The Paradox of Urban Revitalization: Progress and Poverty in America’s Postindustrial Era
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Industrialization and the rapid growth of the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created booming cities that dotted the American landscape. Yet, by the end of the World War II, political administrations and community activists were already asking the question of how to revitalize urban spaces. In part, that discussion happened because of the influx of African Americans to northern and western cities when the opportunity to work in wartime industries became available and lucrative. Therefore, the urban renewal programs of the 1950s and 1960s renewed American cities based on previous racial upheavals. It should be no surprise that the current urban revitalization equally deals with the issues of race and disparity. In fact, many of the ideas, programs, and plans are built directly from the ashes of mid-century renewal. Aptly named The Paradox of Urban Revitalization, Howard Gillette Jr.’s book focuses on the current attempts of urban administrations to balance economic growth, or rebirth, with the needs of long-standing communities.This book joins newer works such as Lizabeth Cohen’s Saving America’s Cities and Tracy Neumann’s Remaking the Rust Belt which all attempt to understand the difficulties facing American cities. Gillette Jr. presents an innovative approach to understanding the problems facing these places, comparing nine cities in three different categories. In these categories, he focuses on how individuals and community organizations have thought, and rethought, about what growth, prosperity, and success look like. While many associate problems in American urban places with the Rust Belt, and similar manufacturing hubs, this work includes other examples outside of the industrial heartland such as Oakland, Camden, and New Haven to give a better national view of decades long struggles. Gillette’s thoroughly researched and comprehensive look at these varied urban centers brings the history of each city to the present. In order to bring the narrative into the mid or late 2010s, he relies on news reports, neighborhood committee documents, websites, and the work of new scholarship.Opening with a vignette on the deaths of young African American men over the past decade, and his own experience with the Civil Rights movement and urban renewal programs of the 1960s, Gillette Jr. suggests that the current urban crisis has transformed, in the words of Richard Florida, to the “central crisis of our time” (3). That crisis springing up from city to city asks a fundamental question: how do urban spaces bring in new business and highly educated, creative new residents while also acknowledging the communities that have continued to live in those spaces? Few cities have accomplished this and even the three best examples of community engagement with economic revitalization that Gillette Jr. provides are only partially successful. Presented as three categories of three cities each, this work delineates between the cities struggling the most to balance the two critical juxtapositions, three cities that have found occasional success, and finally three cities that have, for the most part, balanced development and community. The first section, “Captives of the Old Paradigm,” looks at the cities of Baltimore, Detroit, and Camden. It suggests that these three cities have pandered to big revitalization projects, used generous taxpayer subsidies, and relied on corporations to solve the urban crisis without much real input from the communities which live there.The next two sections each deal with three more cities that are in many ways attempting to renew their cities through different types of community engagement. Here, Gillette Jr. separates the six cities into three working on “Shifting Grounds” and three others that have “Broken Through.” Frankly, the difference seems slim. One might find it difficult to understand how Pittsburgh has broken through because of its redevelopment of the Hill District, but Milwaukee or New Haven’s similar revival of the East End or Oak Street Connector put them in a different category. Yet, the difference between the cities that have seen the most success would be communities who successfully, or somewhat successfully, advocated for their inclusion. In Milwaukee, for example, community members and a history of urban socialism meant that popular unrest to gentrification found a somewhat receptive audience. However, the allure of microbreweries, restaurants, and apartment complexes with dog walks on the roof proved too much for the city to resist. While that same allure might have existed in Pittsburgh, Gillette Jr. ably points out the community efforts to gain concessions from stadium developers to provide community-based grants or a percentage of affordable housing. Pittsburgh’s mayor Bill Peduto’s tenure clearly attempted to use the rising tide of economic fortunes to help uplift communities, using pilot programs such as a city-funded universal basic income aimed at poorer families in need. In this manner, the way in which administration uses the newfound urban wealth, the three cities that have “Broken Through” have done so because of attention paid to not just economics but social growth as well.For historians and even urban planners of Pennsylvania, this work will be incredibly informative. Our commonwealth is littered with postindustrial cities, each facing similar racial disparities and community dislocation to the nine cities highlighted in this book. Even though Gillette Jr. focused on what one might call “secondary” cities in the United States, “tertiary” cities in Pennsylvania such as Erie, Scranton, Harrisburg, or Altoona each have their own paradoxes to face as the centuries’ greatest crisis bears down. Of course, it is helpful that Pittsburgh plays a central role in section 3, and two other cities on the periphery of Pennsylvania, Camden and Newark, each have a chapter of their own. Ultimately, this is a well-designed and intriguing book. Gillette Jr. forces our focus to the present urban renewal campaigns and the challenges they bring us.
Source: Pennsylvania history
Author: Marc A. Sanko
Institution: Pennsylvania Western University
Language: English
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4406215682