Tag: review

Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect

Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect

Robert J. Sampson’s important new book, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect, challenges prevailing notions of community decline. Sampson, an urban sociologist who is the Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard University, argues that our communities continue to matter a great deal and that our lives are powerfully shaped by where we live. William Julius Wilson lauds the book as “one of the most comprehensive and sophisticated empirical studies ever conducted by a social scientist.”

via The Enduring Effect of Neighborhoods – The Atlantic Cities.

Page One: Inside the New York Times


Amazing access, large in scope, but doesn’t begin to answer the question which keeps popping up throughout the film: What is the future of the Times. It was as if by just showing the process, how honest and hardworking the professional journalists are that the question was to be answered. A great snapshot in time, with good cinematography but with a lack of focus.

Edward Scissorhands

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Or, how suburbia [and by extension America] loves conformity and percieved safety
This paper discussed the movie Edward Scissorhands [1990] and the reflection of religion, the corporation and society has on the formation of the city. Polemical in nature, it is not a denouncement of religion, instead it acknowledges the powerful role of religion in society, and how this important part of life shapes our space [and place] in the world.

Edward Scissorhands is the collection of fables and fairy tales not only from the collective history of man, but also from recent American experiences. The classic Frankenstein and Pinocchio story is contrasted with the distinctly American thrill of the new and the allure of progress with the paranoia of the other. The highly stylized neighborhood does not cover the daemons of distrust and isolation that are so eloquently played to by the “Christian” fundamentalist, nor does the blind search for success cover the fractures in the interpersonal relationships of the characters. In the last review, even love cannot triumph over the power of conformity.

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