American Scholarship in the Twentieth Century

Louis Wirth was a German-born American sociologist who spent most of his career at the University of Chicago. Like other members of the Chicago School, he was instrumental in linking social theory to planning and action. His studies on cities in general and on Chicago in particular helped lay the foundation for social planning and policy making in the United States. Wirth was instrumental in generating funding for academic projects that supported social amelioration, and his work in race relations helped improve conditions for minorities before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. As a man of erudition, Wirth not only introduced the English-speaking world to the works of important German social scientists like Karl Mannheim, but also furthered a more theoretical approach to cities and their problems. His essay "Urbanism as a Way of Life" became a landmark of modern urban sociological theory and established a research agenda for generations of sociologists to come. 020