City Spotlight: Montréal

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In our summer issues, the CUSS newsletter team solicits a short piece that introduces CUSS members to the location of the ASA annual meeting. This year, Jan Doering (Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, jan.doering@utoronto.ca) generously agreed to write this year’s city spotlight. Thank you, Jan, for your introduction to Montréal! 

Montréal, a contradictory city

Montréal is unlike any other North American city, and I am not working up to the tired observation that Montréal is “so European.” What makes Montréal unique is its contradictory status as a multilingual and diverse city in Québec, a province that proudly insists on the dominance of the French language and Québécois identity. This contradictory status frequently pits Montréal against its province but also produces social conflict within the city, inflecting how debates unfold and how local issues are addressed (see also Carpentier 2022).

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City & Community – Graduate Editorial Assistants Program

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City and Community launched a new Graduate Editorial Assistants Program this year. The aim has been to expose doctoral students to academic publishing, help them to become professional evaluators of academic writing, and support them in their own work. They also received a $250 stipend for their participation.

This year, there were four doctoral students. As part of the editorial team, students have been learning how academic publishing works through seminar-like sessions with the editor and managing editor. They have helped evaluate new submissions to determine their fit and look for potential reviewers. They also meet regularly as a group to discuss academic publishing and workshop drafts of their papers.

Here are the four students and a little blurb from each one about themselves and what they’re getting out of the program:

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2024 CUSS Sessions in Montreal

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1. Interdisciplinarity and Urban Sociology
Session Organizers: Xuefei Ren and Claire Herbert
Presider: TBD

Individual Presentations:
“Challenging the Ecology of Social Disorganization,” Matthew J. DelSesto.
“Reclaiming Spaces, Shifting Safety: A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of Brownfield Redevelopment and Crime Trends in Chicago,” Marisol Becerra and Agustina Laurito.
“The Sociology of Drywall: Labor, Monopoly Capitalism, and Environmental Hazards,” Albert S. Fu.
“‘Urban-Rural Politics’: The Social Dynamics of Spatial Planning in Urbanizing China,” Bingzhe Lu.

2. Racial Capitalism and the Financialization of the City
Session Organizer: Luana Pinto Coelho
Presider: Elizabeth Korver-Glenn

Individual Presentations:
“A Racial Capitalist Perspective on Debt Blocks,” Ian Kennedy, Kate Krushinski O’Neill, Ryan Paul Larson, Sarah K.S. Shannon, and Alexes Harris.
“Boomtown Landlording: Real Estate Speculation, Racialized Displacement and the Persistence of Small Landlords in Austin, Texas,” Andrew Ford Messamore.
“’It’s a Land Grab:’ Financialized Development Under Racial Capitalism,” Matthew Atwell.
“Reflecting on the Pandemic: Is Using Big Data Another Tool of Racial Capitalism?” Tabitha R. Ingle.
“Using the Master’s Tools: How CLTs’ Legal Models Enable and Constrain Their Work,” Victoria F. Sisk.

3. Suburbs, Small Towns, and Midsize Cities
Session Organizer: Kiara Wyndham-Douds
Presider: Thalia Tom

Individual Presentations:
“Brokering Time: The Impact of Circulating Experts in Suburban Housing Policy,” Jennifer Girouard.
“Bubble vs Real World: Narratives of Place and Privilege in Suburbia,” Whitney Gecker.
“Gentrification and The Social Disruption of Neighborhoods,” Payton Johnson.
“Huesos Ganadores: Domino Play and Parks as Sites of Latinx Pla(y)cemaking,” Teresa Irene Gonzales and Lilian Wynne Platten.
“New Immigrants in Local Politics,” Jonathan Acosta.

4. Urban Inequalities Across Canada
Session Organizer: Prentiss Dantzler
Presider: Jan Doering

Individual Presentations:
“Assessing diversity among urban mobile home residents in Canada,” Lora A. Phillips.
“A Tale of Two Cities: Heterogeneity in Racial/Ethnic Discrimination in the Canadian Housing Market,” S. Michael Gaddis.
“Subsidized housing: The solution to housing affordability issues?” Kate Hee Choi and Arabella Soave.
“Toronto’s Drug Policy Paradox: Harm Reduction Sites versus Drug Arrests in Toronto Neighborhoods (1992-2020),” Taylor Domingos.

5. Community and Urban Sociology Section Refereed Roundtables
Session Organizer: Thalia Tom

Community and Urban Sociology Section Virtual Mini-Conference

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Building Communities in Research and Practice

We are excited to announce a virtual mini-conference giving an opportunity to graduate and postdoctoral students to present their recent scholarly research, network with mentors and each other. There will be one session of concurrent paper presentations, where invited mentors will give feedback to the student presenters. Each paper session will have 4 student presenters at maximum and one invited mentor, who will serve as a presider/discussant. There will also be three professional workshops: (1) Dissertation Workshop, (2) Navigating the Job Market and (3) Publishing, Fellowships, and Grants Workshop.

Date: Friday, April 12, 2024, 12:00 pm – 4:45 pm EST (to accommodate attendees from different time zones).

Registration: Interested students should submit an extended abstract of two pages, with the following clearly marked sections: (1) Introduction to the topic; (2) Hypotheses/Research Questions; (3) Methodology; and (4) Preliminary Results.

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Chair’s Message: Summer 2023

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Dear CUSS Members,

I hope everyone is enjoying summer.  I am looking forward to seeing many of you at our meetings in Philadelphia this week.  We have been busily planning our section events, starting with our reception which will take place on Thursday evening at the Post.   We have an exciting slate of section sessions that start the next morning with “Reimagining Urban and Community Sociology through Data Science”, followed by “Education and Urban Inequality”, “Climate Change, Urban Inequality, and the Future of Cities”, and “Critical Approaches to the Study of Policing of Urban Spaces”.   Our roundtable sessions cover the following themes: Contesting Urban Governance, Education in the Urban Context, Framing Diversity and Contestation, Gentrification, Getting Housed, Losing Shelter, Housing, Planning, and Politics, Neighboring and Community, Police and Spatial Surveillance, Race and Place, Urban Business and Property, and Urban Theory.  I would like to thank the session organizers for putting together a stellar group of papers.  Our business meeting will immediately follow the roundtables and will include our awards presentations. 

This has been a busy year for CUSS.  Many of the discussions that have taken place during my term have centered on ways to improve the section to foster broader involvement and inclusivity, particularly in both elected and volunteer leadership roles.  One of the most visible steps that has been taken towards this end has been in revamping our awards process, including in the constitution of committees, awards submissions, and evaluations.  We now have a portal for awards submissions that allows collects the same information from all applicants, as well as requiring text based only submission of articles aimed at mitigating some sources of potential bias in the review process.  We are open to suggestions about how to improve these processes moving forward.    

As my term concludes in August, I wanted to express how much of a pleasure it has been to serve CUSS as your chair. I am excited to welcome in the new leadership and opportunities to contribute to the continued growth and success of our section.

Best,

Mary J. Fischer

Practitioner Spotlight: Dr. Esther Hio-Tong Castillo

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Dr. Esther Hio-Tong Castillo is the Director of Racial Equity, Storytelling, and Community Impact for the City of Philadelphia. Previously, she served as the Programs Manager for the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Temple University in 2017. Benny Witkovsky interviewed Dr. Castillo about her work in Philadelphia earlier this spring. Thanks for speaking with us! 

Tell me about the work you have done in Philadelphia with the Asian community.

The first time that I worked directly with the Asian community in Philadelphia was when I volunteered as a Census trainer in Chinatown. In late 2019, the City of Philadelphia was recruiting multilingual trainers to ensure that everyone filled out the census, including immigrants and refugees. At that time, I gave a training presentation in Cantonese to about 100 older residents in Chinatown. To my surprise, they were very enthusiastic about filling out the census. Through this experience, I connected with the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC), my former employer. They asked me if I would be willing to lead a program that aims to promote mental health and wellness in the Chinese immigrant community because they just received a grant from the Scattergood Foundation. I said yes. 

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City Spotlight: Landlord Strategies for Avoiding Evictions in Philadelphia

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By Melody L. Boyd (SUNY Brockport) and John Balzarini (Delaware State University)

If it’s been a while since you’ve been to Philadelphia, you’ll notice some shimmering additions to the skyline when you arrive for ASA 2023. You’ll likely need to reroute a block or two to navigate around scaffolding and closed streets as you head to dinner after a day of conferencing. You may want to bring a pair of ear plugs to minimize the construction noise as you move around the city. While Gritty was unveiled in 2018 as the Flyers mascot, the city has gotten quite a bit shinier and new in recent years. Of course, as sociologists we know that shiny and new—which on the surface may seem attractive—actually corresponds with increased inequality as competition for housing intensifies. In the context of these changes throughout the city we conducted research looking at the attitudes, perspectives, and experiences of one of Philadelphia’s most important housing providers—landlords. In this article, we highlight some of our findings from this research, focusing on how landlords navigate evictions amidst an increasingly hot Philly housing market.

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