Table Of ContentVOICES OF
DECLINE
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VOICES OF
DECLINE
'T h P () t \ Fat cor L . s. Cit i e s
f' S V ell' ~
Second Edition
ROBERT A. BEAUREGARD
i~ ~~o~;!;n~fi;up
New York London
Published in 2003 by
Routledge
29 West 35th Street
New York, NY 10001
www.routledge-ny.eom
Published in Great Britain by
Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane
London EC4P 4EE
www.routledge.eo.uk
This edition published 2012 by Routledge:
Routledge Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group
711 Third Avenue 2 Park Square, Milton Park
New York, NY 10017 Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Copyright © 2003 by Taylor & Francis Books, Ine.
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beauregard, Robert A.
Voices of decline: the postwar fate of u.s. citiesIRobert A. Beauregard.
Rev.ed.
p.em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-93237-8-ISBN 0-415-9323B-6 (pbk.)
1. Cities and towns---United States. 2. Urban policy-United States. 3.
Metropolitan areas-United States. 4. Inner cities---United States. 5. United
States-Social conditions-1945-I. Title.
HT123.B332002
307.76'0973-dc21
2002069661
Contents
Preface ...... .......... . vii
Acknowledgments ... ..... . xiii
FRAMING THE DISCOURSE
1 Foundational Urban Debates ... ................ ........... ............ . 2
PRELUDE TO POSTWAR DECLINE
2 The Cities Wholesome and Good 27
3 Not Those of Decadence .................... .. .... ................... . 45
ESCALATING DOWNWARD
4 The Unhappy Process of Changing 77
5 On the Verge of Catastrophe ............... . . . 103
FROM ONE CRISIS TO THE NEXT
6 Every Problem a Racial Dimension ............. ...................... .... 127
7 Crisis of Our Cities ...... ........ 150
A DOUBLE REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
8 Rising from the Ashes ..... . . .. 181
9 Not Excessively Inconvenienced .210
READING THE DISCOURSE
10 Epilogue .238
Notes ....... . . . .. ........ .... 247
Index .......................... .... ............................. ...... 299
v
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Preface
I
grew up as the cities were dying. Trips to the movie theater and the
library, Saturday morning breakfasts with my mother at the coffee
shop downtown, meanderings through the sole department store
at Christmas time, and frequent visits to the factory where my father
worked just blocks from City Hall uncovered few signs, at least for
those youthful and untrained eyes, that our small city of the 1950s
would soon be less busy, less prosperous, and less attractive. Later, I
watched as an interstate highway transformed Providence and Paw
tucket; their commercial areas, once busy with shoppers, turned des
olate and shabby. More recently, I wandered through Detroit's
derelict landscape of downtown office buildings and observed outer
borough neighborhoods in New York City bypassed by the soaring
real estate values and personal wealth of Manhattan.
Mter World War II, the large industrial cities of the United States
entered a period of profound collapse. Factories closed and manufac
turing jobs disappeared. Local tax revenues plummeted and govern
ments faced bankruptcy. Slums and blight engulfed retail districts
and neighborhoods alike. For twenty-five years, conditions relent
lessly worsened and even the most optimistic of observers began to
lose hope that the cities would ever regain their former glory.
vii
viii Preface
In the worst of times, the cities continued to offer numerous
opportunities for people to prosper. Signs of vitality were visible and
have been throughout the postwar period. Particularly in the late
1980s and 1990s, such images became cliches: gleaming office tow
ers, festival marketplaces, gentrified neighborhoods, historically
restored train stations, waterfront marinas, and multipeaked skylines.
Nonetheless, the problems of the cities, like some ecological
Night of the Living Dead, always return to haunt us. Potholed streets
jolt our automobiles while boarded-up stores dampen our urge to
linger and consume. The homeless appear on residential sidewalks,
immigrants crowd into the house next door. Our suburban neighbors
deal drugs, a pornographic bookstore opens on Main Street. Escape
is only temporary, or a delusion.
The proclaimed decline of large cities framed the lives of those
who came of age in the United States in the last half of the twentieth
century. People who grew up in these cities confronted the difficul
ties of urban life on a daily basis: riding the subway, attending a con
cert in the park, walking to work, shopping at the neighborhood
supermarket. Even people who moved to the suburbs watched stories
of arson and crime on the nightly news and debated whether to shop
downtown during the holidays. On the way to their offices in the city,
they drove through physically devastated neighborhoods. No matter
where people were living and working-declining cities, prosperous
suburbs, booming Sunbelt communities, or sparsely populated
countrysides-their lives were touched by the spreading consequences
and anxieties of urban decline.
The postwar traumas of the large cities thereby traveled beyond
the actual sites of deterioration and neglect. By doing so, they exac
erbated the ambivalence toward cities that Americans have embraced
for over a century. In turn, postwar urban decline fused urban
ambivalence to widespread anxieties about racial relations, prosper
ity, national identity, upward mobility, and personal safety. The city
became the discursive site for society's contradictions, and anxiety
emerged as the discourse's dominant quality.
Since the late 1800s, the cities have enabled large numbers of peo
ple to live well-some to become quite wealthy-and have been the
Preface ix
sites of a national economy of global dimensions. They have nurtured
a vibrant popular culture and supported endless intellectual ferment.
At the same time, and for over one hundred years, cities have served as
the focal point of the nation's collective anxieties, the object around
which to debate injustice and inequalities, and the scapegoat for social
ills not of their making. Whether commerce was expanding or impov
erishment deepening, the cities have been viewed as places of decay,
moral turpitude, and social disorganization.
Not surprisingly, the obsession with decline has been fickle.
Gripped by a foreboding sense of crisis in the late 1960s, public
commentary turned optimistic in the late 1970s when evidence of
gentrification surfaced. It remained buoyant throughout the late
1980s and 1990s as a booming economy lured investors and house
holds to the cities. Few observers focused on the cities' problems.
Data from the national census of 2000 seemed to confirm the change
of fortunes. Population decline had ebbed (and reversed in some
cities), job growth was robust, and even those cities-Cleveland,
Detroit-that had been most devastated seemed, at least, to have
stabilized.
Why have Americans devalued their cities? Why do they view
them as problems rather than opportunities? The answer to these
questions lies in the wide-ranging and national debate concerning the
ills of the country's industrial cities, a debate that began in the late
nineteenth century. To present this discourse on urban decline, I
draw on the words of those who wrote and spoke publicly about cities
and did so mainly in mass-market magazines, national newspapers,
government reports, and various public forums. My goal is to capture
how urban decline was represented to a national audience.l Here is
where popular anxieties and aspirations were expressed for all to con
sider. This is the discourse as it was heard and read by people who
lived during those times.
Most scholarly writings on postwar urban decline have aimed to
capture its objective circumstances. Social scientists have analyzed
decline's causes and consequences, interviewed its victims, and
searched for explanations that might make sense of what happened.
Urban historians have drawn on the historical evidence to construct
