Experiencing Cities

Experiencing Cities is an introduction to urban sociology based heavily on microsociology and symbolic interaction theory—emphasizing the way people experience the urban world in their everyday lives, interact with one another, and create meaning from the physical and human environments of their cities.

Table of Contents:
                 PART I            HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS                                            1.      Introduction to Experiencing Cities                                                                                                  The Urban World                         Civilization and Cities                         Growing Up in the City: A Personal Odyssey                         Microlevel Sociology and Macrolevel Sociology and Experiencing Cities                         Symbolic Interactionism and the Study of City Life:                         W.I. Thomas: The Definition of the Situation                         Robert E. Park: The City as a State of Mind                         Anselm Strauss: Images of the City                         Lyn Lofland: The World of Strangers and the Public Realm                         Experiencing Cities through Symbolic Interactionism   2. The Emergence of Cities                   Introduction                         The Origin of Cities                         The Agricultural Revolution                         The Urban Revolution                         Sumerian Cities                         Trade Theory and the Origin of Cities                         Social and Cultural Factors and the Emergence,                         Development, and Decline of Early Cities             3. The Industrial Revolution and the Rise of Urban Sociology                    The Industrial Revolution and Nineteenth Century European Cities                         Manchester: The ShockCity of the Mid-Nineteenth Century                         The Ideal Type:  Community and Interpersonal Relationships                         The Ideal Type: Rural and City Life                         Simmel: Metropolis and Mental Life                         PART II.          DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES                                     4. Chicago School: Urban Ecology and Urbanism                         Chicago: The ShockCity of the Early Twentieth Century                         The ChicagoSchool and Social Disorganization                         Robert E. Park: Urbanism                         The ChicagoSchool and Urbanism                         Louis Wirth: Urbanism as a Way of Life                           Gans: Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of Life                         Claude Fischer: Subcultural Theory                         The ChicagoSchool and Urban Ecology                         Ernest Burgess: The Concentric Zone Hypothesis                         Modifications of the Concentric Zone Hypothesis: Hoyt's Sector Model,                         Harris and Ullman’s Multiple Nuclei Model and                         Shevky and Bell: Social Area Analysis                         Walter Firey: Sentiment and Symbolism as Ecological Variables                         Symbolic Interactionism and City Life:  Summary Statement                                     5. Urban Planning                   Burnham and the City Beautiful                         Ebenezer Howard: The Garden City Movement                         Radburn, New Jersey and the GreenbeltTown of the 1930s                         The Three Magnets Revisited                         Wright's BroadacreCity                         Le Corbusier: Cities Without Streets                         Futurama: General Motors and the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair                         Robert Moses: The Power Broker - New York City and Portland, Oregon                         Edmund N. Bacon: The Redevelopment of Philadelphia                         Jane Jacobs:  The Death and Life of Great American Cities                                             Conclusion                         6.  Urban Political Economy, The New Urban Sociology, and the Power of Place                                          Urban Political Economy                    David Harvey’s Baltimore From Chicago to LA: The LA School                   The New Urban Sociology:                   The Growth Machine and The Sociospatial Perspective                   Sharon Zukin: "Whose Culture? Whose City"?                   Urban Imagery, Power, and the Symbolic Meaning of Place                   The Politics of Power and Collective Memory                   Independence Hall, the National Park Service, and the                   Reinterpretation of History    PART III.         CITY IMAGERY AND THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF CITY LIFE   7. The City as a Work of Art                         Paris and the Impressionists                         New York City and the Ashcan School                         Mural Art as Street and Community Art                         Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program                         The Murals of Los Angeles                                                 8. The Skyscraper as Icon                                                     New York City                         Moscow                         Hong Kong                         Why the WorldTradeCenter?                         Conclusion    PART IV         THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF CITY LIFE   9.      Experiencing Strangers and the Quest for Public Order                                                        The Private Realm, The Parochial Realm, and the Public Realm                          Strangers and the “Goodness” of the Public Realm                         CHEERS: "Where everybody knows your name"                         Anonymity and the Quest for Social Order                                      William H. Whyte:  Public Spaces--Rediscovering the Center                         Sharon Zukin: The Battle for Bryant Park                         Elijah Anderson: On Being “Streetwise”                                                  10.   “Seeing” Disorder and The Ecology of Fear                                                   The Decline in Civility in the Public Realm                         African-Americans and the Exclusion from the Public Realm                         Wilson and Kelling: Broken Windows                         Mitchell Duneier: Street People and Broken Windows                         The Criminalization of Poverty                         Mike Davis: The Ecology of Fear and the Fortressing of America                                                Surveillance of the Streets                         Sampson and Raudenbush:  “Seeing” Disorder and the Social Construction of “Broken  Windows”                           PART V           CITY PEOPLE     11. Urban Enclaves and Ghettos: Social Policies                                                        Ghetto and Enclave                         White Ethnic Enclaves                         African American Ghettos                         Assimilation versus Hypersegregation                                 Urban Renewal and Urban Removal                         Project-Living in Public Housing                         StuyvesantTown                         Gentrification                         HollowCity: The Gentrification of San Francisco                         Homelessness   12.  Gender Roles in the City                         Gender Roles and Public Space                         Etiquette: Governing Gender Roles in the Public Sphere                         Gender Harassment in the Public Sphere                                        Gays and Lesbians in the City                         Urban Tribes, Gays, and the Creative Class                         Jobs Move to Where People Are: Meet me in St. Louis   13. City Families and Kinship Patterns                         The Public World of the Preindustrial Family                         The Industrial City and the Rise of the Private Family                         The Rise of the Suburbs, the Cult of Domesticity, and the Private Family                         The City and the Rediscovery of the Urban Family                         Urban Kinship Networks and the African-American Family                         Mexican American’s in Urban Barrios                         The Suburban Working Class and Middle Class Family                         The Dispersal of Kin and Kin-Work                         PART VI: CITY PLACES   14. Downtown Stores:  Shopping as Community Activities                         The Downtown Department Store                         Neighborhood Stores and Community Identification                         Suburbia, The Mall, and the Decline of Downtown Shopping                         Whose Stores? Whose Neighborhood?                         New Immigrants, the Revitalization of Inner City Stores, and the Rise of the ConsumerCity                         Money Has No Smell: African Street Vendors and International Trade                         Strategies for Main Street Redevelopment                         Conclusion   15. Baseball as Urban Drama                         An Urban Game                         Boosterism and Civic Pride                         Spectators and Fan(atics)                         ImageBuilding Through Technology and Newspapers                         The National Pastime                         A Spectacular Public Drama     PART VII:       THE CITY WORLD   16.  The Suburbanization of America                         19th CenturyCemeteries and Parks: Precursors of Suburbia                         Suburbs: The Bourgeois Utopia                         Race, Suburbs and City                         Gated Communities                         Suburbs and Morality                         EdgeCities and Urban Sprawl                         New Urbanism                         From Front Porch to Back Yard to Front Porch: An Assessment   17. Social Capital and Healthy Places                          Robert Putnam: Bowling Alone                         The Internet and Virtual Communities                                             Chicago's 1995 Heat Wave                         The Paris Heat Wave                         High Ground Low Ground: New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina                         18.       Experiencing World Cities                          World Urbanization                         Modernization Theory and Global Urbanization                         Development Theory: An Alternative Perspective                         Cities, the Global Economy and Inequality                         WorldCities, World Systems Theory, and the Informational Revolution                         Squatter Settlements                         Paris: Riots in Suburban Housing Projects                         References                                                        

About the Author :
Mark Hutter is a professor of sociology at Rowan University and has served as coordinator of the Bantivoglio Honors Program. He teaches and has an active and ongoing research agenda in both urban studies and family sociology and has extensively published and presented papers in these areas. He is the author of The Changing Family 3rd ed (Allyn and Bacon, 1998) and the editor of The Family Experience 4th ed (Allyn & Bacon, 2004). His scholarship and pedagogical involvement in the field of family studies has received international recognition with the award of the National Council on Family Relations’ Jan Trost Award for Outstanding Contributions to Comparative Family Studies in 2004. He is a past president of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and Alpha Kappa Delta, the International Sociology Honor Society.