40402 - The City at 100

Description

The 2025 Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Chicago happens to fall on the hundredth anniversary of the release of The City by Park, Burgess, and McKenzie, providing an auspicious occasion to consider the legacy of this early manifesto for urban research, and specifically urban research in Chicago. Along with other foundational urban texts like The Philadelphia Negro (1899) and Twenty Years at Hull House (Addams 1910), The City laid out a set theoretical puzzles, methodological challenges, and social problems to be tackled by social scientists looking to use the city as a “laboratory” for answering pressing questions of their day, and inspired generations of urbanists who came after them. In this session, presenters will consider the afterlives of this volume. We ask not only what still resonates and what might be better left behind, but also how ideas from The City are relevant not only to contemporary Chicago, but also portable to those doing urban research in geographic and temporal contexts vastly different from those studied by Park, Burgess, and McKenzie.

Sub Unit

• Regional Spotlight Session

Presider

• Jeffrey Nathaniel Parker, University of New Orleans

Panelists

• Marco Z. Garrido, University of Chicago

• Mario Luis Small, Columbia University

• Robert J. Sampson, Harvard University

• Japonica Brown-Saracino, Boston University

Session Organizer

• Jeffrey Nathaniel Parker, University of New Orleans