Daniel Silver

• University of Toronto

Temporal clustering extends the conventional task of data clustering by grouping time series data according to shared temporal trends across sociospatial units, with diverse applications in the social sciences, especially urban science. The two dominant methods are as follows: Time Series Clustering (TSC), with dynamic cluster centres but static la...

This study investigates methods using a global data source, Google Places, to identify culturally similar urban areas without relying on difficult-to-access data like user preferences shown through check-ins. We propose and assess a simple method requiring only information about place types and their frequency in the studied areas, and a more advan...

Modern data-oriented applications often require integrating data from multiple heterogeneous sources. When these datasets share attributes, but are otherwise unlinked, there is no way to join them and reason at the individual level explicitly. However, as we show in this work, this does not prevent probabilistic reasoning over these heterogeneous d...

When sociologists examine the content of sociological knowledge, they typically engage in textual analysis. Conversely, this paper examines the relationship between theory figures and causal claims. Analyzing a random sample of articles from prominent sociology journals, we find several notable trends in how sociologists both describe and visualize...

Early optimism saw possibilities for social media to renew democratic discourse, marked by hopes for individuals from diverse backgrounds to find opportunities to learn from and interact with others different from themselves. This optimism quickly waned as social media seemed to breed ideological homophily marked by “filter bubbles” or “echo chambe...

Urban research has long recognized that neighbourhoods are dynamic and relational. However, lack of data, methodologies, and computer processing power have hampered a formal quantitative examination of neighbourhood relational dynamics. To make progress on this issue, this study proposes a graph neural network (GNN) approach that permits combining...

O conhecimento a respeito das características dos diferentes grupos culturais que existem no mundo e a identificação de similaridades culturais entre suas respectivas áreas de ocupação podem trazer diversos benefícios econômicos e sociais, como a recomendação de locais sob critérios culturais. Pesquisas referentes ao estudo dessas diferentes cultur...

This article examines the dynamics of inter-referencing between cities and develops the concept of the 'Urban Referencing Network' as a representation of the references made by cities to one another in policy documents. The study employs public art policies, specifically the Percent for Art policy, to investigate the structure of inter-referencing...

In this article, we study neighborhood preferences among residents of highly diverse, lower income suburban neighborhoods in Toronto, Ontario. By extending the typical application of conjoint designs to the urban domain, we show techniques for measuring place alienation-a sense of disconnec-tion from place-and its impact on neighborhood satisfactio...

This paper adds to a vital international tradition of discussing the history of sociological theory by empirically investigating its structure, dynamics, and relationships. Our primary contribution to this tradition is to bring to the conversation a greater level of comparative and historical scope, a more systematic quantitative methodology, and a...

The concepts of contradiction and dialogue are crucial to Hermann Gold-schmidt's Contradiction Set Free. In this paper, I place Goldschmidt into dialogue with two social thinkers for whom similar ideas were equally crucial: Georg Simmel and Donald Levine. In the case of Simmel, I highlight his theory of conflict specifically, but more generally his...

This essay seeks to understand a particular kind of response to the felt col- lapse of a cultural practice that purports to link humans, things, and the divine. The cultural practice I am referring to is philosophy; the feeling of collapse occurred in early twentieth-century Europe; the response is that of Martin Hei- degger in his lecture course,...

In an era of international flows of policy ideas, when many cities apply the 'same' policy ideas, their local translations can be substantially different. Yet, urban studies have not provided sufficient tools to compare such translations among a wide number of cities. We develop a methodological program that operationalizes into a quantitative anal...

Milton Santos was a wide-ranging Afro- Brazilian intellectual whose primary contri- butions were to geography and develop- ment studies. Highly influential in Brazil and internationally—especially among American critical geographers—Santos has received less attention from American soci- ologists. The English translation of his final major work, The...

How should we read and understand Georg Simmel’s famous essay, “How Is Society Possible?” How and how well does Simmel answer his main question? What bearing, if any, does the essay have on the study of forms of interaction, in his own work or in modern scholarship? The exchange below addresses such questions in the form of an article, extended com...

In this study, we articulate a functional model of neighbourhood change and continuity, adapted from a classical model proposed by Stinchcombe in 1968. We argue this model provides a relatively simple way to capture key aspects of the complex causal structure of neighbourhood change that are implicit in much neighbourhood change research but rarely...

This paper develops a formal model of urban evolution in terms of (1) sources of variations; (2) principles of selection; and (3) mechanisms of retention. More specifically, regarding (1) it defines local and environmental sources of variation and identifies some of their generative processes, such as recom-bination, migration, mutation, extinction...

This paper seeks to develop the core concepts of a model of urban evolution. It proceeds in four major sections. First, we review prior adumbrations of an evolutionary model in urban theory, noting their potential and their limitations. Second, we turn to the general sociocultural evolution literature to draw inspiration for a fresh and more comple...

This paper is part II of “Towards A Model of Urban Evolution.” It defines a formal model of the Signature of an urban space, comprised of the information encoded in that space. This information consists of: an urban genome, which captures ideas regarding the groups (i.e., users) and activities (i.e., uses) to which a space’s physical forms are orie...

This paper is part IV of “towards a model of urban evolution”. It demonstrates how the Toronto Urban Evolution Model (TUEM) can be used to encode city data, illuminate key features, demonstrate how formetic distance can be used to discover how spatial areas change over time, and identify similar spatial areas within and between cities. The data use...

This paper elaborates a multi-model approach to studying how local scenes change. We refer to this as the "4 D's" of scene change: development, differentiation, defense, and diffusion. Each posits somewhat distinct change processes, and has its own tradition of theory and empirical research, which we briefly review. After summarizing some major tre...

This paper elaborates a multi-model approach to studying how local scenes change. We refer to this as the "4 D's" of scene change: development, differentiation, defense, and diffusion. Each posits somewhat distinct change processes, and has its own tradition of theory and empirical research, which we briefly review. After summarizing some major tre...

This paper elaborates a multi-model approach to studying how local scenes change. We refer to this as the “4 D’s” of scene change: development, differentiation, defense, and diffusion. Each posits somewhat distinct change processes, and has its own tradition of theory and empirical research, which we briefly review. After summarizing some major tre...

Politics in different countries show diverse degrees of polarization, which tends to be stronger on social media, given how easy it became to connect and engage with like-minded individuals on the web. A way of reducing polarization would be by distributing cross-partisan news among individuals with distinct political orientations, i.e., “reaching...

Politics in different countries show diverse degrees of polarization, which tends to be stronger on social media, given how easy it became to connect and engage with like-minded individuals on the web. A way of reducing polarization would be by distributing cross-partisan news among individuals with distinct political orientations, i.e., "reaching...

Research on the relationship between categorical unconventionality and popularity has produced mixed results. While many accounts sug- gest that unconventionality is penalized, much sociological theorizing indicates that success comes from a delicate balancing act between con- ventional and unconventional offerings. Using data on the genre self- cl...

This chapter asks what it would mean to place John Dewey’s theory of art and aesthetics at the very center of a sociological formulation of his ideas. It proceeds in three steps. First, I elaborate why it has been understandably difficult to integrate Dewey's philosophy of art and aesthetics into sociology, by contrasting two sociological efforts t...

Cities have established official neighborhood boundaries for targeted social policy in recent decades. The authors propose that a sociological conception of neighborhoods sensitizes us to the potential consequences of imposing categorical divisions onto a largely continuous urban space. The authors specify this idea in three steps. First, they argu...

The urban policy mobility literature describes the widespread circulation of policyideas while highlighting their mutations along the way. At the same time, the literature oftenanalyzes the localization of such ideas by examining their adoption in one or several cities. Tobetter understand policy replications and mutations, we develop theoretical a...

This paper seeks to uncover the modes of justification by which sociological theo-rists legitimize the "canon" of sociological theory in practice, through the stories they tell to students in sociological theory textbooks. Specifically, we ask: how do textbook authors rationalize their decisions to include and exclude some theorists? Further, what...

Politics in different countries show diverse degrees of polarization, which tends to be stronger on social media, given how easy it became to connect and engage with like-minded individuals on the web. A way of reducing polarization would be by distributing cross-partisan news among individuals with distinct political orientations, i.e., "popping t...

Politics in different countries show diverse degrees of polarization, which tends to be stronger on social media, given how easy it became to connect and engage with like-minded individuals on the web. A way of reducing polarization would be by distributing cross-partisan news among individuals with distinct political orientations, i.e., "popping t...

Recent decades have seen Georg Simmel's canonical status in American sociology solidify and his impact on research expand. A broad understanding of his influence, however, remains elusive. This review remedies this situation by evaluating Simmel's legacy in American sociology since 1975. We articulate Simmel's sociological orientation by elaboratin...

Why some neighbourhoods change over time but others retain their identity remains an open question. Several attempts have been made to answer this question, with a family of models emerging as a result. However, empirically evaluating neighbourhood evolution models is a challenging task, because most require information that is difficult to obtain...

Recent decades have seen Georg Simmel's canonical status in American sociology solidify and his impact on research expand. A broad understanding of his influence, however, remains elusive. This review remedies this situation by evaluating Simmel's legacy in American sociology since 1975. We articulate Simmel's sociological orientation by elaboratin...

This paper develops novel methods for using Yelp reviews as a window into the collective representations of a city and its neighbourhoods. Basing analysis on social media data such as Yelp is a challenging task because review data is highly sparse and direct analysis may fail to uncover hidden trends. To this end, we propose a deep autoencoder appr...

This paper examines an important but underappreciated mechanism affecting urban segregation and integration: urban venues. The venue- an area where urbanites interact- is an essential aspect of city life that tends to influence residential location. We study the venue/segregation relationship by overlaying venues onto Schelling’s classic (1971) [1]...

This paper seeks to advance neighbourhood change research and complexity theories of cities by developing and exploring a Markov model of socio-spatial neighbourhood evolution in Toronto, Canada. First, we classify Toronto neighbourhoods into distinct groups using established geodemographic segmentation techniques, a relatively novel application in...

This paper develops novel methods for using Yelp reviews as a window into the collective representations of a city and its neighbourhoods. Basing analysis on social media data such as Yelp is a challenging task because review data is highly sparse and direct analysis may fail to uncover hidden trends. To this end, we propose a deep autoencoder appr...

This paper develops a formal model of urban evolution in terms of 1) sources of variations; 2) principles of selection; and 3) mechanisms of retention. More specifically, regarding (1) it defines local and environmental sources of variation and identifies some of their generative processes, such as recombination, migration, mutation, extinction, an...

This paper is part II of “Towards a model of urban evolution.” This paper defines a formal model of the Signature of an urban space, comprised of: an urban genome which captures the expected groups (i.e., users) and activities (i.e., uses) of physical forms; a description of the actual activities and groups of the physical forms; and the signals th...

This paper seeks to advance neighbourhood change research and complexity theories of cities by developing and exploring a Markov model of socio-spatial neighbourhood evolution in Toronto, Canada. First, we classify Toronto neighbourhoods into distinct groups using established geodemographic segmentation techniques, a relatively novel application in...

This paper seeks to develop the core concepts of a model of urban evolution. It proceeds in four major sections. First we review prior adumbrations of an evolutionary model in urban theory, noting their potential and their limitations. Second, we turn to the general sociocultural evolution literature to draw inspiration for a fresh and more complet...

This paper seeks to develop the core concepts of a model of urban evolution. It proceeds in four major sections. First we review prior adumbrations of an evolutionary model in urban theory, not-ing their potential and their limitations. Second, we turn to the general sociocultural evolution litera-ture to draw inspiration for a fresh and more compl...

This study aims at exploring social media data to evaluate how regional and cultural characteristics influence the mobility behavior of tourists and residents. By considering information taken from the mobility graphs of users from different countries, we observe that users’ origins can influence their choices. Additionally, the analysis performed...

This study aims at exploring social media data to evaluate how regional and cultural characteristics influence the mobility behavior of tourists and residents. By considering information taken from the mobility graphs of users from different countries, we observe that users' origins can influence their choices. Additionally, the analysis performed...

This article applies a method we term “predictive clustering” to cluster neighborhoods. Much of the literature in this direction is based on groupings built using intrinsic characteristics of each observation. Our approach departs from this framework by delineating clusters based on how the neighborhood’s features respond to a particular outcome of...

Synthesizing and extending multiple literatures, this article develops a new approach for exploring the spatial articulation of urban political cleavages. We pursue three questions: (1) To what extent does electoral conflict materialize between rather than within neighborhoods? (2) How salient are group, place, and location in defining urban cleava...

The visualization of social theory is an important part of the development and communication of our theoretical ideas. While most theorists use figures of some kind, few if any have formal training, or guiding rules or principles for the representation of theory. This has often led to poor visualization efforts, and the visual culture of sociology...

The visualization of social theory is an important part of the development and communication of our theoretical ideas. While most theorists use figures of some kind, few if any have formal training, or guiding rules or principles for the representation of theory. This has often led to poor visualization efforts, and the visual culture of sociology...

Populism is often viewed as a national-level phenomenon that pits a declining periphery against a cosmopolitan, economically successful metropolis. Our analysis of Rob Ford’s 2010 campaign and mayoralty in Toronto reveals the potential for the emergence of populist politics within the metropolis. To comprehend his appeal, principally within the cit...

This article proposes a novel method for data‐driven identification of spatiotemporal homogeneous regions and their dynamics, enabling the exploration of their composition and extents. Using a simple network representation, the method enables temporal regionalization without the need for geographical harmonization. To allow for a transparent corrob...

This paper poses a simple question that is hard to answer: what does Simmel mean by “form” in Sociology? We pursue this question in three major steps: First we articulate why it is important to understand what Simmel means by form in Sociology; second we explain why it is difficult to understand Simmel’s notion of form; and third we develop what mi...

This chapter builds on past work to examine the distinctive ways in which ethnic restaurants help to define the contemporary scenescape in US cities. It uses the example of restaurants to illustrate how to apply and extend a scenes approach. Restaurants in general and ethnically themed restaurants are crucial components of many cities and communiti...

This paper aims to reconstruct the concept of alienation as a live topic for active social theorizing. Joining Marxian and Simmelian ideas, it provides a multi-dimensional, formal, and synthetic theory of alienation. The paper develops a set of theoretical tools for articulating formal elements of action that make alienation possible, without givin...

This paper aims to reconstruct the concept of alienation as a live topic for active social theorizing. Joining Marxian and Simmelian ideas, it provides a multi‐dimensional, formal, and synthetic theory of alienation. The paper develops a set of theoretical tools for articulating formal elements of action that make alienation possible, without givin...

Cities, all over the world, have become more diverse than ever. This poses great challenges to urban studies and theorising. In this article, we review current debates in urban theory through Howitt’s (1998) three-facet conceptualisation of geographical scale and find that urban theorists have high levels of disagreement on the areal (scale as size...

This article pushes forward a critical dialogue about the value of visualization as a method of sociological theorizing. Building on a nascent literature, I argue theory diagrams may operate not only conjunctively but also disjunctively, independent from empirics; that their theoretical value lies not only in capturing sociological problems but als...

https://youtu.be/bKeV08Os0uA Census measurements provide reliable demographic data going back centuries. However, their analysis is often hampered by the lack of geographical consistency across time. We propose a visual analytics system that enables the exploration of geographically inconsistent data. Our method also includes incremental developmen...

Using theory syllabi and departmental data collected for three academic years, this paper investigates the institutional practice of theory in sociology departments across Canada. In particular, it examines the position of theory within the sociological curriculum, and how this varies among universities. Taken together, our analyses indicate that t...

The primary aim of this chapter is to artic- ulate and illustrate the basic orientation of a research program that has sought to rekindle this sensitivity to the expressive organization of urban life. The chapter is structured as follows. First I offer a meditation on the phrase ‘some scenes of urban life’, reflecting on each word of the phrase sep...

We examine American Cosmopolitan in order to understand how specific foods have been linked to dominant forms of beauty. Three food-beauty nexuses emerge, namely moralism, strategy and holism. To understand how women engaged with these nexuses, we draw on Simmel’s “religiosity.” Simmel traced deeply-felt experiences like self-cultivation (beauty) t...

This chapter examines links between scenes and residential patterns. It is guided by a few main questions, such as which types of scenes attract which types of people; how do scenes distinguish within and transcend powerful social cleavages, like race, religion, and education. What emerges is a far more cross-cutting and pluralistic picture of Amer...

This chapter introduces the general orientation of the book and lays out its major themes. Beginning from intuitive examples of scenes, it builds toward deeper reflection on how: 1) scenes are possible at all, that we can coordinate our behavior based on them; 2) we can recognize and differentiate among them; 3) they matter for things we care a lot...

This chapter shows how scenes are factors of production; they are key determinants of economic success or failure. The chapter comes in three major sections. The first, on historical concepts and theory, traces an intellectual movement from “land” as the physical gifts of nature to “scene” as the cultural and aesthetic characteristics of a locale....

This chapter articulates a theory of scenes. More specifically, it develops concepts for answering the question: “what kind of a scene is this?” It comes in four sections. The first argues that any answer to the question has to be multi-dimensional, that is, any specific scene is a complex of many dimensions, like tradition, transgression, or self-...

This chapter illustrates methods for measuring scenes by describing key aspects of the scenescape. We compare specific scenes of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and show how relationships between key dimensions, such as charisma and self-expression, shift across the three cities. The figure of the self-reflective walker, the flâneur, integrates...

Policy is the topic of Chapter 7. The target audience is local and national policy makers. We provide a general overview of how the idea of scenes fits into broader urban and community policy challenges, before turning to specific advice about how to integrate scene ideas into such policy, such as wandering through your city, chatting with citizens...

Recent work in the sociology of music suggests a declining importance of genre categories. Yet other work in this research stream and in the sociology of classification argues for the continued prevalence of genres as a meaningful tool through which creators, critics and consumers focus their attention in the topology of available works. Building f...

Genres Available on MySpace.com. (DOCX)

We investigate the location patterns of organizations that embody key religious-spiritual traditions and that have grown to prominence in the latter 20th and early 21st centuries: evangelical churches, yoga, and martial arts. The distribution of key cultural organizations depends on the degree to which they are able to frame themselves in relation...

Spatial variation in voting is well documented, but substantively meaningful explanations of how places shape individuals’ politics are lacking. This paper suggests that local cultural ‘scenes’ exert a contextual effect – a spatial effect not driven by demographic differences between individuals in different places – on political attitudes and sens...

This paper elaborates a general theory of scenes as multi-dimensional complexes of meaning embedded in material, local practices. It outlines techniques for measuring scenes empirically and shows how certain types of scenes provide environments in which new social movement (NSM) organizations (like human rights and environmental groups) tend to thr...

Extending recent social science work using the concept of scene into politics, this paper investigates connections between cultural variation and political variation across Canadian localities. First, we introduce the notion of scene. Then, using a national database of local amenities (with some 1800 categories and 1.6 million data points), we show...

This article seeks to understand a puzzling aspect of Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money, namely, the many religious analogies Simmel uses to characterize money. We argue that with these analogies Simmel indicates how what he would later term ‘the transcendent character of life’ permeates mundane monetary interactions. Specifically, we articula...

The rise of arts and culture is transforming citizen politics. Though new to many social scientists, this is a commonplace for many policy makers. We seek to overcome this divide by joining culture and the arts with classic concepts of political analysis. We offer an analytical framework incorporating the politics of cultural policy alongside the t...

Cet article propose une theorie generale des scenes urbaines. Elles sont envisagees ici comme des faisceaux multidimensionnels de signification imbriques dans des pratiques locales concretes. L’article, qui presente des methodes de mesure empirique des scenes, veut egalement montrer comment certaines d’entre elles fournissent un environnement propi...

Artists have been a central theme in recent debates about the causes of urban development. This article shifts attention to the question of context: in what sorts of places are artist concentrations most likely to stimulate the local economy? To tackle this question, we employ a Canadian national database of local amenities. This database includes...

Between 1940 and 1944, sociologist Talcott Parsons and political scientist Eric Voegelin engaged in a vigorous correspondence, discussing the origins of totalitarianism and modern anti-Semitism, the legacy of Max Weber, patterns of secularization set in motion by the Protestant Reformation, the methodology and goals of social science, and more. Thi...

The global rise of arts and culture is transforming local politics. Though new to many academic urban analysts, this is a commonplace for many mayors and local policy makers around the world. We seek to overcome this divide by joining culture and the arts with classic concepts of urban politics. We offer an analytical framework incorporating the po...

We join the top down tradition of community power with the bottom up focus of voting and social movements through the concept of scenes. What explains partisanship and social movement activity? Power and regimes we introduce via the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation surveys of mayors in US cities over 25,000. Scenes include 15 abstract types li...

This article contributes to an ongoing theoretical effort to extend the insights of relational and network sociology into adjacent domains. We integrate Simmel’s late theory of the relational self into the formal analysis of social relations, generating a framework for theorizing forms of association among self-relating individuals. On this model,...