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While it is clear that social and economic factors, particularly the level and stability of income, are major determinants of social and economic life-styles (Kahl, 1957), there is also evidence that the architectural design of the homes in which families live has an effect on the manner in which they live (Festinger, Schacter, & Back, 1950; Gans, 1963; Schorr, 1963;Wilner, Walkley, Pinkerton, & Tayback, 1962). Yet, it cannot be assumed that a particular architectural design will have the same effect, both in its character and significance, on all social groups. The presence or absence of a particular design should have a variant effect on the total social life of a population, depending upon the interdependence of the architecturally related behavior to other dimensions of a group's life-style.Social life may be influenced by physical factors within the dwelling unit or by spatial relationships between units. The focus of the current study is on factors external to dwelling units and on the social relationships that develop between families. Guttman (1970) warns of the difficulties in locating the boundaries of the physical setting whose social effects we wish to study when we extend housing beyond the physical dwelling. However, restricting investigations to the dwelling alone does not permit the development of guidelines for architecture and facilities that are external to the dwelling unit.There is considerable research, such as that done by Festinger et al. (1950), Gans (1963), Suttles (1968), and Whyte (1956, which indicates William L. Yancey received his PhD in sociology from Washington University, St. Louis, in 1967. He is currently an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Urban and Regional Development Center at Vanderbilt University. His major research interests center around cultural and social-economic variations in urban life styles.

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Determining whether the black experience was unique, or similar to that of earlier white immigrant groups, is central to the debate over whether blacks should be the beneficiaries of special compensatory legislation in the present. To answer this question requires interdisciplinary research that combines a comparative ethnic, an urban, and a historical perspective. Thus we observe the experience of three waves of immigrants to Philadelphia: the Irish and Germans who settled in the "Industrializing City" of the mid-tolate nineteenth century; the Italians, Poles and Russian Jews who came to the "Industrial City" at the turn of the twentieth century; and blacks who arrived in the "Post-tndustrial City" in their greatest numbers after World War II. Analysis of the city's changing opportunity structure and ecological form, and the racial discrimination encountered shows the black experience to be unique in kind and degree. Significant changes in the structures that characterized each of the "three cities" call into question our standing notion of the assimilation process.Theodore