Description
Book SynopsisManufacturing Decline argues that antigovernment conservatives capitalized on—and perpetuated—Rust Belt cities’ misfortunes by stoking racial resentment. Jason Hackworth traces how the conservative movement has used the imagery and ideas of urban decline since the 1970s to advance their cause.
Trade ReviewManufacturing Decline is a sobering yet essential read for anyone who is interested in the fate of America’s inner cities. This recovery of the politics behind—and, indeed, that created—the devastating decline of key cities such as Detroit is deeply unsettling but ultimately uplifting. As Jason Hackworth makes clear, just as America’s inner cities can be deliberately unmade to serve the political agenda of conservatives, so might they be remade in ways that could actually benefit all citizens equally. -- Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its LegacyManufacturing Decline implicates conservative thought leadership, anti-urban interests, and elite—and ordinary—laissez-faire racism in a deliberate, decades-long degradation of U.S. cities via privation, demolition, and desertion. It is a thoughtful, stimulating, and efficient read at the intersection of urban geography, planning, and the social sciences. -- Michael Leo Owens, author of
God and Government in the Ghetto: The Politics of Church-State Collaboration in Black AmericaManufacturing Decline convincingly argues that, while the disappearance of manufacturing jobs affected Rust Belt cities, their decline was not inevitable. Jason Hackworth provides a marvelous exposition of how this decline was largely produced by the rise of neoliberal policies emphasizing free markets while deliberately overlooking the region’s long history of racial disparities. -- Reynolds Farley, coauthor of
Detroit DividedTimely reading for troubled times...a sturdy exploration of a continuing problem. * Kirkus Reviews *
Throughout
Manufacturing Decline, he demonstrates how even the most well-meaning plans maintain the austerity structures that became prevalent in the last half-century. These have immediate and long-lasting effects on the black populations of Rust Belt cities. * Cleveland Review of Books *
In this well-researched, data-driven book, Jason Hackworth makes a persuasive case that the devastating demographic and fiscal declines that have turned once-thriving rust-belt cities into quasi-wastelands were not simply the result
of impersonal market forces or the supposedly spendthrift policies of left-wing mayors, but were the predictable, if not always intended, result of neoliberal nostrums such as ‘right-sizing.' * Survival *
When you put this book down, you leave with a powerful understanding of the forces and whose choices made the Rust Belt what it is today. * Metropole *
Manufacturing Decline is an invitation to a long overdue discussion, and I hope that urban sociologist, urban geographers,
scholars of race, students of American political development, and others show up. * American Journal of Sociology *
A valuable addition to the shrinking cities literature and should be required reading for anyone interested in the forces that contributed to, and continue to perpetuate, decline across the American Rust Belt. * Journal of Urban Affairs *
Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Organized Deprivation in the American Rust Belt
Part I. Othering the Deprived City1. Racial Threat and Urban Decline
2. Urban Decline as Conservative Bonding Capital
3. The Conservative Myth of Detroit
Part II. Depriving the Othered City4. Conservative City Limits
5. Land-Market Fundamentalism
6. Demolition as Urban Policy
7. Saving the City to Kill It
Conclusion: Urban Decline Was Planned
Notes
Bibliography
Index
