Demolition Means Progress (Paperback)

Andrew R. Highsmith

ISBN 10: 022641955X / ISBN 13: 9780226419558

Verlag: The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2016

Beschreibung

Paperback. In 1997, after General Motors shuttered a massive complex of factories in the gritty industrial city of Flint, Michigan, signs were placed around the empty facility reading, Demolition Means Progress, suggesting that the struggling metropolis could not move forward to greatness until the old plants met the wrecking ball. Much more than a trite corporate slogan, the phrase encapsulates the operating ethos of the nations metropolitan leadership from at least the 1930s to the present. Throughout, the leaders of Flint and other municipalities repeatedly tried to revitalize their communities by demolishing outdated and inefficient structures and institutions and overseeing numerous urban renewal campaignsmany of which yielded only more impoverished and more divided metropolises. After decades of these efforts, the dawn of the twenty-first century found Flint one of the most racially segregated and economically polarized metropolitan areas in the nation. In one of the most comprehensive works yet written on the history of inequality and metropolitan development in modern America, Andrew R. Highsmith uses the case of Flint to explain how the perennial quest for urban renewaleven more than white flight, corporate abandonment, and other forcescontributed to mass suburbanization, racial and economic division, deindustrialization, and political fragmentation. Challenging much of the conventional wisdom about structural inequality and the roots of the nations urban crisis, Demolition Means Progress shows in vivid detail how public policies and programs designed to revitalize the Flint area ultimately led to the hardening of social divisions. Flint, Michigan, is widely seen as Detroit s Detroit: the perfect embodiment of a ruined industrial economy and a shattered American dream. In this deeply researched book, Andrew Highsmith gives us the first full-scale history of Flint, showing that the Vehicle City has always seen demolition as a tool of progress. During the 1930s, officials hoped to renew the city by remaking its public schools into racially segregated community centers. After the war, federal officials and developers sought to strengthen the region by building subdivisions in Flint s segregated suburbs, while GM executives and municipal officials demolished urban factories and rebuilt them outside the city. City leaders later launched a plan to replace black neighborhoods with a freeway and new factories. Each of these campaigns, Highsmith argues, yielded an ever more impoverished city and a more racially divided metropolis. By intertwining histories of racial segregation, mass suburbanization, and industrial decline, Highsmith gives us a deeply unsettling look at urban-industrial America." Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 9780226419558

Bibliografische Details

• Titel: Demolition Means Progress (Paperback)
• Verlag: The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-10: 022641955X
• ISBN-13: 9780226419558
• Einband: Paperback
• Zustand: new

Über diesen Titel

Inhaltsangabe

In 1997, after General Motors shuttered a massive complex of factories in the gritty industrial city of Flint, Michigan, signs were placed around the empty facility reading, “Demolition Means Progress,” suggesting that the struggling metropolis could not move forward to greatness until the old plants met the wrecking ball. Much more than a trite corporate slogan, the phrase encapsulates the operating ethos of the nation’s metropolitan leadership from at least the 1930s to the present. Throughout, the leaders of Flint and other municipalities repeatedly tried to revitalize their communities by demolishing outdated and inefficient structures and institutions and overseeing numerous urban renewal campaigns—many of which yielded only more impoverished and more divided metropolises. After decades of these efforts, the dawn of the twenty-first century found Flint one of the most racially segregated and economically polarized metropolitan areas in the nation.

In one of the most comprehensive works yet written on the history of inequality and metropolitan development in modern America, Andrew R. Highsmith uses the case of Flint to explain how the perennial quest for urban renewal—even more than white flight, corporate abandonment, and other forces—contributed to mass suburbanization, racial and economic division, deindustrialization, and political fragmentation. Challenging much of the conventional wisdom about structural inequality and the roots of the nation’s “urban crisis,” Demolition Means Progress shows in vivid detail how public policies and programs designed to revitalize the Flint area ultimately led to the hardening of social divisions.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Andrew R. Highsmith is assistant professor of history at the University of California, Irvine.