Urban Community

One of the few good reasons to construct a book of readings is getting to talk with the authors of the finest articles recently published in prestigious journals and other outlets. I asked most of them for permission to cut some parts of their articles. Who would want that to happen? Nobody, but quite readily they understood that space in books is at a premium and condensing things is routine, hence they were almost eager to allow this chopping. They also realized that students, and readers generally, prefer material that does not require deep mathematical reading. Thus, they permitted me to ax statistical tables that one must acknowledge represent a great deal of hard work and outstanding scholarship. I encourage students who have already had parametric statistics to read the complete works in the journals: I am sure you will agree that the authors, all of them, used the appropriate statistics in reaching their conclusions. Putting together this reader required a great deal of reading, but that is no complaint. I enjoy reading urban and community sociology and urban geography and design are favorites of mine. At my campus, The University of Texas at Tyler, which opened only a couple of years before I moved here, I started and directed a master's degree in Public Planning and Administration and still teach in the area. Similarly, I started the geography program here and taught geography until we could hire a tenure-tract geographer. With these experiences my appreciation for sociology's sister disciplines continues to grow. As broad and open a discipline as sociology is, our friends in related disciplines have much to contribute to the understanding of cities and communities.Martin, W. Allen is the author of 'Urban Community', published 2003 under ISBN 9780130984234 and ISBN 013098423X.