URBAN SOCIOLOGY IN THEORY + PRACTICE
Course 11.469
Department of Urban Studies + Planning
Fall 2013
Class meetings: Wednesdays, 5:30-8:30 PM, Room 10-401
Faculty: Xavier de Souza Briggs, Room 9-521, [email protected], voice 617-253-7956
Office hours: sign up online at my webpage or make appointment through staff assistant
Staff assistant: Harriette Crawford, Room 9-519, [email protected], voice 253-7736
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This graduate-level seminar introduces students to a set of core writings in the field of urban
sociology and explores the creative dialectic—and sometimes conflict—between sociology and
planning (with planning defined as including both the policy and design traditions). Topics
include the changing nature of community, social inequality, political power, social and spatial
change, the use and impacts of technology and technological change, and the relationship
between the built environment and human behavior. We examine the key theoretical paradigms
that have constituted sociology since its founding, assess how and why they have changed over
time, and discuss the implications of these shifts for urban research and planning practice. As
such, the course has two goals: (1) To give students a more critical appreciation of the
contemporary, comparative, and historical contexts in which planning skills and sensibilities
have been developed and could be applied; and (2) To offer a “sociology of knowledge” approach
to the field of urban sociology, so as to prepare doctoral students to pursue the sociology general
(“first field”) exam.
LEARNING APPROACH AND EVALUATION
The seminar is centered on intensive and often Socratic discussion, plus some brief lectures,
about the assigned readings and study questions. Students will be encouraged to discuss how
the theoretical and practical concerns that have preoccupied sociologists can be applied to their
individual interests and the future of planning.
Requirements and grading are as follows (see additional guidance in Stellar/Homework):
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Six brief response papers, in the form of blog postings of about 700-900 words each
(20%). These will offer a critical assessment of assigned material—outlining and
assessing the central problem or question, unit of analysis, research approach, and
solutions proposed, for example—and not mere restatement of content. You will choose
which 6 of the 14 weeks to submit for; postings are due at 9pm the night before class, on
our Stellar website, Forum section. See additional guidance on Stellar/Materials.
In-class participation (20%). Be prepared, ask questions, make arguments.
Book review of an ethnography of your choice (20%). I will supply a suggested list, but
you may look and choose beyond it, of course.
Term paper or research proposal, about 15-20 double-spaced pages, on a topic of
individual interest (40%). I will post some strong samples of student work in prior years.
Please pay close attention to due dates, and contact Xav by email ASAP in case of genuine
emergency; in fairness to your colleagues, unexcused late submissions will be penalized.
Guidelines for doctoral students. DUSP Ph.D. students who plan to take the general exam in
Urban Sociology may complete their exam proposal in place of the final paper, with permission
of the instructor. To meet this requirement, the student should carefully coordinate with their
exam committee.
A portion of each weekly class meeting, open to all students, is designed to further engage with
urban sociology core readings at the doctoral level. This has two main purposes: first, to engage
more deeply with the foundational texts of the field; and, second, to discuss how these
theoretical frameworks are used, contested, and reinterpreted through research. In other
words, this Ph.D.-oriented portion of the work is especially important for the sociology-ofknowledge agenda of this course, outlined above, i.e. to help students examine both ideas and
ideas about ideas. Understanding why and how people are compelled to ask the research
questions they do, and how they set about answering those questions, is as important as
understanding the theories they eventually propose. So we will be asking: Why were these
theorists writing about urban phenomena when they were? How are their theories still useful
today? What's the difference between how these theorists are usually summarized and the
arguments they were actually making? How have these traditions evolved? What do they fail to
address sufficiently?
COURSE MATERIALS will be made available through the Stellar course website.
KEY TEXTS
Though there are no required texts for the course, these are particularly important works, or
collections of same, that we will draw on over the course of the semester:
Anthologies
Fainstein, Susan and Scott Campbell (eds.). 2002. Readings in Urban Theory. New York:
Blackwell.
Le Gates, Richard T. and Frederick Stout (eds). 1996. The City Reader. London and New York:
Routledge.
Susser, Ida (ed.). 2002. The Castells Reader on Cities and Social Theory. Malden, MA:
Blackwell.
Selected primary sources
Clark, Terry Nichols. 2004. The City as an Entertainment Machine. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
de Filippis, James. 2004. Unmaking Goliath: Community Control in the Face of Global Capital.
New York: Routledge.
King, Anthony D. 1990. Post-Imperialism and the Internationalization of London. London:
Routledge.
Gamm, Gerald. 2000. Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gans, Herbert. 1962. The Urban Villagers. New York: Free Press.
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Gans, Herbert 1967. The Levittowners. New York: Pantheon.
Horton, John. 1995. The Politics of Diversity: Immigration, Diversity and Resistance in
Monterrey Park, California. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Hyra, Derek S. 2008. The New Urban Renewal: The Economic Transformation of Harlem and
Bronzeville. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Klinenberg, Eric. 2003. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Levitt, Peggy. 2001. The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press.
Lin, Jan. 1998. Reconstructing Chinatown: Ethnic Enclave, Global Change. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Logan, John and Harvey Molotch. 1988. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Merrifield, Andrew. 2002. Metromarxism: A Marxist Tale of the City. London and New York:
Routledge.
Mollenkopf, John. 1983. The Contested City. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Park, Robert and Ernest Burgess. 1967 [1925]. The City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pattillo, Mary. 2007. Black on the Block: The Politics of Race & Class in the City. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Sassen, Saskia. 1991. The Global City. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Small, Mario Luis. 2004. Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Smith, Robert. 2005. Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Sugrue, Thomas. 1996. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post-war Detroit
(Part II and III). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wellman, Barry. 1999. Networks in the Global Village. Boulder: Westview Press.
Further reference:
Sign up for new-issue email alerts from City & Community, the American Sociological
Association’s journal of urban and community sociology, and/or City, a multi-disciplinary
journal of critical urban studies.
And see best-book-of-the-year award winners of the ASA’s Urban and Community Sociology
section over the past two decades plus (we’ve included several in the list of key texts above).
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COURSE OUTLINE (assignment due dates in italics)
Week 1 (September 4)
Introduction: The Sociological Eye
Week 2 (September 11)
Classical Foundations
Week 3 (September 18)
Early Urban Sociology in the United States and the
Rise of The Chicago School
Week 4 (September 25)
Community and How to Study it
Week 5 (October 2)
The Ethnographic Tradition
* Book review due
Week 6 (October 9)
The Ecological View: From Culture to Nature
Week 7 (October 16)
Urban Political Economy I: Cities,
Industrialization, and Socio-Spatial Change
Week 8 (October 23)
Urban Political Economy II: Capitalism and Urban
Dynamics
Week 9 (October 30)
Urban Political Economy III: Elites, Political
Power, and Urban Dynamics
Week 10 (November 6)
Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Culture I
Week 11 (November 13)
Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Culture II
Week 12 (November 20)
Social Networks, Social Capital, and Information
and Communications Technology
Week 13 (November 27)
Postmodernism
Week 14 (December 4)
Globalization and Comparative Urban
Development
Week 15 (December 11)
Review and Synthesis
* Term paper due 9AM, Monday, December 16th
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WEEKLY READINGS
NOTE: This reading list is subject to change. Rely on the Stellar website to prep for class.
Each week’s readings are listed in three categories: required readings, additional core readings,
and recommended further readings. All students should read the required readings for each
week. Ph.D. students studying for their general exam in Urban Sociology should also read the
starred exam-list readings (*), whether shown as required or not.
Week 1 – Introduction: The Sociological Eye
Duany, Andrés. 2007. “Restoring the Real New Orleans.” Metropolis. Posted February 14, 2007.
Matchan, Linda. 2013. “An Era Fades at Five Fields in Lexington.” The Boston Globe (August
20).
Marcuse, Peter. 2005. “The City” as Perverse Metaphor. City 9(2): 247–254.
Mills, C. Wright. 2000. The Sociological Imagination (Fortieth Anniversary Edition). New York:
Oxford University Press, Inc. (Chapter 1: The Promise)
Fainstein, Susan S. and Scott Campbell. 2002. “Introduction: Theories of Urban Development
and their Implications for Policy and Planning.” In Susan S. Fainstein and Scott
Campbell (eds.), Readings in Urban Theory, Second Edition (pp. 1-13). Oxford and
Malden: Blackwell Publishers Inc.
Week 2 – Classical Foundations
Durkheim, Emile. 1883. Division of Labour in Society. Excerpts in Gordon Baily and Noga Gayle
(Eds.) (1993) Sociology An Introduction: From the Classics to Contemporary Feminists
(pp. 121-134). New York: Oxford University Press.
Aldous, Joan, Emile Durkheim, and Ferdinand Tonnies. 1972. “An Exchange Between Durkheim
and Tonnies on the Nature of Social Relations, with an Introduction by Joan Aldous.”
American Journal of Sociology 77(6): 1191-1200.
Simmel, Georg. 1950. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” In Kurt H. Wolff (translator), The
Sociology of George Simmel (pp. 409-424). New York: Free Press.
Weber, Max. 1958. The City. Translated by D. M. a. G. Neuwirth. New York: Free Press; 1st
Collier Books edition. (Chapter: "The Nature of Cities")
* Merrifield, Andrew. 2002. “Karl Marx: Commodities and Cities with Sober Senses” In
Metromarxism (pp. 13-30). London and New York: Routledge.
Additional Core Readings:
* Merrifield, Andrew. 2002. “Friedrich Engels: Backstreet Boy in Manchester.” In
Metromarxism (pp. 31-48). London and New York: Routledge.
* Tönnies, Ferdinand. 1887. Community and Society (1957 edition). Translated by C. P. Loomis.
East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
*Karl Marx. [1867] 1976. "The Commodity," and "The Process of Exchange" Pp. 125-177, and
178-187 in Capital, Volume 1. New York: Vintage Books.
Additional Suggested Readings:
Engels, Friedrich. 1984. The Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1944.
London: Penguin.
Redfield, Robert. 1947. “The Folk Society.” American Journal of Sociology LII: 293-308.
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Week 3 – Early Urban Sociology in the U.S. and the Rise of The Chicago School
Du Bois, W.E.B. 1899. Excerpts, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. Philadelphia:
Published for the University.
Park, Robert. 1915. "The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the City
Environment." American Journal of Sociology 20:577-612.
Wirth, Louis. 1928. “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” American Journal of Sociology 44(1): 3-24.
[in The City Reader.]
Park, Robert. 1936. “Human Ecology.” The American Journal of Sociology XLII(1): 1-15.
Ernest Burgess. [1925] 1967. "The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project."
Pp. 47 -62 in Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, and Roderick McKenzie, The City. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Roderick McKenzie. [1925] 1967. "The Ecological Approach to the Study of the Human
Community." Pp. 63-79 in Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, and Roderick McKenzie, The
City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fischer, Claude. 1995. “The Subcultural Theory of Urbanism: A Twentieth-Year Assessment.”
The American Journal of Sociology. 101(3): 543-577.
Additional Core Readings:
*Milgram, Stanley. (1970). “The Experience of Living in Cities”. Science 167: 1461-1468.
*Dear, Michael. “The Los Angeles School of Urbanism: An Intellectual History.”
Miller, D. W. 2000. “The New Urban Studies.” The Chronicle of Higher Education (August 18).
*Beauregard, Robert. 2003. “City of Superlatives” and replies by Michael Dear and Neil Brenner.
In City and Community 2(3): 183-216.
Other Suggested Readings
Harris, Chauncy, & Edward Ullman (1945). “The Nature of Cities.” Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science 242: 7-17.
Hoyt, Homer (1939). “The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American
Cities.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Federal Housing Administration.
Gans, Herbert. 1962. “Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of Life.” Human Behavior and Social
Processes: 625-48.
Whyte, William H. 2000. The Essential William H. Whyte. New York: Fordham University
Press.
Maier, Richard. 1976. “The Civic Bond.” In Charles Tilly (ed.), An Urban World (pp. 382-405).
Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Week 4 – Community and How to Study it
Kasarda, John D., and Morris Janowitz. 1974. Community Attachment in Mass Society.
American Sociological Review 39, no. 3 (June): 328-339.
Wellman, Barry. 1979. "The Community Question." American Journal of Sociology 84:1201-31.
Sampson, Robert J. 2008. What “Community” Supplies. In The Community Development
Reader, eds. James DeFillippis and Susan Saegert, 163-173. New York: Routledge.
Briggs, Xavier de Souza et al. 2010. “When Your Neighborhood is Not Your Community,” in
Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty.
New York: Oxford University Press, pp.3-6, 109-126.
Brint, Steven. 2001. “Gemeinschaft Revisited: A Critique and Reconstruction of the Community
Concept.” Sociological Theory 19, no. 1 (March): 1-23.
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Other Suggested Readings
Wellman, Barry, and Scot Wortley (1990). “Different Strokes From Different Folks: Community
Ties and Social Support.” American Journal of Sociology 96(3):558-88.
Fischer, Claude. 1982. To Dwell Among Friends. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chs.1,
2, 7, 8, 10.
Briggs, Xavier de Souza. 2007. “Some of My Best Friends Are …”: Interracial Friendship, Class
and Segregation in America. City & Community 6(4):263-290.
Week 5 - The Urban Ethnographic Tradition
Abu-Lughod. 1994. “Welcome to the Neighborhood,” in From Urban Village to East Village.
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Gans, Herbert. 1962. The Urban Villagers. New York: Free Press. (Excerpt TBD)
Small, Mario Luis. 2004. Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Excerpt TBD)
Jacobs, Jane. 1961. “The Use of Sidewalks.” In The Death and Life of Great American Cities (pp.
29-88). New York: Random House.
Whyte, William H. 1996. “The Design of Spaces.” In Richard Le Gates and Frederick Stout
(eds). The City Reader (pp. 429-436). London and New York: Routledge.
Additional Core Readings:
Young, A.A. 2007. “Herbert Gans and the Politics of Urban Ethnography in the (Continued)
Age of the Underclass.” City & Community. 6(1): 7-20.
Other Suggested Readings:
Hughes, Everett C. 1943. French Canada in Transition. Chicago, Ill: The University of Chicago
press.
Clark, Samuel D. 1966. The Suburban Society. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Vidich, Arthur and Joseph Bensman. 1960. Small Town in Mass Society: Class, Power, and
Religion in a Rural Community. New York: Doubleday.
Week 6 – The Ecological View: From Culture to Nature
Capek, Stella M. 2010. “Foregrounding Nature: An Invitation to Think About Shifting NatureCity Boundaries.” City & Community 9(2): 208-224.
Gottlieb, Robert. 2005. “Urban and Industrial Roots: Seeking to Reform the System.” In
Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the Environmental Movement (pp. 83-120).
Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
Jacobs, Jane. 1961. “The Kind of Problem a City Is.” In The Death and Life of Great American
Cities (pp. 428-448). New York: Random House, Vintage Books Edition (1992).
Schweitzer, Lisa and Max Stephenson. 2007. “Right Answers, Wrong Questions: Environmental
Justice as Urban Research.” Urban Studies 44(2): 319-337.
Additional Core Readings:
*Brulle, Robert J. 2000. “The Social Dynamics of Environmental Degradation.” In Agency,
Democracy, and Nature: The U.S. Environmental Movement from a Critical Theory
Perspective (pp. 49-59, rest of chapter optional). Cambridge: MIT Press.
*Davis, Mike. 1998. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. Vintage
Books. (Chapter 5: “Maneaters of the Sierra Madre”)
Bookchin, Murray. 2005. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of
Hierarchy. AK Press.
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Lynch, Kevin. 1974. “The Pattern of the Metropolis.” In Charles Tilly (ed.), An Urban World (pp.
298-315). Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Hawley, Amos. 1986. Human Ecology: A Theoretical Essay. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
*Dunlap, Riley E. and William R. Catton Jr. 1994. “Struggling with Human Exemptionalism:
The Rise, Decline and Revitalization of Environmental Sociology.” The American
Sociologist 5: 243-273.
Dunlap, Riley. 2002. “Paradigms, Theories, and Environmental Sociology.” Pp. 329-350 in
Sociological Theory and the Environment: Classical Foundations, Contemporary
Insights, edited by R. Dunlap, F. H. Buttel, P. Dickens, and A. Gijswijt. Lanham:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Other Suggested Readings:
Alonso, William. 1976. “The Historic and the Structural Theories of Urban Form: Their
Implications for Urban Renewal.” In Charles Tilly (ed.), An Urban World (pp. 441-446).
Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Michelson, William. 1976. Man and His Urban Environment: A Sociological Approach (revised).
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Dunlap, Riley E. and William R. Catton Jr. 1979. “Environmental Sociology.” Annual Review of
Sociology 5: 243-273.
Dunlap, Riley E. and Kent D. Van Liere. 1978. “The ‘New Environmental Paradigm.’” Journal
of Environmental Education 9 (Summer): 10-19.
Field, Donald R. and Darryll R. Johnson. 1986. “Rural Communities and Natural Resources: A
Classical Interest.” The Rural Sociologist 6(2): 187-196.
Michelson, William. 1977. Environmental Choice, Human Behavior, and Residential
Satisfaction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hawley, Amos. 1950. Human Ecology: A Theory of Community Structure. New York: Ronald
Press.
Week 7 – Urban Political Economy I: Cities, Industrialization, and Socio-Spatial
Change
Mumford, Lewis. 1961. The City in History (Excerpt) New York: Harcourt.
Howard, Ebenezer. 1996. “The Town-Country Magnet.” In Richard Le Gates and Frederick Stout
(eds). 1996. The City Reader (pp. 309-316). London and New York: Routledge.
Wright, Frank Lloyd. 1996. “Broad-Acre City: A New Community Plan.” In Richard Le Gates and
Frederick Stout (eds). 1996. The City Reader (pp. 325-330). London and New York:
Routledge.
Tilly, Charles. 1974. “The Chaos of the Living City,” In Charles Tilly (ed.), An Urban World (pp.
86-107). Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Tilly, Charles. 1988. “Misreading, then Rereading, Nineteenth-Century Social Change." Pp. 33258 in Social Structures: A Network Approach, edited by B. Wellman and S. Berkowitz.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sennett, Richard. 1976. The Fall of Public Man. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. (Chapter 1: The
Public Domain.)
Additional Core Readings:
*Engels, Friedrich. 1984. The Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1944.
London: Penguin.
*Riis, Jacob. [1890] 2005. How the Other Half Lives. Studies among the Tenements of New
York. Stilwell, KS: Digireads.com Publishing.
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Sennett, Richard. 1976. Families Against the City: Middle Class Homes of Industrial Chicago
(pp. 59-149). New York: Vintage Books.
Warner, Sam Bass. 1974. “If All the World Were Philadelphia: A Scaffolding for Urban History,
1774-1930.” In Charles Tilly (ed.), An Urban World (pp. 315-331). Boston: Little, Brown
and Company.
Le Corbusier. “A Contemporary City.” In Richard Le Gates and Frederick Stout (eds). 1996. The
City Reader (pp. 317-324). London and New York: Routledge.
Additional Recommended Readings:
Sjoberg, Gideon. 1960. The Preindustrial City: Past and Present. Glencoe, Il: Free Press.
Merrifield, Andrew. 2002. “Walter Benjamin: The City of Profane Illumination.” In
Metromarxism (pp. 49-70). London and New York: Routledge.
*Benjamin, Walter. 1999. “Paris, Capital of the Twentieth Century.” In The Arcades Project.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press/Belnap.
Week 8 – Urban Political Economy II: Capitalism and Urban Dynamics
Merrifield, Andrew. 2002. “Henri Lefebvre: The Urban Revolution.” In Metromarxism (pp. 7192). London and New York: Routledge.
Merrifield, Andrew. 2002. “Manuel Castells: The City of Althusser and Social Movements.” In
Metromarxism (pp. 113-132). London and New York: Routledge.
Merrifield, Andrew. 2002. “David Harvey: The Geopolitics of Urbanization.” In Metromarxism
(pp. 133-157). London and New York: Routledge.
Sawers, Larry. 1984. “New Perspectives on Urban Political Economy.” In William Tabb and
Larry Sawyers, Marxism and the Metropolis: New Perspectives in Urban Political
Economy (pp.3-20). New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gordon, David. 1984. “Capitalist Development and the History of American Cities.” In William
Tabb and Larry Sawyers, Marxism and the Metropolis: New Perspectives in Urban
Political Economy (pp. 54-81). New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harvey, David. 2008. “The Right to the City.” New Left Review 53(September-October): 23–40.
Additional Core Readings:
*Mayer, Margit. 2009. “The ‘Right to the City’ in the context of shifting mottos of urban social
movements.” City 13(2-3): 362–374.
Saunders, Peter. 1983. Urban Politics: A Sociological Interpretation (pp. 66-136). London:
Hutchinson.
Susser, Ida (ed.) 2002. The Castells Reader on Cities and Social Theory (Part I.) London and
New York: Blackwell.
Other Suggested Readings:
Lefebvre, Henri. 2003. The Urban Revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
David, Harvey. 1985. The Urbanization of Capital. New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Week 9 – Urban Political Economy III: Elites, Political Power, and Urban
Dynamics
Logan, Jonathan and Harvey Molotch. 2002. “The City as a Growth Machine.” In Susan
Fainstein and Scott Campbell (eds.), Readings in Urban Theory (Chapter 10). New York:
Blackwell. [Updates and condenses a seminal 1976 article by Molotch and 1987 book by
the two co-authors.]
Squires, Gregory D. 2002. “Partnership and the Pursuit of the Private City.” In Susan Fainstein
and Scott Campbell (eds.), Readings in Urban Theory (Chapter 11). New York: Blackwell.
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Hyra, Derek. 2008. The New Urban Renewal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Preface,
Introduction, Building a Theoretical Framework, Conclusion]
Additional Core Readings:
Mollenkopf, John. 1983. The Contested City. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sugrue, Thomas. 1996. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post-war Detroit
(Part II and III). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
*Painter, Joe. 2002. “Regulation Theory, Post-Fordism, and Urban Politics.” In Susan Fainstein
and Scott Campbell (eds.), Readings in Urban Theory (Chapter 5). New York: Blackwell.
Fainstein, Susan. 2001. The City Builders: Property Development in New York and London.
Lawrence: University Press of Kansas [first edition, 1984, Blackwell].
*Kimelberg, S. M. (2011). Inside the Growth Machine: Real Estate Professionals on the
Perceived Challenges of Urban Development. City & Community, 10(1), 76–99.
*Smith, Neil. 2002. “Gentrification, the Frontier, and the Restructuring of Urban Space.” In
Susan Fainstein and Scott Campbell (eds.), Readings in Urban Theory (Chapter 12). New
York: Blackwell.
Other Suggested Readings:
Katznelson, Ira 1981. City Trenches: Urban Politics and The Patterning of Class in the United
States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Knoke, David. 1986. Associations and Interest groups. Annual Review of Sociology 12, no. 1:
121.
Friedland, Roger. 1982. Power and Crisis in the City: Corporations, Unions, and Urban Policy.
New York: MacMillan Press.
Logan, Jonathan and Harvey Molotch. 1987. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Abu-Lughod, Janet. 1994. From Urban Village to East Village. Cambridge, MA 1994.
Week 10 – Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Culture I
Zukin, Sharon. 1996. “Whose Culture, Whose City.” In Richard Le Gates, Richard T. and
Frederick Stout (eds.), The City Reader (pp. 136-146). London and New York: Routledge.
[Also in Fainstein and Campbell, Readings in Urban Theory, Chapter 15].
Sandercock, Leonie. 2003. Cosmopolis II: Mongrel Cities in the 21st Century (pp. 85153).London: Continuum Press.
Sampson, Robert. 2009. “Disparity and Diversity in the Contemporary City.” British Journal of
Sociology Vol. 60 no. 1 (March 2009).
Davis, Diane. 2009 “Taking Place and Space Seriously: Reflections on `Disparity and Diversity
in the Contemporary City’ by Robert Sampson“ British Journal of Sociology Vol. 60 no.1
(March 2009).
Davis, Mike. “Fortress L.A.” In Richard Le Gates, Richard T. and Frederick Stout (eds.), The City
Reader (pp. 201-205). London and New York: Routledge.
Additional Core Readings:
Bonner, Kieran. 2002. Understanding placemaking: Economics, politics and everyday life in the
culture of cities. Canadian Journal of Urban Research vol. 11, no. 1: 1-16 pgs.
Anderson, Elijah. 1990. Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Klinenberg, Eric. 2002. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (Chapter Two:
Race, Place, and Vulnerability) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Massey, Doreen. (1994). Space, Place, and Gender (Chapters 4, 8, 11). Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
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Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass, and
Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wilson, William Julius. 1996. “From Institutional to Jobless Ghettos.” In Richard Le Gates,
Richard T. and Frederick Stout (eds.), The City Reader (pp. 126-135). London and New
York: Routledge.
Other Suggested Readings:
Zukin, Sharon. 1995. The Culture of Cities. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Davis, Mike. 1992. City of Quartz. New York: Vintage Books.
Katz, Michael. 1993. The `Underclass’ Debate. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Massey, Douglas and Nancy Denton. 1994. American Apartheid. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
Massey, Doreen. 1997. “Space/Power, Identity/Difference.” In Andrew Merrifield and Eric
Swyngedouw (eds.), The Urbanization of Injustice (pp. 100-116). New York: New York
University Press.
Briggs, Xavier de Souza. 2004. Civilization in Color: The Multicultural City in Three Millennia.
City & Community 3(4):311-342.
Week 11 – Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Culture II
Pattillo, Mary. 2007. Excerpts, Black on the Block: The Politics of Race & Class in the City.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sampson, Robert J. 2012. Excerpts, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring
Neighborhood Effect. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Sharkey, Patrick. 2013. Excerpts, Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress
Toward Racial Equality. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Week 12 – Social Networks, Social Capital and Information and Communications
Technology (ICT)
Schneider, J. 2006. “Social Capital,” In The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology, Bryan S. Turner,
ed., 557-559. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Briggs, Xavier de Souza. 2003. “Social Capital, Types of,” In The Encyclopedia of Community:
From the Village to the Virtual World, Karen Christensen and David Levinson, eds..
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Gladwell, Malcolm. 1999. “Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg.” The New Yorker 11: 52–63.
Granovetter, Mark. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78(6):
1360-1380.
* Wellman, Barry (1999). “The Network Community: an Introduction.” in Barry Wellman (Ed.),
Networks in the Global Village (pp. 1-48). Boulder: Westview Press.
* Putnam, Robert. 2007. “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First
Century.” Scandinavian Political Studies 30(2):137-174.
* Sampson, Robert et al. 1997. “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multi-Level Study of
Collective Efficacy.” Science 277(5328):918-925.
Additional Core Readings:
* Portes, Alejandro. 1998. Social capital: its origins and applications in modern sociology.
Annual Review of Sociology 24, no. 1: 1-24.
* Sampson, Robert J, Doug McAdam, Heather MacIndoe, and Simón Weffer Elizondo. 2005.
Civil Society Reconsidered: The Durable Nature and Community Structure of Collective
Civic Action. American Journal of Sociology 111, no. 3: 673-714.
* Putnam, Robert. 2001. Social Capital Measurement and Consequences. Canadian Journal of
Policy Research 2(1): 41-51.
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Fischer, Claude. 2001. “Bowling Alone: What's the Score?” Paper delivered to Author-MeetsCritics Session on Putnam's Bowling Alone, Annual Meetings of the American
Sociological Association, Anaheim, CA, August.
Webber, Melvin. 1963. "Order in Diversity: Community without Propinquity." Pp. 23-54 in
Cities and Space: The Future Use of Urban Land, edited by J. Lowdon Wingo. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press.
Other Suggested Readings:
Putnam, Robert, editor. 2002. Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in
Contemporary Society. New York: Oxford University.
Briggs, Xavier de Souza et al. 2010. Excerpt on “The weakness of strong ties,” (conclusion)
Moving to Opportunity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Festinger, L. Schachter, S. and Back, K. W. (1950) Social Pressures in Informal Groups: A Study
of Human Factors in Housing, New York: Harper.
Week 13 - New Technology, Postmodernism and the City
Fischer, Claude S. 1997. “Technology and Community: Historical Complexities.” Sociological
Inquiry 67: 113–118.
Mitchell, William J. 2003. ME++ The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. MIT Press.
“Networks” (pp. 9-11); “Discontinuities”,”Habitats”, and “Communities” (pp. 14-17);
“Sensorium” and “Gaze” (pp. 24-29); “Electronic Nomadicity” and “Access Rules” (pp.
57-60); “Eyewitness Narratives” (pp. 105-109); “Hertzian Public Space” (154-158);
“Epilogue” (pp. 203-211)
Castells, Manuel. [1996] 2002. “The Space of Flows,” in The Castells Reader on Cities and Social
Theory, ed. Ida Susser, 314-366. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Matei, Sorin and Sandra Ball-Rokeach. 2001. “Real and Virtual Social Ties: Connections in the
Everyday Lives of Seven Ethnic Neighborhoods.” American Behavioral Scientist 45(3),
550-564.
Calhoun, Craig. 1998. “Community Without Propinquity Revisited: Communications
Technology and the Transformation of the Urban Public Sphere.” Sociological Inquiry
68(3), 373-379.
Sassen, Saskia. 1996. "The Impact of New Technologies and Globalization on Cities." In The City
Reader, pp. 212-220.
Hampton, Keith. 2003. "Grieving for a Lost Network: Collective Action in a Wired Suburb." The
Information Society 19:417-428.
Additional Core Readings:
Graham, Stephen. 2002. “Bridging Urban Digital Divides? Urban Polarisation and Information
and Communications Technologies (ICTs).” Urban Studies. 39(1): 33– 56.
Castells, Manuel. [1996] 2002. “The Culture of Cities in the Information Age,” in The Castells
Reader on Cities and Social Theory, ed. Ida Susser, 367-389. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Ling, Rich. 2004. The Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone’s Impact on Society. Boston: Morgan
Kaufman.
Other Suggested Readings:
Chen, Wenhong and Barry Wellman. 2005. “Charting the Digital Divide: Comparing
Socioeconomic, Gender, Life Stage and Rural-Urban Internet Access in Five Countries,”
In Transforming Enterprise, eds. William Dutton, Brian Kahin, Ramon O'Callaghan and
Andrew Wyckoff, 467-497. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wellman, Barry. 1999. Networks in the Global Village. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
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Fischer, Claude. 1992. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Katz, James E. and Ronald E. Rice. 2002. Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access,
Involvement, and Interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Schon, Donald, Bishwapriya Sanyal and William Mitchell. 1999. High Technology and Low
Income Communities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Week 14 - Globalization, Transnationalism and Comparative Urban Development
Davis, Diane. 2005. “Cities in Global Context: A Brief Intellectual History.” International
Journal of Urban and Regional research. 29(1): 92-109.
Soja, Edward. 1996. “Taking L.A Apart: Towards A Post-modern Geography.” In Richard Le
Gates, Richard T. and Frederick Stout (eds.), The City Reader (pp.189-200). London and
New York: Routledge.
Roy, Ananya. "Transnational Trespassings: The Geopolitics of Urban Informality." In Ananya
Roy and Nezar Alzayad (eds.), Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the
Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia (pp. 289-313). Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2004.
Smith, Michael Peter. 2005. “Transnational Urbanism Revisited.” Journal of Ethnic and
Migration Studies 31(2): 235-244.
Landolt, Patricia. 2008. “The Transnational Geographies of Immigrant Politics: Insights from a
Comparative Study of Migrant Grassroots Organizing.” The Sociological Quarterly 49(1):
53–77.
Chen, X., L. Wang, and R. Kundu. 2009. “Localizing the production of global cities: A
comparison of new town developments around Shanghai and Kolkata.” City &
Community 8(4): 433–465.
Additional Core Readings:
Zukin, Sharon. 2010. The Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, pp. 1-34, 219-247.
* Sassen, Saskia. 1991. The Global City. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Levitt, Peggy. 2001. The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press.
*James de Filippis. 2004. Unmaking Goliath: Community Control in the Face of Global Capital.
New York and London: Routledge, pp. 17-60.
Roberts, J. Timmons and Peter E. Grimes. 2002. “World-System Theory and the Environment:
Toward a New Synthesis.” Pp. 167-194 in Sociological Theory and the Environment:
Classical Foundations, Contemporary Insights, edited by R. Dunlap, F. H. Buttel, P.
Dickens, and A. Gijswijt. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
*Drainville, Andre. 2004. Contesting Globalization: Space and Place in the World Economy.
New York and London: Routledge.
Other Suggested Readings:
Graham, Stephen. 2004. “Beyond the ‘Dazzling Light’: From Dreams of Transcendence to the
‘Remediation’ of Urban Life: A Research Manifesto.” New Media Society. 6(1): 16-xx.
Clark, David. 1996. Urban World/Global City. New York and London: Routledge.
Anjaria, J. S. 2009. Guardians of the Bourgeois City: Citizenship, Public Space, and Middle‐
Class Activism in Mumbai1. City & Community 8(4): 391–406.
Marcuse, Peter and Ronald Van Kempen, 2000. Globalizing Cities: A New Spatial Order?
London and New York: Blackwell.
Sites, William. 2003. Remaking New York: Primitive Globalization and the Politics of Urban
Community. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
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King, Anthony D. 1990. Global Cities: Post-Imperialism and the Internationalization of London.
London and New York: Routledge.
Dear, Michael. From Chicago to L.A.: Making Sense of Urban Theory.
Davis, Mike. 2006. Planet of Slums. New York: Verso.
Beck, Ulrich. 1999. World Risk Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beauregard, Robert. 2003. “City of Superlatives” and replies by Michael Dear and Neil Brenner.
In City and Community, 2(3): 183-216.
Week 15 – Review and Synthesis
Gieryn, Thomas. 2002. “A Space for Place in Sociology.” Annual Review of Sociology 26:463–96.
Sassen, Saskia. 2000. “New Frontiers Facing Urban Sociology at the Millennium.”
British Journal of Sociology. 51(1): 143–159.
Gans, Herbert. 2009. “Some Problems for and Futures of Urban Sociology: Toward a Sociology
of Settlements.” City & Community 8(3).
Other Suggested Readings:
Castells, Manuel. [1996] 2002. “Conclusion: Urban Sociology in the 21st Century,” in The
Castells Reader on Cities and Social Theory, ed. Ida Susser, 390-406. Malden, MA:
Blackwell.
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