Message from Communications Team (Summer 2020)

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2020 represented a significant change from how CUSS has managed communications to its members. This process began under our past chairs Miriam Greenberg and Rachel Dwyer. We have now shifted our focus away from a traditional PDF newsletter to a combination of email, our website (comurb.org), Facebook, and Twitter (@ComUrbASA). For instance, current chair Japonica Brown-Saracino has been sending out a monthly digest of section updates and announcements via the listserve. This digest is also posted on our Comurb.org and tweeted out by members of our team. While we are relying more on social media to get information out, we will be collecting items from the past year and posting a PDF. That way we can continue to have an archive of traditional newsletters, even as technology continues to evolve. It also continues the great work of Bill Holt, our newsletter letter editor since 2001.

As we move forward, we welcome suggestions as to how we can better serve CUSS members. This includes using the website to highlight the great work – advocacy, scholarship, and teaching – that is done by you all. We would love to post short essays or editorial-style pieces on Comurb.org. If you are interested, pitch us your ideas.

  • Albert Fu <afu@kutztown.edu>
  • Kyle Galindez <kgalinde@ucsc.edu>
  • Lora Phillips <laphillips216@gmail.com>
  • Steven Schmidt <stvnschmidt@gmail.com>

Chair’s Message

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Japonica Brown-Saracino
Boston University
Summer 2020, Vol. 33, No. 2

Under ordinary circumstances, many of us would be preparing for travel to San Francisco.  We would be looking forward to gathering together, in person, at our sessions, business meeting, roundtables, and for a reception at the Tenderloin Museum.    I am certain that I am not alone in regretting the missed opportunity to engage with one another at our sessions, as well as to talk more informally in a variety of conference settings – from the book exhibit, to the crowded hallways where we would ordinarily gather between panels.

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CUSS Digest (June 2020)

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Dear all,

I am thinking of everyone and looking forward to coming together – virtually – in August with those who are able to participate in the remote ASA conference.  It is a crucial moment for urbanists to be in conversation with one another as our current context brings to light and exacerbates longstanding inequalities and injustice.  Racist state violence, police brutality, and protest suppression are pressing urban concerns that should be central to conversations within our subfield.  I will be in touch in coming weeks about plans for virtual section activities during the conference, and welcome emails (my address is below) from section members about how, as a section, we can elevate these concerns and conversations within and beyond our scholarship and meetings.

Below, you will find our June Digest.  Contents include:

A) Section Election Results

B) Section Award Winners

Best,

Japonica

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Interview with 2019 Graduate Student Paper Award winner, Zachary Hyde

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Zachary Hyde, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia, was the winner of the 2019 Graduate Student Paper Award. Zach’s innovative research agenda brings work in relational economic sociology to bear on longstanding questions in urban sociology. We reached out to ask him to discuss his research, and we’re including his responses below. Thanks to Zach for participating in our interview series!

What were the main findings of your paper?

My paper “Giving Back to Get Ahead” focuses on the popular urban policy of density bonusing, where private development companies provide affordable housing and other social services in exchange for extra density. The main finding of the paper is that density bonusing forms a paradox, whereby “giving back” social services simultaneously increases developer profits. Through contributing services developers enhance their symbolic capital via gift-giving, which can be traded in for economic advantages in future dealings with local governments.

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Interview with Harvey Molotch, Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award Winner (2019)

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The CUSS newsletter team reached out to the 2019 Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award Winner, Harvey Molotch, to reflect on his career and his trajectory as an urban sociologist. Dr. Molotch is Professor Emeritus at NYU and UC Santa Barbara and is a prominent figure in urban sociology and our section. We’re including his responses below:

What initially brought you to urban sociology? 

I’ve always had a thing for land and buildings. Children play with blocks; I kept at it. When growing up in Baltimore I liked watching things go up, including houses and especially movie theaters. From family scuttlebutt I learned that a part of making things happen was connections – that’s what gets zoning, building permits, and even permission to have a neon sign. Don’t be shocked, dear reader, but there were bribes.

When I got to urban social science, my Baltimore was not in it. Crime was certainly there but largely sequestered as criminology. Urban science was about concentric circles, demography, and exotic street corner life. I yearned for the developers, the fixers, and the crooks – and their linkages with the more ordinary folks trying to make their way through the thicket. A lot of my life has been to follow up on that.

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City & Community (March 2020)

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The new issue is out!

https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15406040/2020/19/1

Includes:

  1. Symposium on the importance of small cities edited by Richard Ocejo and Ervin Kosta
  2. Two articles on gentrification by Cameron Hightower & Jim Fraser, and by Brendon Beck.
  3. Book reviews:
    • Review by Bruce Haynes on former C&C editor Lance Freeman’s new book on The (Archetypal) Ghetto in Black America
    • Review by Joan Maya Mazelis on Esther Young’s new book about Manufactured Insecurity of mobile homes.
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