The Paradox of Urban Revitalization: Progress and Poverty in America's Postindustrial Era (The City in the Twenty-First Century)

Even as postindustrial cities have climbed from the depths of decline in the twenty-first century, they have witnessed a cruel paradox: with prosperity has come greater inequality. Tracing the origins and effects of uneven revitalization, this book examines the genesis of America's second urban crisis and prospects for its resolution. Even as postindustrial cities have climbed from the depths of decline in the twenty-first century, they have witnessed a cruel paradox: with prosperity has come greater inequality. Tracing the origins and effects of uneven revitalization, this book examines the genesis of America's second urban crisis and prospects for its resolution. In the twenty-first century, cities in the United States that had suffered most the shift to a postindustrial era entered a period widely proclaimed as an urban renaissance. From Detroit to Newark to Oakland and elsewhere commentators saw cities rising again. Yet revitalization generated a second urban crisis marked by growing inequality and civil unrest reminiscent of the upheavals associated with the first urban crisis in the mid-twentieth century. The urban poor and residents of color have remained very much at a disadvantage in the face of racially biased capital investments, narrowing options for affordable housing, and mass incarceration. In profiling nine cities grappling with challenges of the twenty-first century, author Howard Gillette, Jr. evaluates the uneven efforts to secure racial and class equity as city fortunes have risen. Charting the tension between the practice of corporate subsidy and efforts to assure social justice, The Paradox of Urban Revitalization assesses the course of urban politics and policy over the past half century, before the COVID-19 pandemic upended everything, and details prospects for achieving greater equity in the years ahead. "Even as postindustrial cities have climbed from the depths of decline in the twenty-first century, they have witnessed a cruel paradox: with prosperity has come greater inequality. Tracing the origins and effects of uneven revitalization, this book examines the genesis of America's second urban crisis and prospects for its resolution"-- Provided by publisher