Herbert Gans, community sociologist

After a BA and MS in sociology from University of Chicago, Gans worked as an urban planner for the Chicago Housing Authority and a federal agency focused on housing before the creation of HUD.  He then received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, and entering academia at the University of Pennsylvania before settling at Columbia University and later served as president of the American Sociology Association.

-- "Herbert J. Gans, who upended myths on urban and suburban life, dies at 97," Boston Globe
-- "Herbert J. Gans, myth-busting sociologist, dies at 97," Washington Post

From the Globe:

His findings were often surprising. For his first book, “The Urban Villagers: Groups and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans” (1962), he immersed himself in the life of Boston’s working-class West End. The area was later bulldozed for “slum clearance,” and he lamented the destruction of a vibrant community. A half-century later, the book still stood as a classic statement against indiscriminate urban renewal.  (Review, Commentary, 1963, Review, New York Review of Books).

Similarly, Dr. Gans challenged conventional wisdom about postwar suburbia in “The Levittowners” (1967). For more than two years, he lived in Levittown, N.J., later renamed Willingboro, and concluded that the residents had strong social, economic and political commitments, and that notions of suburbanites as conformist, anxious, bored, cultureless, insecure social climbers were wrong. (Review, New York Review of Books, also covering two majority black communities in California).

He found that America’s news was more about politics than government and personalities than issues; that deadlines left little time for context or accuracy; and that beat reporters often censored themselves to protect sources. He recommended larger staffs, wider perspectives and, to cover the extra costs, federal subsidies such as

In “The War Against the Poor” (1995), Dr. Gans scathingly attacked attitudes of the affluent and middle classes and words used to stereotype and stigmatize the poor by questioning their morality and values. One culprit, he said, was “underclass,” with its connotation of permanence, and its presumption that all the men are lazy, all the women immoral, and all the poor too undisciplined to escape welfare dependencies. (Summary, Social Policy)

Returning to the media in “Democracy and the News” (2003), he argued that traditional journalism and an informed citizenry had been weakened by proliferating internet and cable news outlets, the growth of big corporations and special interest groups, and media monoliths obsessed with profits. He prescribed greater newsroom diversity and stiffer walls between editorial and business sides of news organizations.

-- "Urban Legend," UChicago Magazine

At 90, Gans continues to write. His new collection of essays, Sociology and Social Policy: Essays on Community, Economy, and Society (Columbia University Press, 2017), returns to many of the themes that have preoccupied him for more than six decades: immigration, race, cities and how they change, and urban displacement and its effects on the vulnerable.