New Urban Sociology, Chapter 8, Gottdiener, Hutchinson and Ryan (2016)

1. Neighborhoods and
Communities
Impact of industrialization on everyday life
Social and political revolutions of the 19th century caused:
Social change
Moral and spiritual individual isolation

2. The Search for Community
Urban vs. rural way of life
Relations based on business rather than personal considerations
Suburban life thought to still retain aspects of gemeinshaft
Gans: demographic not spatial characteristics cause way of life – people select into
cities and suburbs
cosmopolites, ethnic villagers, the deprived and the trapped

3. The Social Survey
Most important social survey: W.E.B. Du Bois “The Philadelphia Negro”
conditions came from low education &need to strengthen Black community
Most serious problem was housing –caused by discrimination
trapped
leads to high rents
Model minority “For such colored men, Philadelphia apparently has no use”

4. The Community Study
Middletown, Helen and Robert Lynd
Citizens apparently more concerned with consumerism and opportunity to
advance than with civic involvement
Stein summarized results of first generation community studies
industrialization, bureaucratization and urbanization

5. Field Research on Community
Gans: Boston’s West End
the “slum” was actually highly organized around peer groups
Berger: Working class people who moved to the suburbs did not change their behavior to that of middle
class, reproduced their way of life in new environment
Conclusion: places that look “disorganized” are more often home to a variety of lifestyles which are a
function of interplay of
class
ethnicity
face
gender
Social disorganization or spatial specification? Venkatesh
Back to theory: is “its complicated” good theory?
How would you do a neighborhood study and test or develop some new theories?

6. Network Analysis: Does Location
Matter?
Network analysis uses personal interview and survey research to discover personal links
Fischer (1982)
city dwellers have fewer kin and more friends who are not related to them
But: BIGGEST predictor of networks was education level
does education broaden social network or
do people who like to have lots of new friends seek education OR
does education teach you how to make non-related rriends?
Non-neighborhood personal ties: social media and beyond…
Kleinenberg (2003)
communtiies with strong social networks had lower death rates
African American communities had more broken ties due to increased crime rate and population loss.
Poorer social networks (controlling for all else) led to higher death rates

7. Mental maps and the semiotics
of urban space
People impute distinct meanings and associate specific emotions with space
Lynch (1964)
places vary in their ability to invoke detailed mental images
Imageability – better design leads to more memorable places
Jersey City Vs. Boston
Mental mapping
class, age differences
race: Black residents view of their environment greatly restricted, while white residents
has more expansive image of their surroundings
Quality of these theories?

8. Behavior in Public Space
Street life, street smarts (goes back to gender)
People’s public behavior depends on contextual clues: ignore one another until there is a
crisis
Whyte (1958) -- apparently unplanned, random interactions are highly structured

9. Types of Neighborhoods and
Community Interactions
Neighborhood: “A uniquely linked unit of spatial/social organization between the
forces and institutions of the larger society and the localized routines of individuals
in their daily lives” (Hunter, 1979)
Variations in communities
identity
interaction
linkages

10. Types of Neighborhoods and
Community Interactions
Five types of neighborhoods:
parochial: strong subculture, stable, lots of strong ties, few weak
integral: has high identity, interaction and linkages
diffuse: low levels of neighboring, high weak ties
anomic: low voter turnout, little sense of community
stepping stone: live there only until there are resources to move
defended: identity changes to one of high solidarity in response to external threat
What kind of neighborhood was your high school in?
How does race overlay with these concepts?