"The City” That Could Have Been. Urban Theory through the Women of the Chicago School

The article reconsiders the formation of urban sociology through the overlooked contribution of the women of the Chicago School. Focusing on Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge, it argues that their work developed a distinct way of knowing the city, grounded in situated observation, empirical proximity and attention to the social organization of inequality. By reconstructing this feminist-pragmatist genealogy, the article shows how questions of embodiment, intersectionality and everyday urban experience were already central to their research and reform practices. The discussion then examines Vienna, Barcelona, Toronto and Seoul as contemporary cases in which this legacy reappears, in different forms, through gender-sensitive planning, proximity policies, gender-responsive budgeting and women-friendly smart urbanism. Recovering this lineage allows urban sociology to rethink its conceptual foundations and to imagine more equitable urban futures. Keywords: Chicago School; urban sociology; feminist urbanism; gender epistemology; intersectionality; embodied sociology