Introduction

Before the terms urban regeneration and creative class were invented, what we now think of as urban culture had already been flagged as important for city vitality. While we tend to mainly associate the Chicago School of urban sociology with the ecological model of city growth, Ernest Burgess provided some prophetic insights into not just urban growth but urban character and change within and between city districts – issues important for this Part. Just as it is today, in the 1920s culture was seen to play a vital transformative role in urban life and urban redevelopment especially in the downtown neighbourhoods, about which Burgess had this to say:

Near by is the Latin Quarter, where creative and rebellious spirits resort. The slums are also overcrowded to overflowing with immigrant colonies – the Ghetto, Little Sicily, Greektown, Chinatown – fascinatingly combining old world heritages and American adaptations. Wedging out from here is the Black Belt, with its free and disorderly life.

(Burgess 1925: 56)