Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves

Cloth $59.00 ISBN: 9780226599854 Published February 2019

E-book $10.00 to $58.99 About E-books ISBN: 9780226599991 Published February 2019

Urban theorists have tried for decades to define exactly what a neighborhood is. But behind that daunting existential question lies a much murkier problem: never mind how you define them—how do you make neighborhoods productive and fair for their residents? In Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves, George Galster delves deep into the question of whether American neighborhoods are as efficient and equitable as they could be—socially, financially, and emotionally—and, if not, what we can do to change that. Galster aims to redefine the relationship between places and people, promoting specific policies that reduce inequalities in housing markets and beyond. Drawing on economics, sociology, geography, and psychology, Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves delivers a clear-sighted explanation of what neighborhoods are, how they come to be—and what they should be.

Review Quotes

Review Quotes

Choice

“Highly recommended. . . Impressive in its scholarship and scope, this is a major addition to the literature on neighborhoods. . . Galster brings clarity and precision to this literature through a unified framework of neighborhood change.”

Social Forces

“Galster’s key argument—that we make our neighborhoods and then they make us—marks a critical contribution to the scholarship on neighborhood effects. . . He leads us through the maze and helps us find connections between seemingly disparate findings via a compelling theoretical framework.”

Ingrid Gould Ellen | author of Sharing America's Neighborhoods

“Bringing together frameworks and extensive evidence from across the social sciences, this important and unique book helps us understand how and why neighborhoods form and change, the many ways in which they shape our lives and opportunities, and how policies can help to make them both vibrant and inclusive. Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves is the rare book that offers not only critical insights for scholars but also concrete guidance for policymakers.”

Casey Dawkins, University of Maryland

“In Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves, Galster draws upon decades of research to illustrate the multiple paths through which we make our neighborhoods and, in turn, are shaped by the neighborhoods we make. Galster develops sophisticated arguments, but the logic is easy to follow. This book unifies a large body of interdisciplinary literature on neighborhood dynamics that Galster was instrumental in creating, moves that literature forward by developing testable empirical hypotheses about neighborhood change, and offers a menu of strategies that are designed to create a spatial opportunity structure defined by high-quality, diverse, and stable neighborhoods.”

Kirk McClure | Journal of Urban Affairs

"Galster’s work represents the cutting edge of our understanding of neighborhood change. His work needs to be the state of the art of community development practice. This book should make a significant contribution toward advancing our understanding and practice of community development."

For more information, or to order this book, please visit https://press.uchicago.edu

Economics and Business: Economics--Urban and Regional

Geography: Urban Geography

History: Urban History

Sociology: Social Organization--Stratification, Mobility

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