Racism and America\'s Urban Cycle

Racism and America's Urban Cycle Question: 1 Following World War II, two major points of inflection in American history would set off a settlement pattern that would levy distinct effects on the racial disparity present here throughout. The acceleration of America's economic growth paired with the massive improvement of its technologies and infrastructure for transportation (i.e. the proliferation of private automobile and home ownership), would lead to the development of the suburb. The most immediate and direct reflection of this condition would be the sharp contrast between the emergence of the suburb and the decline of the inner-city. The process of urban flight by which many of the older residences in the heart of the city would be abandoned for residency in such contexts would essentially expand the borders of the city. The outskirts would increasingly be occupied by a city's wealthier inhabitants, whose access to the city by personal or rail car at this time-as well as by increasingly reliable communication technology-would allow them to occupy a large space. Simultaneously, this pattern would considerably reduce the value and appeal of many residencies in the immediate inner- city. These would therefore increasingly become the low-income neighborhoods of America's inner cities. With the industrial development of the city healthfully underway, its labor class would occupy many of the decayed old neighborhoods of the city, and would by no coincidence generally be African American residents. The outcome of this pattern is described damningly by Massey & Denton (1998), who tell that "the geographic isolation of Africans within a narrowly circumscribed portion of the urban environment-whether African townships or American ghettos-forces blacks to live under extraordinarily harsh conditions and to endure a social world where poverty is endemic, infrastructure is inadequate, education is lacking, families are fragmented, and crime and violence are rampant. Moreover, segregation confines these unpleasant by-products of racial oppression to an isolated portion of the urban geography far removed from the experience of most whites." (Massey & Denton, 15-16) This idea of removing such urban consequences from the view of whites brings us to consider gentrification. The term 'gentrification' is one of highly controversial and loaded implication. To its supporters, it appears that this mode to urban revitalization is the most direct route to improving property values, social conditions and economic outlooks for distinct city neighborhoods. To its detractors, gentrification is a term which naturally implies the economic displacement of lower-income residents in favor of middle-class inhabitants. On the balance, it remains an issue very much entangled in individualized and personal perspectives, as well as in the contexts of varying issues relating to society, economy, policy and race. Mitchell's (2003) text, which evaluates the longstanding conflict of interests between the developers of Berkley and its extensive homeless population, with the process of gentrification at the center of differing needs of urban land use. Mitchell denotes that "while the language of disaffiliation and deviance retained a certain prominence, homeless advocates worked hard to emphasize the structural determinants of homelessness (economic decline; the dismantling of the welfare state, of which deinstitutionalization can be seen as a part; gentrification and redevelopment in areas susceptible to it)." (Mitchell, 179) In this phrasing in particular, it becomes clear that there are real political and social consequences to gentrification and that for the homeless population in Mitchell's discussion, these are distinctly negative. So would this be illustrated by the experience of many of the Mexican- American populations living in South Tucson. Our Walking Tour took us through the downtown redevelopment projects that have made Rio Nuevo such an appealing destination and that have led to much of the corporate development here. The fact that Tucson is both an ethnic enclave and is one of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the United States stands in direct contrast to the development boom at the heart of the city as well as in the University area. The heightened isolation of those groups already 'disaffiliated,' to borrow the phrase from Mitchell, tends to produce a pointedly negative outcome of the superficially positive process of gentrification. Essentially, those in the lower tiers of the urban socioeconomic hierarchy, rather than having been drawn out of despair, have been thrust to the periphery of America's 'revitalizing' cities.

Question 2: One of the most important points raised by the course reading material would be that underscoring a clear proclivity toward urban design and planning in those who would first colonize the new lands. Though massive and ripe with natural resources and incredible frontiers, the new land was also flowing with inherently profitable waterways, brimming with commercial trade prospects and inhabited by a native population which, though Chudacoff reports it to have been significantly underestimated as an city-dwelling peoples as well, would appear ripe for exploitation. More importantly though to this discussion would be the text's consideration of the inherency of the European urban culture to America's development. Indeed, according to Chudacoff's (2005) account, "the Europeans who colonized North America were from the beginning urban-minded people, linked to commercial markets. Even the earliest explores in New England had viewed the new land in terms of the commodities it promised to yield." (1) This reveals an important point as applies to the ebb and flow of urban development or focus through modern history. Especially across the late 20th century as denoted here, the period of America's greatest growth would also set off an urban cycle that denotes racially motivated phases of disinterest in this building block to American society and prosperity. The result is that even as the city remains in no small regard a center of industry, of intellectual exchange and of community living space fully unlike the individual living experience of the suburbs, it also possesses various symptoms of its periods of decay which cannot be suppressed even in spite of the considerable efforts of revitalization. Indeed, if we refer back to the discussion above on gentrification, it is clear that in fact the crime and poverty which are here disavowed are not simply forced to the periphery. To the contrary, these failures of civic equality typically come home to roost even in those neighborhoods designed to contrast this effect. Jacobs (1961) text would pay focus to this idea, though in 1961 and therefore considerably less informed on the cyclical rise and fall and rise of the city thereafter. Jacobs is somewhat prescient of gentrification's effects though, describing the city streets as significantly populated by African American dwellers in economically disadvantaged circumstances, and further denoting that "the barbarism and the real, not imagined, insecurity that gives rise to such fears cannot be tagged a problem of the slums. The problem is most serious, in fact, in genteel-looking 'quiet residential areas' . . . It cannot be tagged as a problem of older parts of cities. The problem reaches its most baffling dimensions in some examples of rebuilt parts of cities, including supposedly the best examples of rebuilding, such as middle-income projects." (Jacobs, 31) This speaks to a point which would become altogether less baffling and more sociologically understood as American began to legally address the economic segregation inherent to deeply racist nation. This segregation, imposed by law in the South, would nonetheless persist as a matter of socioeconomic distribution throughout the nation, with our reading pointing to pattern in America's urban history where the moments of greatest disregard thereto (i.e. the 1870s, the 1930s, the 1970s, the 2000s) have also yielded the greatest evidence of a persistent racial inequality in America.