The study of racial and ethnic communities has been at the core of urban sociology from the very beginning, and the recent immigration of new population groups to American cities brought about fascinating change in the ethnic and racial composition of cities and suburbs, intergroup relations within urban communities, and other areas. Twenty years ago, studies of segregation compared black and white residential patterns, while today any such analysis is incomplete without consideration of various Hispanic/Latino and Asian populations (and without some sort of explanation as to why the segregation patterns of these groups is so different from that of African Americans. In the broader field of race and ethnic relations, assimilationist models (implicit in the segregation indexes used in urban sociology) have been replaced by a variety of social interaction and racial formation models. In this volume, we would like to see a range of studies showing how those who study community and urban society have responded to the population changes under way in both larger and smaller communities (perhaps including field studies and ethnographic studies of individual communities), theoretical essays which explore the changes in race and ethnic relations in contemporary urban societies (and how urbanologists must respond to these changes), as well as 'revisions' to current empirical models which might help us to better explain the changes occurring in urban life as a consequence of the new immigration and expansion of ethnic and racial groups in contemporary society.

Volume Seven of Research in Urban Sociology, Race and Ethnicity in New York City, has just been published by Elsevier Press. Contents of that volume and others in the series may be viewed at the following web address.