MICHAEL B. KATZ. Why Don't American Cities Burn?

Abstract

As a collection of thoughtful essays about the nature of the American modern city and especially the persistent pattern of concentrated poverty there, this book serves as a useful synthesis for recent policy debate. Going well beyond the topic suggested in his title, Michael B. Katz assesses, among other things, the nature of black inequality and the shift to market-based solutions to urban problems, as well as the reasons why cities have seldom since encountered the widespread civil disturbances that broke out across the United States in the 1960s. Cities no longer burn, but not because their problems have been solved. Rather, Katz argues, the selective incorporation of minorities into local power structures as part of what he calls the management of marginalization as well as draconian measures of social control have dampened collective dissent. Unlike France, which recently witnessed upheavals in suburban ghettos where immigrants without hope are concentrated, the United States has been largely successful in keeping the peace without materially altering place-based disparities in income.