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Great American City

Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect

Robert J. Sampson

Great American City
Read an excerpt: "Observing Chicago."

Robert J. Sampson

With a Foreword by William Julius Wilson
552 pages | 6 halftones, 46 line drawings, 14 maps, 1 table | 6 x 9 | © 2012
Paper $25.00 ISBN: 9780226055688 Published June 2013
E-book $10.00 to $25.00 About E-books ISBN: 9780226733883 Published March 2012
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.
Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments

PART I SETTING AND THESIS

1. Placed
2. Neighborhood Effects: The Evolution of an Idea

PART II PRINCIPLES AND METHOD

3. Analytic Approach
4. The Making of the Chicago Project 

PART III COMMUNITY-LEVEL PROCESSES

5. Legacies of Inequality 
6. “Broken Windows” and the Meanings of Disorder 
7. The Theory of Collective Efficacy
8. Civic Society and the Organizational Imperative
9. Social Altruism, Cynicism, and the “Good Community”

PART IV INTERLOCKING STRUCTURES

10. Spatial Logic; or, Why Neighbors of Neighborhoods Matter
 11. Trading Places: Experiments and Neighborhood Effects in a Social World 
12. Individual Selection as a Social Process 
13. Network Mechanisms of Interneighborhood Migration 
14. Leadership and the Higher-Order Structure of Elite Connections 

PART V SYNTHESIS AND REVISIT

15. Neighborhood Effects and a Theory of Context 
16. Aftermath—Chicago 2010 
17. The Twenty-First-Century Gold Coast and Slum 

Notes
References 
Index 

Review Quotes
Douglas S. Massey | Science

“A revolution is under way in social science, and Robert Sampson’s Great American City offers an excellent exemplar of the new turn. . . The book convincingly demonstrates that individual outcomes are not the simple result of atomistic choices but reflect highly contingent decisions that unfold within spatially grounded social structures and institutionalized processes that limit options and reproduce existing inequalities between individuals, households, and neighborhoods. By situating human beings within a well-defined social system, Sampson contextualizes individual actors and their decisions socially, spatially, and institutionally.”

Mary Pattillo | Northwestern University

“Great American City takes us from the grand theories conjured by its commanding title, down to the iconic street corner to see what it really means when windows are broken. This is a book of big, challenging, provocative, and inspiring ideas, as well as of meticulous, rigorous, and exhaustive data. Sampson has truly shown his shoulders big enough to be counted among Chicago’s most venerated social observers, as well as the most astute theorists of place.”

George Akerlof | Nobel Laureate in Economics, University of California at Berkeley

“After Great American City we will never be able to view cities in the same way again. This is one of those rare books that deeply affect how we think about the world. It teaches us afresh how the neighborhoods we live in affect us and the people around us. And there are also immense policy implications. Robert Sampson shows definitively how the fate of the urban poor is so very dependent on the communities in which they live.”

Richard Florida | The Atlantic

“Robert J. Sampson’s important new book challenges prevailing notions of community decline. Sampson argues that our communities continue to matter a great deal and that our lives are powerfully shaped by where we live. . . . [With] lots of empirical detail and theoretically driven, Great American City shows the striking persistence of poverty across its neighborhoods from 1960 to 2000."

Milt Rosenberg | WGN Radio

“It’s good reading which is a rare compliment to a sociologist. . . A very important book.”

Choice
"Robert J. Sampson’s very readable research findings are theoretically rich, cutting-edge in urban research, and should be inspirational for future researchers in urban sociology. . . . A definite must read for anyone interested in groundbreaking upper-level urban sociology. Essential."
Claude Fischer | City & Community
"Robert Sampson’s Great American City is a landmark work in urban sociology in part because it contributes so richly in different ways to our understanding of how neighborhoods operate in Chicago. But it is also a landmark work because it so richly in so many different ways strongly asserts that the community in community studies matters."
Nancy Denton | City & Community
"Rob Sampson has written a great book. It is a must-read for almost all sociologists and demographers, and especially important for urbanists. Though I have written numerous book reviews and read countless others, this essay is by far the hardest one I’ve been asked to do. It is hard for two reasons: first, there is so much excellent material in Great American City to write about that it is hard to know where to begin; and second, the book is so good it is difficult to keep from being overly effusive in praising it."
Lincoln Quillian | Contemporary Sociology
“Great American City is the rare example of a highly anticipated book by a leading scholar that exceeds expectations. Combining Robert Sampson’s observations with major data collection on neighborhoods in Chicago and original analytic methods, the result is a compelling argument for the importance of place. Neither a purely theoretical nor empirical study, Great American City is an impressive model of how theory, data collection, and analytic methods can be combined to the benefit of all three endeavors. . . . Among the most important works in sociology in recent decades. . . . Through its publication, Sampson establishes himself as our modern Robert Park, and Great American City can be justly regarded as the most sophisticated Chicago School study ever produced.”
Jeffrey M. Timberlake | Journal of Urban Affairs
“There is a scene in the film Crocodile Dundee in which a young hoodlum threatens the titular protagonist with a knife. In response to his girlfriend’s tremulous observation of this fact, Dundee, unfazed, brandishes a comically much larger knife and quips sardonically, “that’s not a knife . . . THIS is a knife.” The hood turns tail, Dundee returns the knife to its sheath, and the film chugs merrily on. I was reminded of this scene several times while reading Robert J. Sampson’s Great American City. With respect to social scientists past, present, and future: THIS is a book.”
Robert J. Bursik, Jr. | Theoretical Criminology
“Great American City definitely is one of the best bang-for-the-buck values in recent years. It is worth the very small investment to own this magnum opus regardless of the research site.”
BBC Radio 4's "Thinking Allowed"
“Following in the influential tradition of the Chicago School of urban studies, but updating it for the twenty-first century, [Sampson] argues that communities do still matter because life is decisively shaped by where we live. Neighbourhoods influence a wide variety of phenomena including teen births, altruism and crime. Not even national crisis can destroy the enduring impact of place.”

American Sociological Association: ASA Distinguished Book Award
Won

Crime, Law, and Deviance section, American Sociological Association: Albert J. Reiss, Jr. Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award
Won

Choice Magazine: CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Awards
Won

ASA Community and Urban Sociology Section: Robert E. Park Award
Won

North American Regional Science Association: The William Alonso Memorial Prize
Won

View Recent Awards page for more award winning books.
For more information, or to order this book, please visit https://www.press.uchicago.edu
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