Jamin Rowan

(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017)

When celebrated landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted despaired in 1870 that the “restraining and confining conditions” of the city compelled its inhabitants to “look closely upon others without sympathy,” he was expressing what many in the United States had already been saying about the nascent urbanization that would continue to transform the nation’s landscape: that the modern city dramatically changes the way individuals interact with and feel toward one another. An antiurbanist discourse would pervade American culture for years to come, echoing Olmsted’s skeptical view of the emotional value of urban relationships. But as more and more people moved to the nation’s cities, urbanists began to confront this pessimism about the ability of city dwellers to connect with one another. The Sociable City investigates the history of how American society has conceived of urban relationships and considers how these ideas have shaped the cities in which we live. As the city’s physical and social landscapes evolved over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, urban intellectuals developed new vocabularies, narratives, and representational forms to express the social and emotional value of a wide variety of interactions among city dwellers. Turning to source materials often overlooked by scholars of urban life—including memoirs, plays, novels, literary journalism, and museum exhibits—Jamin Creed Rowan unearths an expansive body of work dedicated to exploring and advocating the social configurations made possible by the city. His study aims to better understand why we have built and governed cities in the ways we have, and to imagine an urban future that will effectively preserve and facilitate the interpersonal associations and social networks that city dwellers need to live manageable, equitable, and fulfilling lives.

Review by Mike Taylor presented at Faculty Book Lunch

Thanks to Jamin’s generosity, I had the chance to see this book in proposal form a few months ago as I work toward submitting my own. So, to engage with the final product has been particularly informative methodologically, as well as intellectually engaging and enjoyable. As many of you know, I recently moved from the urban squalor of Vancouver, BC to the rural paradise of Mapleton, Utah. Yet, as I consider Jamin’s concept of urban sociability, The Sociable City leaves me longing for the day-to-day interactions with food vendors, street musicians, shop owners, and the like for whom I developed what Jamin describes as “a wry fondness . . . , an appreciation for those one may never see but who nevertheless provide the mutual support that makes it possible to lead a satisfying life in the city” (154). In The Sociable City, Jamin turns to such oft-overlooked sources of early twentieth-century urban ideologies as memoirs, plays, and museum exhibits, in order to trace the evolution of urbanist discourse in the United States from dominant ideas of sympathy that emerges from “intimate social relations” and “nurturing communities” (2), to the concept of “interdependent sociability” (7-8). Through this intellectual mapping of shifting urban imaginaries, Jamin emphasizes how the ever-changing affective interactions of city dwellers result in the literal reshaping of the physical built environment of our cities. Jamin threads this argument throughout each chapter by analyzing the contrasting constructions from the natural space of Central Park to the public housing structures of such urban centers as Chicago and Philadelphia. Within these public spaces, The Sociable City rebuilds a conversation between leading sociologists, settlement activist writers, African American intellectuals, New Yorker journalists, novelists, and others who began to understand human interactions in the city as a form of ecology, a natural system of interdependence and shared social satisfaction. By expanding the U.S. intellectual tradition of urban discourse to include voices of otherwise underrepresented classes, races, genders, and genres, Jamin’s The Sociable City concludes by emphasizing the significance of understanding the importance of urban sociality. He writes, “Taking urban sociality more seriously matters because . . . , a society’s decisions about what kinds of relationships and interpersonal emotions matter determine the types of cities it builds and the kinds of opportunities those cities afford to those who live in them” (160). Overall, The Sociable City deepens the field’s understanding of early twentieth-century urban discourse while simultaneously emphasizing the vital role that literature and literacy play in shaping the social and physical ecologies of contemporary and future cities. With this broadening of sources for understanding the history and significance of urban discourse, The Sociable City urges students and scholars, city dwellers and city builders, to seek out and engage with diverse urban ideologies in order to build, rebuild, and maintain the types of sociable cities that society depends on.