People, Plans, and Policies: Essays on Poverty, Racism, and Other National Urban Problems

by Herbert J. Gans

The primary theme of this collection of essays is that the cities' basic problems are poverty and racism, and until these concerns are addressed by bringing about racial equality, creating jobs, and instituting other reforms, the generally low quality of urban life will persist.

Gans argues that the individual must work to alter society. He believes that not only must parents have jobs to improve their children's school performance, but that the country needs a modernized "New Deal," a more labor-intensive economy, and a thirty-two hour work week to achieve full employment. Other controversial ideas presented in this book include Gans's opposition to the whole notion of an underclass, which he feels is the latest way for the nonpoor to unjustly label the poor as undeserving. He also believes that poverty continues to plague society because it is often useful to the nonpoor. He is critical of architecture that aims above all to be aesthetic or to make philosophical statements, is doubtful that planners can or should try to reform our social or personal lives, and thinks we should concentrate on achieving individual public policies until we learn how to properly plan as a society.

383 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 1991

About the author

Herbert Julius Gans was a German-born American sociologist who taught at Columbia University from 1971 to 2007.
One of the most prolific and influential sociologists of his generation, Gans came to America in 1940 as a refugee from Nazi Germany and sometimes described his scholarly work as an immigrant's attempt to understand America. He trained in sociology at the University of Chicago, where he studied with David Riesman and Everett Hughes, among others, and in social planning at the University of Pennsylvania, where his dissertation was supervised by Martin Meyerson.
Herbert J. Gans served as the 79th President of the American Sociological Association.

Reviews

[Nathan Storring · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading People, Plans, and Policies because of Herbert Gans's fair but cutting criticism of Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities, one of my favorite books. Over fifty years later, almost every contemporary criticism of class, race and culture in her work can be traced back to Gans.

People, Plans, and Policies includes that review of Death and Life and so much more. While some of the articles feel a little repetitive, Gans successfully demonstrates how so many of America's problems originate in poverty and unemployment, and provides a number of creative policy ideas for addressing that basic problem. He also provides a valuable framework for thinking about the relationship between policymaking and the research that informs it.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, great ideas, a bit repetitive but thorough, still relevant but dated.