The City, Revisited: Urban Theory from Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York

11. The New Chicago School: Notes toward a Theory

Every city is unique. Cities partially shape their residents, sensitizing them to some concerns, while discouraging others. This chapter explores how the city of Chicago has encouraged a distinct flavor in the research and theorizing about cities by persons who have done time in Chicago’s environs. The last section considers how these ideas may be joined together as components of a new Chicago School. It should be noted at the outset that the participants in the Chicago Not-Yet-a-School of urban politics—also known among themselves, tongue-in-cheek, as the Chicago Preschool—differ on the question of whether a new Chicago school has taken form.1 The reflections in this chapter are sparked by recent discussions of the L.A. and New York schools, which have substantially defined themselves in opposition to an old Chicago model—of Ernest Burgess, Homer Hoyt, and others. We agree with critics who maintain that core aspects of the older Chicago paradigms are inadequate.2 We need new and better theorizing— especially about cities and urban phenomena. We reflect on these issues as the critics and flag-wavers on each coast seem not only to have misunderstood Chicago and Chicago-based theorizing, but also to have constructed foundations too limited for themselves and others to build on. Reflecting on Chicago can potentially enrich our theorizing about cities and societies around the world. Chicago has long illustrated such diverse and openly conflictual politics that it draws in visitors like Max Weber (who wrote that Chicago was like a man with his skin cut off, so you could see the working organs exposed) and led Saul Bellow3 to do graduate work in anthropology (which directly The New Chicago School Notes toward a Theory n Terry Nichols Clark 11 221 The New Chicago School inspired his Henderson the Rain King and more). Chicago visitors have long been aghast by Chicago’s politics and culture, yet these inspired many to dig deeper. Doing time around Chicago politics is like doing fieldwork among the Australian aborigines for a young anthropologist. It teaches cultural relativism . It shakes up the standard political labels, categories, and solutions that come from most European and American politics. Chicago, I suggest, is a distinctly important world city because its core political dynamics were long those of clientelism or patronage—which in recent years have been reframed as bribery and corruption. This clientelism Chicago shares with Taipei, Naples, Bogotá, Lagos, and indeed most cities the world over. To confront this past openly, and consider how this legacy has changed and can change, is the most salient issue on the policy agenda of governments today—at national, regional, and local levels. It stands prior to and is definitional in conceptualizing development in its multiple possible forms. Chicago offers answers to these general queries. We explore Chicago as a case, pointing out traits that are found elsewhere .That is,we strive to generalize by exploring the core,deeper structures that drive Chicago. If every city is unique, it is because general processes combine in unique ways in each location. But we can understand a single city better, and offer more lessons for others, by attending to the general processes as well as to how they combine to generate uniqueness. Chicago’s Uniqueness Several factors make Chicago unique, and therefore capable of producing new ways of analyzing cities. These factors include the following: 1. Chicago is the largest major U.S. city with a strong tradition of Catholicism; white Protestants accounted for less than 20 percent of the population through the twentieth century. Chicago’s Catholic tradition was drastically shaken in the 1984 election of Harold Washington , who first mobilized African-American Chicagoans for serious political engagement. The continual flow of immigrants from across the world has filled specific neighborhoods with new character, but 222 Terry Nichols Clark ethnically and culturally distinct neighborhoods remain stronger and more politically legitimate in this city than most U.S. locales. 2. Catholicism, by stressing concrete personal relations, helped legitimate Chicago’s parishes, schools, and neighborhoods. The precinct captains have long been distinctly powerful; ethnic politics, clientelism/ patronage,and material allocation of incentives were the key resources. Chicago is rife with the Wagnerian leitmotifs, the Levi-Straussian deep structures: Don’t make no waves, don’t back no losers. We don’t want nobody nobody sent. Chicago ain’t ready for reform. (The first two are titles of...