jason carr HIST 5302 Metropolitan America Final Part A: "Based on your readings, the lectures, and the presentations of others, discuss what you think American urban history is and then identify and discuss three themes of urban history." Urban history is a subset of professional history which is concerned with issues of urban growth and topography, demographics, urban planning and economics, the urban- hinterland relationship and the problems popularly associated with cities (inter-class friction, congestion, overcrowding). America has (or has had) distinguishing features which modify the fabric of its urban history: African slavery and the resultant racial frictions, plentiful Western land resources, and America's industrial superiority in World War II. These historical features manifest in inner-city decay, urban sprawl (chiefly in the Western regions) and the metropolitan-military complex. The decay of the inner city is one of the most emotionally laden and complex problems studied by urban historians. This decay is related essentially to the failure of inexpensive housing in the inner city to act as a staging ground for Black upward mobility. As Gilbert Osofsky noted in his "Harlem Tragedy: An Emerging Slum", European immigrants continued to move out of tenement housing while Black citizens remained in place and perhaps even consolidated Black population from previously- interspersed Black neighborhoods (309). Even when Blacks moved out of the immediate area, their new neighborhoods would flee to more homogenous neighborhoods.1 The result of the small amount of outward movement of Black families was not integration and heterogeneity but rather an expansion of the ghetto itself. Although the creeping ghettoization is frequently attributed to White Flight the issue may very well be a class or cultural issue more than a racial one.2 The flight out of the tenements was a [lower-] middle class phenomenon: ". middle-class Negroes, like others of that class, wished to put some distance between them and those who stood beneath them on the ladder of success."3 The crime, impoverished culture, and aesthetic blight of the inner city has inspired reform, planning and renewal in Eastern cities, and a negative model for newer Western cities. Reform has taken forms as altruistic as reformers' settlement houses and as brutal as the "New York Approach" ("Negro removal"), a program which, among other atrocities, paved over blighted neighborhoods with freeways or other new projects.4 One of the many ironies in this unfortunate situation was that the New York plan (other attempts to reform in Philadelphia) was initiated by "liberals", but that the final programs would hardly be described today as "liberal."5 The Western cities had plenty of physical space and did not model themselves on the old (New England) model in which a Central Business District was the bullseye nested in a ring of concentric circles. Frequently the sprawl was not the goal, but rather the result of breakneck annexation. This continual spatial growth was a hedge against getting hemmed in by suburbs (i.e., to avoid being like the crowded Eastern cities). Although the spread-out style of the new Western cities was pejoratively referred to as "sprawl", it represents a new urban topography in its own right. Born in the post- Industrial age, these cities were shaped when distance- compressing technologies like highways, telephones, and the automobile had come into their own. Proximity to the Central Business District (if there was one) was not necessary or even desirable. Authors like Findlay pointed out that these new cities are coherent landforms, legible to its inhabitants. The Western urbanites provided their own mental maps of the areas, imposed their own social cartography, their own centers of the city.6 Due in some part to the fair weather associated with the West, World War II had a seminal influence on Western cities. Pre-World War II Western cities were, according to Carl Abbott, in a state of "economic and cultural quiescence" but after 1940 these cities "have become national and even international pacesetters."7 A huge influx of military contracts flowed into Western cities hot on the heels of infrastructure-building Federal funds from the 1930s.8 Cities like Dallas, San Diego and Seattle derived significant portions of their employment from wartime contracts (A North American Aviation Company installation in Dallas employed 40,000.9). The downside, of course, is that when military spending drops off the cities can be vulnerable to layoffs and plant closings. Seattle, aware of this, tried to gain a national (or global) audience with its World's Fair. This would in theory provide access to other revenue streams besides Boeing.10 It is also ironic that the newer-style cities of the West are falling prey to many of the same kinds of problems that plague the older-style Eastern cities. Although population densities are usually lower, other problems like traffic gridlock, air and water pollution, and Black concentration in ghettos are present in even mid-sized Western cities. Even when urbanites try to run to the safety and predictability of suburbia, the problems of the city tag along like an unwanted kid brother. _______________________________ 1 "Drawing the Color Line", 148. 2 Racial tensions do provide a nasty undertone to some of the more heated discussions on the failures of the inner city. 3 "Drawing the Color Line," 149. Emphasis added. 4 Schwartz, Joel. The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City. Precis by Annette Nolte. 5 Even though the liberals might have have good intentions, their methodologies were flawed (New York) or their political strength insufficient to control the programs (Philadelphia). Bauman, John. F. Public Housing, Race, and Renewal. Book Review by Shywanna Glenn. 6 Findlay. Magic Lands. Oral presentation and precis by jason carr. 7 Abbott, Carl. The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West Pp xviii, xii. 8 Abbott. p 6. 9 Abbott, p 7. 10 Boeing recently announced yet another wave of layoffs. http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/