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Starting around 70 years ago, white flight out of America's major
cities caused rapid urban decline. Now we are witnessing a
resurgence of American urbanism said to be the result of white
people's return. But this account entirely passes over the stable
immigrant communities who arrived and never left: as whites fled
for the suburbs and exurbs in increasing numbers, Latin Americans
immigrated to urban centres in even greater numbers. Barrio America
charts the vibrant revival of American cities in the 1970s, 1980s
and 1990s, arguing that we should attribute this revival to the
influx of Latin American immigrants -- both legal and not. An
award-winning historian and son of immigrants, Andrew
Sandoval-Strausz recounts this untold history by focusing on the
largest immigrant barrios in two of the nation's largest cities:
Chicago's Little Village and Dallas's Oak Cliff. These
neighbourhoods were once classic examples of urban crisis: they
reached their peak prosperity around 1950, afterwards losing
residents, jobs, and opportunity, which destabilised urban public
order. But after 1965, when Lyndon Johnson overturned the
restrictive 1924 immigration law and a major agricultural crisis
was convulsing Mexico, these neighbourhoods saw a record number of
incoming Latin Americans. The nation's urban barrios are regularly
portrayed as decaying districts plagued by crime and disorder, but
in reality, over the past several decades, areas with growing
immigrant populations have become some of the most dynamic, stable,
and safe neighbourhoods in their cities. The new immigrants brought
with them three distinctive cultural traditions -- penchants for
public spaces, walking, and small entrepreneurship -- that have
changed the American city for the better. Drawing on dozens of oral
histories with migrantes themselves, Sandoval-Strausz places
immigrant voices at the centre of the narrative, emphasising the
choices of Latin American newcomers, the motivations that brought
them to the United States, and the hopes that lay before them,
their families, and their communities. Barrio America demonstrates
how migrants have used their labour, their capital, and their
culture to build a new metropolitan America.
In recent decades, hundreds of millions of people across the world
have moved from rural areas to metropolitan regions, some of them
crossing national borders on the way. While urbanization and
globalization are proceeding with an intensity that seems
unprecedented, these are only the most recent iterations of
long-term transformations-cities have for centuries served as vital
points of contact between different peoples, economies, and
cultures. Making Cities Global explores the intertwined development
of urbanization and globalization using a historical approach that
demonstrates the many forms transnationalism has taken, each shaped
by the circumstances of a particular time and place. It also
emphasizes that globalization has not been persistent or
automatic-many people have been as likely to resist or reject
outside connections as to establish or embrace them. The essays in
the collection revolve around three foundational themes. The first
is an emphasis on connections among the United States, East and
Southeast Asia, Latin America, and South Asia. Second, contributors
ground their studies of globalization in the built environments and
everyday interactions of the city, because even world-spanning
practices must be understood as people experience them in their
neighborhoods, workplaces, stores, and streets. Last is a
fundamental concern with the role powerful empires and
nation-states play in the emergence of globalizing and urbanizing
processes. Making Cities Global argues that combining urban history
with a transnational approach leads to a richer understanding of
our increasingly interconnected world. In order to achieve
prosperity, peace, and sustainability in metropolitan areas in the
present and into the future, we must understand their historical
origins and development. Contributors: Erica Allen-Kim, Leandro
Benmergui, Matt Garcia, Richard Harris, Carola Hein, Nancy Kwak,
Carl Nightingale, Amy C. Offner, Margaret O'Mara, Nikhil Rao, A. K.
Sandoval-Strausz, Arijit Sen, Thomas J. Sugrue.
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Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
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