On his book Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves
Cover Interview of August 07, 2019
The wide angle
Urban theorists have tried for generations to define exactly
what a neighborhood is. But behind that daunting existential question
lies a much murkier problem: how do you make neighborhoods productive
and fair for their residents? In Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our
Selves, I delve deeply into the question of whether American neighborhoods
are as efficient and equitable as they could be—socially and financially—and,
if not, what we can do to change that. I aim to redefine the relationship
between places and people, promoting specific policies at the local, state, and
federal levels that reduce inequalities in opportunity associated with
neighborhood inequalities.
Though I was trained in economics, I realized early in my
career that to understand neighborhoods thoroughly, one needed to also draw
upon insights from sociology, geography, and psychology. Making Our
Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves is my attempt to synthesize a lifetime of
thinking about this issue in a holistic way. My goal is to deliver a clear-sighted
explanation of what neighborhoods are, how they come to be, why they change—and
what they should be.
[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
The wide angle
Urban theorists have tried for generations to define exactly what a neighborhood is. But behind that daunting existential question lies a much murkier problem: how do you make neighborhoods productive and fair for their residents? In Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves, I delve deeply into the question of whether American neighborhoods are as efficient and equitable as they could be—socially and financially—and, if not, what we can do to change that. I aim to redefine the relationship between places and people, promoting specific policies at the local, state, and federal levels that reduce inequalities in opportunity associated with neighborhood inequalities.
Though I was trained in economics, I realized early in my career that to understand neighborhoods thoroughly, one needed to also draw upon insights from sociology, geography, and psychology. Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves is my attempt to synthesize a lifetime of thinking about this issue in a holistic way. My goal is to deliver a clear-sighted explanation of what neighborhoods are, how they come to be, why they change—and what they should be.