ABSTRACT
Scott Greer operated in a context of Midwestern sociology, despite his training in California and birth in Texas. In this, the many years at Northwestern and then at Wisconsin imbued him with the spirit of the Chicago School of sociology. One suspects that indeed it was Parsons that Scott had in mind when, in The Emerging City, he spoke of "the social scientist as dismayed and a little embittered by the lack of fit between the existing system and any simple powerful and elegant theory". Greer was extraordinarily supple in seeing the complex nature of such new characteristics. This preserved him from dogmatism and exaggerations of all sorts in all directions. The metropolitan community is for Greer the large-scale society in miniature and manageable format. In The Emerging City, Greer makes it plain that segregation served to reinforce older patterns that delayed integration of the urban network.
