Please join us April 22nd, 1126 E. 59th Street, Rm 401, 4:30-5:50, for the second City, Society and Space workshop of the quarter! We are excited to have Gordon C.C. Douglas (2014 PhD) Post-Doc at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University present his recent work: “Methodological Considerations for a Cultural Sociology of Urban Planning”, a discussion of some of his recent qualitative work in progress.
As usual, food and drink will be provided!
The abstract for the talk is below:
“This talk, building out of a couple of projects-in-progress, will focus on exploring two elements of classical Chicago urban sociology that might fruitfully be connected, debated, and revived: the explicit sociological analysis of urban planning, and the tradition of naturalistic and “journalistic” research and reportage. Sociological scholarship on urban planning, policy, development, and design has been central yet sporadic in urban sociology and has not been effectively codified. Meanwhile, the empirical art of what Robert Park called “nosing around,” and what I expand to mean the walking of a city or neighborhood, talking to informants, observing, understanding, and reporting cultural phenomena, has new relevance as qualitative methodologists speak up for the unique advantages of their trade (rather than washing them over with quantitative language) and recognize the importance of public communication. Posing several studies of my own as cases for brief analysis and discussion, I will consider the potential advantages and disadvantages of an adaptive, story-driven, naturalistic approach to a cultural sociology of urban planning. I hope to provoke discussion not only of the epistemological importance of the sociology of planning per se, but of the controversial methodological standing of a more “journalistic” form of sociological reportage and the potential value (and pitfalls) of bringing such an approach to the study of urban planning, policy, and development.”
(In lieu of a paper version of the talk itself, Gordon will provide an example of one of the studies he will pose as a case of qualitative research on the cultures of urban planning, a previously unpublished chapter from his forthcoming book, as well as the methods appendix from that study.)
For an advance copy of the chapter, please contact Theresa Anasti at tanasti@uchicago.edu.