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Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood

Effect by Robert J. Sampson

Article in Journal of Urban Affairs · August 2013

DOI: 10.1111/juaf.12023

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BOOK REVIEWS

Robert J. Sampson, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood
Effect (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

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: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect (GAC). With respect to social
scientists past, present, and future: THIS is a book.
For starters, the empirical core of GAC relies on no fewer than six original (both words merit
emphasis, in my view) data collection efforts—all with several to many thousands of cases and
most with multiple waves—grouped under the umbrella moniker Project on Human Development
in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN). At least three additional secondary data sources were
concatenated to the family of PHDCN studies to measure neighborhood demographics, crime,
and the incidence of stranger assistance to heart attack victims. Like tiles in a mosaic, each
data set focuses on particular types of neighborhood social processes and outcomes. Sampson
and several collaborators employed the PHDCN data to investigate the causes and consequences
of neighborhood effects; that is, the structural bases, emergent social properties, and spatially
ordered outcomes of local communities.
The first part of the book describes the motivations and theory animating the PHDCN, while the
second describes the analytic approach and details of the project itself. Indeed, one of the many
treasures of the book is Chapter 4, which describes the techniques, challenges, and dramas of
putting the PHDCN together. This chapter includes details on both the project logic and associated
sampling strategies, but also juicier tidbits on bruised egos, bribes, and lawsuits. Here Sampson
shows that social science research is itself a social process.
Parts III and IV collectively are the theoretical and empirical centerpiece of the book. Part
III focuses on what most readers have probably run across if they have read previous work by
Sampson and his collaborators. This section includes chapters on the spatial clustering of a variety
of variables and processes, including socioeconomic disadvantage, the relationship between actual
and perceived disorder, collective efficacy, civic events and neighborhood organizational capacity,
and social altruism and cynicism. The last chapter in this section contains wholly new findings
that provide intriguing evidence on the relationships between collective efficacy, altruistic social
behavior, and neighborhood violence.
Part IV moves beyond between-neighborhood differences and focuses on the linkages and
spatial interdependencies of neighborhoods. In this section Sampson shows that neighborhoods
are deeply interconnected in Chicago via mobility flows and elite networks. He also uses this
section to reprise his critique of the conclusion (somewhat overstated in social science gossip

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Volume 35, Number 3, pages 385–392.

Copyright  C 2013 Urban Affairs Association

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

ISSN: 0735-2166
386 I JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS I Vol. 35/No. 3/2013

networks) that the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) mobility experiment showed “no neighborhood
effects.” In point of fact, and as Sampson notes, a variety of effects were discovered from MTO,
just not the dramatic changes that were perhaps unrealistically expected at its outset. Sampson’s
larger critique of MTO is that it used an extremely narrow definition of what a neighborhood
effect is; hence, anyone concluding that neighborhood effects are nonexistent or minor on the
basis of MTO would be missing whole categories of other important neighborhood processes and
effects. For example, Sampson shows that people select into neighborhoods in part on the basis
of characteristics of and relationships between neighborhoods. Thus, Sampson shows that, quite
apart from being a statistical nuisance, neighborhood selection is itself a type of neighborhood
effect. Finally, Part V revisits the main findings and returns to the streets of Chicago for a
post–Great Recession epilogue of sorts.
Having followed at some remove the progress of the PHDCN piecemeal over the course of
the last 15 years, I admit to not having fully appreciated its scale and scope. Now, laid out
in one publication, the jaw-dropping ambition of the project is on full display. Playing on the
Seinfeld conceit that its sitcom-within-a-sitcom was “about nothing,” Sampson claims that his
book is “about everything, or at least almost everything social about the city” (p. 22). This is
tongue-in-cheek hyperbole, but in the margins of the book I noted that Sampson is well on his
way to developing a unified theory of urban community, one that specifies both the causes of
neighborhood effects and the effects of neighborhood causes.
In this respect, GAC is a welcome exercise in silo destruction. By focusing on one important
context within which human behavior occurs, Sampson obliterates the false barriers separating
studies of—in no particular order—crime, collective action, organizations, poverty, culture, race,
social networks, politics, and residential mobility. Neither does he privilege one set of disciplinary
approaches or tools. He takes seriously ideas derived from criminology and sociology, of course,
but also economics, social psychology, demography, and political science, and synthesizes their
contributions in a singular focus on urban communities. In Sampson’s words, “the goal of a
neighborhood-based rather than variable-based approach is to understand the configuration of
social dynamics and causal processes—the ‘everything’ of the city” (p. 23).
I have two general critiques of GAC, both surely resulting from the study’s ambition and the
inherent tension in making any book both salable to a wide audience and sufficiently sophisticated
to be of use to academic practitioners. First, in my judgment this book should be assigned to
undergraduates with caution, unless (1) they are extremely advanced and have been exposed
to urban sociological debates stretching from Human Ecology to MTO, or (2) the instructor is
prepared to use the book as a text for a large chunk of a course, providing lots of background
lecture material in the process. Sampson is an efficient and precise writer, but he does not dumb
down his language or explanations. Hence, virtually every sentence is beautifully constructed,
but not for easy consumption by the typical 19-year-old. Consider, for example, his discussion
of PHDCN findings on neighborhood effects on verbal ability trajectories. He concludes by
noting that “if we assume for the sake of argument that the selection weighting model I used
is reasonable in adjusting for baseline (or ‘pretreatment’) and time-varying confounding of
covariates, the implications for MTO and kindred studies are significant” (p. 282). So to instructors
of undergraduates: caveat emptor.
Second, I wanted more “stories,” or illustrations of how some of the processes and mechanisms
Sampson adduces actually work. Much of what he argues is that “emergent properties,” and “social
norms,” and “cultural structures” exert effects on families and individuals. But these are hard to
observe and conceptualize, making some of the claims less transparent than they might be with a
few examples. Take the putative crime-reducing properties of collective efficacy (CE). The data
show that neighborhoods where residents are cohesive and share expectations for social control
are better able to ward off street crime, but how does this work? Do would-be criminals know that
 I Book Reviews I 387

“this is the kind of neighborhood where you don’t sell drugs because you’ll get the cops called
on you”? Or do residents actually call the police more often in high-CE neighborhoods than
in low-CE ones? Or do residents retaliate against real or imagined slights less often when they
trust their neighbors? And how does CE “work” for low birth weight or asthma? Do residents of
high-CE neighborhoods drive mothers to prenatal appointments? Do they buy children inhalers if
they can’t afford them? More processual illustrations and stories, even if only speculative, would
enhance the reader’s understanding of some of the book’s most important arguments.
In the end, I believe Sampson’s emphasis on selection as a social process and his conceptual
focus on and measurement of neighborhood cultural structures such as perceived disorder, collec-
tive efficacy, and moral and legal cynicism will turn out to be the most durable legacies of GAC.
I have often considered The Truly Disadvantaged and American Apartheid as the two canonical
touchstones of urban scholars of my generation. Each spawned entire sub-branches of work on
urban spatial patterns and socioeconomic outcomes. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give
to Great American City is that it not only continues and to some extent resolves the questions
posed in those books, but will likely compete with them as venture capital for future cottage
industries of research on urban social processes.

Jeffrey M. Timberlake
University of Cincinnati
jeffrey.timberlake@uc.edu

Harley F. Etienne, Pushing Back the Gates: Neighborhood Perspectives on University-

Driven Revitalization in West Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012).

Many universities in the United States and Canada have become increasingly committed to
working with their surrounding communities to improve the quality of life of both the university
population and the neighborhoods in which they are located. This is often driven by the self-
interest of universities, which are in competition to attract new students and quality faculty. This
competition is especially intense for the prestigious, mostly private, research universities that
find themselves in the heart of economically challenged and physically deteriorating inner city
neighborhoods. Columbia University, the University of Southern California, Harvard University,
Northeastern University, the University of Chicago, and Johns Hopkins University come to mind.
However, among these institutions, the University of Pennsylvania, or Penn, is often put forth
as a model of success that other universities should emulate. Its West Philadelphia initiatives are
often touted as having positive outcomes for both the university and the community
Harley Etienne, in this compact but informative volume, outlines the reasoning behind
university-driven development and neighborhood revitalization as university campuses expand.
Although he uses Penn as a case study, he explores how urban universities in general have
expanded and developed their urban campuses while becoming real estate developers and
drivers of urban change. Most of the literature on this subject is from the perspective of uni-
versities themselves, and Etienne attempts to balance these views with neighborhood-level per-
spectives on the benefits to them of Penn’s institutional neighborhood planning and revitalization
efforts in West Philadelphia. The result is a meaningful contribution to the literature from which
urban planners, policymakers, neighborhood organizers and city officials could profit.
388 I JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS I Vol. 35/No. 3/2013

According to Etienne, West Philadelphians view the results of Penn’s West Philadelphia Ini-
tiatives as mixed. Although there is evidence that Penn assisted its surrounding communities in
reversing urban decline, Penn’s view of its role is somewhat overstated according to Etienne. For
example, while crime rates dropped significantly, this mirrored a national trend, and it is difficult
to ascribe the drop in West Philadelphia to Penn’s efforts. The same can be said, according to
the author, for both housing values and their appreciation. This took place during the national
housing boom of the 1990s and 2000s. While Penn could not control such national trends, it did
profit from them locally, “by understanding the trends and leveraging its own policy to maximize
their impacts on its host communities” (p. 76).
While West Philadelphians for the most part felt good about Penn’s efforts, they expressed a
healthy measure of skepticism about the university’s motives. While some felt the university was
acting in its own self-interest, “many found Penn . . . to be of great benefit. Even for the most
marginal of residents, the university provides resources that other city institutions do not” (p. 63).
However, many informants complained about Penn’s services for its faculty and students living
in the neighborhoods around the university. Some, for example, felt Penn’s bicycle police were
agents of gentrification and were not there to assist them. Moreover, a recurrent strong criticism
was that, in dealing with area leaders and neighborhood groups, the university was not always
fair or transparent.
The actual discussion of neighborhood perspectives, nonetheless, does not form the bulk of the
book. Etienne states: “The book is based primarily on an ethnographic study that examined resi-
dent impressions of neighborhood change” (p. 4). However, of the 42 structured and unstructured
interviews that form the source of neighborhood perspectives, some were with Penn staff and
students. Consequently, it is not clear how many actual neighborhood residents were interviewed.
While the author may have spent most of his time with the ethnographic study, the discussion
of neighborhood perspectives does not reflect that. Instead, there is much material on the urban
context of universities, on how Penn evolved historically, how the West Philadelphia initiatives
came to be, and discussions of the neighborhood actions of other universities. All of this is of
interest, but the book feels unbalanced in terms of elaborating on a wide array of neighborhood
views, feelings, and actions in response to the initiatives. The book is important to be sure. It
goes where others don’t, but one can’t help but feel when putting it down that it could have been
so much more.

David J. Edelman
University of Cincinnati

John Flint and Mike Raco (Eds.), The Future of Sustainable Cities: Critical Reflections
(Bristol, UK: The Policy Press, 2012).

This is a timely compact book reflecting on the consequences of the U.K.’s financial crisis and
its impact on the sustainability agenda. The new politics emerging from the crisis of 2008 is
demonstrated by looking at tangible responses to the recession. The book explores the property
industry, the issue of delivering low carbon cities, and the transport and housing sectors from
a sustainable perspective in some detail. Finally the book looks at tensions and conflicts in
sustainable planning in Austin, Texas, in the United Kingdom at a neighborhood level, and lastly
in a U.K.-wide perspective.
 I Book Reviews I 389

The authors of the book clearly aspire to a more balanced approach to sustainability planning
which is not solely market-driven but gives more equal treatment to social, economic, and
environmental policies and strategies. This view is challenged by the tenacity of neoliberal views
since the crisis in 2008 as well as the dilemmas posed by globalization, geopolitical change and
climate change.
In the introductory chapter, an authentic picture of the recent politics of sustainability is painted
by editors John Flint and Mike Raco. While the book’s material is predominantly U.K.-based, its
thrust is internationally relevant, in the same way that Jeffrey Sachs’s recent book The Price of
Civilization (about economics and ethics in the United States after the 2008 crisis) has a strong
international resonance.
The editors have genuinely tried to answer a number of core questions related to the impacts
that the current worldwide financial crisis is having on the concept of sustainability. The book is
therefore informative and insightful.
The editors effectively establish why the assumptions built into planning systems and city
strategies in the two decades preceding 2008 have been undermined: the dominance of the
market-led, property-driven agenda has diminished due to the lack of availability of credit
and the resulting contraction of the property market. Crises have become a way of life
as illustrated by the recent banking LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) scandal and
the ongoing Eurozone crisis. These crises are shifting the boundary between the state and
markets.
Surely, then, this is an opportunity for new rational policies and strategies for sustainable cities,
climate change, energy production, and consumption amongst many other things? Unfortunately,
many politicians, bankers, corporate leaders, and the media appear to assume it will be “back to
business as usual” soon, despite the fact that the recession has already lasted longer than previous
recessions in this and the last century. In short, the tensions and dilemmas relating to urban
sustainability thinking and practice have intensified. In this review it is only possible to look at a
few examples from the book.
The Future of Sustainable Cities taken as a whole argues that, since the beginning of the
economic crisis, the environment has become less of a priority for governments. Mark Whitehead,
a contributor, using the example of Mesa, Arizona, confirms that continued “economic growth”
has trumped the “sustainable economic growth” paradigm. This generalization applies also to
planned policy changes in the Meriden Gap between Birmingham and Coventry in England. In
other words, there is a new “urban pragmatism” to deal with development pressure, implying
an erosion of the sustainability concept. The local authorities involved are considering shifting
greenbelt boundaries in the Gap to provide quid pro quo protection elsewhere. This raises an
interesting issue of the scale at which one determines urban sustainability.
Despite economic pressures, sustainability remains important for politicians in the United
Kingdom and the United States. However, economics tend to dominate at the expense of sustain-
ability. In the United Kingdom, growth strategy has become focused on London and the southeast
of England at the expense of the rest of the country. Sarah Dooling, in her quirky chapter on urban
ecological accounting, illustrates faultlines between social, economic, and environmental con-
cerns as a result of the economic downturn in Austin, Texas, resulting in the homeless ending up in
parks.
What do the authors think the future holds for research on the sustainability agenda? John Flint
and Mike Raco identify a number of areas for consideration:

r On governance reforms (i.e. the crisis has caused relationships to change between the state,
civil society and the private sector): Many debates have been silent on the complexities of
390 I JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS I Vol. 35/No. 3/2013

these changes. Research is required to unpack these relationships to reveal the networks
and where political power is mobilized.
r The growing scales of governance, including those beyond national control (e.g., Euro-
pean legislation in Europe and international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol) are
increasingly dominating national legislation and the impact is as yet under-researched and
understated.
r The impacts of alternative trajectories for future development (e.g., ones based on the
technologies and practices of the green economy) are not adequately understood.
r An upcoming recession may open up questions over unequal land ownership and community
rights and responsibilities. Such debates would play an important role in sustainability and
development politics in the global North mirroring debates that have been occurring in the
global South.

Perhaps predictably, given the complexity of the issues, the overarching conclusion is that
there is no magic bullet that will tackle all the problems of sustainability. Continuing prob-
lems and uncertainties in the Western World demonstrate that many of the warnings of climate
change, resource depletion, inequality, and ecological limits to growth carry a new “authority,”
despite the best efforts of many politicians to generate optimistic and consensual accounts of
change.
Coming from a British planner-practitioner background, I would like to see closer working
relationships between practitioners and researchers so that the lessons learned by researchers in
collaboration with practitioners can play a bigger part in policy and strategy formulation. An
accessible evidence base to inform both policy and decision makers is much needed. Given the
scale and duration of the economic crisis, managing change effectively has never been more
important.
The Future of Sustainable Cities should appeal to at least three audiences. To academics and
researchers, it is a good summation of where we are and where we are going. In addition, the book
is useful for students from a variety of fields studying sustainability planning. For practitioners,
the book is a useful source of background material on the evolution of the sustainability agenda,
although at some points the academic writing style may constitute a challenge. I recommend this
fairly priced book ($42.95, paperback) as a useful primer for students and practitioners.

John Walls
Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (retired)
jmwalls50@gmail.com

Andrew Smith, Events and Urban Regeneration: The Strategic Use of Events to
Revitalise Cities (London: Routledge, 2012).

Events like the 2012 Olympic Games in London capture the attention of the world, but the
events are experienced intimately by the residents of the host city. City officials have come to
think of major events as assets that aid in urban development, design, and restructuring. The
facilities, infrastructure, and social legacy of events have the potential to reinvigorate urban
spaces and communities. In Events and Urban Regeneration: The Strategic Use of Events to
Revitalise Cities, Andrew Smith takes the reader on a global journey of success and failure in
 I Book Reviews I 391

regard to the urban redevelopment efforts that accompany large-scale sporting and cultural events.
Smith synthesizes existing research and presents the reader with examples ranging from the 1888
Universal Exhibition in Barcelona to recent Olympic Games in London, Vancouver, and Beijing.
Summarizing the experiences of cities around the globe, Smith offers a clear and repeated bottom
line: events alone are not a sufficient strategy to revitalize cities. Events should complement and
help to advance existing urban regeneration efforts.
Smith opens the book with some careful definitions of major events and urban regeneration.
Major events, defined and outlined in Chapter 1, include the Olympic Games, America’s Cup,
European Capital of Culture, and World Expo, among many others. Major events must address
the needs of diverse stakeholders, and as a result they are a sometimes inflexible or inappropriate
tool for regenerating cities or city neighborhoods. The goal of urban regeneration sometimes falls
by the wayside as city officials and event planners give more attention to staging a successful
event than to the legacy of the event for city residents and spaces. Smith offers a clear list of
considerations that city or event officials should keep in mind if regeneration is an important goal.
In the second chapter, Smith presents some theoretical scaffolding to think about events as
tools of urban regeneration. Practitioners of economic development will find a familiar discussion
of neoliberal policies, in which cultural events are turned into commercial assets for cities, and
corporate sponsorship plays a visible role in event planning and implementation. Yet, Smith
presents additional theoretical lenses to prompt the reader to consider both events and urban
regeneration from modern, postmodern, social, temporal, and spatial perspectives. Smith presents
these lenses to help the reader understand why event regeneration strategies receive a mix of
support and skepticism. This overview might be helpful for pushing students to think about
how the phenomena of event regeneration relates to larger trends in urban design and economic
development.
The book is full of examples of regeneration efforts linked to major events, with a range of
these initiatives introduced in a helpful chronology in Chapter 3. Smith is skilled at describing
how initiatives, ranging from facility and venue development to jobs training, have been linked to
major events both through the text and in short case studies presented at the conclusion to several
chapters. The book also includes photographs to help the reader visualize design issues discussed
in the narrative. In subsequent chapters, Smith highlights questions and considerations that should
be given attention by policymakers when linking events to urban regeneration. Event venues, the
physical regeneration of cities, social regeneration initiatives, redevelopment of postindustrial
areas, and tourism development all receive detailed consideration. Chapter 9 describes the various
institutional approaches cities use to link regeneration initiatives to major events, and Chapter
10 concludes by summing up key lessons and by offering a list of considerations for urban
policymakers.
Six case studies of event regeneration (Cape Town, Barcelona, Manchester, Singapore, New
Orleans, and Gothenburg) are an attractive feature of the book. These examples of regeneration
success and failure, presented as illustrations at the end of several chapters, help the reader
think through how complex social and institutional structures must align to help event-related
regeneration integrate with a city’s broader strategic and economic development goals. Smith
charts out how conceptual problems discussed in the chapter were addressed in practical ways in
each city. While the cases were clearly intended for illustration, the experiences of these cities
point to the need for comparative case analysis to help identify conditions for successful event
regeneration that are common across cities. Systematic comparative case analysis could provide a
stronger empirical base for the lessons outlined in the concluding chapter. The book’s conclusion
should, but does not, spell out the need for additional theoretical development, nor does it chart
out empirically based conditions or caveats that practitioners should keep in mind as they attempt
392 I JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS I Vol. 35/No. 3/2013

to sort through the best practice advice. Hopefully, Smith’s helpful integration of the literature
will provide a strong foundation for a new generation of studies that tackle such questions.
The topic, and book, will interest multiple audiences, though the price ($50.95, paperback) may
keep the casual reader at bay. The emphasis on theory in the early chapters and the study questions
at the end of the book make it a good fit for graduate or upper-level undergraduate classes in
urban economic development, planning, or tourism and recreation management. Scholars will
find the book provides a quick and structured introduction to the literature on major events and
urban economic development, making it a good resource to keep on the bookshelf and reference
for examples. Perhaps the book should be of greatest interest to officials and decision makers in
cities lobbying for and planning major events; the evidence presented in the book, however, hints
that for some cities the desire to host a major event will cloud careful planning and assessment
of urban regeneration efforts.

Eric S. Zeemering
University of Maryland Baltimore County
zeem@umbc.edu
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