A World More Concrete (Paperback)

N.D.B. Connolly

ISBN 10: 022637842X / ISBN 13: 9780226378428

Edité par The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2016

A propos de cet article

Paperback. Many people characterize urban renewal projects and the power of eminent domain as two of the most widely despised and often racist tools for reshaping American cities in the postwar period. In A World More Concrete, N. D. B. Connolly uses the history of South Florida to unearth an older and far more complex story. Connolly captures nearly eighty years of political and land transactions to reveal how real estate and redevelopment created and preserved metropolitan growth and racial peace under white supremacy. Using a materialist approach, he offers a long view of capitalism and the color line, following much of the money that made land taking and Jim Crow segregation profitable and preferred approaches to governing cities throughout the twentieth century.A World More Concrete argues that black and white landlords, entrepreneurs, and even liberal community leaders used tenements and repeated land dispossession to take advantage of the poor and generate remarkable wealth. Through a political culture built on real estate, South Floridas landlords and homeowners advanced property rights and white property rights, especially, at the expense of more inclusive visions of equality. For black people and many of their white allies, uses of eminent domain helped to harden class and color lines. Yet, for many reformers, confiscating certain kinds of real estate through eminent domain also promised to help improve housing conditions, to undermine the neighborhood influence of powerful slumlords, and to open new opportunities for suburban life for black Floridians. Concerned more with winners and losers than with heroes and villains, A World More Concrete offers a sober assessment of money and power in Jim Crow America. It shows how negotiations between powerful real estate interests on both sides of the color line gave racial segregation a remarkable capacity to evolve, revealing property owners power to reshape American cities in ways that can still be seen and felt today. A World More Concrete argues that Americans, immigrants, and indigenous people of all colors made tremendous investments in racial apartheid in the twentieth century, in order to regulate city growth and to maximize the value of land. Focusing on South Florida, the book illustrates how entrepreneurs used land and debates over property rights to negotiate the workings of Jim Crow segregation. Over the course of several decades, property ownership became an important feature in the development of cities and suburbs, in the articulation of civil rights reform, and in the general failure of civil rights activism to end residential segregation and black poverty. As a result of the privileged legal and social position granted to property ownership, Jim Crow culture became American culture - politically, economically, and in the built environment. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

N° de réf. du vendeur 9780226378428

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: A World More Concrete (Paperback)
• Éditeur: The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL
• Date de parution: 2016
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 022637842X
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780226378428
• Reliure: Paperback
• État de l'article: new

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

Many people characterize urban renewal projects and the power of eminent domain as two of the most widely despised and often racist tools for reshaping American cities in the postwar period. In A World More Concrete, N. D. B. Connolly uses the history of South Florida to unearth an older and far more complex story. Connolly captures nearly eighty years of political and land transactions to reveal how real estate and redevelopment created and preserved metropolitan growth and racial peace under white supremacy. Using a materialist approach, he offers a long view of capitalism and the color line, following much of the money that made land taking and Jim Crow segregation profitable and preferred approaches to governing cities throughout the twentieth century.

A World More Concrete argues that black and white landlords, entrepreneurs, and even liberal community leaders used tenements and repeated land dispossession to take advantage of the poor and generate remarkable wealth. Through a political culture built on real estate, South Florida’s landlords and homeowners advanced property rights and white property rights, especially, at the expense of more inclusive visions of equality. For black people and many of their white allies, uses of eminent domain helped to harden class and color lines. Yet, for many reformers, confiscating certain kinds of real estate through eminent domain also promised to help improve housing conditions, to undermine the neighborhood influence of powerful slumlords, and to open new opportunities for suburban life for black Floridians.

Concerned more with winners and losers than with heroes and villains, A World More Concrete offers a sober assessment of money and power in Jim Crow America. It shows how negotiations between powerful real estate interests on both sides of the color line gave racial segregation a remarkable capacity to evolve, revealing property owners’ power to reshape American cities in ways that can still be seen and felt today.

À propos de l'auteur

N. D. B. Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. His first book, A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida, which was published by the University of Chicago Press, received the 2014 Kenneth T. Jackson Book Award from the Urban History Association, the 2015 Liberty Legacy Foundation Book Award from the Organization of American Historians, and the 2016 Bennett H. Wall Book Award from the Southern Historical Association, among other awards. He was a cohost of the popular history podcast BackStory.