The Contemporary City and Contemporary Social Research.
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Suggests that social scientists have been too concerned with the development of a problem-solving approach to understanding the nature of the city. The concern reflects an inappropriate response to pressures to make social science more relevant; rather than changing the study curriculum to make it more relevant, perhaps what is needed is a change in the social scientists themselves. Increased personal involvement in inner-city life would make them more perceptive of that life style; thus, their studies would be more relevant to the inner city. As for the curriculum and the study of the city, perhaps a better approach than the problem-solving orientation is to revive older, European strands of thought and to study the city as an order of institutions. Such an approach focuses attention on the fact that social interactions and roles, institutional relationships, and structural changes over time are the urban phenomena to be studied and explained. 13 pp. Ref.
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