Communities Left Behind: The Area Redevelopment Administration, 1945-1965. By Gregory S. Wilson. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2009. xxii, 197 pp. $41.00, ISBN 978-1-57233-664-3.)

Abstract

In his examination of the Area Redevelopment Administration (ara), Gregory S. Wilson joins a growing list of those who critique America's post-World War II social and economic policies from the Left. Though it hoped to eliminate “pockets of poverty,” the ara, Wilson argues, illustrates how liberal reform in the United States has proved inadequate in its attempts to solve capitalism's inequities. Rooted in Cold War liberalism, which failed to recognize structural problems in the nation, the ara adopted a Keynesian approach in leveraging private investment to create jobs and stimulate economic growth at the local level. This, reformers believed, would raise “depressed areas” out of poverty. Although the ara focused on public works, such as water and sewage systems, parks, and public buildings, Wilson correctly concludes that it never addressed the issues that precipitated chronic poverty and unemployment in places such as Indian reservations and central Appalachia. Rather, ara policies actually limited national collective action by furthering the perception that “other” places existed “within an otherwise prosperous, beneficent political economy” (p. 150).