Ideology and the Urban Crisis explores the philosophical underpinnings of the contemporary debate surrounding the urban crisis. It examines three major ideologies of American city politics by uncovering and analyzing the philosophical presuppositions of each as derived from the history of political thought. The book also explores writings influenced by the Marxist/radical paradigm, examines the revival of classical approaches to the city, and concludes by outlining the bases of a more adequate philosophy of urban politics. Ideology and the Urban Crisis is intended for teachers and scholars of urban politics interested in more effectively incorporating normative materials into their courses and research. Focusing on the literature of the past two decades, it argues that the ideologies of the urban crisis have had an immense impact on public policy and on the political process in general. The book classifies and explicates these materials, making them more accessible and providing a basis for their intelligent criticism.

Lynda Ann Ewen offers the first thoroughgoing Marxist-Leninist analysis, based on primary research, of the structure and dynamics of class relations and corporate power in a major U.S. metropolitan area. She contends that Detroit's urban crisis is not a temporary aberration in a good system run amuck, but the logical result of years of social planning and the use of human and natural resources for the benefit of the few. In general, analyses of the problems in American society have endorsed capitalist ideals and assumptions. Nevertheless, these analyses and the reform measures that have accompanied them in the past decade have done little to alleviate the plight of the cities. To determine what action should now be taken, Professor Ewen focuses on the development of class conflict in the United States and its manifestations in Detroit. The author analyzes kinship and also ownership and control of the major firms in Detroit. The contradictions that led to the urban crisis, she concludes, are inherent in the fundamental nature of a class society, in which the social means of production are privately owned by an elite group who must produce profits at all costs. She argues that to protect its interests and prepare the way for socialism, the working class requires a grasp of its historical and present opposition to the ruling class. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Over 40 years ago the historic Kerner Commission Report declared that America was undergoing an urban crisis whose effects were disproportionately felt by underclass populations. In America's Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-blind Politics, Curtis Ivery and Joshua Bassett explore the persistence of this crisis today, despite public beliefs that America has become a "post-racial" nation after the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Ivery and Bassett combine their own experience in the fields of civil rights and education with the knowledge of more than 20 experts in the field of urban studies to provide an accessible overview of the theories of the urban underclass and how they affect America's urban crisis. This engaging look into the still-present racial politics in America's cities adds significantly to the existing scholarship on the urban underclass by discussing the role of the prison-industrial complex in sustaining the urban crisis as well as the importance of the concept of multiracial democracy to the future of American politics and society. America's Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-blind Politics encourages the reader not only to be aware of persisting racial inequalities, but to actively engage in efforts to respond to them.