Chicago as urban microcosm
Quaint Boston can’t match Chicago’s bustle and sprawl, but the two cities are more alike than not in fundamental respects. In fact, they’re surprisingly similar to Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and other urban areas in how “neighborhood effects” work, according to sociologist Robert Sampson. Sampson, the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences and director of the Social Sciences Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, has devoted his career to studying the metropolis. His new book, “Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect,” details the results of a groundbreaking, 15-year study of the Second City’s people and neighborhoods. Growing up in upstate New York, in “what I now realize was the massively declining industrial city of Utica,” Sampson witnessed the shedding of jobs and population dip. “Growing up, I didn’t think like a sociologist, obviously, but I was fascinated by issues that were apparent in...