The Urban South: A Regional Framework

Abstract

A SHORT TEN-MINUTE DRIVE from downtown Atlanta and you are no longer in city; you are in South. There it is still possible, journalist Pat Watters wrote, a late spring evening ... to breathe air of a small-town America (not suburbia) of American past, suffused with coolness and blossom fragrance of trees and bushes, roses, honeysuckle, and wet smell of grass and weeds.' The aroma had barely subsided when historians began to draw a different portrait of urban South, demonstrating that, over past two centuries, urban Southerners were concerned about same issues and problems as residents in cities elsewhere and were as aggressively capitalistic in pursuing growth and prosperity. If urban South lagged behind urban North in population and production, lag was of time, not of quality. Southern cities, in short, were full-fledged members of urban nation, distinguished only by latitude and pace.2 Such historical studies-and complementary works of sociologists, geographers, and political scientists-had beneficial effect of lifting cotton curtain that had shrouded an important aspect of Southern regional development. The South could no longer be thought of simply as the plantation, planter, staple crop, and Negro, all set in a rural scene.3 The discovery of Southern city, moreover, had significance beyond academy. It provided a new perspective on an old region and portended well for its future. As