Wendell E. Pritchett

Which Urban Crisis? Regionalism, Race, and Urban Policy, 1960—1974

During the 1960s and 1970s, Congress and policymakers engaged in a heated debate over the proper role of the federal government in urban America enacted several initiatives to deal with the problems facing older cities, including creating the Department of Housing and Urban Development. However, throughout these years, federal officials, members of Congress, and other interested parties remained divided over the extent and nature of the “urban crisis.” During the early 1960s, much of the debate about urban areas focused on the problems of “metropolitan growth,” but in late 1960s, urban problems became increasingly identified with issues of racial conflict. By the early 1970s, policymakers had concluded that federal programs had generally failed to improve the state of urban America, and they oversaw a devolution of power back to local governments.

Introduction Politics and the American City, 1940–1990

Authors of articles in this issue identify two themes in American urban history. First, between 1950 and 1980, politicians including St. Louis mayors as well as New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and Robert A. Weaver (Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development), fostered an upward shift in the locus of authority for directing the urban-political economy. By the 1980s, however, small-city mayors around San Francisco as well as President Richard M. Nixon joined with policy activists including Jane Jacobs and Irving Kristol to affect a downward shift of authority. Unlikely allies, Jacobs, Kristol, and Nixon sought to return power to the hands of local leaders. Second, authors show that political elites shaped the conceptual, legal, and institutional frameworks within which they worked to foster economic growth, reduce crime, structure the economic and social geography of cities and regions, and deal with the challenges of race and class at a moment of social upheaval.Authors of articles in this issue identify two themes in American urban history. First, between 1950 and 1980, politicians including St. Louis mayors as well as New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefel...

Race and Community in Postwar Brooklyn The Brownsville Neighborhood Council and the Politics of Urban Renewal

The 1940s and 1950s are an important but neglected period in shaping modern race relations in New York City. The war mobilization and the economic boom that followed created new possibilities for economic and social mobility, and opened up new areas of the city and the suburbs to second-generation immigrants. The economic expansion also attracted hundreds of thousands of new immigrants, primarily African Americans from the South and Latinos from Puerto Rico, significantly changing the color of New York’s melting pot. These demographic trends had a dramatic impact on relations among New Yorkers in this period. This article will examine the impact of these societal trends on one New York neighborhood: Brownsville, an area in eastern Brooklyn. From its creation at the turn of the century, Brownsville was known as Brooklyn’s Lower East Side, a second stop on the ladder of upward mobility for recent Jewish immigrants. Built in the late 1800s and early 1900s for the working class, Brownsville housing and infrastructure was substandard from the beginning, and Brownsville residents struggled to secure basic neighborhood resources. Brownsville was a Jewish ghetto from its inception, and it was viewed with contempt by the better classes of the city. At the same time, Brownsville supported a wide variety of religious, business, and civic institutions. It also provided a common culture and identity for its 100,000 residents, mostly firstand second-generation immigrants, and helped them acclimate to American society. Many upwardly mobile Jews moved out in the 1920s, when Brownsville’s development ceased, and the Depression hit Brownsville harder than most New York neighborhoods. By World War II, the area’s housing and infrastructure was seriously deteriorated. In response, Brownsville residents created

Identity Politics, Past and Present

Burgmann has produced an interesting analysis of the liberating potential of the Seattle Movement. However, “identity politics,” as the term is currently employed, does not provide a useful framework for understanding the recent past, and therefore it cannot help academics in their attempts to analyze the meaning of current trends. Instead of using the flawed framework of “identity politics,” scholars should look to the opportunities and limitations inherent in all modern social movements.