Harvey Warren Zorbaugh

Harvey Warren Zorbaugh (September 20, 1896 – January 21, 1965) was Professor of Educational Sociology, at New York University. he was born in East Cleveland, Ohio and educated in sociology at the University of Chicago. He married Geraldine Elizabeth Bone on September 7, 1929, and they had two children: a son, Harvey Jr., and a daughter, Harriet. His classic text, first published in 1929, was The Gold Coast and the Slum, a book based on his PhD thesis completed under the direction of Robert E. Park at the University of Chicago.

"Zorbaugh codified the concept of 'natural areas' in urban sociology...the unplanned, natural products of a city's growth...distinct cultural areas...each with its complex of institutions, customs, beliefs, mores, traditions, attitudes, sentiments, and interests. They may express racial/ethnic differences, such as...Harlem, Little Italy, Little Havana, Chinatown, Koreatown, or Little Tokyo...according to Zorbaugh, the land market sifted and sorted the urban population into small enclaves that offered a means of cultural segregation of the population...(a process which) he understood to be a cultural force that emerged through the natural history of the city...through a coincidence of physical boundaries and cultural forces...a natural area is a geographical area characterized both by a physical individuality and by the cultural characteristics of the people who live in it."[1]

In the late 1940s, Dr. Zorbaugh also hosted one of the first game shows on American TV. Titled Play the Game, the show aired from September 24, 1946 to December 17, 1946 (DuMont, primetime) and from August 20, 1948 to November 6, 1948 (ABC, primetime).

Also during the 1940s, he published some sociological comments about the comic book craze then prevalent among young Americans.[2]

"It is time the amazing cultural phenomenon of the growth of the comics is subjected to dispassionate scrutiny. Somewhere between vituperation and complacency must be found a road to the understanding and use of this great new medium of communication and social influence. For the comics are here to stay."[3]

Zorbaugh's primary interest in urban sociology concerned the causes and effects of social and geographical segregation within the city and the issues created by the tensions between the need for social and community cohesion and those boundaries that inevitably emerge between different social groups rooted in geography, race and economic status. Consequently, he was interested in the fluid changes in city life and how any boundaries we see are always transient, unstable and changing. He spent the bulk of his career on the faculty of New York University becoming a leading specialist in the social adjustment of gifted children. He worked with clinics, committees and other public services around the problems of children and was an outspoken opponent of racial prejudice in public schools.[4]