Decatur Day and the History of Serial Displacement in an Atlanta Suburb

September 6, 2023.Reading time 38 minutes.

By David S. Rotenstein “Decatur Day is part of history. It’s a part of Black history. It’s a part of the Black culture,” Chevelle Eberhart-Lee told me in a recent interview. “And if this day discontinues, it’s like erasing a part of history.” Eberhart-Lee’s family has been in Decatur for more than a century. Her […]

Shifting a Timeline—A Review of “The Misunderstood History of Gentrification”

March 7, 2022.Reading time 7 minutes.

Gale, Dennis. The Misunderstood History of Gentrification: People, Planning, Preservation, Urban Renewal, 1915-2020. Temple University Press, 2021. Reviewed by David J. Goodwin Gentrification entered the scholarly discourse on cities in 1964 with London: Aspects of Change, Ruth Glass’s study regarding the influx of middle-income residents moving into historically working-class London neighborhoods and the gradual transformation […]

Is This Placemaking Success Transferable? A Review of “Learning from Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Towns, and Public Spaces”

September 9, 2021.Reading time 10 minutes.

Manshel, Andrew W. Learning From Bryant Park: Revitalizing Cities, Towns, and Public Spaces. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020. Reviewed by Katie Uva On an August night in 1993, I was five years old and sitting in Bryant Park on a blanket on a lush bed of grass with my parents, their friends, and […]

Member of the Week: Mario Hernandez

June 24, 2021.Reading time 9 minutes.

Mario Hernandez Assistant Professor, Social and Historical Department Mills College @mario22h Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? My research focuses on relationship between race and gentrification. My current book project, Bushwick’s Bohemia: Art and Revitalization in Gentrifying Brooklyn, will be published by Routledge Press in the spring of 2022. The book […]

Displaced by Tourists — A Review of “Gentrification Down the Shore”

May 19, 2021.Reading time 7 minutes.

Makris, Mary Vollman and Mary Gatta. Gentrification Down the Shore. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020. Reviewed by David J. Goodwin During the virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy stood in front of Asbury Park Convention Hall and pledged the state’s delegates to then-presidential candidate Joe Biden. Just an hour from […]

Neglected Gems: Soft City

June 23, 2020.Reading time 4 minutes.

By Richard Harris Raban, Jonathan. Soft City. New York: E.P.Dutton, 1974. Let me fess up: I’m cheating. Apart from the fact that this was written half a century ago, Soft City isn’t a neglected item of urban historical writing. It was one of the two books that made me into a student of cities. The other […]

The “Ghetto” for Good and for Ill: A Review of Lance Freeman’s A Haven and a Hell

April 30, 2020.Reading time 7 minutes.

By Kevin McGruder Lance Freeman, A Haven and a Hell: The Ghetto in Black America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019). At the beginning of Langston Hughes’ Black Misery, a small volume featuring brief observations of black life accompanied by illustrations, a young black boy looks out at the reader with a melancholy gaze while […]

Book Review: Boston on Sam Stein’s Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State

March 9, 2020.Reading time 8 minutes.

Samuel Stein. Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State. Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2019. By Amanda Boston The process of exclusionary development we know as “gentrification”—and the working-class communities and cultures it displaces—has preoccupied urban residents and other stakeholders for decades. Scholars have explored transformation of the process from a scattered residential phenomenon into a […]

The Metropole Bookshelf: David Goodwin on Artists and Urbanity in the Garden State in his recent work, Left Bank of the Hudson: Jersey City and the Artists of 111 1st Street

February 27, 2020.Reading time 11 minutes.

The Metropole Bookshelf is an opportunity for authors of forthcoming or recently published books to let the UHA community know about their new work in the field. Goodwin, David. Left Bank of the Hudson: Jersey City and the Artists of 111 1st Street. New York: Empire State Publishing, 2017. By David Goodwin Jersey City, New […]

Member of the Week: Mike Amezcua

January 21, 2020.Reading time 8 minutes.

Mike Amezcua Assistant Professor of History and Urban Studies New York University https://www.razalandscapes.com/ Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I am in the process of completing my first book manuscript which centers on the making of Mexican Chicago and its distinct neighborhoods from postwar urban renewal to the era of gentrification. […]