Front cover image for The origins of the urban crisis : race and inequality in postwar Detroit

The origins of the urban crisis : race and inequality in postwar Detroit

Thomas J. Sugrue (Author)
Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit has become the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America's racial and economic inequalities, the author 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 Princeton Classics edition includes a new preface by the author, discussing the lasting impact of the postwar transformation on urban America and the chronic issues leading to Detroit's bankruptcy

eBook, English, 2014
First Princeton Classics edition
Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2014