Selling the Lower East Side: Culture, Real Estate, and Resistance in New York City

Mele (sociology, SUNY at Buffalo) examines a century of changes in the Lower East Side neighborhoods of New York City, drawing on the research of the new urban sociology school to demonstrate how cultural perceptions of this distinctive area are essential to the confluence of political/economic land usage and the resistance of residents against neighborhood transformation. He demonstrates how redevelopers symbolically include the ambiance of the bohemian, avant-garde, and dangerous aspects of the Lower East Side while working toward their displacement. Mele provides a comprehensive analysis of the neighborhood's transformation, complete with useful maps, photographs, and an extensive bibliography. The material is directed toward an educated reader well versed in urban affairs. Recommended for academic libraries. -Library Journal

Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis

Following a wave of de-industrialization and cutbacks in public spending, American downtowns are reinventing themselves in the image of Disneyland and Las Vegas. Fantasy City looks at the changing face of the city and what it means for its citizens and for the future of urban development. America's central cities more and more begin to resemble theme parks. While this appears to have brought a new energy and hope to the urban landscape, it has yet to deliver an economic miracle to the surrounding residents and merchants. Local communities struggle to maintain their distinctiveness even as they embrace the commercial fantasies offered by global entertainment companies. John A. Hannigan shows how the growth of the fantasy city reflects an ongoing search for risk-free mass entertainment by middle-class consumers.

By discussing examples from a wide variety of venues, including casinos, malls, heritage developments and theme parks, Hannigan traces the rise of urban entertainment at the beginning of this century, its decline after World War II to its surprising renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s. He offers provocative insights into urban development from structuralist, cultural and constructionist perspectives. By drawing on extensive material from business, cultural studies and urban planning, he shows that the growth of the fantasy city signals not only the arrival of a new urban space, but also the eventual destruction of the "inner city."

Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space

What's in store for American cities? The eight authors of the essays written for this powerful cautionary volume have seen the future--and it's worse than you think. According to project-leader Sorkin, the Disney theme parks have been insidious models for today's alarmingly sanitized, security-obsessed, simulated places. Margaret Crawford (Southern California Institute of Architecture) describes the world's largest shopping mall in Edmonton, Alberta, a prime example of the prevailing controlled-fantasy urbanism; though the wares duplicate those sold in other malls, the mall's theme-settings purport to bring the world, in a developer's words, ``all here for you in one place.'' Edward W. Soja (Urban Planning/UCLA) examines the hyperreal exopolis of Orange County, where people work, play, live, shop, and attend college in artificial ``total environments'' that simulate themselves when not simulating somewhere else. Langden Winner (Political Theory/Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) looks at California's Silicon Valley as a socially parasitic work-centered community without a physical center. Neil Smith (Geography/Rutgers) shows how the real-estate and art industries employ a frontier metaphor to justify their, to him, disruptive gentrification of N.Y.C.'s Lower East Side. All these contrived environments, the authors find, work to exclude the variety, spontaneity, grit--and less-privileged people--found in real cities, as do the other phenomena considered here: the parallel noncities built under Montreal and (in bridges between high buildings) over Calgary, Minneapolis, and elsewhere; the high walls and police barricades of L.A.; the historic tableau of N.Y.C.'s South Street Seaport; and the fast-growing and truly placeless electronic city of computerland. It all adds up to a trend that, as surveyed in this wide- angled collection--which offers a more penetrating view than did Joel Garreau's Edge City (p. 837)--seems disturbingly pervasive. The corrective, though, may not be to have more humane architecture or pedestrian pathways that rub middle-class noses in urban filth, poverty, misery, and violence--but to address these miseries directly. -Kirkus Reviews

American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass

"During the 1970s and 1980s a word disappeared from the American vocabulary," begins American Apartheid ". . . That word was segregation." But the practice of segregation certainly has not disappeared, as Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton glaringly expose. One-third of all American blacks live in one of just 16 urban areas, in neighborhoods so racially segregated they have almost no chance at interracial contact. The authors argue that segregation--and disassocation from not only other cultures, but other ways of life--is at the root of many problems facing African-Americans today. -Amazon.com

Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City

Hispanics are quickly transforming the United States both through sheer numbers and their culture, according to Mike Davis. "Salsa is becoming the predominant ethnic flavor--and rhythm--in major metropolitan areas," he writes, and Spanish surnames are growing at five times the rate of the general population (José is now the most popular name for baby boys in California and Texas). Davis, the author of City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear, says the United States is undergoing what he calls "Latin Americanization." In Magical Urbanism, which is short by comparison, he doesn't traffic in tired rhetoric about the magic of multiculturalism or the wonders of ethnic diversity--but he does come down hard against those who resist Latin Americanization. He writes of "an INS police state with sweeping powers away from the border," blasts the opponents of bilingual education, and hopes that Latino immigrants will rejuvenate the American labor movement. The book lacks a strong central thesis; it's more a collection of 15 essays, rich with anecdotes, on topics such as U.S. demographic trends, transnational neighborhoods, and "the Dickensian underworld of day labor." Old fans of Davis will definitely want to check out this latest offering, as will readers interested in a quick look at the face of America's future. -Amazon.com

Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster

"For generations, market-driven urbanization has transgressed environmental common sense. Historic wildfire corridors have been turned into view-lot suburbs, wetland liquefaction zones into marinas, and floodplains into industrial districts and housing tracts. Monolithic public works have been substituted for regional planning and a responsible land ethic. As a result, Southern California has reaped flood, fire, and earthquake tragedies that were as avoidable, as unnatural, as the beating of Rodney King and the ensuing explosion in the streets." -from Ecology of Fear

The Cultures of Cities

When Lewis Mumford wrote his now-classic The Culture of Cities in 1934, it could safely be assumed that "culture" was an epiphenomenon that sprung organically from the activities of the people of a city. Zurkin builds upon Mumford's arguments for a late 20th-century reinterpretation, discussing the ways in which cities' cultures are increasingly the product of complex negotiations between ethnic groups, artistic and architectural elites, and multinational purveyors of canned culture. Her chapters dealing with the effects of Disneyland on urban planning, the creation of a "cultural center" in the rural Berkshires, and the nature of shopping in urban settings are particularly intriguing. Her primary concern is how economic elites gain the upper hand in representation as the culture of a city: in her view, culture is, increasingly, a consciously synthesized mirage optimized for economic gain. Recommended. -Amazon.com

The Theming of America

From Graceland to Dollywood, from Las Vegas to Disneyworld, this book explores the origins, nature, and future of themed environments in information-overloaded America. The Theming of America explores the nature of social change in America since the 1960s-from Graceland to Dollywood, from Las Vegas to Disneyworld, from the Mall of America to your local mall. Modern Americans cannot escape the profusion of recognizable symbols and signs attached to virtually all aspects of our culture, tying our media culture and the seductions of consumerism to the production of ingeniously designed spaces. This accessible second edition has been revised and updated. This second edition of Theming of America is an analysis of American society in which the author, Mark Gottdiener explores the nature of social change since the 1960s as reflected in the "theming" of America--from Graceland to Dollywood, from Las Vegas to Disneyworld, from the Mall of America to your local mall. Nowhere can modern Americans escape the profusion of recognizable symbols and signs attached to virtually all aspects of our culture, constantly reminding us that we are on familiar and comforting ground."Just come in, friend, and buy; make yourself at home," these symbols seem to say, thus tying our media culture and the seductions of consumerism to the production of ingeniously designed symbolic spaces. Mark Gottdiener's book is the first to explore the origins, nature, and future of themed environments in our information-overloaded world. This second edition has been revised and updated. Gottdiener begins with a brief historical account of the shifting importance of themes in the construction of built space. He then evaluates the economic basis for the increasing reliance on symbols in the marketing of commercial enterprises and analyzes contemporary trends in themed restaurants, malls, airports, theme parks, museums, and war memorials. Final chapters are devoted to examining such critical issues as the disappearance of public space, the relation between themes and mass media industries, and the future of symbolic spaces.

The Origins of the Urban Crisis

Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit has become the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America's dilemma of racial and economic inequality, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of today's urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American urban landscape after World War II. "This superb study offers a richly detailed account of the rise and fall of twentieth-century Detroit.... Must reading for ... everyone concerned about the current urban crisis." --Jacqueline Jones, author of The Dispossessed: America's Underclass from the Civil War to the Present

Hollow City: Gentrification and the Eviction of Urban Culture

The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City

City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

The Tourist City

William Julius Wilson

» Read about Wilson and his work at the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy (Harvard University)

The Bridge Over the Racial Divide

In a work that will significantly influence the political discussion with respect to race and class politics, one of the country's most influential sociologists focuses on the rising inequality in American society and the need for a progressive, multiracial political coalition to combat it. The culmination of decades of distinguished scholarship, The Bridge over the Racial Divide brilliantly demonstrates how political power is disproportionately concentrated among the most advantaged segments of society and how the monetary, trade, and tax policies of recent years have deepened this power imbalance. Developing his earlier views on race in contemporary society, William Julius Wilson gives a simple, straightforward, and crucially important diagnosis of the problem of rising social inequality in the United States and details a set of recommendations for dealing with it.

Wilson argues that as long as middle- and working-class groups are fragmented along racial lines, they will fail to see how their combined efforts could change the political imbalance and thus promote policies that reflect their interests. He shows how a vision of American society that highlights racial differences rather than commonalities makes it difficult for Americans to see the need and appreciate the potential for mutual political support across racial lines.

Multiracial political cooperation could be enhanced if we can persuade groups to focus more on the interests they hold in common, including overcoming stagnating and declining real incomes that relate to changes in the global economy, Wilson argues. He advocates a cross-race, class-based alliance of working-and middle-class Americans to pursue policies that will deal with the eroding strength of the nation's equalizing institutions, including public education, unions, and political structures that promote the interests of ordinary families. He also advocates a reconstructed "affirmative opportunity" program that benefits African Americans without antagonizing whites. Using theoretical arguments and case studies, Wilson examines how a broad-based political constituency can be created, sustained, and energized. Bold, provocative, and thoughtful, The Bridge over the Racial Divide is an essential resource in considering some of the most pressing issues facing the American public today.

When Work Disappears

An unofficial adviser to President Bill Clinton, Wilson has become a celebrity of sorts. A former University of Chicago professor, Wilson--currently on staff at Harvard--has been profiled in The New Yorker and dubbed one of America's most influential people by Time magazine. A respected thinker on issues of race and poverty, the author of The Declining Significance of Race and The Truly Disadvantaged offers his take on welfare and inner-city joblessness in When Work Disappears. Racism, Wilson argues, plays increasingly less of a role in urban problems. More significant, he claims, are changes in the global economy and the disappearance of unskilled but decent-paying jobs near cities; according to Wilson, these factors have deprived the urban working class of steady jobs, destroyed inner-city businesses, and caused younger, upwardly mobile residents to flee for the suburbs. -Amazon.com

The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy

The Declining Significance of Race : Blacks and Changing American Institutions

Nickel and Dimed

Essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich has always specialized in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity, and verve. With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet.

No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City

Harvard anthropologist Katherine S. Newman explodes the myth of America's unmotivated poor in No Shame in My Game, a study of low-wage workers and their job-seeking peers in central Harlem. This is a frontline perspective: in addition to hundreds of interviews, Newman also put her research assistants behind the counters of the fast-food restaurants alongside the study's subjects. The results show that America's largest group of impoverished citizens is not the unemployed, but the working poor. But what will move readers most is the struggling workers themselves, who suffer the indignities, exhaustion, and low compensation of jobs as "burger flippers" because, as one fast-food restaurant employee, Larry, says, "It's my job. You ain't puttin' no food on my table; you ain't puttin' no clothes on my back. I will walk tall with my Burger Barn uniform on." Newman explains how obstacles such as cuts in welfare, lack of health insurance (almost half of employed Americans under the poverty line have no coverage), and substandard education undercut even the most determined efforts of working poor like Larry. Fortunately, she also offers a thick list of old and new potential solutions to this crisis, from Earned Income Tax Credits to new training programs linking private industry to public schools with at-risk youth. An essential, eye-opening read. - Amazon.com

Edge City: Life on the New Frontier

After the suburbanization of America in the 50's, when people followed new highways out to new one-family homes, came the malling of America in the 60's and 70's and then, in the 80's, the high- rise office buildings that brought the jobs suburb-ward and added critical mass to dozens of ``urban'' clumps now bigger than many of the major old cities they surround. Today more people commute to work along the edge than into the old downtowns. Garreau (The Nine Nations of North America, 1981) devotes separate chapters to different ``Edge City'' regions, using them as springboards to tackle several issues. Among these are the restriction of civil liberties where the village center, as in New Jersey's Bridgewater township, is a privately owned mall; the enforced conformity in residential communities like those near Phoenix that are run by a corporation rather than a municipal government; the complications of race and class around Atlanta; the conflicts between developers' ideas of highest and best use and preservationists' devotion to sacred sites, as in the newest battle at Bull Run in Virginia. In general, Garreau approves the Edge City trend, which he justifies with a simplistic market-capitalist assumption that if that's where people are, then that's what people want. He pretty much ignores, to name just two major counterarguments, the effects of federal spending policies that favor highways over inner cities, and the wants of the people left behind or deliberately excluded from the Edge facilities. Even on issues he does consider, such as quality of life and culture on the Edge or developers' motives for building, he avoids much hard evidence and harder questions. Still, a provocative work that brings to popular attention a major restructuring that is, as Garreau says, all around us but largely ignored by professional architects and planners. -From Kirkus Reviews

Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream

Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States

This first full-scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how "the good life" in America came to be equated with the a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American suburb from the middle of the 19th century to the present day. He treats communities in every section of the U.S. and compares American residential patterns with those of Japan and Europe. In conclusion, Jackson offers a controversial prediction: that the future of residential deconcentration will be very different from its past in both the U.S. and Europe.

Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia

Unlike the pre-modern city, where workplaces and residences were integrated, suburbia, as this ``searching study'' reveals, is a middle-class invention. In tracing suburban history, Fishman ``makes us keenly aware that modern, class-segregated suburbs represent a total transformation of urban values.'' -From Publishers Weekly