Herbert Gans' (1962) classic study titled Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian Americans explored the ‘slum’ area in Boston. It showed that life in this working-class community was highly organized around peer groups. Thus, field research carried out in the 1950s and 1960s showed that primary relations and an intimate community life could be found in suburban settlement space. The same was also true of the suburbs. Otherwise, an unnecessarily sharp distinction was made between the city and suburb by the Chicago sociologists.