Larry Bennett

On his book The Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism

Cover Interview of November 30, 2010

In a nutshell

The Third City is an unconventional interpretation and explanation of contemporary Chicago.

By exploring this iconic American city, I comment on broader trends in American urbanism. And what I mean by American urbanism is the cluster of attributes that define cities in the United States. These attributes include decentralized and relatively low-density metropolitan regions, a high degree of socio-economic segmentation within metropolitan regions, continued (but not always successful) efforts to create busy downtown areas and congenial residential districts, ongoing economic challenges as cities seek to attract private investment, and again—across metropolitan areas—great disparities in the provision of public services and access to other public amenities.

Chicago is one of the United States’ most observed cities—by visitors and social scientists, as well as by local journalists, scholars, and creative writers. Rich literatures have contributed to a particular view of Chicago that resonates locally and across the United States—dynamic but culturally parochial, the site of a perpetual civil war pitting reformers against “the machine,” “the city of neighborhoods.”

In The Third City I seek to determine how relevant these images continue to be, and to the extent they should be set aside or at least modified, what are the most striking features defining the emergent Chicago. Further: how is this new Chicago—what I characterize as the third Chicago—influencing the broader shape of American urbanism?

This is a book for readers who appreciate cities. It’s especially for those observers of cities who are struck by the paradoxical character of American urbanism: revitalized downtown and near-downtown residential areas, persistent social disparities, seemingly unending suburbanization—even in the face of energy and broader environmental constraints.

media studies / america / everyday existence / urbanism / chicago / florida richard / jacobs jane / daley richard / royko mike / mumford lewis /

[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.

Carolyn J. Dean,
Interview of February 01, 2011

The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.

Jerome Kagan,
Interview of September 17, 2009