HOME TOWN

Robert J. Sampson, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2012) (From the bookjacket: "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. 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 Robbert 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." "Following in the influential tradition of the Chicago School or 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." Unfortunately, recent studies have identified Chicago as (1) the most segregated city in the United States and (2) the most corrupt city in the United States. Neighborhoods endure!).