Search

While we understand that city life is strongly patterned, specifically in 24 hour increments, the forces behind this patterning are not as well understood. I examine one of the forces that has been suggested as a predictor and driver of daily life, social ecology. Measuring this concept as combinations of institutions, I use quantitative methods including OLS regression to predict the patterns of daily life. Drawing on literature from social ecology, geography and sociology, I use this regression model to understand how these institutions could drive the 24 hour pattern of life. This project uses cell phone data from the city of Milan across a period of two months to examine this question, leveraging methods drawn from signal processing to refine diurnal signals. I find that while social ecology is a strong predictor of the amount of social activity in a city, other latent forces are certainly pertinent in the production of this pattern of life. To better understand why the OLS model can only predict part of the pattern, I use random forests to better explain why the temporal phase of this activity is difficult to estimate. These results have implications for organizers of social movements, criminologists, and epidemiology, as it allows people to better understand the movement of people around a city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a method in sociology, urban ethnography is rather straightforward: it conducts participant observation in cities. In essence, urban ethnographers study place, and yet how place is portrayed, as it pulls together community and city life, is too often absent from ethnographic descriptions. Indeed, place serves as a powerful actor in the lives of everyday people, but it becomes difficult to understand how place works in an ethnographic context. To reflect upon this puzzle, the following offers a language for how we may make better sense of place as urban ethnographers. Focusing here on the central ideas of Wirth (1938) and how it relates to place as an actor in ethnographic research, highlights the more hidden tenets of this methodological approach, underscoring the boundary maintenance of what is in and out of what it means to do urban ethnography. By revisiting classic urban ethnographies we consider how place is constructed as an object of analysis, reflective of social phenomenon occurring within a city ecology. And, in identifying six tensions (in/out, order/disorder, public/private, past/present, gemeinschaft/gesellschaft, and discrete/diffuse) we demonstrate how descriptions of place are either present or absent in these ethnographies. To understand these tensions as they depict place, we maintain, is to better understand how place is represented within urban ethnography. often understood as a conceptualization of an actually existing urban space, but without an understanding of the aforementioned tensions, urban ethnography will remain rather imprecise. variants, casino development in post-industrial cities and state-licensed culture districts, this article provides examples of how external agencies shape urban localities for the incursion of outside groups, but also how local groups struggle to not be completely shut out of the process. These cases illustrate the ways 'cultural terraformers' use strategies such as colonization of the collective conscious, recreating partnerships, and re-spatializing to reshape the local culture of place in the interest of outsiders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within urban and community sociology, much emphasis is placed on neighborhood transitions and transformations, whether processes of economic decline and abandonment, or of reinvestment and gentrification. This is understandable, given the impacts of change on vulnerable residents. Yet many neighborhoods do not change dramatically over time - their built environments, demographic compositions, distinct cultures, and positions in local hierarchies of places endure for decades. Existing literature acknowledges this (Delmelle 2017; Solari 2012), calling for attention to the mechanisms by which neighborhood stability is accomplished. Drawing upon scholarship in urban sociology as well as a case study of one Jacksonville, Florida neighborhood, this paper provides a model for understanding neighborhood continuity attentive to the roles of structural, organizational, symbolic, and interactional domains. Continuity, it argues, should be understood as resulting from active work across these domains - not from a lack of action or attention. Discussion and conclusions consider this model's applicability to other types of neighborhoods and contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers from community psychology, urban sociology, and urban planning share common inquiries on how sense of community (SoC) evolves across time in different societal contexts, and how it links with health and wellbeing. Existing literature from Western democratic societies identified that the multiple theoretical and operational definitions of SoC are relevant to social capital and social cohesion at the individual- and collective- levels. One major research gap is to clarify such conceptual overlaps and the differential mechanisms connecting SoC with health, happiness, and other measures of subjective wellbeing. We used comparable data from the Taiwan Social Change Survey administered in 1997 and 2017. Over the twenty-year time period, there is a significant increase in sense of community membership and a decrease in sense of community consciousness that took place across areas of different urbanization levels. Respndents with a higher level of education or resided in more urbanized areas showed a stronger sense of community consciousness, while those in rural areas or received less education showed a stronger sense of community attachment. A higher sense of community affinity is associated with better health and higher level of happiness, while other four SoC dimensions showed varied strength and directions of associations with subjective wellbeing. Through recognizing SoC as a multi-dimensional construct that contains elements of structural and cognitive social capital as well as social cohesion, we suggest that developing SoC may be a viable community-level strategy to buffer the socioeconomic, cultural, health, and wellbeing disadvantage among vulnerable social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology has seen a revival of cultural studies, with many urban and community scholars especially interested in the ways in which culture brings about strategies for action (see Swidler 1986). In the present paper, we examine a sample of people who are part of an expat "digital nomad: subculture, and ask what cultural "toolkit" nomads use to solve their problems back home? To do so, this paper analyzes data from fieldwork and 70 formal interviews to examine a sample of creative class professionals who left their homes in order to become expat digital nomads, "professionals who prefer a locationindependent lifestyle that allows them to travel and work anywhere in the world" (Mohn 2014). Given that interacting, social communities depend, in part, upon shared values in order to flourish, we identified the five core values that inform digital nomads' decisions to take action to leave home and engage in nomad community building abroad. We label these values: individualism, selfimprovement, sharing and helping, positivity and hustle, and minimalism. As each value is significant to the character of their communitybuilding, we first discuss them individually and then describe their confluence in Bali's digital nomad community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study maps the parent-subsidiary ties of all multinational corporations in 2016 grossing $10 million and above by city location. This covers 22,312 cities, and over 200,000 parent-subsidiary connections. Social network analysis is used to create a unique centrality-based rankings of all cities consistent with the "world city hierarchy" frequently studied at the cross-section of global and urban sociology. Inference focuses on the traditional apex of the hierarchy (New York, London, Tokyo) versus the rapidly emergent, "Chinese triad" of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Findings show that Beijing maintains the national monopoly on multinational corporate headquarter locations while Shanghai has the most branch locations, and Hong Kong remains the "gateway" city for foreign capital penetration into mainland China, with the most overall ties. These findings are consistent with theoretical expectations regarding the specific global functions served by these cities according to extant literature. Findings also present compelling new evidence of the shift of transnational capital flows from West to East, with the "Chinese triad" among others having achieved near or even surpassing London and New York inter-city in corporate connectivity. Lastly, these findings provide an important baseline on which to investigate shifts in the world-system, particularly in the semi-periphery (China, Singapore, etc.) in the post-financial crisis era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. suburbs underwent a dramatic demographic shift between 1990 and 2010, watching their white populations decline and their poor, nonwhite, and less-educated populations grow. Has the move to suburbs by such groups--who are frequently targeted by police--attracted more intense policing there? While the absolute numbers of arrests have decreased in suburbs as in cities, suburban police departments have nearly doubled the proportion of their arrests made for small, quality-of-life violations. Using fixed effects models to estimate the quality-of-life arrest rate in 162 suburbs between 1990 and 2010, this study finds that the growth of suburbs' nonwhite populations is associated with a shift to quality-of-life focused, broken-windows style policing strategies. Extending to suburbs the racial threat literature conducted in cities, I find that white fear of nonwhites was a stronger explanation for the shift to quality-of-life policing than crime rates. This suggests that broken windows policing does not "follow the crime", as its advocates claim, but rather follows people of color. I also test Jonathan Simon's theory that housing market bubbles help explain more intense policing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization, it is assumed in the sociological literature, goes hand-in-hand with proletarianization and a definitive shift in the nature of social struggles towards demands for wage labor, housing, and basic services. However in the City of Cape Town long-term urban residents are currently engaged in land occupations for raising livestock--a quintessential peasant activity in South Africa. These land occupations raise questions about the relationship between urbanization and proletarianization as well as the relationship between urbanization and class-consciousness and collective action in cities today. Drawing on in depth interviews and participant observation carried out between 2009 and 2014 at land occupation sites in Cape Town, this paper argues there is what we might call a "latent reserve army of peasants" in urban South Africa today that would revert to peasant activities if land were available. In other words, the handful of land occupations for raising livestock that are observable today are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential demand for land in cities for agriculture by urban residents. The current occupations predate the neoliberal period and therefore cannot just be understood as a response to the deepening crisis of subsistence induced by neoliberalism. Rather it is an outcome of longer-term relationship between the development of capitalism, wage labor and urbanization in much of the global South. I argue that there exists an urban proletariat with peasant characteristics today that is contesting and reshaping urban space, not only in South Africa, but in much of the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The degree to which lower-income residents and small businesses in upgrading neighborhoods are displaced by the process of gentrification has provoked considerable debate in urban sociological research. Displacement is generally framed as a possible, and potentially remediable, outcome of gentrification. This stands in contrast to the predominant framing of displacement as a necessary precursor to redevelopment that characterized much of the earlier urban sociological literature on urban renewal. In this article, I challenge the conceptualization of displacement as mere outcome in the gentrification process. Drawing on archival research and media accounts, this paper presents an historical case study of redevelopment over 50 years in Wichita, Kansas. I demonstrate that a "displacement-first" strategy has characterized all attempts - government-led "urban renewal" in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as more recent private sector-driven gentrification efforts - to transform the city's "skid row" into the hub of a gentrified downtown core. I discuss the implications of these findings for sociological theories of gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research demonstrates both the importance of social ties for the poor and their frequent social isolation. This paper uses ethnographic observations and interviews with 25 poor and homeless members of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as well as 25 interviews with non-members. People come to KWRU when their situations are dire. Homeless or at risk of losing welfare benefits, food stamps, or other crucial forms of support, they seek support from an organization that may assist them to secure benefits or temporary housing, and in doing so often build social ties with one another. However, this paper focuses on the other side of that coin: many of my respondents' avoidance of social ties. Building relationships implies a need for those ties; this challenges the common self-concept of believing individuals can and should succeed independently. The myth of individualistic success is one of the strongest barriers to the formation of social ties among the poor. Other reasons I found include a pervasive fear that neighbors will gossip about one's problems; in the context of individualistic ideology, such exposure is unthinkable. Individualistic ideology also supports pervasive stigma about poverty, which causes respondents to avoid associating with others who are in many ways like them. In general my respondents avoid contact with neighbors, considering their neighborhoods places of fear, stress, crime, and violence. Respondents also recognized that ties require a mutuality that can be daunting; they shrank from social ties that could drain precious resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long been interested in the factors that determine social movement activity, both at the individual and regional level. Numerous theories have emerged over the years to explain how and why people come to participate in social or political activism, but there are currently three main shortcomings in the literature. First, most examinations of social movement activity focus on one or a small handful of movements in one national context, so our understanding of social movements in a comparative framework is limited. Second, activism is clearly affected both by the individual characteristics of people and the regional context in which people reside. Studying both of these simultaneously requires a multilevel approach, which is not common the study of social movements. Third, few studies have considered how urban status affects this process at both the individual and regional level. This paper starts to address these shortcomings with a multilevel analysis of the determinants of social movement activism in the contemporary European Union, the site of major protest activity in recent years. Using the 5th wave of the European Social Survey, I test competing theories of social movement activism in a sample of 20 countries. Results indicate that the level of resources and urban status best predict individual activism. Cities provide a better environment for social movements, even in areas that should otherwise struggle to produce activism. I conclude with a discussion of the implications for urban theory and future social movement research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances an urban field theory of the relationship between place and cultural production that accounts for 21st century trends and artists' own practical career strategies. Using a multi-city comparative study of contemporary visual artists in two "off-center" cities - Portland, Oregon, and Nashville, Tennessee, this study challenges extant urban models of cultural production. I argue that contemporary artists are dually embedded in local scenes and a global, urban field, in which artists' career strategies require overcoming place-based market, social, and symbolic disadvantages, and in which cities themselves vary in terms of market, social, and symbolic resources, which are in turn produced and reproduced around artists' efforts to make and maintain their careers. This means that while the art world appears to be decentering, place still matters greatly, and place reputations are a stake and reward in artists' career struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much of the field of urban sociology has been shaped by the ideas of and disagreements between three major schools of urban sociological thought, namely the Chicago School, the LA school, and the New York school, I argue in this paper that our understandings of the urban remain incomplete. Focusing on the urban sociological contributions of W.E.B. DuBois' through the ethnographic text The Philadelphia Negro, I tease out and examine notions of the urban embedded in this extensive text. In tandem, this paper illuminates aspects of the urban that pertain to the preservation of particular local and national histories rendering them regional centers often characterized by their stark and persistent black-white racial dynamic. This paper, then, adds to urban sociological theory and urban sociological discourse by emphasizing the particularities of cities by engaging with DuBois' critical ideas about Philadelphia at the close of the 19th century. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generational patterns in locational attainment have been understudied in urban sociology and demography despite their importance in contributing to our understanding about racial and ethnic group integration into the segregated housing market that exists in American society. Using generational data from the 2003-2007 Houston Area Study (HAS) merged with Census 2000 data, the present study seeks to build upon the limited research - two studies - that exists on this topic and extend the examination of Hispanic spatial assimilation to the Houston area. Our results reveal a surprising pattern of generational differences consistent more with the tenets of the segmented assimilation model than those of the spatial assimilation model. Essentially a significant decline is observed in the neighborhood outcomes of 2nd generation Hispanics, relative to 1st and 1.5 generation Hispanics, but a significant improvement in neighborhood conditions emerges between 2nd and 3rd plus generations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central to "building Puerto Rico" after WWII was providing citizens with adequate and "honorable" homes, which resulted in two types of housing that spatially brand social life in the island: multiple-dwelling public housing and suburban single-family subdivisions. The articulated relationship between the house and personal and spiritual security, articulated via these two housing forms, resulted in the introduction of the residential gate for private as well as public housing. This intervention was explicitly developed to address the island's growing crime rate at the end of the 20th Century. Here, I argue that the community gates (in public as well as private housing) are mechanisms for defining, controlling, and preserving the idea of "home" and community. I explore the role that gates play in supporting housing ideals, defining the sanctioned users and controllers of the city, and recognizing and organizing anonymous moving bodies across space. Furthermore, home gates corral unequal urban landscapes; protecting rich lifestyles, sequestering the poor, and regulating women. In this segmentation of lifestyles, I argue that Puerto Rican society is a past-urban Caribbean society; beyond the promise of the city. And the home becomes the locus of this new organization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractStudying the Global City: Design and Assessment of an International Travel CourseThe study that follows examines the design and assessment of an international travelcourse in urban sociology. Scheduled as an undergraduate general educationcourse and supported by a teaching grant, 'London: Studying the Global City,' provides a descriptive summary for sociologists who have considered developing an international travel course and delivering it online. Funding from the teachinggrant provided itinerary setting travel that shaped course syllabus development. In addition, six years of teaching urban sociology with a focus on fieldworkin Philadelphia served as a model supporting development of the London study. Course objectives, assignments in London, and their linkages to pre and post trip assignments are detailed in an effort to highlight the design process. A final section provides an assessment of student performance with suggestions aimed at improving alignment with course objectives. Study conclusions consider the challenges and benefits to offering urban sociology as an online travel based course. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With evidence from in-depth study of contemporary local governance, I connect legal scholarship on consensus decision-making to government legitimacy. I contrast Philadelphia's plans to use eminent domain for private redevelopment in two economically similar neighborhoods. (Data are archival, interview, and observational.) In one neighborhood, stakeholders' evaluation of government legitimacy grew increasingly negative as Philadelphia developed and implemented plans. The project in the second neighborhood initially followed the same path, but successful negotiation caused a sharp turnaround in stakeholder satisfaction. In both cases, critics claimed and still claim that procedural and distributive injustices caused citizens to lose faith in government. However, the contrast of the two stories allows us to recognize that support for negotiation could have ameliorated (and in some instances did ameliorate) claims of procedural and distributive injustices. The comparison also reveals that in these policy disputes, developers, constituents, and governments face serious problems of lack of information and future uncertainty. The two dominant concepts of the roots of government legitimacy -- formal procedure and interest-group politics -- either exacerbate or barely recognize these problems, but negotiation can allow participants to acknowledge and cope with them. Finally, impending key points of legislative consideration can provide the law behind the shadow of public conflict that makes negotiation possible. I hope to open sociological awareness to the possibilities of individualized negotiation producing government legitimacy. Conversely, with strong empirical study, I give dispute-resolution legal scholars what they have been asking for: analysis of mechanisms by which collaborative decision-making can build government legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the impact of white flight on neighborhood life has long been a concern, very little research has focused on perceptions of the blacks who act as "pioneers." In many cases, the first blacks who move into white communities intentionally seek integration, but in a short period of time, they find their community has "turned over" or resegregated to become predominantly black. This paper draws on an ethnographic case study of Parkmont, a neighborhood that has transitioned from predominantly white to predominately black to analyze a unique population: black pioneers who have entered a white neighborhood and witnessed the process of white flight. Using field observations and semi-structured intensive interviews, the goal of this paper is to better understand pioneers' views about the desire for integration and their opinions of the "second wave" blacks moving in as the area completed the cycle of racial transition. This paper is part of a larger project that addresses limitations of past research on neighborhood change by specifically examining blacks' residential preferences/motives, aspirations, and disappointments concerning integration and white flight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most studies of urban nightlife focus on patrons, this analysis focuses on the employees of the nightclub industry. This articles draws on over five years of experience in and two years of ethnographic research at Narcisse: a restaurant/club/lounge which is both unique and yet representative of the nightlife industry of Chicago. This study draws out the temporal peculiarities of the occupation, the specific occupational orientation - one that defies traditional occupational logic by emphasizing the greater importance of symbolic and social capital rather than economic compensation, and finally how traditional occupational status and hierarchies neglect how certain jobs have particular status within a particular idioculture as opposed to the dominant culture. In doing so, this study offers insight into urban sociology by exploring the internal workings of the post-industrial hybrid of the service economy and the culture industry generalized herein as the leisure industry, and how specific occupations and occupational roles are always embedded in larger cultural frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What directs neighborhood change in neighborhoods over time? We evaluate the race-based expectations model put forth by Taub, Taylor, & Duncan in their comprehensive, multi-method study (1984), using data that engages their explanations the predictors of racial change and stability in urban areas. Their theory proposes that white residents use race as a proxy for where the neighborhood is headed, therefore making investment decisions about their neighborhood based on their race-based expectations. We examine the pathways of eight Chicago neighborhoods which they predicted to integrate racially only transitionally until their white population exists, resist integration, or achieve stable racial integration. We combine two data sources for our analysis: 1) 1970-2000 Census data from the Neighborhood Change Database (NCDB) and 2) tract-level homicide data for the city of Chicago from the years 1991-2002, collected by one of our authors. The results show strong support for their model but underscore the significant limitations of black-white analyses of our increasingly diverse communities. We incorporate Latinos and Asians into the model and explain their effect as well as the effects of institutional actors, space, and crime on racial integration. We compare the eight neighborhoods to the surrounding county and discuss how this local study can inform our understanding of neighborhood change in other communities and on other scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study focuses on the organized underground food market in secondary schools in a metropolitan city. After the collapse of the selling of high fat, salty, and sugary foods in the public schools by food companies due to parent and community reaction. The students took over the business and are profiting much, creating a black market, selling to each other these products (Cola, chocolates, potato chips, etc...), even though they were banned by most schools. The study uses a theoretical oriented narrative for the ethnographic interviews. The study focuses on, a) analyzing why teens risk themselves, b) how relationships are, and c) what the image assumptions are, in this organized black market of food in their schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of how to characterize American metropolitan form is a longstanding and contentious issue within urban sociology, and the location and configuration of poor neighborhoods has been a key factor in these debates. At the turn of the 21st century, many argue that new theories are required to understand substantial changes in metropolitan social organization, including a new spatial distribution of poverty. After decades of striking increases in poverty segregation, far fewer poor families were isolated in high-poverty neighborhoods in 2000 and many scholars argue that the poor spread out across metropolitan areas in a process that has been called the "deconcentration of poverty." Yet while the deconcentration thesis has been widely accepted, it has been subjected to relatively little empirical analysis and conflicting evidence has not been reconciled, leaving its theoretical implications unclear. I use US Census summary data for 1980-2000 to undertake a detailed evaluation of the deconcentration of poverty using multiple segregation measures, including spatial indices, and examining the comparative context of trends in other forms of segregation. I find that while poverty segregation became less severe in important respects, there were also limits to the deconcentration of poverty and that in fact along some dimensions the poor became more segregated at the end of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists and demographers have long been interested in the residential attainment of minority groups in metropolitan areas (Alba and Logan 1991, 1992, 1993; Logan and Alba 1993; Logan et. al. 1996; Logan and Leung 1996). Researchers have found that, net of individual characteristics such as income, acculturation, household composition, and age, whites tend to live in neighborhoods with higher median income and a larger proportion of whites than do Asians, Hispanics, or blacks (Logan et. al. 1996; Logan and Leung 1996). Whites also live in higher quality housing units than Hispanics and blacks and have higher rates of home-ownership than Asians, Hispanics, and blacks (Rosenbaum 1996). Despite this sizeable body of evidence, little is know about racial and ethnic differences in residential attainment among the elderly. This topic deserves attention for several reasons. First and foremost, most of the current work on the residential circumstances of the elderly focuses on continuing care and assisted and independent living communities. However, most elderly prefer to stay in their own homes and age in place. One's home is frequently the main source of wealth, and intergenerational transfers of wealth play an important part in perpetuating racial and ethnic inequality (Oliver and Shapiro 1995; Conley 1998). Neighborhood and housing quality can also help compensate for health declines in old age and this explains a portion of racial and ethnic differences in health and well-being among the elderly (Himes et. al. 1996; Krout and Wellington 1996; Wait and Hughes 1999; Balfour and Kaplan 2002; Cagney et al. 2005). These concerns, coupled with the aging of American society in general, make studying the elderly an important contribution to the residential attainment literature. Using data from the 2005 American Housing Survey (AHS), I plan to extend the attainment research agenda by focusing on racial and ethnic variations in residential attainment patterns among the elderly that age in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Processes of social control are an underdeveloped area of study in music subcultures. This paper reports social control by analyzing the existence of "crews"—groups within the hardcore music subculture that have properties of gangs. A key component in the development of control is what I call "mythifacation," a process of creating an aura that surrounds crews. Ethnographic data for the paper was collected between September 2007 and January 2008 from fourteen hardcore music events in mid-Atlantic cites and also from three recorded interviews. Results show that hardcore crews' control over the subculture is perpetuated by a dialectic of mythifacation, reification and fetishism. Elements of exclusion reinforce possessive boundaries that crews establish according to their local subculture, and phenomenal attraction to hardcore crews will continue to promote their formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 30 years, social theorists have increasingly emphasized the importance of space. However, in empirical research, the dialectical relationship between social interaction and the physical environment is still a largely neglected the issue. Using the theory of structuration, I provide a concrete example of why and how space matters in the cultural analysis of an urban social world. I argue that, bike messengers—individuals who deliver time sensitive materials in downtown cores of major cities—cannot be understood outside an analysis of space. Specifically, I connect the cultural significance of messenger practices to the emplacement of those practices inside the urban environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International migration is reconfiguring cities, nations, and societies worldwide. Urban sociological theory, while providing insight into residential change and suburban composition, provides little insight as to how these processes reconfigure the cultural, demographic, and political characteristics of the suburbs. Moreover, existing literature on global immigration and urban settlement generally considers an immigrants' move to the suburbs as a sign of assimilation and social mobility. This paper considers Berwyn, a suburban town near Chicago currently undergoing significant and transformative demographic changes, to examine the effects of immigration on a local community. I conducted interviews (in both Spanish and English), performed context analysis, and observed street-level activity during 2005 (and again in 2007). I unearthed the motivation of immigrants locating or relocating in Berwyn, gained an understanding as to their non-anglophone cultural contexts and links, determined the previous residents' reaction toward this transformation, and identified the social (cultural and political) problems related to this rapid demographic and cultural transition. I discovered that the immigrants' move to Berwyn was not associated with assimilation as many had recently arrived, lived near and worked with others with similar backgrounds, maintained language and cultural characteristics, and regularly communicated with other members of their multi-valenced intra-city and international networks. Essentially, a non-anglophone community is being established within Berwyn. Although this transformation from Bohemian to Brown is rapid and relatively peaceful, access to quality local services and institutions has been slow. Berwyn, an emergent suburban multi-cultural enclave, is a natural experiment with Global Implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I review the claims of an urban sociological crises simply as a way to consider arguments that make normative assessments about urban conditions that adversely impact human and social justice. Hence, the paper is not intended to settle the debate regarding claims of an "urban sociological crises". Rather, we rely on some of the claims in order to discuss conceptual frameworks relative to US cities, discuss theoretical critiques relative to the frameworks, and suggest the appropriateness of a normative disposition to describe links between such frameworks and urban problems. Consequently, I rely on institutional anomie theory (IAT) as a way to conceptualize the relationship between federalism and social dilemmas of large cities in the U.S. Messner and Rosenfeld (1997) argue that the dominance of economic institutions have rendered non-economic institutions less effective in garnering the type of social progress that they were intended to. They characterize such conditions as institutionally anomic and argue that these conditions are linked to patterns of crime. In this paper we review empirical research, and argue that government policy priorities of federalism distort non-economic functions of governance, and that IAT is an appropriate tool to conceptualize any nexus between government institutions and ill-effects that is has on residents of large cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have looked explicitly at street kids. Those that have done so have mostly attended to their participation in illicit activities (e.g., drug use, panhandling, prostitution, theft) or have focused on particularly deviant street kids. As a result, street kids have been painted as an exceptionally deviant group with little or no involvement in the mainstream world. This paper, based on ethnographic field research and informal interviews with Hollywood street kids, explores their participation in and allegiance to mainstream society by examining their daily lives and activities—including work, school, having fun, maintaining and building relationships with family and friends, staying aware of current events and popular culture, and espousing societal values—and suggests that street kids, far from being wholly deviant, are more accurately viewed as occupying a liminal position participating in both the straight, licit world of mainstream society and the illicit world of the street. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning in the 1980s bars and dance clubs reemerged as zones of intercultural interactions within Shanghai. Based on interviews with bar and club owners, customers, as well as field notes from participant observation over the last15 years, this paper describes the changing organization of the ethnosexual contact zone of the nightlife and the changing nature of the social interactions within it. Nightlife is a context in which casual interactions among foreign sojourners and settlers and various categories of PRC citizens are common and relatively spontaneous. At the same time it is a space in which racial and gendered identities are not only accented and expressed, but also constructed and articulated in particular and salient ways that partly define the experience of being a young man or a woman in Shanghai. In particular this paper focuses on the production of contrasting masculine and female sexual identities associated with Europeans and North American men and women who frequent Shanghai night clubs and bars. The paper also describes how differently constructed social spaces are used by different groups to express and defend their sexual, gendered and racialized status positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"World cities" and "global cities" have increasingly attracted the attention of urban-focused social science research Urban scholars increasingly view city networks as constituting an important structural dimension of the world system. From this perspective, the great cities of the world are organizational nodes in multiple global networks of economic, social, demographic, and information flows. This relational view allows us to begin to think about mapping cities in terms of their structural relationships with one another, describing the structure of a world network of cities, identifying and explaining hierarchical relations among world cities, understanding the "nesting" of the world city network into the broader world-system, and analyzing the connections between cities' places in the global hierarchy and social relations within them. While much of the focus on global cities and cities in global networks has been squarely on the cities at the very top of the world urban hierarchy, like the New York, Tokyo, and London, relatively little effort has been directed at understanding how the urban areas in "the global South" are part of the wider global urban hierarchy. In effect, these cities are left "off the map" by much of the global and world cities literature. This paper will attempt to remedy this by putting forward a preliminary "mappings" that consider these cities and suggest a more comprehensive agenda for global city scholars that incorporates the cities of the underdeveloped world. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Eyes on the Street", Jane Jacobs' paradigm of benign locals who keep vigil and 'just help' in times of trouble, is taken for granted in by urbanists writing on public space. Other traditions offering perspectives on local surveillance and action hold a number of contrary, but equally-simplified perspectives on the roles local actors play in public order. I take these ideas to task in an examination of how people who work in public environments - New York subway workers in particular - conceptualize and respond to the opportunities for intervention they encounter. Based on interviews with 70 transport workers and in situ observation, I argue that workers deploy a number of strategies to keep surveillance and manage evolving exigencies in a way structured by their work process and related crosscutting pressures. These strategies, taken individually, could be consistent with some of the simplifications implicit in the literature, but taken together show the contingent use of situated, practical strategy attuned to local context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I deconstruct the notion of progress according to two competing factions within a Midwestern city of 50,000. The competing visions, initially divided by a land-use decision for a regional commercial center on the outskirts of Ames, Iowa, became more pronounced as the land-use decision went unresolved, causing the two distinct visions of progress to collide. The two visions, termed smart growth vision and progrowth vision, have framed their view of progress for the community by drawing on various community capitals (Flora and Flora 2004) in an attempt to sway political capital to support one vision over the other. The result of the contention between the competing visions has affected three consecutive city council elections, directed city council agendas, dominated community dialogue, and filled the pages of the local newspaper. The relationship between framing a vision for the community and actual outcomes (e.g., mobilization of potential adherents, blocking or delaying land-use decisions, electing candidates to city government) is discussed. The evidence in this case study suggests frames mobilize potential advocates as do major political events and perceived successes. However, this occurs up to the point that political capital is gained, causing social movement participants to demobilize and countermovement actors to mobilize. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, social scientists have been paying more attention to artistic and cultural production. Two things are abundantly clear: Art and culture is important to economy and society, and art and culture "happens" in particular places, and more often than not, those places are urban. Yet our understanding of art and culture does not probe deeply into the dynamics of place-based artistic and cultural production. Using detailed interviews with almost 100 cultural producers in New York City, this article seeks to put forth a systematic understanding of how cultural economies work by formalizing the mechanisms, both social and economic, by which cultural producers gain employment, attain valorization for their talents and goods, and advance their careers, and why these processes happen in particular places. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Durban, South Africa was planned during apartheid as a series of concentric rings of commerce and residence, with whites closest to the core and blacks located in distant townships. Following the end of formal apartheid in 1991 and with the instantiation of majority rule in 1994, the African National Congress came to power with a mandate to link excluded black populations to the substantial growth potential of South Africa's pockets of first world economy and infrastructure. High capacity local government was tasked as the primary agent of transformation, and the tools of planning were retargeted away from division and exclusion and towards breaking down the racialized spatial arrangement of cities. Post-apartheid infrastructure development was intended to break down existing spatial structures through local and corridor-based economic development and increased opportunities for access and mobility. This paper uses spatial data from the 1996 and 2001 South African censuses together with city departmental data on housing and social services to examine links between public investment and spatial change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do "neighborhood effects" help to explain life trajectories and residential destination choices of young adults? Drawing upon ethnographic and census-based data, I seek to find this answer through an examination of a cohort of residents who were raised in a middle class community called Co-op City, located in the Bronx, New York. Co-op city is the largest multiracial middle-income housing complex in the United States. I argue that due to the cohort members' experiences in Co-op City, their neighborhood of origin, their adult residential choices are primarily driven by class-based values and social, human, and cultural capital aspects of participants' lives, rather than the commonly cited race-based values. Through oral histories, census based data, and a survey questionnaire, I examine how class has become a social construction and premise for the collective and individual search for a new community. Based on my findings, I offer suggestions for a varied sociological approach to neighborhood and community studies. The implication of my findings directly contradicts many other scholarly works on residential segregation, and instead, suggests that class, rather than race, may be a deeper defining "social construction" for some young adults who move out from their neighborhood of origin. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted over a six-week long period in Downtown Los Angeles during the summer of 2005. Specifically, a tourist route to the district's main attractions mapped the projects geographically boundaries. Much research has been published on the downtown's 'carceral' and exclusionary character - with 'undesirables' serving as targets. This study, in essence, seeks to reevaluate these claims. More nuanced portraits of two features are described: 1) how 'undesirables' are removed from segregated areas - essentially, implicit and indirect tactics are used; and 2) how the role of 'law and order' symbols change to reproduce 'normal' society in each of the areas studied. New insights include: how 1) 'undesirables' have been able to create viable public-spaces in the Civic Center area; and 2) that 'undesirables' resist domination in specific ways. Problems with the research mainly involve its limitation to day-time study. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent has urban tourism marketing been accompanied by, and itself helped facilitate, deeper political and economic restructuring? Through a case study of New York City over the last 30 years, this paper argues there is a strong interrelationship between these two processes, and indeed that tourism marketing has been instrumental in the shift towards urban neoliberalism. I focus on two pivotal periods of crisis and transformation in contemporary New York City, when new public-private partnerships formed with a similar, dual agenda to save and transform the city. The first period is that of the 1970's fiscal crisis, when this agenda involved behind-the-scenes promotion of "pro-business reforms," and very public branding of New York as a white-collar tourist destination. The second period follows the attacks of September 11, 2001, when the quiet use of lucrative business incentives was accompanied by high-profile efforts to "re-brand New York" for "patriotic tourism." This paper draws in particular on consultants' reports commissioned and acted upon by city and state economic development agencies-documents previously unused by scholars. Thus my research shows different ways in which tourism marketing was employed discursively, politically, and economically to facilitate, and distract attention from, broader neoliberal shifts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young adulthood, transitional by nature, combined with an urban lifestyle can cause individuals to feel displaced and, in essence, unraveled. How do these individuals cope with the current state of dislocation? In which ways do they attempt to weave their lives to the lives of others in the city? Based on an ethnography of a young women's knitting group, this paper will attempt to show how particular urban settings, such as this knitting group, can foster ties that are neither strong, nor weak, but rather fluid, running the gamut between these two extremes. Drawing on their demographic traits, and their life stories, I will present the conditions under which this fluid social tie has developed. I will argue that certain contemporary phenomena, such as geographic and occupational mobility, have created conditions for social dislocation. Consequently, many of these women have sought out this group as a means of establishing and maintaining friendship. Through their constant shifting between openness and superficiality in conversation, I will show the ways in which they subtly walk the line between close and remote connections. Also, an analysis of their practice-focused interactions will reveal the means through which they use the activity knitting to navigate this social dance. Many of these women have sought out this group as a means of establishing and maintaining friendship, which, though partial, serve to fill some void in their social lives. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That the built environment of the city is a social process, both in its production and in the ongoing social-material interaction of its inhabitants, should be apparent from the state of current research. The problem we now face is how to break such a vastly complex, compelling phenomenon into manageable research questions. This paper proposes that discrete moments and distinct fragments in the process of production of the urban built environment offer just that possibility. Moreover, the importation of theory from outside strictly urban sociology, specifically concepts from the work of Bruno Latour and Pierre Bourdieu, can help parse these smaller scale and scope occurrences. I take the case of the New Urbanism, a recent movement in urban design, and in particular, New Urbanist efforts to transform individual visions of new places into collective plans for realizable projects. In the analysis of these efforts, I find that the development of coherent, abstract "tools" aids in the accomplishment of the planning goal and reproduces the New Urbanist movement as such. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, city leaders have seized upon the idea that securing a future of economic prosperity depends upon projecting bold images of urban vitality to the global marketplace. Yet the mobilization of urban spectacle to suit the needs of global capital often sparks heated local opposition to the development and promotional plans of urban elites. This paper argues that an emerging trans-disciplinary field of urban sociologists and communication scholars has begun to explore the interconnections between urban promotional strategies and local struggles over the shape and use of city-space. To help clarify the theoretical issues that animate this field, this paper offers a conceptual framework to guide both urban sociologists and critical communication scholars interested in exploring the symbolic dimensions of contemporary urban revitalization and promotion. The paper then concludes with a discussion of the common theoretical and ethical commitments shared by urban sociologists and critical communication scholars working within this emerging field of "urban communication." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do humans interact with animals in public, and what is the significance of such encounters? While some scholars have paid attention to intimate relationships between guardians and their companion animals, few studies have examined the other ways that animals are part of society. Participant observation in a park located in Greenwich Village, New York demonstrates that it is common for humans to seek enjoyable interactions with "street pigeons." In unpacking the how of such interactions in a public park, this seemingly mundane finding reveals that, with pigeons, human visitors to the park obtain a unique form of playful, carefree, face-to-face interaction heretofore only documented among humans by urban ethnographers and Simmel (1971), who described such interactions with the concept of sociability. An ethnomethodological sensibility, in which shared understanding is dropped as a prerequisite for coordinated interaction, paves the way for a needed amendment of sociability to include interactions among humans and animals. Logically, such an amendment also forces- and relies upon- an extension of the interaction order (Goffman 1983) to include animals. This study thus sheds light on the ways in which even minor interactions with "simple" animals have significance for human beings that require rethinking sociological theory. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although all minorities experience some levels of housing discrimination, statistics show that African Americans, more than any other minority, are still the most residentially segregated group in the United States. We examine residential segregation for African Americans, Latinos, and Asian/Pacific Islanders from the 2000 Census data for 331 Metropolitan Statistical Areas across the United States and compare our findings with data from the 1990 Census. We provide evidence that residential segregation has generally declined slightly for blacks across the United States. However, we find that residential segregation has increased substantially for Latinos and remained relatively unchanged for Asian/Pacific Islanders. We examine our findings from a historical sociology of law framework of housing discrimination and desegregation, concluding that communities such as our example of the Grosse Pointes and Detroit in southeast Michigan epitomize a contemporary white-black residential divide with very deep-seeded patterns of housing segregation. We review research on residential preferences of black and whites and argue that both structural and individual factors must be considered in any understanding of contemporary residential segregation. We conclude that, while black-white residential segregation has decreased very slightly, patterns of overall residential segregation have increased. Data include six tables and three figures illustrating patterns of residential segregation from 1990 to 2000. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing body of research rooted in sociology, anthropology, and economics that is focused on detecting and understanding how community environments affect the individuals that inhabit them. Many studies focus on the impact of community structural characteristics on its members, while various researchers also strive to understand the mechanisms and social processes through which the urban/suburban neighborhood affects the lives of its residents. However, much is left unanswered. I argue that communication research and a communication ecology approach, in particular, has much to contribute to this vein of inquiry, as it allows for better, in some cases, and at least partial, in other cases, answers to: (a) how particular social processes work and lead to outcomes observed at the community level and (b) how space and place becomes inscribed with meaning; more importantly, however, (c) a communication approach allows us to move from a paradigm of "neighborhood effects" to one of community change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In "Mobilizing the Local: The Resource Types Behind the Los AngelesTenants' Rights Movement, 1976-1979," we analyze the importance of varioustypes of resources for tenant mobilization in Los Angeles neighborhoods.We draw from multiple data sources: a survey of LA county renters,archival records of speakers at LA City Council meetings, demographicinformation from the census, and newspaper coverage of rent control in theLA Times and use binomial regression to test the significance of each ofthe following resource types (with neighborhoods as our unit of analysis):cultural resources: percent educated and percent trade union members inthe locale; social organizational resources: geographical access, thenumber of tenant organizations, neighborhood access through pro-tenantorganizations, the number of landlord organizations, and neighborhoodaccess through pro-landlord organizations in the locale; human resources:the number of speakers at the City Council meeting from the locale; moralresources: the extent of tenant identification in the locale; and materialresources: household income. We find a strong role for cultural resourcesand some social organizational resources for tenant mobilization.Landlord social organizational resources and leadership resources werefound to hamper tenant mobilization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]