Edward C. Banfield
(November 19, 1916- September 30, 1999)
Edward Banfield was an influential political scientist and conservative thinker who authored sixteen books on the structure of communities and urban environments. He was the George D. Markham Professor of Government at Harvard University and he headed the Presidential Task Force on Model Cities under President Nixon. Banfield theorized in his three most influential works, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, The Unheavenly City, and The Unheavenly City Revisited, that social capitol including the values and habits of community members have profound effects upon the community’s economic success and his ideas remain both relevant and controversial.
In the early 1960’s Edward Banfield was the editor of reports on selected American cities, published by the Joint Center for Urban Studies at MIT and Harvard. The PLAD hosts several of these reports. Some reports were composed by individual professors while others were written collaboratively with graduate students. The PLAD also owns some supplementary material in its collection.
PLEASE NOTE: The CPLA Special Collections are stored in closed stacks and do not circulate. To access the collections, please contact Funk Library at aceslib@library.illinois.edu. If you are on-site, please inquire about access at the circulation desk.