Reputation as Resource and Constraint in Urban Neighborhoods

• In Event: 189 - Section on Community and Urban Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 02. Conceptualizing Community

Abstract

What does it mean for a neighborhood to have a particular type of reputation—what does it mean for a neighborhood to be hip, or dangerous? While journalistic outlets regularly cover the former (Brennan 2012), and companies develop controversial mobile applications to determine the latter (Dewey 2014), there is little sociological work on neighborhood reputation. While the neighborhood as a unit of analysis has long been an important component of urban sociological work, from the early Chicago school (Park, Burgess, and McKenzie 1925, Zorbaugh 1929) to crucial neighborhood studies (Whyte 1943, Drake and Cayton 1945, Jacobs 1961, Liebow 1967, Suttles 1968, Stack 1974, Anderson 1978, Zukin 1982, Pattillo 1999, Klinenberg 2002, Small 2004, Lloyd 2006, Brown-Saracino 2009, Deener 2012) to the more contemporary research agenda on neighborhood effects (Sampson 2012), we still do not know a lot about exactly how reputations develop in and influence neighborhoods—what effect they have on business development or neighborhood change, for example. At a time when a great deal of research concentrates on how neighborhood residence can affect important life outcomes, and the idea that cities can become more attractive to migrants based on particular metrics (Florida 2005), the reputation of a neighborhood clearly matters a great deal.

Author

• Jeffrey Nathaniel Parker, The University of Chicago