Atlanta is often cited as a prime example of a progressive New South metropolis in which blacks and whites have forged "a city too busy to hate." But Ronald Bayor argues that the city continues to bear the indelible mark of racial bias. Offering the first comprehensive history of Atlanta race relations, he discusses the impact of race on the physical and institutional development of the city from the end of the Civil War through the mayorship of Andrew Young in the 1980s. Bayor shows the extent of inequality, investigates the gap between rhetoric and reality, and presents a fresh analysis of the legacy of segregation and race relations for the American urban environment. Bayor explores frequently ignored public policy issues through the lens of race--including hospital care, highway placement and development, police and fire services, schools, and park use, as well as housing patterns and employment. He finds that racial concerns profoundly shaped Atlanta, as they did other American cities. Drawing on oral interviews and written records, Bayor traces how Atlanta's black leaders and their community have responded to the impact of race on local urban development. By bringing long-term urban development into a discussion of race, Bayor provides an element missing in usual analyses of cities and race relations.

A potent re-examination of America’s history of public disinvestment in mass transit. Many a scholar and policy analyst has lamented American dependence on cars and the corresponding lack of federal investment in public transportation throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century. But as Nicholas Dagen Bloom shows in The Great American Transit Disaster, our transit networks are so bad for a very simple reason: we wanted it this way. Focusing on Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and San Francisco, Bloom provides overwhelming evidence that transit disinvestment was a choice rather than destiny. He pinpoints three major factors that led to the decline of public transit in the United States: municipal austerity policies that denied most transit agencies the funding to sustain high-quality service; the encouragement of auto-centric planning; and white flight from dense city centers to far-flung suburbs. As Bloom makes clear, these local public policy decisions were not the product of a nefarious auto industry or any other grand conspiracy—all were widely supported by voters, who effectively shut out options for transit-friendly futures. With this book, Bloom seeks not only to dispel our accepted transit myths but hopefully to lay new tracks for today’s conversations about public transportation funding.

It is difficult to ignore the fact that, even as the United States becomes much more racially and ethnically diverse, our neighborhoods remain largely segregated. The 1968 Fair Housing Act and 1977 Community Reinvestment Act promised to end discrimination, yet for millions of Americans housing options remain far removed from the American Dream. Why do most neighborhoods in American cities continue to be racially divided? The problem, suggests Mara Sidney, lies with the policies themselves. She contends that to understand why discrimination persists, we need to understand the political challenges faced by advocacy groups who implement them. In Unfair Housing she offers a new explanation for the persistent color lines in our cities by showing how weak national policy has silenced and splintered grassroots activists. Sidney explains how political compromise among national lawmakers with divergent interests resulted in housing legislation that influenced how community activists defined discrimination, what actions they took, and which political relationships they cultivated. As a result, local governments became less likely to include housing discrimination on their agendas, existing laws went unenforced, and racial segregation continued. A former undercover investigator for a fair housing advocacy group, Sidney takes readers into the neighborhoods of Minneapolis and Denver to show how federal housing policy actually works. She examines how these laws played out in these cities and reveals how they eroded activists' capability to force more sweeping reform in housing policy. Sidney also shows how activist groups can cultivate community resources to overcome these difficulties, looking across levels of government to analyze how national policies interact with local politics. In the first book to apply policy design theories of Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram to an empirical case, Sidney illuminates overlooked impacts of fair housing and community reinvestment policies and extends their theories to the study of local politics and nonprofit organizations. Sidney argues forcefully that understanding the link between national policy and local groups sheds light on our failure to reduce discrimination and segregation. As battles over fair housing continue, her book helps us understand the shape of the battlefield and the prospects for victory.

A collection of thirteen essays--considered "classics" in the field of urban politics--from leading scholar Clarence Stone, with new essays by the editors and by Stone himself that contextualize the impact of his previous works and suggest new directions for researchers.

"Focuses on the fastest-growing immigrant populations among "second-tier" metropolitan areas. Examines the changes wrought by these new suburban settlement patterns and provides comparative analysis of immigration trends and local policy responses in these gateways. Case examples explore the challenges of newcomer integration, as well as immigration's impact on suburban infrastructure"--Provided by publisher.

Books recommended for undergraduate and college libraries listed by Library of Congress Classification Numbers.