Dispatches Against Displacement


Book Description

San Francisco is being eroded by waves of cash flowing north from Silicon Valley. Recent evictions of long-time San Francisco residents, outrageous rents and home prices, and blockaded "Google buses" are only the tip of the iceberg. James Tracy's book focuses on the long arc of displacement over almost two decades of "dot com" boom and bust, offering the necessary perspective to analyze the latest urban horrors. A housing activist in the Bay Area since before Google existed, Tracy puts the hardships of the working poor and middle class front and center. These essays explore the battle for urban space—public housing residents fighting austerity, militant housing takeovers, the vagaries of federal and state housing policy, as well as showdowns against gentrification in the Mission District. From these experiences, Dispatches Against Displacement draws out a vision of what alternative urbanism might look like if our cities were developed by and for the people who bring them to life. James Tracy is a Bay Area native and a well-respected community organizer. He is co-founder of the San Francisco Community Land Trust (which uses public and private money to buy up housing stock and take it out of the real estate market), as well as a poet and co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power.




Housing Urban America


Book Description

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of housing: an increasingly difficult quest in the contemporary urban United States, where crime, urban blight, and continuing capital decay undercut the advantages of city living. The American dream has moved to the suburbs; the nightmare of our cities prompts new recognition both in the president's cabinet and the college curriculum.The editors of this book have updated their acclaimed earlier collection, providing new introductory articles; new papers, such as, Discrimination in Housing Prices and Mortgage Lending, ASummary Report of Current Findings from the Experimental Housing Allowance Program, Alternative Mortgage Designs and Their Effectiveness in Eliminating Demand and Supply Effects on Inflation; and a new bibliography of the literature.Additional chapters focus on differing strategies for improved urban housing and renewal by providing concrete suggestions for distributing existing resources and allocating new funding. The bibliography provides the best single guide to the current literature on housing. Housing Urban America, in this new edition, is an important guide to those students and scholars fascinated by the essential questions of adequate housing: its social costs, and the source of the revenues to provide it.




Cities and Society


Book Description

This distinctive anthology contains classic and first-rate contemporary writings that have had a major impact on the field of urban studies. The expert and well-known scholars who have written these essays cover central topics that have evolved over the past 25 years. Brings together 20 of the most important classic and contemporary readings on cities and society in one accessible volume Offers an international focus, as well as case studies, all by leading experts in the field Includes an analytical introduction by the editor Provides coverage of current trends, theoretical perspectives, and policy issues Features diverse topics such as space, housing, globalization, the economy, and social inequalities.




Private Property and Public Power


Book Description

News media reports on eminent domain often highlight outrage and heated protest. But these accounts, Debbie Becher finds, obscure a much more complex reality of how Americans understand property. Private Property and Public Power presents the first comprehensive study of a city's acquisitions, exploring how and why Philadelphia took properties between 1992 and 2007 for private redevelopment. Becher uses original data-collected from city offices and interviews with over a hundred residents, business owners, community leaders, government representatives, attorneys, and appraisers-to explore how eminent domain really works. Surprisingly, the city took over 4,000 private properties, and these takings rarely provoked opposition. When conflicts did arise, community residents, businesses, and politicians all appealed to a shared notion of investment to justify their arguments about policy. It is this social conception of property as an investment of value, committed over time, that government is responsible for protecting. Becher's findings stand in stark contrast to the views of libertarian and left-leaning activists and academics, but recognizing property as investment, she argues, may offer a solid foundation for more progressive urban policies.




Rebuilding America's Cities


Book Description

A growing cooperation between the public and private sectors indicates that the tasks of redevelopment are too large and complex for either sector to accomplish alone. Some people maintain that government can do few things right; others are equally distrustful of the private sector. As used here, the private sector is considered to be all that is not government. Each of the success stories illustrated is, in part, a ""road to recovery,"" although none appear to have been influenced by a purpose that broad.Paul R. Porter and David C. Sweet present stories of progress in self-reliance that concern neighborhood and downtown recoveries, school improvement, job generation, a regained fiscal solvency, novel financing techniques, helping tenants to become homeowners, and a successful venture in self-help and tenant management in crime-infested neighborhoods. The successes stem from the diverse community roles of Yale University, a medical center, the world's largest research organization, the Clorox Company, a gas company, an insurance company, a newspaper, neighborhood and downtown organizations, city governments and two religious organizations - the Mormon Church and the tiny Church of the Savior.These stories are located throughout the United States, including Akron, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, New Haven, Oakland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, St. Paul, Salt Lake City, Springfield, Mass., Tampa, and Washington, D.C. The editors have gathered the work of professionals known in the field of urban studies: James W. Rouse, Donald E. Lasater, Rolf Goetze, Dale F. Bertsch, Joel Lieske, Eugene H. Methvin, James E. Kunde, T. Michael Smith, Robert Mier, Carol Davidow, Jay Chatterjee, June Manning Thomas, Norman Krumholz, Larry C. Ledebur, and Robert C. Holland.




Guatemala-U.S. Migration


Book Description

Guatemala-U.S. Migration: Transforming Regions is a pioneering, comprehensive, and multifaceted study of Guatemalan migration to the United States from the late 1970s to the present. It analyzes this migration in a regional context including Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States. This book illuminates the perilous passage through Mexico for Guatemalan migrants, as well as their settlement in various U.S. venues. Moreover, it builds on existing theoretical frameworks and breaks new ground by analyzing the construction and transformations of this migration region and transregional dimensions of migration. Seamlessly blending multiple sociological perspectives, this book addresses the experiences of both Maya and ladino Guatemalan migrants, incorporating gendered as well as ethnic and class dimensions of migration. It spans the most violent years of the civil war and the postwar years in Guatemala, hence including both refugees and labor migrants. The demographic chapter delineates five phases of Guatemalan migration to the United States since the late 1970s, with immigrants experiencing both inclusion and exclusion very dramatically during the most recent phase, in the early twenty-first century. This book also features an innovative study of Guatemalan migrant rights organizing in the United States and transregionally in Guatemala/Central America and Mexico. The two contrasting in-depth case studies of Guatemalan communities in Houston and San Francisco elaborate in vibrant detail the everyday experiences and evolving stories of the immigrants' lives.




Market-Based Public Policy


Book Description




Urban Housing Segregation of Minorities in Western Europe and the United States


Book Description

This book provides an expert examination and comparison of housing segregation in major population centers in the United States and Western Europe and analyzes successes and failures of government policies and desegregation programs in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, and West Germany. The collection begins with a review of the historical development of housing segregation in these countries, describing current housing conditions, concentration of housing in each country's leading cities, minority populations and the housing they occupy--specifically public, nonprofit, and owner-occupied dwellings. When focusing on the United States, the contributors assess housing segregation, antisegregation measures, and institutional racism toward blacks in the Midwest and South, and toward Mexican-Americans throughout American cities. Chapters dealing with Western Europe include housing segregation of South Asian and West Indian immigrants in Britain, immigrants in Sweden, Turkish, and Yugoslav "guest workers" in West Germany, and Algerian and other Arab groups in France. The book concludes with discussions of public housing policies; suburban desegregation, resegregation, and integration maintenance programs; specific integration stabilization programs; and desegregation efforts in one specific place. Contributors. Elizabeth Huttman, Michal Arend, Cihan Arin, Maurice Blanc, Wim Blauw, Ger Mik, Clyde McDaniels, Jürgen Friedrichs, Hannes Alpheis, John M. Goering, Len Gordon, Albert Mayer, Rosemary Helper, Barry V. Johnston, Terry Jones, Valerie Karn, Göran Lindberg, Anna Lisa Lindén, Deborah Phillips, Dennis Keating, Juliet Saltman, Alan Murie




Place Matters


Book Description

Analyzes the problematic trends facing America's cities and older suburbs and challenges us to put America's urban crisis back on the national agenda.




City Politics, Pearson eText


Book Description

This text provides a foundation for understanding the politics of America's cities and urban regions. Praised for the clarity of its writing, careful research, and distinctive theme - that urban politics in the United States has evolved as a dynamic interaction among governmental power, private actors, and a politics of identity - City Politics remains a classic study of urban politics.