[8] Although Gans views his career as spanning six fields of research,[9] he initially made his reputation as a critic of urban renewal in the early 1960s.
His first book, The Urban Villagers (1962), described Boston's diverse West End neighborhood, where he mainly studied its Italian-American working class community.
His 1967 book The Levittowners was based on several years of participant-observation in New Jersey's Levitt-built suburb in Willingboro, observing how a set of new homeowners came together to establish the community's formal and informal organizations.
Gans's third major participant-observation study, of the national news media, was conducted in the newsrooms of NBC and CBS and the editorial offices of Time and Newsweek.
Like some other sociologists who began their careers in the mid-twentieth century, Gans has been active both as a scholar and advocate, advising urban planning, antipoverty and other public policy agencies.
In his address as the 1988 president of the American Sociological Association, Gans urged the discipline to become more useful to and relevant for the general public.
"The book describes the policies and political processes by which America overcame the economic, military and other disasters of the century's first decade and began to turn into a more democratic, egalitarian, peaceful and human society."