Gans, Herbert J.

Herbert Gans is a sociologist, urban planner, and critic who has written or edited 14 books and hundreds of articles, and who taught in Columbia University's department of sociology for three decades. Gans was born in 1927 in Cologne, Germany, to middle-class Jewish parents. The family fled Germany in 1939, arriving first in England and then in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood. Gans became a U.S. citizen in 1945 and subsequently spent 14 months in the Army. Returning in 1946 to the University of Chicago, he studied under the "Chicago School" of social scientists, among them Earl Johnson and Everett Hughes, who stressed the importance of urban fieldwork. At Chicago, Gans also grew close to the sociologist David Riesman, who in 1950 supervised a Master's dissertation titled "Political Participation and Apathy: A Study of Political Participation in Local Government and Some Recommendations to Increase Participation in the Government of Park Forest, Illinois." Riesman would remain a friend, correspondent, and mentor to Gans for the next 50 years.

Gans considered moving to Israel and joining a kibbutz after completing his M.A. Instead, he went to work as a planner for the Chicago Housing Authority. His planning work later took him to the Minnesota iron range, where he helped plan two new towns; he also briefly worked for the Division of Slum Clearance of the United States Housing and Home Finance Agency. In 1953, he followed another mentor from Chicago, the social scientist and planner Martin Meyerson, to the University of Pennsylvania and embarked on a doctorate in urban planning. Gans finished his dissertation, titled "Recreation Planning for Leisure Behavior: A Goal-Oriented Approach," in 1957. He was subsequently hired as an assistant professor of city planning at the University of Pennsylvania.

...