Ruth Glass (born Ruth Adele Lazarus, 1912–1990) was a German-born British sociologist, urban planner and founder (in 1958) of the Centre for Urban Studies at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

(UCL).

Life

She was born in Berlin on 30 June 1912, the daughter of Eli Lazarus, who was Jewish, and Lilly Leszczynska. She left Germany in 1932, studying at the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...

. After spending two years from 1941 at the

Bureau of Applied Social Research The Bureau of Applied Social Research was a social research institute at Columbia University which specialised in mass communications research. It grew out of the Radio Project, Radio Research Project at Princeton University, beginning in 1937. T ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, she returned to the United Kingdom in 1943. She concentrated on town planning and social planning.

Work

Glass's work reflected her belief "that the purpose of sociological research was to influence government policy and bring about social change". A lasting legacy is her coining of the term "

gentrification Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and planning. Gentrification often increases the ec ...

", which she created to describe the processes by which the poor were squeezed out of parts of London as upper-class ghettos were created. A key figure in urban sociology, Ruth Glass made a significant contribution to the institutionalisation of British sociology as an academic discipline in the 1950s. Her reputation in this field was established from the late 1930s by studies of housing developments and planning at the

Watling Estate The Watling Estate is in Burnt Oak, in the Edgware district of the London Borough of Barnet. It was one of twelve London County Council cottage estates built between the wars to provide "homes fit for heroes". There are 4032 homes set in . Loca ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

and in

Middlesbrough Middlesbrough ( ) is a town on the southern bank of the River Tees in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the North York Moors national park. It is the namesake and main town of its local borough council area. Until the early 1800s, the a ...

, and later by pioneer work on black immigration. However, as Eric Hobsbawm acknowledged in his obituary of Glass, the text of what would have been her major work, the ''Third London Survey'' (successor to the surveys of

Booth Booth may refer to: People * Booth (surname) * Booth (given name) Fictional characters * August Wayne Booth, from the television series ''Once Upon A Time'' *Cliff Booth, a supporting character of the 2019 film ''Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' ...

and Llewellyn-Smith), was never quite completed.

Family

Between 1935 and 1941 she was married to Henry William Durant, the statistician and pioneer in the field of public opinion polling. She married David Victor Glass, a sociologist and demographer, in 1942.

Selected publications

* *Glass, R. (ed) (1948) The Social Background of a Plan: a Study of Middlesbrough, Preface by Max Lock, London : Routledge & Kegan Paul *Glass, R. (1955) Urban Sociology in Great Britain: a trend report, ''Current Sociology'', IV, 4: 8-35. * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Glass, Ruth 1912 births 1990 deaths British sociologists British women sociologists 20th-century British women scientists Critical theorists Columbia University faculty German emigrants to the United Kingdom