Once a thriving metropolis on the banks of the Mississippi, St. Louis, Missouri, is now a ghostly landscape of vacant houses, boarded-up storefronts, and abandoned factories. The Gateway City is, by any measure, one of the most depopulated, deindustrialized, and deeply segregated examples of American urban decay. "Not a typical city," as one observer noted in the late 1970s, "but, like a Eugene O'Neill play, it shows a general condition in a stark and dramatic form." Mapping Decline examines the causes and consequences of St. Louis's urban crisis. It traces the complicity of private real estate restrictions, local planning and zoning, and federal housing policies in the "white flight" of people and wealth from the central city. And it traces the inadequacy—and often sheer folly—of a generation of urban renewal, in which even programs and resources aimed at eradicating blight in the city ended up encouraging flight to the suburbs. The urban crisis, as this study of St. Louis makes clear, is not just a consequence of economic and demographic change; it is also the most profound political failure of our recent history. Mapping Decline is the first history of a modern American city to combine extensive local archival research with the latest geographic information system (GIS) digital mapping techniques. More than 75 full-color maps—rendered from census data, archival sources, case law, and local planning and property records—illustrate, in often stark and dramatic ways, the still-unfolding political history of our neglected cities.

During the past two decades, most large American cities have lost population, yet some have continued to grow. Does this trend foreshadow the 'death' of our largest cities? Or is urban decline a temporary phenomenon likely to be reversed by high energy costs?

Shrinking Cities: Understanding Shrinkage and Decline in the United States offers a contemporary look at patterns of shrinkage and decline in the United States. The book juxtaposes the complex and numerous processes that contribute to these patterns with broader policy frameworks that have been under consideration to address shrinkage in U.S. cities. A range of methods are employed to answer theoretically-grounded questions about patterns of shrinkage and decline, the relationships between the two, and the empirical associations among shrinkage, decline, and several socio-economic variables. In doing so, the book examines new spaces of shrinkage in the United States. The book also explores pro-growth and decline-centered governance, which has important implications for questions of sustainability and resilience in U.S. cities. Finally, the book draws attention to U.S.-wide demographic shifts and argues for further research on socio-economic pathways of various groups of population, contextualized within population trends at various geographic scales. This timely contribution contends that an understanding of what the city has become, as it faces shrinkage, is essential toward a critical analysis of development both within and beyond city boundaries. The book will appeal to urban and regional studies scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, as well as practitioners and policymakers.

During the Middle Ages, southwest Germany was one of the most prosperous areas of central Europe, but the Thirty Years' War brought devastating social and economic dislocation to the region. Focusing on the town of Schw bisch Hall, Terence McIntosh explor

In the twentieth century, urban growth was one of the most powerful catalysts of geographical, social and demographic change in the Western world. When this book was first published in 1989, however, a massive process of counter-urbanization was underway, which saw the loss of population and jobs in cities and a pronounced urban to rural shift. This book analyses the causes and consequences of urban decline in Britain and the developed world during this period and beyond, and assesses the implications for urban planning and policy. David Clark’s relevant and comprehensive title will be of value to students with a particular interest in urban geography and development.

Bringing to the fore a wealth of original research, A Detroit Story examines how the informal reclamation of abandoned property has been shaping Detroit for decades. Claire Herbert lived in the city for almost five years to get a ground-view sense of how this process molds urban areas. She participated in community meetings and tax foreclosure protests, interviewed various groups, followed scrappers through abandoned buildings, and visited squatted houses and gardens. Herbert found that new residents with more privilege often have their back-to-the-earth practices formalized by local policies, whereas longtime, more disempowered residents, usually representing communities of color, have their practices labeled as illegal and illegitimate. She teases out how these divergent treatments reproduce long-standing inequalities in race, class, and property ownership.

Despite local folklore, Chicago is not always a city that works. No longer the "Hog Butcher for the World," the Windy City has, in recent decades, pursued economic growth at all costs--to the detriment of many of its citizens. This book describes the social, economic, and political costs of the growth ideology and examines the populist response that promises an alternative Chicago. Tracing the city's uneven economic development since World War II, the authors demonstrate how unchecked growth in favor of private enterprise has resulted in severe poverty, unemployment, crime, reduced tax revenues and property values, a decline in municipal services, and racial, ethnic, and class divisiveness. And yet proponents of Daley-style machine politics and the notion of the city as a growth machine still assert that the future of the city depends exclusively on its ability to grow. The victory of Harold Washington is the most visible symbol of the movement toward an alternative Chicago. Naming different priorities and using more participatory tactics, this challenge to the politics of growth promotes development that is responsive to social need, not just market signals. Author note: Gregory D. Squires is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Larry Bennett is Associate Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at DePaul University. Kathleen McCourt is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Loyola University of Chicago. Philip Nyden is Associate Professor of Sociology at Loyola University of Chicago.