The American Dream Reconsidered:
The City and the American Dream

Even at the birth of the republic, many Americans had a deep distrust of cities. Thomas Jefferson famously said, “The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body.” But cities have also served as key engines of the nation and of the American dream. Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the most famous embodiment of the American dream, could only have achieved his success in a city like Philadelphia. And by the early twentieth century, a majority of Americans lived in cities. Cities have served as key sites of economic innovation and growth, cultural self-expression, and central American ideas, such as the melting pot. But they also continue to occupy an ambivalent place in our national self-conception, as evidenced by the urban-rural split that cleaves our national political map. All of this makes the city an ideal lens through which to think about the American dream, especially at Roosevelt University in the heart of Chicago.