Abstract
This issue, our 81st, marks the 20th anniversary of City & Community’s first one, back in March 2002. As Anthony Orum, the journal’s first Editor, wrote in the Inaugural Editorial of that first issue, the hope of launching City & Community was “to publish in these pages the best theory and research on the city.” Simple yet complex, like the best things in life. We have succeeded as a journal in publishing excellent work in urban sociology, advancing our subfield and discipline, and raising and contributing to key debates in urban studies. Quite simply, urban sociology in 2022 would look very different and not be nearly as theoretically robust were City & Community not started in 2002.
That first issue featured a debate across six papers between advocates of the “Los Angeles School” and the “Chicago School” of urban studies. At the time discussions around these traditions with their competing views of cities and urban research were quite lively in departments and programs around the country. I doubt many of us are having them today. Instead, sociological research on topics like race and space, housing, the environment, migrants and migration, sexualities and space, the Global South, and critical analyses on a variety of power structures in cities have emerged as some of the leading areas of inquiry in our subfield. They are covered in recent and forthcoming issues of City & Community. Indeed, our attention to these important societal and intellectual topics examined through the lens of urban sociological theory is our most significant contribution to the discipline of sociology today. Our journal has helped us in that mission.
If service at a journal is one of those “thankless” jobs in our business, then hopefully the following “thank yous” offer a measure of appreciation. I would like to acknowledge and thank the journal’s Editors who came before me: Anthony Orum, Hilary Silver, Lance Freeman, Sudhir Venkatesh, and Deirdre Oakley. I strive to build upon the solid foundation you all set. Thank you to the current managing editor, Daniela Tagtachian, and to all the managing editors who came before her. It is your efforts behind the scenes that make each issue possible. Thank you to everyone who has served on our editorial board these past 20 years. Your guidance and assistance have kept this journal running. Thank you to anyone who has submitted at least one review over the last 20 years. Thank you to our authors for sharing your wonderful work with City & Community and letting us be the outlet for you to share it with the world. Thank you to ASA (especially Karen Edwards) and CUSS for their commitment to the journal, and to all the production staff at Wiley and SAGE, the journal’s publishers. Finally, thank you to our readers. You’re the ones who give urban sociological research the attention and validation it deserves. Keep reading, keep sharing, keep discussing.
I hope you all enjoy 2022. On to the next 20 years of City & Community!