Some Scenes of Urban Life Daniel Silver It is inevitable that individuals who seek the same forms of excitement, whether that excitement be furnished by a horse race or by grand opera, should find themselves from time to time in the same places. The result of this is that in the organ- ization which city life spontaneously assumes the population tends to segregate itself, not merely in accordance with its interests, but in accordance with its tastes or its temperaments. The resulting distribution of the population is likely to be quite different from that brought about by occupational interests or economic conditions. (Park, 1984: 43) Robert Park wrote these lines in 1925. The present chapter suggests they remain as true now as they did then, perhaps even more so. ‘Social facts are located facts’ (Abbott, 1999) well describes the basic Chicago School orientation, which continuously aims to contextualize abstract processes in con- crete times and places. Park’s quotation indi- cates that this original Chicago School vision included aesthetics and taste as key outcomes and impulses in the organization of city life. However, despite some notable exceptions (for example, Hunter and Janowitz, 1974; Suttles, 1984), the main traditions that grew up in the wake of the Chicago School have neglected this cultural aspect of urban life. Major themes instead have been crime, devi- ance, and social control – all of which were also of great interest to Park and his collabo- rators, to be sure. The primary aim of this chapter is to artic- ulate and illustrate the basic orientation of a research program that has sought to rekindle this sensitivity to the expressive organization of urban life. Where Park spoke of ‘moral regions’, the key term here is ‘scenes’. Yet, as we will see, the continuity is palpable. The chapter is structured as follows. First I will offer a meditation on the phrase ‘some scenes of urban life’, reflecting on each word of the phrase separately and then together as a unity. John Dewey, Georg Simmel, Kenneth Burke, Charles Baudelaire, among others, will serve as reference points for this exer- cise. Second comes an illustration of how scenes can be empirically studied as both outgrowths and drivers of key aspects of 26 BK-SAGE-HANNIGAN_RICHARDS-170036-Chp26.indd 408 2/9/2017 8:30:17 PM