Small Cities USA

Price (paper): $23.95  
Price (cloth): $68.00  
Subtitle: Growth, Diversity, and Inequality
Written by Jon R. Norman
Subject:Sociology
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-5278-1
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-5277-4
Pages: 192 pages
Publication Date: June 2012

Praise for Small Cities USA:

"Norman presents a thought-provoking and important analysis of an urban world often overlooked by most social science researchers. Those seeking to understand the future of metropolitan America would be wise to read this book."
—Robert Adelman, University of Buffalo, the State University of New York

Description:

While journalists document the decline of small-town America and scholars describe the ascent of such global cities as New York and Los Angeles, the fates of little cities remain a mystery. What about places like Providence, Rhode Island; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Laredo, Texas; and Salinas, California—the smaller cities that constitute much of America's urban landscape? Jon R. Norman examines how such places have fared in the wake of the large-scale economic, demographic, and social changes that occurred in the latter part of the twentieth century.

Small Cities USA illustrates how smaller cities changed over the last third of the century, exploring how a large group of these cities have experienced divergent fates of growth and prosperity or stagnation and dilapidation. Drawing on an assessment of eighty small cities between 1970 and 2000, Norman considers the factors that have altered the physical, social, and economic landscapes of such places. These cities are examined in relation to new patterns of immigration, shifts in the global economy, and changing residential preferences among Americans.

In doing so, he presents the first large-scale comparison of smaller cities across time in the United States. This study shows that small cities that have prospered over time have done so because of diverse populations and economies. These "glocal" cities, as Norman calls them, are doing well without necessarily growing into large metropolises.

JON R. NORMAN is an assistant professor in the department of sociology and the graduate program in urban affairs and public policy at Loyola University, Chicago. His work has appeared in Sociological Focus, Afterschool Matters, Method and Theory in Religion, and the Journal of Religion and Society.

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Price (paper): $23.95
Price (cloth): $68.00