American Cities in the Age of Inequality

Economic inequality has increased in the United States in recent decades, while rising housing costs have made many cities unaffordable to working-class and middle-class Americans, or consigned workers and minorities to inferior urban neighborhoods. Several recent works on urban history and policy assert the importance and difficulty of preserving cities' economic and racial diversity, and offer a wide range of proposals for redressing inequality, gentrification, and the dwindling availability of affordable housing. Most of these works, like much recent scholarship on urban history and policy, engage in pointed criticism of gentrification and the market-based “neoliberal” laws and policies typically favored by many city governments, landlords, and developers. Others, however, contend that a tightly regulated real estate and rental market or partnerships between private capital and government can create cities that are both prosperous and diverse. Many of the policy proposals advanced in these volumes focus on bolstering urban neighborhoods, while others encompass the entire city or contend that cities' problems ought to be addressed regionally, nationally, even globally. Collectively, these works of history and policy not only make a persuasive case for the value of economic and racial diversity but also champion the less quantifiable but nonetheless real goal of fostering the ties of community, so that residents feel a genuine sense of belonging in their neighborhood and their city.

Rasmussen, Chris. “American Cities in the Age of Inequality.” Journal of Urban History 45, no. 2 (March 2019): 377–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144218816634.