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In this paper, we examine how structural and social-psychological factors combine to motivate urban environmental activism. Specifically, we argue that residents' everyday perceptions about environmental, social, and political conditions in their neighborhoods and cities are connected to their likelihood of involvement in environmental collective action. We use logistic regression models and original survey data from the 2021 Cook County Community Survey (n = 1,069) to investigate whether urban residents' perceptions of the conditions where they live are associated with their likelihood of participating in protests or public meetings around environmental issues. Our findings show that, in the context of the Chicago metropolitan area, residents who perceive worse environmental conditions in their communities, feel a greater sense of belonging to their neighborhoods, and feel they understand local politics and have political power are more likely to mobilize. In contrast, those who are pessimistic about the future of their neighborhoods are less likely to act. The study suggests that participation in urban environmental collective action is partly explained by how people interpret the daily surroundings they routinely navigate and experience where they live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a procedure for constructing a city theology which effectively deals with the two major problems confronted in developing such a typology (1) the selection of dimensions 'along which cities vary in a relatively uniform way, and (2) the formation of homogeneous groups of cities on the basis of these dimensions jointly considered. The procedure suggested in this paper consists of uniting findings from previous research on the "selection of dimensions" problem with hierarchical grouping cluster analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades limited research attention has been given to those smallest population centers, beyond the individual farmstead, commonly referred to as hamlets. Alluding to this fact, the following statement made in 1943 by the geographer, Glenn T. Trewartha, is still indicative of the situation: "… one of the most numerous and widespread settlement types in the United States, the unincorporated hamlet, does not deserve the near oblivion that has been accorded it by geographers and other workers in the social sciences." The lack of research interest may be attributed partially to the dimunition of the farm population and rural institutions and the increasing significance of industrialization and urban development. Because of these and other changes, students of society may share the opinion that hamlets are rapidly disappearing and consequently not worthy of study. Various studies, however, are not in agreement concerning whether or not hamlets have increased or decreased in size and numbers. According to Fuguitt, the contradictory findings stem from the fact that previous researchers have not made "a clear distinction between (1) changes in population size categories over time, and (2) changes in individual places over time." In a study based on Census data, Fuguitt examined Wisconsin's incorporated small towns for the period 1880-1960. He simultaneously analyzed the two analytical components indicated above through the use of the Markov model. His general conclusion was: "While fewer small towns are being 'born' these days, they aren't 'dying,' but are growing up to be big towns, in some cases." Although it is possible, as Fuguitt also suggests, that small unincorporated places are declining in size and number, there is little reported data to suggest they are rapidly diminishing as a rural collectivity or settlement center in contemporary society. In general, the purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to our descriptive knowledge of hamlets. Initially, an effort is made to determine the main activity pursued by the principal family supporters within or near the hamlet area. Secondly, based on the major activity pursued by each resident family's primary income recipient, a statistically derived typology of hamlets is described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a regional interpretation of manufacturing as an urban function in the United States. But this interpretation is supplemented by the notion of a national systems of cities, which believes that urban and metropolitan functions are inter-regionally organized. This paper examines the occurrence of manufacturing activity in the larger urban and metropolitan centers of the West North Central geographic division, as defined by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Using manufacturing activity as the dependent variable (Y) and an indication of accessibility as the independent variable (X), the regression of Y on X was computed for each groups as well as the correlation coefficient. Deviations of the actual percentage engaged in manufacture from the predicted percentage were computed for each city. On the basis of study three groups were identified: diversified manufacturing centers with metropolitan functions, diversified manufacturing centers with few metropolitan functions and specialized manufacturing centers. The second major grouping includes the regional metropolises and the regional capitals.

This paper is concerned with the consequences of urbanization, industrialization and increasing societal complexity upon the social relations and social roles of certain community members (Winch and Blumberg, 1968). The generalizations are based on primary and secondary analyses of the life styles of widows aged 65 and over, who are located in different types of communities in various societies. The assumption is made that sociological understanding of life styles of widows in rapidly urbanizing countries will contribute to knowledge of the changes occurring not only in family roles, but in other social relations as well. The shortage of data about widows all over the world necessitates the positing of these generalizations as exploratory rather than as final statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is not offered, even by implication, as an explanation for urban riots and confrontations. It is an exposition of a point of view, a methodology, and a body of evidence which hopefully may shed some light on this complex and pressing social problem. Within the social sciences several levels of analysis exist, each appropriate to the study of a certain type of problem (Devereaux, 1963; Bendix, 1963). Experimental approaches to social psychology have been particularly valuable in the analysis of individual behavior in a social context; emphasis has been on finding both the social determinants and the social implications of the behavior of an individual. While we believe that part of the explanation of collective phenomena, such as urban revolts, lies in the analysis of the behavior of individuals (cf. Brown, 1965), we do not advocate naive reductionism. We propose only to use data from the laboratory to form some operational definitions and hypotheses to guide further study and interpretation of collective events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies of public apprehension about crime indicate that people hold conflicting orientations regarding the nature and extent of the problem (McIntyre, 1967). On the one hand, they feel that throughout the country as a whole and even elsewhere in their own communities, the threat of crime, especially violent crime, is severe and increasingly so. On the other hand, however, they feel that people and property in their own neighborhoods remain relatively safe, this being the case even among residents of high crime risk areas. The issue of crime deterrence, particularly in residential areas, involves a number of dimensions, depending partly on threatened and partly on actual apprehension of offenders by actions of residents and police. The threat of apprehension exercised through informal channels has been demonstrated in the work of Maetoby et al. (1958) which shows that the crucial factor differentiating high from low delinquency areas of the same lower socio-economic level is the shared expectations among neighbors that residents would intervene to prevent the commission of offenses. More recently in a study of ghetto riots, Warren (1969) has demonstrated the importance of actual informal intervention in crime deterrence, finding that the more cohesive the neighborhood, the more likely that residents attempted to prevent looting, burning, and disorder. The significance of formal controls as deterrents to crime is somewhat more problematic. Even though crime prevention is a major manifest function of police (Banton, 1964; Bittner, 1967; Wilson, 1968), one is left to assume the degree to which formal controls do deter crime, and as Blumstein (1967), for one, has stated, "although the question (of what people are deterred from eommitring what crime by what actions of the criminal justice system) is central to much of the operation of the criminal justice system, and especially to police operation, there has been no systematic attempt to answer it." Some light is shed on this issue in studies of police response to citizen complaints which show the mutual dependence of formal and informal structures for the control of crime. Black and Reiss (1970) report that the majority (72 percent) of police encounters (at least with juveniles) stem from citizen calls rather than from police-initiated action, yet the results of victimization studies reveal that this still represents only a limited proportion of all offenses reported by citizens to police (Biderman, This paper is concerned with the issue of how people view the nature and extent of crime in their own neighborhoods, and whether they attribute their area's safety (or dangerousness) to the exercise of formal or informal controls, comparing rural, suburban, and central city residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of occupational status and income for suicide is not clear. One study indicates a positive relationship; five reveal a negative relationship; two show a higher suicide rate for very high- and very low-status occupations than for middle-status occupations; and the combined results of a study of three English cities are inconsistent. Although evidence is strongest for a negative relationship, no definitive conclusion can be made. Very likely, the relationship varies depending upon other conditions. In particular, it may vary with employment status; income may be directly related to suicide under conditions of unemployment, but inversely related under conditions of employment, or vice versa. In this paper an attempt will be made to determine whether and in what way employment status may influence the effects of income. In addition, effort will be made to determine whether unemployment is related to suicide at all income levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the ubiquitous trends in social behavior is the formation of comprehensive systems of interaction known as communities. Everywhere in the world and throughout man's existence on earth, the formation of communities has been evident, from the primitive tribe to the contemporary nation-state. Among the exciting developments within the more complex communities of mankind, such as cities and nations, is the emergence of subcommunity forms which both complement and contest the arrangements of the larger society. Status communities and ethnic communities of many sorts belong among the contemporary sub-communities. It is instructive to apply this concept of sub-community formation to areas of behavior such as the worlds of art and jazz, when that behavior can be shown to approach closure and completeness with respect to a distinctive way of life. This paper deals with two major tasks: (1) the development of a special theory of the jazz community as an unique form of status community, and (2) a judgment as to the validity of referring to the social world of the jazz musician as a community. It should be mentioned that while this formulation is conceived in terms of the jazz subculture, it also has widespread application elsewhere in the area of social deviance. Since the concept of status group has its roots in the general theory of community, we shall briefly outline that concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost without exception, students of community life have held that the neighborhood as a basis for association disappears as the degree of urbanization increases. Simmel and Park provided the early theoretical basis; Bernard, McClenhan, Roper, Sweetser, and others, conducted early empirical studies which provided the factual basis for Wirth's later restatement of the Simmel-Park position. After this initial research, which could be characterized as "Chicago style," interest in the problem waned. Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in the problems of urbanization including studies of neighboring as well as other forms of social participation. On the basis of these theoretical statements and empirical studies, most students of the community have continued to point out that contacts with neighbors are less frequent and more superficial in the city than they are in the country. Unfortunately, however well conceived and well executed the empirical studies in this area have been, they do not provide a factual basis for the comparative statements given in most urban-sociology textbooks. The research has been confined to studies of one neighborhood, or two or more neighborhoods in the same city. In addition, none of the studies uses the same "valid" scale for populations from various points on a rural-urban continuum. The problem of testing the above hypothesis, i.e., that there is a negative relationship between urbanism and frequency or quality of neighborhood contacts, is two-fold: to develop a "valid" scale applicable to people located at any point along the urbanism continuum; and to interview a sample of people located at various points along that continuum. Work that tests this hypothesis and is aimed at solving both the problems outlined above is the interest of this paper. Because of the resurgence of interest in the area and a possibly wider use for the scale, it was decided to report these results even though the full work was completed almost eleven years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mobilization behavior of voluntary associations in a community was studied to explain why some organizations were successfully recruited into the environmental quality movement and others were not. Analysis ora random sample of 209 community organizations in a midwest urban area showed that approximately half were mobilized into supporting the environmental quality movement. Hypotheses on the effects of goal overlap, organizational resources, and position in the multi-organizational field were tested. The significant factors were the size of the manpower base, the leader's personal mobilization into the environmental quality movement and the allocation of social responsibility among community groups for solving local pollution problems. The last factor—the acceptance or rejection of group responsibility for working for the collective good—emerged as the most important explanatory factor. Thirty-one percent of the variance in the mobilization of organizational interest and 22 percent of the variance in the mobilization of group activity was explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several themes in Wirth's "Urbanism as a Way of Life" generate the prediction that alcohol use (versus nonuse) will be more widespread among residents of urban areas. Multiple regression analysis of data from two recent national polls (1966, 1968) reveals support for this prediction. With eight other key sociological variables simultaneously controlled, the greater the urbanism of a community (measured in terms of community size), the greater the proportion of alcohol users it contains. To make certain that this association is due to urban conditions (as opposed to merely the absence of rural forces which encourage abstinence), the effects of rural forces are reduced by omitting the most rural categories of the community size measure of urbanism, and the data are reexamined. The association still persists, basically because of the larger proportion of middle to upper status, white, and Protestant alcohol users in the more urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial and temporal distribution of delinquency has been described for a number of large metropolitan areas, but it is doubtful if juvenile delinquency has been followed as carefully and over such a long period of years in any other place as it has in Chicago. While the Chicago area studies were pioneering efforts in the field and probably have contributed much to our understanding of delinquency, it is risky to generalize these relationships and apply them to cities of other sizes or to cities whose population, social organization, and institutions are quite diverse. If generalization is considered a possibility, we must first determine the extent to which middle-sized cities have a range of social areas and institutions similar to those found in large cities: we would then look for and expect to find similar types and patterns of delinquency in middle sized cities as are found in large metropolitan areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Cleveland data, we replicate Roncek and LoBosco's study of the effect of proximity to San Diego's high schools on crime in their surroundings. We also examine a major alternative hypothesis whether having other non-residential land uses in the schools' surroundings accounts for crime in these areas. Our findings closely parallel theirs. Proximity to public high schools only increases crime on city blocks which are immediately adjacent to the schools. Second, the size of a school's enrollment is not important for explaining crime in its surroundings. The analysis of non-residential effects supports Roncek and LoBosco's claim that crime effects are due solely to the presence of public high schools, although other land uses affect crime near private high schools. While there are differences in the exact magnitudes of the effects, the substance of their findings for San Diego generalizes well to a very different city. More generally, we argue that Wirth's early arguments about the effect of urbanism on impeding social control can be extended to the residential areas within the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social learning and social bonding theories of deviant behavior were investigated in four community contexts: farm, rural-nonfarm, suburban, and urban. The mean differences across these contexts on pertinant variables did not form a continuum from rural to urban. Rather, the farm and suburban areas were similar, and the rural-nonfarm and urban areas were more alike than either of the other two contexts. A number of the social bonding variables interacted with community context, but no systematic pattern was observed. Social learning variables did not interact with context. Rather, the different level of these variables appeared to account for the variance in deviant behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A theoretical formulation is presented that represents an abstract and parsimonious conception of public policy adoption at the subnational level. The formulation consists of two components: the principle that social phenomena exist in contexts with which they are compatible, and several distinguishing attributes of subnational collectivities and public policies. Taken together, these statements lead to the conclusion: if there is a match between attributes of a policy and those of a collectivity, then the probability increases that the policy will be adopted by the collectivity. General hypotheses derived from the formulation appear generally consistent with findings of previous research. Specific hypotheses derived from the formulation regarding city adoption of War on Poverty and National Flood Insurance programs are tested with crosssectional data for a sample of U.S. cities. Results of an ordinary least-squares regression analysis reveal support for derived hypotheses. It is concluded that the explanatory and predictive powers of the theoretical formulation are high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mobilization behavior of voluntary associations in a community was studied to explain why some organizations were successfully recruited into the environmental quality movement and others were not. Analysis of a random sample of community organizations in the U.S. midwest urban area. Organizations mobilized into supporting the environmental quality movement were analyzed. Hypotheses on the effects of goal overlap, organizational resources, and position in the multi-organizational field were tested. The significant factors were the size of the manpower base, the leader's personal mobilization into the environmental quality movement and the allocation of social responsibility among community groups for solving local pollution problems.

This study examines attitudinal manifestations of anomia and militancy among the Negro populations of three lower-class neighborhoods. Translating these ideas into the present research context, the basic question asked is: What is the relative impact of ecological setting and of the social characteristics of persons (such as social participation and socioeconomic status) in predicting attitudes? The two attitudes studied are anomia, measured by the Stole Anomia Scale, and militancy, measured by a recently published Militancy Scale. The study focuses upon anomia and militancy at two levels of analysis—the neighborhood level and at the individual level. The neighborhood analysis is directed toward measuring the impact of a given ecological setting on the attitudes of those residing in the area. The individual analysis centers around the social attributes of the respondent (the standard socioeconomic indicators, as well as several social participation measures) and their association with militancy and anomia. While sociologists have examined the effect of social context, they have seldom separated the consequences of social conditions from those of a person's own attributes, principally because most sociological data furnish information about social aggregates rather than individuals, (Blau, 1960:179; Coleman, 1969:86-114). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The events of the decade of the 1960's that have led us all here to a symposium on urban confrontations—in their cumulative significance and in their direct implications for the structure of democracy in America—are of unique historical force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for comparative research has been a persistent theme in the literature of community sociology for some time. Although comparative studies are being undertaken with greater frequency, a major problem associated with their design and execution stems from the ambiguity of the concept "community" and an inadequate conceptualization of the dimensions along which these social units vary. One recent approach to this problem has been through the application of factor analysis. Two studies, in particular, serve as our point of departure—Jonassen and Peres' factor analysis of eighty-two variables operating in eighty-eight Ohio counties and Hadden and Borgatta's factor analysis of sixty-five variables operating in all American cities of 25,000 or larger. Both studies contribute much to our knowledge of community structure, but as a framework for comparative analyses they have the following limitations: 1. The Jonassen and Peres study was limited to Ohio counties. Generalizing from their data to a different universe, or units thereof, would be a questionable procedure based on the shaky assumption that Ohio is "typical" or resembles closely the United States or any single state in question. 2. The Hadden and Borgatta study was limited to cities of 25,000 and larger. The use of factors identified in their study to differentiate smaller communities would involve accepting the assumption that smaller units vary along the same dimensions as larger units. 3. Although similar factors were identified in the above two studies, a number of differences were also observed. The differences may be a consequence of the different units studied (counties in one analysis and cities in the other), the different parameters involved (data from all Ohio counties in one study compared with data from all United States cities of 25,000 and larger in the other), or the different variables used in the two studies. (They have only twelve variables in common, and only fourteen others are conceptually similar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article represents an attempt to replicate a study written by Douglas Rennie and Robert Hilgendorf concerning their examination of the stratification system of a small town in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The authors examined the correlation of factors relevant to social class self-identification and measures of socioeconomic status. There was a problem in describing the social class system of the community so the authors focused their study on the pictures of the stratification system secured by three different approaches to the measurement of social class. The authors used weighted scores and comparisons based on house type, education and occupation. In conclusion, the authors suggested that communities differ in the degree to which a community social class ranking is consensually perceived.

The Past played by cities and the significance of urbanization have been much discussed by those who in recent years have struggled with the problems of the developing nations. In the ensuing discussion three viewpoints have emerged: one emphasizing economic factors, two asserting the priority of social and political aspects, and three supporting the United Nations' approach of "balanced social and economic development." The partisans involved in the discussion have not consistently followed the biases of their own disciplines. For example, Everett Hagen, an economist, following a frustrating experience as adviser to the Government of Burma, has written a book, On the Theory of Social Change, in which he assigns priority to social factors in the emergence of societies from traditional into urban-industrialized states. On the other hand, William McCord, a sociologist with wide experience with developing nations in Africa and Asia, has judged the more classical economic factors related directly to production to be more central to the explanation of change than social and political variables. After reading the work of each of these scholars, one is led inevitably to the common experience which they and many others have shared in recent years, namely, an awareness of the inadequacy of our academic and theoretical formulations to meet the tests posed by the development problems of the new nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This concern with informal groups in an urban environment has attracted a number of sociologists. A large proportion of the work in urban sociology until 1940 emphasized the lack of integration in the city which was believed to be the result of a lack of informal group membership. This theme was stressed particularly by sociologists of the Chicago school of that period as represented by Park and later by Wirth and Redfield. One of the major criticisms of Wirth and others of the Chicago school is that they exaggerated the degree of secularization and disorganization that supposedly typifies urban communities. Sociologists recently have become interested in the urban informal group as an important contributor to the integration of the city. Research of this nature indicates that informal groups continue to play an important role in the maintenance of the social system as a whole. Actually, Janowitz, Axelrod, Whyte, and others, on the basis of their research in American cities, claim that cities are highly organized and that many informal networks of social relationships exist which were overlooked by earlier writers. Other sociologists, dealing with the role of informal group participation as a means of relating the urbanite to the larger community, have discovered strong kinship and neighborhood ties in those areas of the city where such relationships were often assumed to be quite weak. The main interest in this research is to see to what extent the conventional and more recent views of urbanism are exemplified in a modem metropolitan community. This is not to say that the present study can resolve this critical problem; rather, it may contribute to the development of a more general agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]