A Good Place to Do Business: The Politics of Downtown Renewal since 1945 (Urban Life, Landscape and Policy)

By: Roger Biles and Mark H. Rose

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Synopsis: The “Pittsburgh Renaissance,” an urban renewal effort launched in the late 1940s, transformed the smoky rust belt city’s downtown. Working-class residents and people of color saw their neighborhoods cleared and replaced with upscale, white residents and with large corporations housed in massive skyscrapers. Pittsburgh’s Renaissance’s apparent success quickly became a model for several struggling industrial cities, including St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia. In A Good Place to Do Business, Roger Biles and Mark Rose chronicle these urban “makeovers” which promised increased tourism and fashionable shopping as well as the development of sports stadiums, convention centers, downtown parks, and more. They examine the politics of these government-funded redevelopment programs and show how city politics (and policymakers) often dictated the level of success. As city officials and business elites determined to reorganize their downtowns, a deeply racialized politics sacrificed neighborhoods and the livelihoods of those pushed out. Yet, as A Good Place to Do Business demonstrates, more often than not, costly efforts to bring about the hoped-for improvements failed to revitalize those cities, or even their downtowns.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
Book Size:: 360 Pages
ISBN-13:: 9781439920831
Related ISBNs:: 9781439920817, 9781439920824
Publisher:: Temple University Press
Date of Addition:: 03/07/23
Copyrighted By:: Temple University
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: History, Nonfiction, Business and Finance, Social Studies, Sociology
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.