The Making of the Chicago Project

Abstract

Many social science studies appear rather antiseptic in their description, as if data cleanly appeared on the analyst’s computer screen without any blood, sweat, or tears. The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) generated lots of the latter, and I believe that the story of its making is relevant to an understanding of how social science works, how cities work, and the interplay between them in producing a human outcome. The role of scientific investigators in such endeavors is usually overlooked, as is the process by which ideas generate the construction of data. Paraphrasing Goethe, one might say that “data are theory.” Also underappreciated are the twists, turns, and compromises that researchers encounter once the research design texts are closed and data collection commences. I thus make an effort to breathe life into those key moments in the project. I begin with the intellectual backdrop to PHDCN, which might be subtitled: “What happens when social science gets into bed with big science?”