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.