What’s the difference between open and closed? In the lab, performing an experiment to prove or disprove a hypothesis, we are working within the framework of a closed system; the original proposition governs our procedures and observations in arriving at ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ When in performing an experiment we come across something unforeseen, or are […]
How can the core characteristics of big cities be mobilized to make human life more just and democratic? Premised on the centrality of urban space to human experience and the great challenges and opportunities produced by urban concentration across the globe, the Social Science Research Council’s initiative on The Decent City seeks to deepen understanding and improve practice by creating interactions among social scientists, humanists, architects, designers, and urban planners. The Cities Papers are thought pieces produced by scholars and practitioners from all these perspectives who participated in several gatherings to further shape the initiative’s agenda.
A “decent” city, in our usage, is not quiet, orderly, or predictable, each of which is alien to robust urban life. The term is meant to imply a site of reflection, research, and policy in a zone between more utopian reflections on the one side and highly focused instrumental policy considerations on the other. Substantively, it connotes cities in which built environments and the organization of space diminish and soften various dimensions of inequality and promote relations among diverse populations that are neighborly. We are deploying a spatial imagination to interrogate design, toleration, and inequality as key concepts and sites as we search for thresholds of urban decency and means to achieve them.
Notes on Neighborhood Inequality and Urban Design
by Robert J. SampsonCan we design the fair or “decent” city? This question has taken on urgency in recent years as income inequality has risen sharply. Housing in particular has come in for scrutiny and urban planning has taken on new meaning. In this essay, I place the quest for equity against the backdrop of existing evidence. Although […]
Mapping the Social Geography of Urban Inequality
by Nicole P. MarwellIt seems useful to discuss the research possibilities and implications of two distinct approaches to the idea of a social geography of urban inequality. First is the idea that various dimensions of inequality (e.g., income, wealth, air quality, school performance, public safety, “collective efficacy,” etc.) can be empirically observed in urban space, and compared across […]
Love Thy Neighbor(hood)
by Michael SorkinNeighborliness is the hallmark of the decent city. While this quality, which compounds generosity, caring, tolerance, and quotidian exchange, is not uniquely urban, it is a founded in the idea of propinquity. The idea of a “nearest neighbor” may be elastic but it is, nevertheless, a product of geography: one might travel to the next […]
Immigrant Political Representation and the Social Geography of Migration
by Rafaela DancygierThis short think piece seizes on the concepts of “mobilization,” “justice,” and “democracy” in relation to the political representation of immigrant-origin minorities in cities. Social scientists have been studying variation in the representation of minorities in city councils, with particular emphasis on African Americans in US cities. Much less is known about what explains when, […]
How the Debate over Public vs. Private Transportation Hurts Everyone
by Robert BruegmannA great deal of the discourse about cities in recent years has revolved around issues involving public vs. private. This has sometimes been a useful and illuminating conversation. Too often, however, the conversation descends almost immediately into a stand-off because of basic disagreements about the role of individuals, families, institutions and the government in today’s […]
Group Relations and Urban Design
by Anastasia Loukaitou-SiderisFrom the days of Pope Sixtus V and Baron von Haussmann to its more contemporary manifestations, urban design has served elite urban groups, often perpetuating urban inequalities and divisions of wealthy/poor, private/public, formal/informal. Indeed, the vast majority of urban design praxis is concentrated in select prime spaces in the city—civic centers, corporate commercial districts, convention […]
Global Politics Go Local in the American City
by Jytte KlausenOn August 5, 2012, Wade Michael Page fatally shot six people and wounded four others in a mass shooting at a Sikh temple in a Milwaukee suburb, Oak Creek. Page was a white supremacist and belonged to a neo-Nazi group of skinheads called “Hammerskin Nation”. He had founded several white power music bands including one […]
Ethnic Conflict in Urban Asia
by Ashutosh VarshneyAn empirical regularity has time and again confronted scholars of ethnic conflict. Despite ethnic diversity, some places — nations, regions, towns, villages — remain peaceful, whereas others with the same diversity experience frequent outbursts of violence. Similarly, some multiethnic societies, after maintaining a long record of peace, explode all of a sudden. Scholars have sought […]
Dialogics
by Richard Sennett“Do not mail leaflets. Talk face-to-face!” These are Saul Alinsky’s rules for mobilizing a community, the great Chicago activist knowing that people do not get involved with a cause just because it has a compelling, formal, leaflet-able logic; it’s messier human connections which rouse human beings. Because of this, Alinsky shied away from the accolade […]