Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect - Softcover

Sampson, Robert J.

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9780226055688: Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect
Softcover
ISBN 10: 022605568X ISBN 13: 9780226055688
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2013

Synopsis

For over fifty years numerous public intellectuals and social theorists have insisted that community is dead. Some would have us believe that we act solely as individuals choosing our own fates regardless of our surroundings, while other theories place us at the mercy of global forces beyond our control. These two perspectives dominate contemporary views of society, but by rejecting the importance of place they are both deeply flawed. Based on one of the most ambitious studies in the history of social science, Great American City argues that communities still matter because life is decisively shaped by where you live.

 

To demonstrate the powerfully enduring impact of place, Robert J. Sampson presents here the fruits of over a decade’s research in Chicago combined with his own unique personal observations about life in the city, from Cabrini Green to Trump Tower and Millennium Park to the Robert Taylor Homes. He discovers that neighborhoods influence a remarkably wide variety of social phenomena, including crime, health, civic engagement, home foreclosures, teen births, altruism, leadership networks, and immigration. Even national crises cannot halt the impact of place, Sampson finds, as he analyzes the consequences of the Great Recession and its aftermath, bringing his magisterial study up to the fall of 2010.

 

Following in the influential tradition of the Chicago School of urban studies but updated for the twenty-first century, Great American City is at once a landmark research project, a commanding argument for a new theory of social life, and the story of an iconic city.

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About the Author

Robert J. Sampson is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and coauthor of Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points through Life and Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70.

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Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Publication date
2013
Language
English
ISBN 10 
022605568X
ISBN 13 
9780226055688
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
552
Rating
  • 3.76 out of 5 stars
    300 ratings by Goodreads

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780226734569: Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0226734560 ISBN 13:  9780226734569
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2012
Hardcover