The substance of the chapter “Community Organization and Juvenile Delinquency” was presented at the annual meeting of the Recreation Congress, in Springfield, Illinois, October 8–12, 1923, but has not been previously published. The paper “Community Organization and the Romantic Temper” was read at the meeting of the American Sociological Society in Washington, D.C., in 1923, in the section on Community Organization. It was published in the Journal of Social Forces, May, 1925.
Professor Burgess’ paper, “Can Neighborhood Work Have a Scientific Basis?” was presented at the annual meeting of the National Conference of Social Work, in Toronto, May 1924. An abstract of this paper was published in the Proceedings of the conference for that year.
In conclusion, the authors wish to take this occasion to acknowledge their indebtedness to the publishers for using here the papers in the journals mentioned.
Robert E. Park
University of Chicago
November 2, 1925
TABLE OF CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I. | The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment. Robert E. Park | [1] |
| II. | The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project. Ernest W. Burgess | [47] |
| III. | The Ecological Approach to the Study of the Human Community. R. D. McKenzie | [63] |
| IV. | The Natural History of the Newspaper. Robert E. Park | [80] |
| V. | Community Organization and Juvenile Delinquency. Robert E. Park | [99] |
| VI. | Community Organization and the Romantic Temper. Robert E. Park | [113] |
| VII. | Magic, Mentality, and City Life. Robert E. Park | [123] |
| VIII. | Can Neighborhood Work Have a Scientific Basis? Ernest W. Burgess | [142] |
| IX. | The Mind of the Hobo: Reflections upon the Relation between Mentality and Locomotion. Robert E. Park | [156] |
| X. | A Bibliography of the Urban Community. Louis Wirth | [161] |
| Indexes | [229] | |
CHAPTER I
THE CITY: SUGGESTIONS FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT
The city, from the point of view of this paper, is something more than a congeries of individual men and of social conveniences—streets, buildings, electric lights, tramways, and telephones, etc.; something more, also, than a mere constellation of institutions and administrative devices—courts, hospitals, schools, police, and civil functionaries of various sorts. The city is, rather, a state of mind, a body of customs and traditions, and of the organized attitudes and sentiments that inhere in these customs and are transmitted with this tradition. The city is not, in other words, merely a physical mechanism and an artificial construction. It is involved in the vital processes of the people who compose it; it is a product of nature, and particularly of human nature.