, 62;
natural ecological boundaries and, 65; personal, territorial, and lived space and, 141–42;
population movements and, 274, 286; post–World War II history and, 283; revitalization of urban
core and, 283, 284; shifting of low-income populations and, 283–84; slums around city centers
and, 32; social area analysis and, 67; spatial and moral order of the city and, 61; spoked wheel
model of, 62; street layouts and, 142–43; urbanites’ sense of place and, 138–43; walkable
neighborhoods and, 71; zone of transition and, 61–62. See also Ecology
Urban history, women neglected in, 149–50
Urbanism: arts’ importance to, 261–62, 265–66; change in dynamics of urban change and, 284;
classic sociological concepts and, 47; compositional theory and, 126–27; definition of urban and,
43–44; tolerance and, 123, 125–29, 131–32; unified life and, 44; as a way of life, 36–41, 126. See
also Cities; Urban geography; Urbanization
Urbanization: factors in urban growth and, 263, 266, 268; population movements and, 274, 282–83;
in post–Civil War period, 158; reasons for, 4; shifts in social organization and, 5; social
consequences of, 23–24; social disorganization and, 61; sports and, 221–24, 227; women and
voluntary associations and, 158. See also Cities; Urban geography; Urbanism
Urban planning. See City planning
Urban problems: bifurcated job structure and, 278; cost effectiveness of addressing, 216; dropping
out of school and, 211–13; federal divestiture from cities and, 279–81; female-headed households
and, 208–11; industrial decline and, 196–97, 201–2, 206–8; poverty and unemployment and, 206;
racial and ethnic inequality and, 198–202, 206–8; roots of, 196–97; social isolation in segregated
neighborhoods and, 206; social programs addressing, 213–17

Valdini, Melody, 184

Vallejo, California, 156
Vaughan, Stevie Ray, 265
Venkatesh, Sudhir, 81–82
Vienna, 255–56
Voting and elections: barriers to voter registration and, 180–82; campaign finance and, 186–89, 190;
Citizens United v. FEC and, 187–88; council-manager form of government and, 183; election of
2012 and, 187; electoral reforms and, 183–85; incumbency and, 189–91; at-large elections and,
183–84; local party support and, 188–89; Motor Voter law and, 182, 185; national versus local
elections and, 180–81; nonpartisan elections and, 183; political machines and, 188–89;
socioeconomic correlates of political involvement and, 185–86; voter ID and, 182; voter purges
and, 182; voter turnout and, 180, 182, 183, 185, 189; Voting Rights Act of 1965 and, 182
Wacquant, Loïc, 197, 198–200, 209
War, capitalism and, 42–43
Warhol, Andy, 254
Warr, Mark, 169
Warren, Roland, 56
Washington, D.C.: downtown revitalization in, 285; minimum wage increase in, 278; pay for women
in, 155, 156; professional sports and, 225; Social Register and, 177; suburbs of, 284, 285;
telegraph and, 225
Washington, Harold, 191
Weber, Max, 41, 49 n.6, 54, 222–23
Weill, Kurt, 257
Weinberg, S. Kirson, 240
Weinschenk, Aaron C., 183
Welfare policy, 166–67
Wellman, Barry, 74, 75
West, James, 236
West End House (Boston), 232–33
Whyte, William F., 77–79, 111–13
Wietz, Eric, 256–57
Williams, Marilyn, 68
Wilson, James Q., 83
Wilson, John, 162
Wilson, Thomas, 127–28
Wilson, William Julius: defended neighborhoods and, 124; on economic and industrial shifts, 196–
97; on female-head households, 209; on immigrant neighborhoods, 207; on sentimental value of
space, 64–65; on social isolation of inner-city residents, 206; on voluntary organizations, 186
Wirth, Louis: agreement among urban sociologists and, 44–46; ambivalence about city life and, 27;
on city as impersonal, 13; critiques of, 41; definition of the city and, 37–38, 45, 47, 55; on effects
of urban population size and density, 38–41; Hull House and, 160; influence of, 48, 96; influences
on, 36; money as basis of association and, 46; permanence of cities and, 49 n.9; on rural
characteristics of cities, 36–37; on secondary versus primary relations in the city, 121; on
segregation and tolerance, 134–35; on social stratification, 40–41; urban determinism and, 126–28;
on urbanism as a way of life, 36–41, 126
Wolff, Edward N., 177
Women: activism against rape and, 172; best cities for working women and, 155–56; class and
activism for, 164; educational attainment of, 153, 154; fear of crime among, 169–71; historical
exclusion of, 158; ideology of domestication and, 152, 167; kin relations and, 74–75, 157;
leadership in professional organizations and, 157–58; municipal housekeeping and, 163; neglect of
in sociology, 6, 147, 149; neglect of in urban history, 149–50; objectification of, 167; in the paid
labor force, 150–56; physical vulnerability of, 165; pink-collar jobs and, 150–51; in politics, 164–
65; private sphere and, 152, 158; rape and rape culture and, 169–70, 171–72; rates of violence
against, 169, 170–71; in settlement house movement, 159–60; sexual harassment and, 105, 167–
70; suffrage and, 182; transportation and, 165–67; unpaid work of, 76, 151–52, 157, 167, 172 n.1;
voluntary associations and, 157–65; vulnerability to crime and harassment and, 95–96; wage gap
and, 152–53, 154, 155, 156; women’s movement versus community organizations and, 164;
workforce participation rates for, 152, 155; workplace opportunities and, 155, 161; workplace
segregation and, 150–51, 153–56, 161–62. See also Feminism; Gender
Wuthnow, Robert, 236

Xie, Min, 170–71

Yale Child Study Center, 213–14, 216
Yoels, William C., 212

Zelizer, Viviana, 231

Zhou, Min, 207–8
Zorbaugh, Harvey, 60, 62, 160
 About the Authors

DAVID A. KARP, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at Boston College, where he

taught for 42 years. He received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard
University and his doctorate in sociology from New York University.
Among his recent books are Speaking of Sadness: Depression,
Disconnection, and the Meanings of Illness; The Burden of Sympathy: How
Families Cope with Mental Illness; and Is It Me or My Meds? Living with
Antidepressants. Each of these books is rooted in the kind of social
psychological perspective that animates “being urban.”

GREGORY P. STONE, PhD, who died in 1981, was Professor of Sociology

at the University of Minnesota. He received his doctorate from the
University of Chicago. Stone co-edited Social Psychology Through
Symbolic Interaction and published numerous articles in the American
Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and The Sociological
Quarterly. His article “Appearance and the Self” is considered a classic in
symbolic interactionist writings. He was a founding member of the Society
for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and served as the society’s first
president.

WILLIAM C. YOELS, PhD, retired as Professor Emeritus at the University

of Alabama-Birmingham. He received his doctorate from the University of
Minnesota. His published works include Symbols, Selves and Society:
Understanding Interaction; Experiencing the Life Cycle: A Social
Psychology of Aging; and Sociology in Everyday Life. He has published
articles in the American Journal of Sociology, Symbolic Interaction,
Qualitative Sociology, The Sociological Quarterly, and The Sociology of
Health and Illness. He is a founding member of the Society for the Study of
Symbolic Interaction and served as one of three Associate Editors for the
Society’s official journal, Symbolic Interaction.

NICHOLAS P. DEMPSEY, PhD, is Associate Professor of sociology at

Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, FL. He has published articles in Symbolic
Interaction, Qualitative Sociology, and Studies in Symbolic Interaction.
Dempsey holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago.