Robert J. Sampson: Neighborhood Effects and the Contemporary City

[MUSIC]

>> Thanks.
Absolutely delighted

to be back in Chicago.

I spent many wonderful
years as a Chicago and

also teaching at
the University

of Chicago just
down the road.

I also spent
about 15 years

on a major
research project,

intensely studying
the city.

And what I'd like
to do is share

some of the results
with you today.

Now, 15 minutes,

we have 15 years
worth of research.

That's not going to work
in terms of details.

But what I think I can

do is give you
the big picture.

Think of it as
a tasting menu

of facts about the city.

And I'm going
to start with

a cover of the book
because I think it

represents the idea of

the book and actually
the talk today.

I argue that the city
is characterized by

distinct and diverse set

of neighborhoods
represented

abstractly in color,

that have persistent
effects across

a wide variety
of outcomes,

things that you might
not think go together.

I study things as
diverse as crime,

well being,
infant mortality,

teenage pregnancy, test
scores, for example.

In short, I emphasize
the power of place on

a multiple set of
outcomes across

our lives and for a
long period of time.

Hence, the idea of

the enduring
neighborhood effect.

Now, it's true that

this idea goes against

a lot of common wisdom.

We're told that
globalization,

technology have rendered
place irrelevant.

You've all heard
the phrase

the world is
flat, perhaps.

And it's true that if you

walk out on the
street here,

people are walking

around chatting on
their cellphones,

plugged into the iPhones,
tweeting, whatever,

they're elsewhere,
rather than here.

But I argue that
the city is,

in fact, not flat,
it's very uneven.

And also community which

we've been told
is dead, is not.

There are many
thriving communities,

and I want to tell you

a little bit about that.

Chicago is not just a
great American city,

as many will attest,

even die hard New Yorkers,

and that's my tribe,

but it's also a microcosm
for other cities.

In other words, I
think of Chicago in

a way as urban laboratory,

and I use that
laboratory to

study the city and

I'll walk you
through that.

And I start off in
the book by taking

the reader on a walk

down the streets
of the city.

You're familiar
with these scenes.

I'll start with the
gleaming and vibrant city

right outside our
door, of course.

This is what most tourists

know glorious
architecture,

people froliing in
Millennium Park.

But there's also another
part to the city.

The city is really
multiple cities in one.

Here's the abandoned
and forgotten city.

As you walk South, you
don't have to go far

from the loop to come

across places like this.

Manufacturing left
this neighborhood.

No one is on the street.

It's abandoned, furtive

looks, people are fearful.

Even further south,
we see the following.

This is the first
picture actually,

that I took and I
present in the book.

It was rather
eerie and haunting

to me because about
10 years ago,

on this very spot,

I met with a family
as did others,

who were living in
one of the largest

housing projects
in Chicago,

the Robert Taylor Homes.

And they were telling
us their struggles

to deal with
everyday life.

Today, it's a field,
25,000 people

used to live in
this neighborhood.

It no longer exists.

This night and
day contrast

exists across the
United States.

In fact, I have to

confess, here's
my hometown.

On the left,
that's actually

across the street from

where I went to
high school.

The high school is no
longer a high school.

On the right it's across

the street from where

my family went to church,

the church no
longer exists.

This night and
day difference

is in this city,

Utica, New York.
It's in most cities.

And I as a social
scientists

want to understand that.

But let's move away from

just pictures and
move out to take

a more distal or bird's
eye view perspective.

And what I'm going to
do is walk you through

very quickly thousands of

data points that we've

studied over the years.

What could be more
different than homicide,

typically among
two young males

and a woman giving

birth to a baby less
than 2,500 grams,

a low birth weight baby,

or a baby that dies.

It turns out,
and this is a

map now of Chicago,

the entire city,

the community
areas in the city.

And what I've done is

to array the murder rate

proportional to the size

of the stars and these

are hundreds of

incidents over
multiple years.

And also shaded it by
the health of children,

infants, again, low birth

weight, infant mortality.

And what you see
is that areas

that have high
murder rates

where the stars are,

are almost in
every single case,

those where there are
low child health.

Areas on the
South side and

running down the
South side and

over to the West side.

You might think it's
just poverty, it's not.

If we control for poverty,

the same
relationship exists.

It's not just the
negative things.

We talked about
the global elite

saying that
community is dead.

Well, guess what?
They tend to

concentrate in particular
neighborhoods too.

The stars here are
proportional to

what some economists call

the creative class
and including

artists and
writers per 1,000.

They tend to
concentrate very

distinctly in
certain cities.

And moreover,
the more people

are wired into
the Internet,

the more they use

the Internet,
more technology,

they too are
clustered in space.

And actually as
it turns out,

the more wired people
are externally,

the more wired they are
into their community.

It even matters where
you have a heart

attack or drop a letter.

I thought you might
find this of interest.

Real quickly, my
research team and I

dropped about
3,000 letters

systematically in
the city of Chicago

to see if they
were returned

and what was the
rate of return.

Turns out that it varied

tremendously
across cities,

those communities that
you see that have

a larger envelope had

a higher rate of
return of letters.

I think of this as other
regarding behavior.

You don't have to pick

up a letter and return it.

But, damn, if you drop
a letter, a bill,

you want it to be returned

, that varies
tremendously.

But also it varies

according to a character
of the community

that was measured 14
years prior where

we looked at the rate
of giving assistance,

CPR to heart attack
victims on the street.

If you're feeling
your chest tightened

when you walk out
of the theater,

it's not a bad place to

be because it turns out,

actually, the doop is
a pretty decent place.

The point is very distinct
differences across

communities in
what I think of as

the social character
of communities.

It's also true that
things like poverty and

segregation have
a long history

and they're very
sticky and persistent.

The areas that were
segregated in 1960,

this shows over a
50 year period,

the segregation in Chicago

and the increases in

poverty designated by
the positive marks.

And what you see
is that poverty

is very consistently
and unevenly spread.

It shifts down
South in the city

and across the West side.

That's over about
a 40 year period.

And if we look at
the most recent data

available, the
foreclosure,

great recession, boom,

being layered on the

most disadvantaged
communities

that go as far
back as 1960.

So in this sense,

we really have to
take into account

the history and the
persistent inequality

that exists in cities.

Now, my obsession as

a social scientist perhaps

because I grew up in

the place that
I showed you,

is to try to understand

these differences
within cities and

across cities in the
neighborhood effect.

And there's a large scale
project I was called

the Project and
Human Development

in Chicago Neighborhoods.

It went on for many years.

It was a collaborative
project.

It was a study of 6,000

children in many
neighborhoods.

I'm not going to tell you

about the children part,

there's no time,
I want to talk

a little bit about the
neighborhood part.

And really, if you
think about it,

we have report
cards for kids,

we have GNP for
society, we have

thermometers for our
individual health.

Why not for neighborhoods?

We developed a scheme.

We call it ecometrics.

If you think about it,

it actually makes sense.

It's a metric for

the study of
social ecology.

And what we did is to
interview thousands of

Chicagoans clustered
in their neighborhoods

not just a random survey,

but a neighborhood
level survey.

We also drove down
the streets very

slowly with video cameras

and videotaped
22,000 street

segments in the
city of Chicago.

This was way before
Google Street View.

Later on, I was like,

should have patented that.

But you can get a
lot out of this.

You can actually see.

You can count up. Is
there a disorder?

Are there broken windows,
vacant homes, etc.

We did that for
all the streets.

We also interviewed
leaders

the movers and the
shakers, the aldermen,

ministers, school
principals, community

organizations,
thousands of,

multiple points in time.

And also, we
collected data on

what we call collective
action events,

marches, rallies,
blood drives,

and so forth. Let me
give you example.

We asked 10,000

Chicagoans questions
like this.

Would your neighbors
take action if,

for example, children
were skipping school?

There was a fight in
the neighborhood?

City was going
to close down

the local fire station?

Turns out, there's
huge variability

across neighborhoods
in the sense in

which people expect
their neighbors to take

action and in terms
of their interaction,

whether they trust
their neighbors

and they're willing
to help them.

And I'm not talking
about close knit ties,

having dinner with your
neighbors or going

to their son's wedding.

That might not
be a bad thing,

I'm talking
about a sense of

working, trust,
and cohesion.

And it turns out that

this characteristic
which we call

collective
efficacy for the

efficacy in a united way,

predicts a number
of outcomes

with regard to
health and homicide.

Here you see every
homicide that

occurred over a three
year period in Chicago,

arrayed by the rate

of collective efficacy
in a neighborhood,

the purple areas
dark purple,

are high collective
efficacy,

very few homicide
incidents.

The white areas,

show high rate
of homicide.

This has been adjusted.

This is the simple chart.

Lots of details
in the book,

like well, what
about this?

And what about poverty
and what about that?

Turns out that
collective efficacy

seems to have

a very direct
effect on homicide.

Even by the way,

in other cities, we even

replicated this
study in Stockholm.

What could be different
welfare state?

Stockholm is very
different from Chicago.

And indeed, these show

all the neighborhoods
in Chicago and

the blue line and

all the neighborhoods in

Stockholm and
the red line,

Chicago is more
violent, it sits above,

but the relationship shows

as collective
efficacy gets higher,

moving to the
right, violence

goes down in both
cities in the same way.

Let's talk about
another phenomenon,

disorder. I took
this picture.

It appears in the book.
Is this disorder?

How many of you heard

of broken windows theory?

The idea of one

broken windows
leads to another,

unravels. You got it.

Well, there's defacement
of the property,

but maybe there's a
little art on the wall.

We took pictures like
this in videos all over

the city and the claim

is that it leads
to lower crime.

It reduces well being,

so there's more
crime and people

move out of the city

and there's lower health.

But the answer is
that, in fact,

perceptions
depend a lot on

the context in which
we are viewing it.

In other words,
we can count

up the disorder in
a neighborhood.

But the perceptions
people have,

it's not like they're
divorced from that.

They see things, but
there's a lot more going

on in terms of

their cultural
understanding of disorder.

And it turns out that
what you can actually

measure and see and film

isn't what
predicts things.

It's really those
perceptions and

those perceptions
can be deceiving.

One example, people
perceive there to

be more disorder with

a higher concentration of

immigrants in
the community.

But one of the findings is

actually that immigration
is related to

lower crime and
disorder as

these workers
in a march in

Chicago in 2006
are indicating.

So the perceptions
are deceiving.

Things are not always
what they seem.

Another thing, networks.

You're familiar with

networks probably
these days.

So this is a network
of all the leaders

in Chicago. Again,
politicians,

business leaders, law

enforcement,
education, religion.

They're shaded by
their type and

I'm not going to tell you

because that's not
really important now.

The size is those people

that are more connected.

In the middle
is probably we

could call them Mr. Big,

but I'm not going to
tell you who that is.

You might be able to
guess. And around

the edge are all
these isolates,

people that have no ties.

And yet, other people
are in cliques and

are very tied together.

That's an important
difference.

What I'd like you to

take away from
this, however,

is that while this
is important,

when we look at it across

neighborhoods, this
is what we see.

Differences. Again,
on the left,

it's a real community
that is basically

made up of a
bunch of islets,

that is leaders that have

ties to the other leaders
in their community.

And then you have
three cliques.

Whereas on the
right, think

of this as a spider web,

a dense web of

relationships among
leaders in the community.

What we find in a
nutshell is that that's

the community
that tends to do

better on a number
of things again,

even when we
adjust for some

of the usual suspects.

The other thing I

mentioned earlier,
collective civic action.

I took this picture after

a vicious incident
of violence on

the South side in
Roseland as it turns out,

there was a beating
outside of a high school.

Some of you may
remember it, Fenger.

These men were out
protesting that and

trying to get
the community

to work against violence.

We measured these
collective actions

across multiple years,

actually across about
30 years and examined

what collective
action is related to.

And it turns out that

collective action
in this sense,

is highly related to

the organizational
density in a community.

That is to say,
the number of

nonprofit organizations
that exist.

And it turns out
that when you have

these organizations,
even if you have

a mundane event
like a blood drive,

people then start to

talk and get involved
in other things.

So networks matter,
collective action,

organizations,
social connections,

trust, and the
things that we

always have known
about cities

in terms of

the pervasive segregation
and inequality.

The book tries to put
this all together.

So I'm not going to
show you any more maps,

but I just want to leave

you with a couple
takeaways.

I think that policy is

often based on anecdotes.

And that the tools
of ecometrics and

the procedures that we
use and ideas I think,

that have been derived
from our study,

can be put forth
in a policy way.

And even technology which

is said to undermine
community,

actually can be
used to improve it.

There's now iPhone apps to

report things, not
just potholes,

but in terms of pollution

and housing and a
number of other things.

So you can go out and
get involved that way.

By the way, there's also

technological
applications now even

for enhancing interactions
with neighbors.

But on your level,

I hope that this perhaps

leads you to see the
city in a new light.

Because again,
things aren't

always what they seem.

So when you're
out there, put

away the cell phone
after you've made that

call for the
pothole perhaps

and observe things
differently,

and imagine a new
city or a better city

because everything
I've shown

you, nothing
is inevitable.

These are patterns that

are socially constructed.

Take action to improve
our neighborhoods.

And I'll leave
you with another

picture that I took

this time next to

a very down and

out neighborhood at
least over the years,

former Cabrini
Green housing area,

it was very poor,

it's now in transition

and I came across this and

I found it interesting

looking toward the loop.

Perhaps graffiti,
perhaps not.

Thank you
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