Both readings “Theoretical Perspectives on the City” and Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community highlight the importance of perspective on urban sociology. In “Theoretical Perspectives on the City”, we see how researchers go through different paradigms, from urban ecology to urban political economy to postmodernism, when they “[ran] out of questions that they could answer using their theoretical framework” (32). Similarly, Gregory states the different theories that come across when trying to explain what cultivates the subculture that exists in the African-American inner-city community including Wilson’s thesis that this concentration of poor was created because of a restructuring of the US economy and the out migration of “nonpoor blacks from ghetto communities” and Gregory’s own theory that addresses state activism and the role that politics play in the formation of the black identity in relation to the creation of this subculture (6).

I feel as if the constant change in theories is only natural in research because as we learn more, our theories evolve to fit our new perspectives. But I also feel that just as conservatives in the Reagan and Bush administration contributed the perception that the subculture in the inner-city community was caused by single mother households, other theories are driven to popularity based on the culture they were created in.