Editorial Board:
Editor:
George H. Conklin,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Board:
Bob Davis,
 North Carolina
 Agricultural and
 Technical State
 University

Richard Dixon,
 UNC-Wilmington

Ken Land,
 Duke University

Miles Simpson,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Ron Wimberley,
 N.C. State University

Robert Wortham,
 North Carolina
 Central University
 

Editorial Assistants

Rob Tolliver,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Shannon O'Connor,
 North Carolina
 Central University

® 
Volume 4, Number 2
Fall 2006

Special Focus:
The Urban Post-Industrial
World

Outline of Articles

1. Urban Organization and Planning in the Post-Industrial City: An Editorial and Introduction to the Spring 2006 Issue of Sociation Today
   by George H. Conklin
   2006 is the year that the world as a whole becomes over half urban, yet no longer is the city the home of the industrial factory in the Western world.  What shape should the new city take in the information age?  Are we following an obsolete model when we plan in the Western world for a "new urbanism?"  Does suburbanization have to fade away to promote racial justice?  Why has urbanization concentrated poverty in the rural areas?  We must re-examine these areas as sociologists and question past assumptions. 
2. The Poor Rural Areas That Must Support "The Cities of the Future"
   by Ronald C. Wimberley and Libby V. Morris 
   Cities have exported poverty to rural areas, yet we forget that cities do not exist in nature.  Sociologists and others often seem to forget that.  Cities are a product of social behavior.  Neither do cities exist in self-sustained vacuums unto themselves.  Cities are dependent and interdependent with rural areas and through forms of social interaction that link people living in urban and rural areas.  While cities are a product of social behavior, they are dependent upon natural resources.  It is from rural areas that the natural resources which sustain cities are produced and extracted.
3. Gentrification, Displacement and New Urbanism: The Next Racial Project
   by Olivia Hetzler, Veronica E. Medina, and David Overfelt 
   Cities today are trying to reinvent themselves using buzzwords like the New Urbanism.  New Urbanist policies have generated more positive economic outcomes for cities than past gentrification policies have ever been able to accomplish by focusing on the "best and highest use."  However, the consequences of this policy on the resident (and frequently minority) populations have barely received attention.  This inattention is not accidental since the conservative vocabulary hides racial issues behind new terminology. 
4. Suburban Sprawl, Racial Segregation and Spatial Mismatch in Metropolitan America 
   by Charles Jaret, Robert M. Adelman, and Lesley Williams Reid
   Using multivariate models and newly available measures to measure Smart Growth, the issue of whether Smart Growth will help reduce racial separation is asked.  Among the multiple findings is that metro areas with equal percentages of population living in the suburbs (and with other variables controlled), the ones with more sprawl (i.e. lower densities, long unconnected streets) have less black-white residential segregation. 
5. Land Use Planning and the Consequences of Smart Growth
   by Bob Jentsch 
   Smart Growth is a current buzzword which implies that all growth is good if it is planned.  But urban planning usually fails because it concentrates on each city as the center of its own universe, starting with a downtown and working out.  This is unrealistic but common, really a misapplication of the concentric zone theory of the early industrial city to the modern world.   The author began his career as a planner with the Pruitt-Igoe project in St. Lewis and uses that as one example of why planning failed then as it continues to do so today.  (A video file is included).
6. We Shouldn't Have to Move Out to Move Up
   by Denise Hester
   One of the assumptions of the New Urbanism is that cities need to encourage increased density near the core.  That means that infill becomes a planning goal to increase density. But that also means that current residents have to move out so others can move in.  As a community activist, Hester argues that such planning practices are racist, part of the next racial agenda. (A video file is included).
7. The Prison Industrial Complex
   by Earl Smith and Angela Hattery
   Incarceration has become a multi-billion dollar industry that relies on more than 2 million citizens on any give day in the United States.  African American males, who in the 1970s were only 9% of the prison population, after harsher sentencing largely fueled by the drug trade, are now 62% of the prison population.  This is viewed as a national tragedy. 
8. The Social Side of Diabetes:  The Influence Of Social Support on the Dietary Regimen of People with Diabetes
   by Roger Y. Klomegah
   Diabetics need good social support in order to manage their disease and eat healthy diets.  They recognize this fact.  The research shows that instrumental support appears to be more important as it has a stronger association to dietary adherence than does emotional support.  A questionnaire is included.
9. Max Weber Visits America:  A Review of the Video
   by Michael Wise
   The North Carolina Sociological Society is proud to announce the long-awaited video of Max Weber's trip to North Carolina as retold by two of his cousins.  Max Weber made a trip to visit relatives in Mount Airy, North Carolina,  in 1904.  This 2004 narrative by Larry Keeter and Stephen Hall is the story of locating and interviewing two living eyewitnesses (1976) to Max Weber's trip. The video includes information about Weber's contributions to modern sociology.  Dowloadable files are provided using the .mp4 format.   The video should appeal to students and professors interested in Max Weber.  It can be included in courses ranging from introductory sociology to theory.

©2006 by the North Carolina Sociological Association