Beyond Chicago: Framing and elevating urban social science

Justus Uitermark argues that the Chicago School of Sociology offers urban studies more than a foil for critical scholarship or a reservoir of cliched biological metaphors. In our response, we concur, but we also highlight the many forms of urban scholarship that align with the Chicago School's emphasis on rich empirical research, analytical abstraction and deductive reasoning – beyond the direct descendants of Robert Park and his mentees. Across the social sciences and applied fields, much of the contemporary literature on cities and urbanization is consonant with the basic approach of the Chicago School while improving upon it through comparative and multi-scalar analysis, greater attention to power dynamics, sharper identification of causal mechanisms and a normative commitment to improving urban life. We frame this diverse work as urban social science and argue for elevating its agenda-setting role in urban studies.