Book Review: Race, Politics, and Community Development in U.S. Cities (original) (raw)

2006, Urban Affairs Review

The final chapter of the book helps urbanists make sense of post-1960s commercial downtowns in the United States, in particular their urban malls, festival marketplaces, and historic preservation. Alison Isenberg is one of several planning historians, including Gail DuBrow, Max Page, and Randall Mason, who finally are writing critical accounts that interpret preservation in the context of planning and urban development. Isenberg reminds us, "There is no authentic downtown past to contrast with a fake urban present, just as there is no lost democratic heyday" (p. 315). Instead, downtown has been a venue through which Americans project, promote, and contest their values and visions for the nation, its economy, and culture writ large. "During the course of the twentieth century, Main Street has been a place to teach, debate, exclude, fantasize, argue, include, make new dreams, and revisit old ones" (p. 316). As the book's epilogue on remaking the World Trade Center site attests, Main Street remains that place today. This book should be read widely by scholars, practitioners, and students of urban policy, planning, preservation, history, and sociology. Downtown America promises to become a classic work of urban and planning history. It is an important critique of race and gender in urban development, a definitive study of the twentieth-century commercial downtown, and a masterful account of people's power to shape metropolitan life.