The divided city : poverty and prosperity in urban America

The divided city Poverty and prosperity in urban America

Alan Mallach

Book - 2018

Who really benefits from urban revival? Cities, from trendy coastal areas to the nation's heartland, are seeing levels of growth beyond the wildest visions of only a few decades ago. But vast areas in the same cities house thousands of people living in poverty who see little or no new hope or opportunity. Even as cities revive, they are becoming more unequal and more segregated. What does this mean for these cities--and the people who live in them? In The Divided City, urban practitioner and scholar Alan Mallach shows us what has happened over the past 15 to 20 years in industrial cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, and Baltimore, as they have undergone unprecedented, unexpected revival. He draws from his decades of experience ...working in America's cities, and pulls in insightful research and data, to spotlight these changes while placing them in their larger economic, social, and political context. Mallach explores the pervasive significance of race in American cities and looks closely at the successes and failures of city governments, nonprofit entities, and citizens as they have tried to address the challenges of change. The Divided City offers strategies to foster greater equality and opportunity. Mallach makes a compelling case that these strategies must be local in addition to being concrete and focusing on people's needs--education, jobs, housing and quality of life. Change, he argues, will come city by city, not through national plans or utopian schemes. This is the first book to provide a comprehensive, grounded picture of the transformation of America's older industrial cities. It is neither a dystopian narrative nor a one-sided "the cities are back" story, but a balanced picture rooted in the nitty-gritty reality of these cities. The Divided City is imperative for anyone who cares about cities and who wants to understand how to make today's urban revival work for everyone.--Amazon.com.

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Subjects
Urban renewal > United States.
Sociology, Urban > United States.
Equality.
Urban poor > United States.
Published
Washington, DC : Island Press [2018]
Language
English
Main Author
Alan Mallach (author)
Physical Description
xvi, 326 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 293-313) and index.
ISBN
9781610917810
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: Revival and Inequality
  • Chapter 1. The Rise and Fall of the American Industrial City
  • Chapter 2. Millennials, Immigrants, and the Shrinking Middle Class
  • Chapter 3. From Factories to "Eds and Meds"
  • Chapter 4. Race, Poverty, and Real Estate
  • Chapter 5. Gentrification and Its Discontents
  • Chapter 6. Sliding Downhill: The Other Side of Neighborhood Change
  • Chapter 7. The Other Postindustrial America: Small Cities, Mill Towns, and Struggling Suburbs
  • Chapter 8. Empty Houses and Distressed Neighborhoods: Confronting the Challenge of Place
  • Chapter 9. Jobs and Education: The Struggle to Escape the Poverty Trap
  • Chapter 10. Power and Politics: Finding the Will to Change
  • Chapter 11. A Path to Inclusion and Opportunity
  • References
  • About the Author
  • Index
Review by Choice Review

Mallach (Center for Community Progress, Washington, DC) provides an important exploration of contemporary urban development in the US. The author's focus is on what he terms "legacy" cities--older industrial cities such as St. Louis; Detroit; Baltimore; Flint, Michigan; and Youngstown, Ohio; Mallach carefully investigates the trends these cities have undergone since the turn of the millennium. Many cities have experienced a renaissance as gentrifying neighborhoods attract millennials seeking city living. At the same time, income polarization and racial segregation have increased in most cities; the vast majority of neighborhoods have not benefited from recent revitalization. Mallach also addresses in some depth the problems many older industrial cities still suffer--many have not profited from the downtown improvements or university district development cities such as Detroit and Philadelphia enjoy. After identifying and discussing such trends in some detail, Mallach outlines a series of local policies and programs that might help improve economic outcomes and reduce social polarization in America's industrial cities. This accessible and compelling work will likely be of strongest interest to scholars of urban studies, urban planning, and urban sociology. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduates through faculty and professionals. --Mark E. Pfeifer, State University of New York Polytechnic

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review

For all of the talk of recent urban revival, only a tiny proportion of revived neighborhoods have seen the benefits, while the vast majority have continued to experience a precipitous decline. This startling observation drives Mallach's deeply researched survey of the dual processes of revival and decline in American cities large and small. Drawing from historical, sociological, and economic research, Mallach explains how deindustrialization, demographic change, and craft-beer-sipping millennials have transformed the urban environment. He surveys the mixed record of efforts to spark revival, from community development corporations in Newark to urban greening in Detroit, and draws on his own professional experiences as a city planner in Trenton, New Jersey. The breadth of information almost overwhelms the big idea, but certain chapters, particularly one on gentrification, captivate. Ultimately, Mallach writes, the middle is disappearing in cities, a profound shift apparent in American society broadly. In light of such a starkly diagnosed problem, the author's modest policy recommendations confound. But for readers looking for an introduction to important issues facing cities today, this book will serve admirably.--Kling, Sam Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Mallach (Bringing Buildings Back) digs into the dark side of America's urban revival in this uneven analysis of the forces reshaping "legacy" cities-the Clevelands, Milwaukees, and Buffalos of the heartland, formerly industrial cities hollowed out by suburbanization and white flight in the 1960s and '70s-rather than the major coastal cities that have received the most attention from others investigating urban renewal. Mallach describes how gentrifying areas of legacy cities have attracted an influx of college graduates with the skills to thrive in the postindustrial knowledge economy, who draw trendy coffee shops and revamp neighborhoods around anchor institutions such as universities. At the same time, he argues, middle-class and poor neighborhoods in the same cities are sliding downhill, buffeted by the subprime mortgage crisis of the 2000s, structural economic changes, and the legacies of racial segregation. For every gentrifying neighborhood like Baltimore's Fell's Point or St. Louis's Washington Avenue, Mallach writes, many more are falling into a cycle of physical deterioration, out-migration, and abandonment. Mallach points to localized infrastructure spending, job creation, and education as possible solutions to this urban crisis. While the book's subject matter is timely, it relies heavily on synthesizing other authors' arguments, resulting in an unfocused and somewhat derivative analysis of the issues confronting cities. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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