jason carr
HIST 5302
November 2, 1998

Goldfield, David R.  "The Urban South: A Regional Framework."
(precis)

1    This article is about the influences of Southern regional

context on Southern urbanization.

Goldfield analyzes distinctive regional phenomena to help

illuminate the peculiarities in  Southern urban culture.

     Because Goldfield is writing a primarily cultural history

his sources are almost exclusively secondary.  He draws heavily

from scholarly work on Southern history, and also extensively

quotes bon mots from noted observers such as Sherwood Anderson

and Lewis Mumford.

     Goldfield's thesis is that a regional framework or context

is essential to a successful reading of Southern history.  He

assumes the South is a region and that it is demonstratably

different from other national regions.  Goldfield first points to

ruralism to help explain the South's odd style of urban

development.  He points out that city-rural dichotomy is

inaccurate and that such entities as Paris as London have had

semi-rural features in their past, and that Southern urban life

is closely tied to agricultural (chiefly harvest) rhythms.  In

addition, rural immigrants retain much of their rural culture

when move to the city.  Goldfield holds that the very layout of

neighboring towns in the South was affected by the vagaries of

processing, storing, and transporting the local staple.

     Goldfield addresses the effect of Evangelical Protestantism

     on Southern urban culture, transplanted perhaps by the rural

immigrant. He admits the connection is not clear but the

conservative, pessimistic, intolerant brand of religion familar

to the rural migrants increased urban sensitivity to family and

moral concerns.  This stubborn religiosity made Southern cities

conservative or reactionary in sharp contrast to the liberalism

found in other American Cities.

     The second major influence on the Southern region, and hence

Southern urban growth, was race.  While the Northern cities

concentrated their Black populations into ghettos, the South's

poor were dispersed in locally substandard housing.  Goldfield

says that the aforementioned rural conservatism and religious

certitude served to preserve the bi-racial character of Southern

society, and he compares Black ecological patterns in the South

to those in pre-industrial Third World countries.

     The third major influence on the Southern region is

colonialism.  Goldfield holds that the South has been a de facto

colony of the North, providing staples,  low-skilled labor, and

investment opportunities for the North.  The South's dependant

nature was illustrated during the Great Depression, when Southern

cities made good use of Federal monies to build their lagging

infrastructures.  This subservient position and lack of financial

and industrial power meant the South could not compete with the

North on the National level.

     Goldfield concludes that the predicted rosy future of

Southern urbanism is not yet arrived, and that Southern cities

will be true to their conservative ways and continue to under-

provide services and remain a second-string player on the

national scene.  He offers that his regional framework for

studying urbanization in America, and in comparing American

urbanization to the urban development in other countries.



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_______________________________
1What is the article about?
2The author concludes....

http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/