Urban Crisis Research Articles

A Lutta Continua: Black Catholic Activism in Detroit, Michigan in the 1970s

A Lutta Continua: Black Catholic Activism in Detroit, Michigan in the 1970s Nancy M. Davis I n the annals of Catholic history in America, the story of black Catholics in Detroit, Michigan might appear to be insignificant particularly when compared to the extensive histories of Catholic populations in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, throughout Maryland and Louisiana. Even as the study of AfricanAmerican Catholics has unfolded since 1990 when Father Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., published his extensive national history, Detroit is usually located miles off the radar screen as these studies typically center on Baltimore, Maryland, New Orleans, and even New York City with its sizeable population of black Catholics from the Caribbean. And yet, if one is to examine Catholic history and American race relations , the struggle of black Catholics in Detroit takes on enormous importance. Though Detroit maintained for much of its history a Protestant leadership, as historian Thomas Sugrue points out, Detroit was dominated through the 1970s by a “‘blue-collar workforce’ that was predominantly Catholic.”1 In fact, as noted by Catholic historians Leslie Tentler and John McGreevy, most northern American cities through the 1950s were heavily populated by Catholics and, according to Detroit’s Archbishop John F. Dearden, “the Negro-White confrontation in American cities. . .” was “. . . in great part a Negro-Catholic confrontation. . . .”2 And therefore , the experience of black Catholics in Detroit, a city which ranked fifth in size in 1960, is important to the larger story of twentieth century race relations and the Catholic church. 15 1. Thomas J. Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 552. 2. John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Urban North (Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, 1996, 212; Leslie Tentler, Seasons of Grace: A History of the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990); John F. Dearden, “Challenge to Change in the Urban Church” (speech, National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice, Kansas City, Missouri, 1967). Of equal historic significance, Detroit has been the hub for much of the second half of the twentieth century of a militant form of Black nationalism that helped to guide and shape the city’s political and social culture. Its NAACP branch at mid-century managed to bridge Detroit’s black middle and working-class leadership and, during this period, was either the largest or the largest fundraising branch. In later decades, Detroit spawned numerous other moderate to radical black organizations that included the Trade Union Leadership Council and the League of Black Revolutionary workers, the latter serving as the umbrella organization for many small, heavily politicized African-American union groups. This proclivity to protest, which was also found among segments of the city’s black Catholics, further renders the black Catholic experience in Detroit of perhaps greater importance than its numbers , and thus this article argues that Detroit should be among the primary places in urban America where racial confrontation in the twentieth-century Roman Catholic Church is examined. To examine such relations, this article will chronicle black Catholic activism in the late 1960s through the 1980s with the aim of contextualizing militancy and protest in the larger story of church relations and post-World War II black Detroit. It will paint a picture of what militancy among black Catholics looked like during this period and chronicle two protest organizations (Black Catholics in Action [1968-1971] and the Detroit and Michigan Black Lay Catholic Caucuses [1970-1974, 1971-79]), as well as the Office of the Black Secretariat, which was an outgrowth of this protest and carried the mantle for black Catholic concerns through the 1970s. This article takes the position that all of these organizations and events are historically significant and particularly when studied together Detroit must become central to the study of race and the Catholic Church in the urban north and, in particular, the role played by the laity in such protest. And though two of the organizations chronicled were short-lived, this article aims to demonstrate that their influence in many cases extended well beyond their years and offers as evidence of the former, the impact that...

Good Cooperative Governance as a Tool to withstand Urban Coop Bank Crisis - A Case Study of Rajkot Nagarik Coop Bank, India

Prologue: Indian economy is substantially supported by cooperative sector through 500,000 cooperatives, 230 million members, assets worth INR 1.5 billion and presence in every sector of economy. 20th century remained milestone for credit and banking cooperative in Gujarat state. At beginning of new millennium, 350 Urban Co-operative Banks (UCBs) held around 18 per cent (INR 170000 million) of the total bank deposits in Gujarat and advanced 6 per cent of the loans. Due to a major UCB scam, the year 2001 was turning point and misfortune for state cooperative banking that has eroded image of the sector. The deposit, depositors, loan and borrowers of UCBs in the state dropped substantially in subsequent years. 35 UCBs became virtually insolvent and vanished, 60 were declared weak by the Central Bank and 187 were threatened & vulnerable. Rajkot Nagarik Sahkari Bank (RNSB), a mid-sized cooperative bank with 220,000 members had deposit of INR 6000 million and loan base of INR 4000 million. It faced competition from private and foreign banks; reform process had snatched protection to the cooperative sector. In faint milieu and backdrop of lost faith on cooperative banking, during 2001-2007 RNSB maintained its growth on all major indicators. The research paper investigates reasons of growth under adverse conditions and test whether RNSB has maintained cooperative principles and value at the center? A cooperative bank is cooperative first and then bank. Cooperative Bank needs to remain profitable within cooperative framework. It has to carefully blend business expediency and cooperative values. Cooperative governance implies rules, tools and the concrete procedures through which cooperatives are managed. The governance must be consistent with the values, principles and the mission of credit cooperative, in order to allow for their correct implementation. RNSB management claims its aim to provide a WORLD-CLASS Banking facility to the local common people at economical rate & achieve healthy growth. Bank claims commitment to the highest level of ethical standards, professional integrity & regulatory compliances while philosophy of bank is based on three core values - Operational Excellence, Customer Focus and Upliftment through Co-Operation. This research paper critically analyzes success of a cooperative bank in institutional perspective. Objective: 1. To study and analyze critical financial & cooperative indicators of UCBs in Gujarat vis-?-vis RNSB 2. To investigate reasons of growth for RNSB 3. To scrutinize governance of RNSB in light of Cooperative Principles & Values 4. To study whether Good Cooperative Governance is Good Business Practice Research Methodology: The research paper will review secondary data in form policy documents, annual reports, compilation of financial data of UCBs and available research papers. It will also collect & analyze primary data to draw conclusion using appropriate research tools. Recommendation: The suggestions may be useful to cooperatives in general and cooperative banking in special - how inbuilt institutional character of a cooperative can be used efficiently and effectively in competitive business environment, which help in withstanding environmental crisis. How sound business practices can be designed and implemented without compromising cooperative principles and values?

Beijing: from imperial capital to Olympic city

The Emergence of as an Imperial Capital The Forbidden City and the Qing Emperors Daily Life in the Inner and Outer Cities The City Besieged and the Last Emperors Old Beijing and Republican China Mao's Capital and Socialist Transformation Economic Reform and Cultural Fever Boom, Urban Crisis, and the Olympic City Conclusion: Preserving the Past: The City as Museum and Showcase

Modelo para armar: Buenos Aires, da crise ao boom

In a short time Buenos Aires pass by from a social, political and urban crisis which seemed terminal, to a new touristic and economic boom, which has caused a rebirth from ashes of the most selfcomplacent representations of the city. The article tries to explain that this transition from crisis to boom didn't mean an overcoming of the crisis but, on the contrary, the crystallization of the social fracture caused for the crisis itself. It tries to show how the main urban aspects which distinguish the boom represent a direct continuation of the urban process of the decade of 1990, responsible of the crisis of 2001. And it tries to explain the role - in this cycle of crisis and boom - of ten years of progressive government in Buenos Aires.

Which Urban Crisis?

During the 1960s and 1970s, Congress and policymakers engaged in a heated debate over the proper role of the federal government in urban America enacted several initiatives to deal with the problems facing older cities, including creating the Department of Housing and Urban Development. However, throughout these years, federal officials, members of Congress, and other interested parties remained divided over the extent and nature of the “urban crisis.” During the early 1960s, much of the debate about urban areas focused on the problems of “metropolitan growth,” but in late 1960s, urban problems became increasingly identified with issues of racial conflict. By the early 1970s, policymakers had concluded that federal programs had generally failed to improve the state of urban America, and they oversaw a devolution of power back to local governments.

The Privatized City

This article discusses the founding of the Manhattan Institute as part of a wider mobilization of conservative ideology and activism in 1970s New York. Important to the success of this mobilization was the concerted effort to reframe the “urban crisis” as a problem of values and culture and to construct a narrative of moral decline—and ultimately of conservative redemption—based in liberal New York.

Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America by David M. P. Freund

Book Reviews 155 David M. P. Freund. Colored Property: State Policy andWhite Racial Politics in Suburban America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. 496. Bibliography. Drawings. Index. Maps. Notes. Photographs. Cloth, $35.00. Charging a title with references to the histories of race and wealth will raise the expectations of any reader. David Freund does not avoid the critical appraisal of his audience. Colored Property addresses one of the most important topics of recent American history?the political and economic facets of race relations during the past sixty years. His concern is the analysis of the political rhetoric of color blindness and how it differed from the racialist vocabulary of biological superiority that shaped the early decades of the twentieth century. Freund constructs his premise in two sections. The first offers a discussion of the ways federal policies redefined millions of local and state housing markets. The second part of the analysis moves into an examination of these forces in the metropolitan region of Detroit, Michigan. With evidence drawn from a variety of disciplines, Freund raises the standard for urban studies in the twenty-first century. His command of the secondary literature that is relevant to the reinterpretation of the relationship between white Americans' ideas about property and their changing notions about race adds depth to the range of his primary sources. When he writes, "whites' ideas about race and their preoccupation with property were relational and mutually constitutive" (p. 38), Freund refines decades of scholarship that emphasized the primacy of one set of causes over the other. This attempt to disambiguate the meanings of racial thinking within the economic policies of home ownership yields an additional reward. Colored Property closes with a cautionary note about the assumptions of a color-blind housing market powered by individual homeowners' decisions in the absence of governmental and institutional forces. The successful balance among the individual decisions, racial bias, and economic policy that Freund achieves embodies the ideals of historical analysis. Thomas Sugrue's discussion of the urban crisis focused on Detroit but also illustrated a national history. Freund offers a provocative national political history and grounds it with a detailed examination of the rhetoric of home ownership in Detroit's suburbs. A significant limitation of the work is the marginal place of African American voices in this process. However, given the foundation Freund provides, a scholar could certainly develop another study to fill this void. Colored Property is crucial reading for historians and educators studying the recent past of the metropolitan Midwest. It is 156 Michigan Historical Review also an invaluable work for researchers interested the expansion of American suburbs in the twentieth century. Walter D. Greason Department of History Ursinus College Alan D. Gaff. Bayonets in theWilderness: Anthony Wayne's Legion in the Old Northwest. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. Pp. 419. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth, $39.95. Given the awesome might of the armed forces that won the Civil War and both World Wars, it is easy to forget that the United States Army was once a humble, ragtag force hindered by a great many obstacles: a lack of resources, recruiting difficulties, American hostility to standing armies, and nearly constant pressure from both unfriendly Natives and European interlopers. In an elegantly written and eminendy readable book, Alan D. Gaff successfully documents this chapter inAmerican military history. On November 4, 1791, American military power ebbed to its lowest point when a confederacy of northwestern Indians defeated General Arthur St. Clair in the Battle of Wabash River. President George Washington had to pick up the pieces from this disastrous defeat and rebuild. Gaff traces this process, from the painstaking choice of a new commander, through the recruitment and training of new troops, and finally to the ultimate victory of the U.S. Army over the northwestern confederacy. It is a compelling drama full of intrigue, political maneuvering, desperation, and chicanery. Besides serving as a tighdy constructed history of the early years of the American army, Gaffs book doubles as a biography of Anthony Wayne, best known by the moniker "Mad Anthony." The nickname was used byWayne's men as a term of affection, but over the centuries it has...

‘¿Le gusta este jardín?’: El conflicto por el Casino de la Selva

<p>El conflicto por le Casino de la Selva publicitó la crisis urbana de Cuernavaca, Morelos; fue un conflicto violento y negociado entre actores privados con regímenes de valor (económicos, morales y culturales) en tensión polémica, actuando con, para y contra las instituciones públicas (del municipio, el estado y la federación), tanto en los campos artísticos como en el ambiental. Este ensayo interpreta este conflicto, en el contexto de las fricciones locales, regionales y globales en su trayectoria histórica, en los procesos de urbanización de Cuernavaca.</p>

La discrimination positive territoriale : de la dérogation à l’institutionnalisation

The law of March 3 1 st, 2006 for the equality of opportunity aims at answering the urban crisis of the autumn 2005. Since the policy of the city, as a way of territorial positive discrimination, seems to know an alteration : the legislation on the city (social cohesion) seems overdtermined by a legislation in the direction of persons living in the «sensitive (perceptible) urban zones» (equality of opportunity). The obstinacy of a discriminatory socioeconomic situation makes visible identification between territory and population : the republican principle of blindness originally feeds a process of institutionalization of «ethno-racial » management. The confusion between equality (legal concept) and identity (biological concept) is skillfully maintained by the notion of «variety» and the sensitive debate on the «ethnic statistiques».

The Spirit of Environmental Justice: Resurrection Hope in Urban America

AbstractUsing the resources of prophetic religion, and with special reference to the blighted city of Chester, Pennsylvania, I argue that lack of access to affordable, nutritious food is an environmental justice problem embedded within a host of other social and economic problems. A holistic analysis of the dysfunctional web that ties together seemingly disparate social pathologies can make sense of, and provide solutions for, the eco-crisis, including the food crisis, in urban communities today. I offer a case study of a grocery co-op in Chester as a successful experiment in sustainable food justice and participatory democracy that directly confronts the urban crisis, including the rising incidence of obesity and diabetes in under-resourced communities. By avoiding a carbon-intensive food regime, the Co-op is a living parable of how local food choices can undergird the health of consumers along with the bio-systems that support this and future generations of humans, animals, and plants. I conclude that the powers of resurrection hope and biblical justice are compelling resources for combatting the mean-spirited politics of greed and power that drive the downward cycle of American cities today.

ARANYA TOWNSHIP, INDORE: INDIA-AN EXPERIMENT ON SUSTAINABLE HUMAN HABITAT

Urbanization in India and south Asia has generated one of the horrifying pictures of poverty in the form of Slum. It has been a very difficult task of dealing with this settlement form which has been the part of many of the growing urban centres of the country with almost 47% population of cities as slums. Aranya project represent a new paradigm in urban planning to resolve the growing issue and discuss one of the critical aspect of urban design and town planning approach with the economically weaker section of the urban population. What makes it special is – the idea of ‘Planning and Urban Design framework of the settlement where people build themselves’. The framework was evolved through understanding the needs of the people. An attempt was made to address the issues of identity and sense of community which is often missing in conventional projects. The site and services approach to planning and design for the 65,000 population in the Indore city is a new philosophy for handling the urban crisis of slum settlements. The project is the synthesis of the cultural, social and economic needs of the slum population and the more mundane aspect of cost effective site and services, creating one of the richest fabric for ideal habitation of the poor people. The concept for the project is defined by the broad goals of a good habitat – vitality, imageability, equity, efficiency, flexibility and feasibility. The Aranya project demonstrates the vital aspects of urban design in its design of appropriate typology, hierarchy of streets and open space, housing cluster with human scale, flexibility in addition and growth of built form and an efficient sites and services layout integrated with the architecture of the township. The indigenous character of built form provides a setting for the continuation of fundamental values of society. As per the traditional Indian towns, the level of publicness and the degree of privacy is maintained through a spatial order. The clarity of spatial hierarchy enhances the imageability of the settlement. This was arrived at through a rigorous research of the Indian traditional settlement forms. The Aranya plan uses these universal principles of hierarchy in urban design by creating the centre with public amenities and major urban space moving outwards with series of streets and clusters of houses in hierarchy creating more private residential public realms. The street is also seen as an urban space with human activities and multiplicity. The emphasis on developing a cost efficient layout for services has brought down the cost of the project significantly and hence an important ingredient of the design of the settlement. Aranya has become the model not only in the professional and the academic world, but also with administration and the implementing agencies. It has been the case study for many of the similar projects. The project has looked at the implementation process as a vital aspect in such a project for the poor. It defines construction of the minimum, so as to allow people to add and develop the house as per their requirements and affordability in the future. This inbuilt into the project, the aspect of sense of belonging and identity, which is a strong social issue for the habitation of the poor. The efficient site planning, a fresh approach to infrastructure and using the strong traditional urban design principles of the country with a hope to provide the most ideal environment for living to the poor has produced the example of great urban design in the context of rapid urbanization. It has not only been accepted by the people but been a case study for further research in the field. Keywords: Low-cost housing, Innovative sites and services projects, land-use efficiency, affordability, socio-cultural responsive architecture, innovative infrastructure.

What drives health care expenditure?—Baumol's model of ‘unbalanced growth’ revisited

The share of health care expenditure in GDP rises rapidly in virtually all OECD countries, causing increasing concern among politicians and the general public. Yet, economists have to date failed to reach an agreement on what the main determinants of this development are. This paper revisits Baumol's [Baumol, W.J., 1967. Macroeconomics of unbalanced growth: the anatomy of urban crisis. American Economic Review 57 (3), 415–426] model of ‘unbalanced growth’, showing that the latter offers a ready explanation for the observed inexorable rise in health care expenditure. The main implication of Baumol's model in this context is that health care expenditure is driven by wage increases in excess of productivity growth. This hypothesis is tested empirically using data from a panel of 19 OECD countries. Our tests yield robust evidence in favor of Baumol's theory.

Collaborative Partnerships for Urban Development: A Study of the Vancouver Agreement

Collaborative partnerships—featuring intergovernmental and/or public–private sector cooperation—have been identified as a leading organisational expression of the ‘new urban governance’. The paper examines the Vancouver Agreement—an urban development compact between the governments of Canada, British Columbia, and the City of Vancouver. Signed in March 2000 for a five-year term, and renewed in April 2005, the Vancouver Agreement has been widely acclaimed as an example of successful collaborative working, addressed to the revitalisation of the city's Downtown Eastside. The origins of the agreement are explained in the context of an urban crisis in the Downtown Eastside, where established policies were seen to be failing. High-level political support for a new governance approach led to the adoption of an urban development partnership, and the paper sets out its structure and strategic programmes of action. Benchmarked against conditions for effective intergovernmental working posited in the public administration literature, the paper then analyses five procedural attributes of the partnership: resource sharing, leadership, community involvement, mutual learning, and horizontal accountability. Concluding observations are offered on the long-term prospects for the Vancouver Agreement.

The heart of the city:

ABSTRACT In international debates about post-colonial writing, Zambian literature is largely invisible – overshadowed (as Zambia is in several other regards) by the powerful regional pull of neighbouring South Africa. Moreover, those critics who have written about Zambian texts from the national and regional perspective have tended to represent them as all-too-often aesthetically wanting (i.e. subordinated to journalistic discourses) and almost entirely consumed by the debate about the relative merits of ‘modernity’ versus ‘tradition’, usually imagined as the cultural contrast between the city and the country. This article seeks to bypass those trends. Its focus is a recent collection of short fictions edited by Zambian women, which takes both the complexity and the urban inflections of contemporary Zambian identities for granted. The stories’ combination of elements of women's romance narrative with the concept of African urban crisis produces the notion of a certain kind of slipperiness as a key component of both Zambian city life and the emergent national imaginary.

The rise of service employment and its impact on aggregate productivity growth

This paper investigates how the employment shift from manufacturing toward service sectors affects the rate of economic growth when services play their role both in intermediate and in final demand. Our model includes as a special case both Baumol’s [Baumol, W.J., 1967. Macroeconomics of unbalanced growth: the anatomy of urban crisis. American Economic Review 57 (3), 415–426] model, in which services are produced only for final consumption, and Oulton’s [Oulton, N., 2001. Must the growth rate decline? Baumol’s unbalanced growth revisited. Oxford Economic Papers 53 (4), 605–627] model, in which services are entirely devoted to intermediate demand. We show that, given that the growth rate of productivity in the service sector is lower than that in the manufacturing sector, both the employment share in manufacturing and the rate of economic growth will decline in the long run irrespective of the size of the elasticity of substitution between labor and service input.

City Versus State in Zimbabwe: Colonial Antecedents of the Current Crisis

There is currently a major urban crisis in Zimbabwe. This expresses itself in failures of provision of water, electricity, medicines, transport, housing etc. Descriptions of conditions in the high density townships of Harare and Bulawayo today are strikingly reminiscent of the last great urban crisis – in the late 1940s of colonial Rhodesia. Two other features are common to both crises. One is the problem of governance. The other is the relation between the city and the state. In both periods there was a great debate about what consituted urban ‘citizenship’, with the great majority of African residents in the cities believing themselves to be unrepresented by illegimitate institutions of local government. In both periods, too, there was deep tension between the city and the state. In the Rhodesian as well as in the Zimbabwean period there was debate between the two over who was responsible for the urban crisis and over who should take what steps to resolve it. To many Zimbabweans the present crisis, and the contemporary clashes between the government and the cities, seem unprecedented. This article seeks to explore its colonial antecedents.

The Tokugawa Bureaucracy and Urban Crises: A Revival of the Humanist Traditions of China and Japan in Ogyu Sorai's Political Writings

AbstractOgyu Sorai (1666–1728) is a Japanese Confucian scholar who formulated his political philosophy, honoring the benevolent Way of the ancient Chinese Sages. It was his firm conviction that the task of government is to bring peace to the people. This humanistic concern was indeed central to classical Confucianism before the rise of a bureaucratic empire like the Qin (221–206 bce). How then is it possible to account for this lofty idealization of early Chinese Confucianism and its relevance to Tokugawa Japan (1600–1868)? This paper explores how Sorai's pursuit of Chinese antiquity was pitted against Tokvgawa bureaucratic control in the Edo metropolis and how he celebrated the centrality of great human beings to the promotion of popular welfare. In this view, the institution of soceity rests ultimately on political personalities who govern the land virtuously, and not on enforcement of order by punishments. It is worth noting, however, that Sorai did not articulate this humanist position merely as a Sinologist. In his mind, the Confucian values of humane rulership and interpersonal and social ethics were conflated with the samurai ideals prior to the establishment of the centralized Tokugawa power structure. He was well acquainted with the mental prowess of Japan's military lords and with their commitment to the primacy of human potentialities in both the military and civil arts. Theoretically, the ideal drawn from the way of antiquity is decentralized rule, as samurai rulers were originally lords of their fiefs. The construction of a human order in autonomous regions is what Sorai considered to be essential to realizing a society where the people can enjoy peace and tranquility.

Introduction

This article introduces a special issue on the history of public housing in the Americas, with contributions on the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and Argentina. It briefly surveys the state of public housing in the Americas and the contrasts and parallels between countries as well as between developed and developing regions; it stresses the political and social importance of state housing provision during the urban crises of the twentieth century; and it broadly charts the historiographical trends. In introducing the various articles that deal with the history of public housing and public housing tenants in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Buenos Aires, Puerto Rico, and Barbados, the article highlights the shift away from narrow policy histories to interpretations set in broader political, economic, social, and transnational contexts that use diverse primary sources such as oral testimony. It also highlights the crucial role played by historical actors such as public housing tenants themselves and the media.

Guns, Slums, and “Yellow Devils”: A Genealogy of Urban Conflicts in Karachi, Pakistan

Karachi is a city of migrants and an important commercial hub, which provides Pakistan with a window on the world. But Karachi is also a deeply fragmented city, plagued by an acute urban crisis that takes roots in the failure of the development plans that successive Pakistani governments have delegated to foreign experts. The transnationalisation of the Afghan jihad, in the 1980s, also fuelled social and ethnic antagonisms in the city and contributed to the proliferation of violent entrepreneurs and ethnic parties. Both criminal elements and ethnic activists contributed to the ever-increasing fragmentation of urban space in the city, and to the multiplication of ethnic enclaves controlled by private militias. This extreme fragmentation of the city has benefited local jihadis and foreign terrorists who have taken shelter here since the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. However, Karachi will never be a “sanctuary” for jihadi militants, due to the hostility of local ethnic parties, whose activists see themselves as enlightened secularists at war with the most retrograde elements of their society and their foreign allies.

“There is tragedy on both sides of the layoffs:” Privatization and the Urban Crisis in Baltimore

AbstractBy the 1960s, the urban crisis in the United States was well underway. Structural trans-formations in the postwar economy and accelerating deindustrialization contributed to high rates of unemployment in many cities in the nation's old industrial core. During the 1970s and 1980s, the urban crisis worsened. This article argues that the macroeconomic policies of Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan fueled urban decline. Responding to the waning hegemony of the United States in the global economy as well as to a domestic corporate crisis of profitability, the presidents pursued macroeconomic agendas that prioritized the revitalization of American economic dominance. Macroeconomic policy decisions in combination with white-backlash pressures constrained the range of urban policies the presidents could pursue and often compelled privatization. The federal-level decisionmaking had devastating consequences in Baltimore, Maryland, the city discussed in this article. The macroeconomic and urban policies had racialized and gendered outcomes that plunged the city into the most acute phase of the urban crisis.