“Urbanism as a Way of Life”

Eclipsing Community? Neighborhood Disadvantage, Social Mechanisms, and Neighborly Attitudes and Behaviors

“…Much urban sociological research on neighborhood and community life pays homage to the Chicago School premise that ecological characteristics of cities—i.e., population size, density, and heterogeneity—shape urbanites’ perceptions about and engagement with their residential environments (Kasarda and Janowitz ; Wirth ). A key principle of a classic “Wirthian” approach is that contextual processes (i.e., urbanization) are linked to a weakening of local sentiments and social bonds, resulting in an overall declining significance of “community.” But rather than contextual, Gans () argues for a compositional effect; that is, the collective action of individuals from particular social class groups shapes community life.…”

“…As an extension of the classic linear development model (Wirth ), Kasarda and Janowitz () derived the systemic model of community attachment. From this logic, length of residence is the key exogenous predictor of community organization as it nurtures local friendship and kinship bonds.…”

“…Since the early ruminations of the Chicago School (Tönnies [1887]1957; Wirth ), scholars have debated whether community life is being harmed by a gradual deterioration of neighborhood connections and ties. An extensive body of research has examined community social organization in general and neighborhood attachment in particular across multiple dimensions that typically capture residents’ attitudes about and behaviors in their neighborhoods (Bolan ; Greif ; Guest and Lee ; Hipp , ; Kasarda and Janowitz ; Lee and Campbell ; Sampson , ; Swaroop and Morenoff ; Woldoff ).…”

Social Capital in an Era of Super‐diversity: Introduction to Tesg Dossier

“…(, p. 167) define social capital as ‘features of social organisation, such as trust, norms, and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated action’. The presumed negative association between ethnic diversity and social capital was already a central tenet in the era of the Chicago School (Wirth ; Shaw & McKay ). This old idea is still vividly debated following Putnam's () paper E Pluribus Unum .…”

Urban Erasures: Historical and Contemporary Archaeologies

“…From Friedrich Engels’s () analysis of Manchester to W. E. B. Du Bois’s () study of Philadelphia to the social and ecological approaches applied to Chicago by Louis Wirth (), Robert Park (), and Drake and Horace Clayton (), early researchers framed the city as a contested space where the ravages of class formation, expropriation, racism, and anomie exposed the painful social realities of capitalism for the majority of urban settlers. In fact, developing a critique of capitalism through the lens of critical urban studies has quite a long and illustrious history.…”