John Joe (or J.J.) Schlichtman. I am a professor and student of community sociology. My writing centers on the potential for equitable, just, asset-based community development. It aims to connect our understanding of what seem like big processes such as globalization and gentrification to everyday lives on the street level. I study transformation: how people and groups resist or exploit it, the decisions residents make in navigating it, its influence on the urban landscape, and the various paths governments take to influence it.
The New York Times noted the “daring tack” of my first book, Gentrifier (2017), co-authored with Jason Patch and Marc Lamont Hill, while Bloomberg CityLab suggested that the story of my second book, Showroom City, “is, in a way, a timeless one.” My third book (~2026) seeks to establish a framework for debates on just community development. The ‘fabric approach’ is rooted in a recognized but inadequately considered assumption: that all neighborhood revaluing and reinvestment implies former devaluing and disinvestment. With this in mind, it unpacks the ‘threads’ related to this potentially tumultuous devaluing and revaluing. The framework highlights not only how these initial injustices took place (the devaluation threads), but shows how they can be inadvertently amplified with hasty resolutions to shuffle people around in the name of undoing them (the revaluation threads). It illuminates the reality that just, sustainable community development can only occur when each neighborhood’s unique combination of these historical threads are understood.
My research and perspectives have been discussed in The New York Times and Bloomberg CityLab, as mentioned, but also in outlets such as Next City, NPR, Chicago Tribune, The Independent (UK), The Economist, and Architectural Digest.
I am grateful to participate in several strong communities. At DePaul, where I serve on the university’s Faculty Council, I teach courses such as Urban Sociology, the Community-Based Seminar on Housing Policy, Global Cities, The Right to Chicago, and Qualitative Methods. In Chicago, I enjoy working with community organizations and engaging in policy discussions. I also oversee another vibrant and global—but virtual—alliance nearing 90,000 members: ‘Urbanist’ on LinkedIn.
Contact:
j.j.schlichtman@depaul.edu
(773) 325 4093 
990 West Fullerton, 1st Floor, #1201 / Chicago, Illinois 60625
No office hours, on leave
In the News:
Essays:
- Displaced—Even Without Moving – Next City
- Four Types of Gentrifiers You See in Your Neighborhood – Next City
- The Perfect ‘Urban’ Suburb Is Going to be…Homewood? – Chicago Tribune
- The Complicated Business of Going Out to Eat in a Gentrifying Neighborhood – Next City
- How the Unwilling Gentrifier Buys a Home – Next City
- What Downtown High Point Needs Next – Greensboro News & Record
- Unlocking ‘GENTRIFIER’ – University of Toronto Press
Select Academic Writing:
- “Invasions” in GENTRIFIER (2017) John Joe Schlichtman, Jason Patch, and Marc Lamont Hill. University of Toronto Press.
- “Big City Problems: Private Equity Investment, Transnational Users, and Local Mobilization in the Small City.” (2020) City and Community, 19: 98-131.
- “The Sociological ‘Urban’” (2018) Defining the Urban: Interdisciplinary and Professional Perspectives edited by Deljana Iossifova, Christopher Doll, and Alexandros Gasparatos. Routledge.
- “Gentrifier? Who, Me? Interrogating the Gentrifier in the Mirror. (2013) JJ Schlichtman and Jason Patch. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 38 (4), 1491-1508.
On Twitter:
Tweets by JJSchlichtman