What This Course is About

This is a seminar/discussion course about America's urban crisis -- and what we can do about it. It is also a course in policy analysis -- evaluating different public policies in terms of their effectiveness. It is also a course in American politics -- examining how political conflicts over ideas and interests influences policy regarding cities.

Many politicians, candidates, journalists, business  leaders, and philanthropists frequently express concern about the "urban crisis."   They hold hearings, issue reports, write articles, and fund research about what caused the crisis  and what to do about it.   Are other cities, like L.A in 1992., ticking time bombs, waiting to explode?  Are the problems facing American cities -- poverty, homelessness, high levels of infant mortality, racial segregation, traffic gridlock, pollution, etc. -- solvable?    

There's been a great deal of research and writing about urban problems in the past few years. Most of the readings for this course draw on up-to-date research and thinking. But many of the urban problems we face today have been around for some time. People have been thinking about urban problems for many years. We can learn a great deal from the urban thinkers of the past as well.  

The major questions addressed in this seminar include the following:

1.  As the U.S. has changed, so has the shape, function, and number of cities and metropolitan areas. How have these changes come about?  How and why did the suburbs grow, especially after World War 2?  What's the difference between cities and suburbs? Are they growing more alike or more apart?  How has the physical shape of metropolitan areas -- its architecture, roads, residential areas, open spaces, factories, stores, offices, neighborhoods, downtowns – changed? What impact have these changes had on how people live their lives?

2. Are there certain "urban" characteristics -- economic, social, political, psychological -- common to all cities and metropolitan areas? What is meant by the term "urban crisis?" Does it affect all urban areas in the same way?  How has the distribution of wealth and power in the larger society influenced the economic, social, and physical conditions of cities and metro areas?  What are the causes of urban poverty and racial segregation?

3. Should there be a national urban policy designed to help rebuild cities? Or should there simply be policies to help individuals wherever they happen to live? What approaches have been tried?  What works?  What has failed?  Why?  How do we assess proposals to deal with our urban problems? We'll look at such issues as poverty and employment, housing and homelessness, public health, transportation and environment, racial segregation and discrimination, and others. What are the current policy debates regarding these and other issues?

4.  What role do cities play in our national political life? (This is often called "the politics of urban policy"). How are cities governed? (This is often called "urban politics"). Who runs our cities?  Business? Local politicians? Neighborhood groups?  Developers?  Unions?  No one? What are the different ways that cities and metro areas are governed?  What difference does it make?

5.   Do cities in other countries have the same problems? Why or why not? Even if we find some common characteristics, we also know that L.A. has a quality about it that differs from Boston; that Paris is hardly the same as Nairobi; that Beijing is quite different from Mexico City; that San Diego is very different from San Francisco. How do we account for these differences?  What can we  learn from these differences to help address the problems facing American cities?

Course Requirements

Your grade will be based on the following:

1. One-third your grade will be based on your class participation. This is a seminar course. Its success depends on class discussions. Students are expected to do the readings on time and participate in class discussions. When doing the reading, think about the issues you want to discuss in class. Most of the readings are short articles from newspapers and magazines with little or no technical jargon. Some readings are more difficult and will take more time to digest.  I encourage students to debate and disagree -- but to do so based on information and evidence as well as your own values.

2. One-third of your grade will be based on written assignments. You will be assigned a number of short  (3 to 4 page) papers, based primarily on the readings. These include book reviews, policy analyses, newspaper editorials, and others. All papers should be typed, double-spaced.  Proofread your papers. Check for correct spelling, punctuation, grammar. Put your names on the first page. Cite your sources in the essay (Author: Page Number) and in the bibliography (Author, Title, Publisher, Date). Examples or statistics should be used to illustrate your major points, not as a substitute for critical analysis. A few assignments will require you to work in groups.

3. One-third of your grade will be based a research project done in collaboration with a nonprofit organization on a local policy issue.  At list of the groups and the research issues is at the end of this syllabus. You will work in groups of 3-5 students with each organization. I expect you to spend at least two hours each week on this project. I will expect a written report from each group at the end of the semester. The members of each group will get the same grade, so it is up to each group to divide up the work fairly.

Books to Purchase

You should purchase the following paperback books, available at the college bookstore:

o Kozol, Savage Inequalities

o Dreier, Mollenkopf &  Swanstrom, Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century (2^nd edition)

o Nivola, Laws of the Landscape

o Massey & Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation & the Making of the Underclass

o Medoff and Sklar, Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood

   o CQ Researcher,  Urban Issues (2nd edition)

Web Readings

Most of the readings for this source will be found on the website for UEP 301. You can get there by going to the Oxy library website. The course readings to be found on the website are marked with an asterisk (*). It is each student’s responsibility to get these readings from the website. Please download them so you can mark them up as well as bring them to class. There are many separate articles from magazines, newspapers, journals and other sources, so it may take time to download them each week. Make sure you have sufficient time to do this.

Reports and Journals

I will distribute free copies of several reports that are part of the required reading. These include reports  the income divide in Los Angeles (A Tale of Two Cities), and on community development corporations (Corrective Capitalism). 

Films

We probably won’t have time to see more than one film this seminar.  I would encourage you, however, to go to the Library and view some or all of the following films that are relevant to the topics  in the course. :

                        "Hull House: The House that Jane Built" (documentary about the first wave of urban social reform at the turn of the 20th century) 

"The Times of Harvey Milk" (documentary about the rise of gay politics in San Francisco)

             “Bread and Roses” (feature film about the “justice for janitors” campaign in LA)

            “The Killing Floor” (feature film about the 1919 Chicago race riots)

            "City of Hope" (a feature film, directed by John Sayles, about urban politics)

            "Do The Right Thing" (Spike Lee's film about the Brooklyn ghetto)

            "Taken for a Ride" (a documentary about America's love affair with the automobile)

            “Home Economics" (a documentary about daily life in the LA suburbs)

                        “Is Wal-Mart Good for America?” (A documentary about the impact of the world’s largest corporation on our communities)

Web Sites

I hope that all of you will become familiar with the World Wide Web as a way of connecting to the larger worlds of public policy. There are thousands of web sites that deal with social issues and thousands of advocacy organizations and political networks that have their own web sites. Here are several key sites with which you should be familiar. I encourage you to bookmark them so you can find them easily.

1. Moving Ideas Network (http://www.movingideas.org) -- This site is a link with dozens of organizations and publications that deal with public policy issues. It includes organizations such as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Economic Policy Institute, Public/Private Ventures, The American Prospect magazine, Center for Law and Social Policy, and others. It includes links to issues such as economics and politics, welfare and families, education, civic participation, and health policy.

2.Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program (http://www.brook.edu/metro) the Urban Institute (http://www.urban.org) and the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (http://www.cbpp.org) are three outstanding research and policy centers focusing on urban issues. These websites are constantly being updated with new reports on a diversity of issues -- housing, transportation, welfare, banking, segregation, poverty, and other topics.

3.   Community Organizing and Development  (http://comm-org.wisc.edu ) -- This site is a link with hundreds of groups involved in urban community development. If you want to find out what groups are working on different urban issues, this is the site. It also has many articles and reports on urban community development and community organizing.

4. The Center for Neighborhood Technology (http://www.cnt.org), the National Housing Institute (http://www.nhi.org) Planners Network (http://plannersnetwork.org),  Civic Practices Network (http://www.cpn.org), and Citistates (http://www.citistates.com) all focus on innovative research and programs that strengthen urban neighborhoods and metropolitan areas. Each site has links to many other resources about particular issues, programs, cities, and metropolitan areas.   Two magazines – Shelterforce (http://www.nhi.org/online) and City Limits (http://www.citylimits.org) – provide examples of interesting urban politics and policy from a liberal/progressive perspective.  City Journal (http://www.city-journal.orgpublished by the Manhattan Institute, provides interesting articles on urban issues from a conservative perspective.

5. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has its own web site (http://www.hud.gov) with information about its programs, policies, data bases, and many links. More useful for this course is HUD's Office of Policy Development & Research (http://www.huduser.org which has a great deal of information about housing and urban problems, studies and publications, and available data. You reach can the HUD library, with many reports and publications about cities and housing problems, at this site.

6.  The Institute for the Study of Homelessness and Poverty:
http://www.weingart.org/institute
This organization, sponsored by the Weingart Center, collects and issues reports on various social and economic problems facing the Los Angeles area, including housing, poverty, homelessness, health care, hunger, and others. It is a great resource for finding out what studies have been done about LA.

7.  Neighborhood Planning: (http://www.neighborhoodplanning.org.  This is a wonderful website about what makes cities and communities livable. It looks at neighborhoods (and neighborhood planning) from the point of view of planning tools for housing, transportation, schools, economic development, public safety, and other issues. It also has a section on the “heroes” of community planning - some of the most important figures in the history of planning, architecture, organizing, and other topics.

Newspapers, Magazines and Journals

Students are expected to read at least one daily newspaper -- the LA Times, the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal -- on a regular basis.  When an article appears in one of these papers that relates to the topics in the course, bring it up in class. There are also many magazines -- such as The Neighborhood Works, Governing, and Planning -- targeted to urban practitioners and policymakers. The best sources for following national politics are Washington Post Weekly and National Journal. You should also become familiar with the major journals that focus on urban problems and policies. In the Library, peruse these publications to see what scholars and practitioners are saying. The major journals include Urban Affairs Quarterly, Journal of the American Planning Association, Journal of Urban Affairs, and National Civic Review.. Other relevant journals include Social Work, Social Policy, Challenge, and American Demographics.

TOPICS AND READINGS

(Readings preceded by an *asterisk are available on-line. 

NYT = New York Times. LAT = Los Angeles Times).

I. INTRODUCTION

 Personal Values (Tuesday, January 24)

"Looking for Housing" exercise

Social Choices (Thursday, January 26)

Kozol, Savage Inequalities (entire book)

II. WHAT MAKES CITIES LIVABLE?

COMPARING  U.S. AND FOREIGN CITIES

Tables on demographics

*Largest Metropolitan Areas in the United States

*Largest Metropolitan Areas in the World

*World’s Largest Cities (1 to 100)

*Largest US Cities (1 to 100)

*”Table 2A-2. Population Change for 100 Largest Central Cities And Their Suburbs: 1980-2000"

Economic Conditions (Tuesday, January 31)

*Cavnar, “Downtown Dreams” (Continental. December 2004)

*Wilson, “When Work Disappears” (NYT Magazine, August 18, 1996)

*Kilborn, "Another Notch in the Decline of Main Street" (NYT, November 4, 1993)

*"Toronto and Detroit" (Economist, May 19, 1990)

*Traub, “No-Fun City” (NYT Magazine, Nov. 4, 2001)

*Walljasper, "Denmark: What Works?” (Nation. January 26, 1998)

*Greenhouse, "Why Paris Works" (NYT Magazine, July 19, 1992)

*Smith, “France Has an Underclass,  But Its Roots Are Still Shallow” (NYT, Nov. 6, 2005)

*Wolfe, "Canada's Liveable Cities" (Social Policy, Summer 1992)

*Francis, “It’s Better to to Poor in Norway Than in the US,” Christian Science Monitor, April 14, 2005.

Social and Community Conditions (Thursday, Feb. 2)

*Dogan and Kasarda, "Comparing Giant Cities" (The Metropolis Era: Mega-Cities, 1988)

*Hall, "How Foreign Cities Cope" (The World & I, June 1991)

*Ibrahim, "To French, Solidarity Outweighs Balanced Budget" (NYT, Dec. 20, 1995)

*Richardson, “Boyle Heights Seeks Balance Amid Change” (LAT, July 24, 2005)

*Kretzman, “Building Communities from the Inside Out” (Shelterforce, Sept/October 1995)

*Gecan, “All Real Living is Meeting” (from Michael Gecan, Going Public, 2002, pps 19-26)

*Pierce, "A Universal Church of Immigrants" (Boston Globe, July 4, 1993)

*Mahler, “The Soul of the New Exurb” (NYT Magazine, March 27, 2005)

*Goldman, "A Hidden Advantage for Some Job Seekers" (LAT, Nov. 28, 1997

*Belluck, “New Wave of the Homeless Floods Cities’ Shelters” (NYT, Dec. 18, 2001)

*Jordan, “Branching Out: Neighborhood Libraries” (Governing, October 2001)

*Blankstein and Winton, “13 Die in Four Days of Violence” (LAT, Nov. 19, 2002)

*Butterfield, "Study Links Violence Rate to Cohesion of Community" (NYT, Aug. 17, 1997)

Environmental and Physical Conditions (Tuesday, Feb. 7)

*Kelley, “Ventura’s Manager Demands Smart Growth: Profile of Rick Cole (LAT, Jan 9, 2006)

*Gowda, “Whose Garden Is It?” (Governing, March 2002)

*Tobar, “Housing Laws No Cure for Slums’ Ills” (LAT, July 20, 1997)

*Barringer, “California Air is Clearer, But Troubles Remain” (NYT, Aug 3, 2005)

*Mena, “Still Something Between Them” (LAT, Nov 21, 2004)

*Firestone, “Suburban Comforts Thwart Atlanta’s Plans to Limit Sprawl” (NYT, Nov. 21, 1999)

*Willon, "As Inland Empire Grows, Freeway Commute Slows" (LAT, Oct. 30, 2001)

*Selvin, "The View From the European Bus" (LAT, Aug. 15, 1999)

*Simons, "Amsterdam Plans Wide Limit on Cars" (NYT, Jan. 28, 1993)

*Walters, “Urban Role Model: Christchurch, New Zealand” (Governing, October 2001)

*James, “Eco-cities – the Next Swedish Export” (Planning, May 2002)

*Dillon, "Mexico City Spawns Suburbs, Changing Face of Countryside" (NYT, Dec. 18, 1999)

How National Policies and Values Shape Cities in Europe and America (Thursday, Feb. 9)

Nivola, Laws of the Landscape (entire book)

Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, Place Matters (Chapter 4)

Lennard and Lennard, “Principles of True Urbanism” (2005)  

III. WHAT CAN CITIES DO?

URBAN POLITICS AND POLICY CHOICES

Economic Development: The Dilemma of Capital Mobility (Tuesday, Feb. 14)

Dreier, Mollenkopf and Swanstrom, Place Matters (Chapter 5)

CQ Researcher, Urban Issues (Ch. 1, “Exporting Jobs” and Ch. 3 “Living Wage Movement”)

*Gertner, “What Is a Living Wage?” (NYT, Jan. 15, 2006)

*DeFilippis, “Understanding Capital Mobility...” (From DeFilippis, Unmasking Goliath, 2004)

*Dreier, “Builders Clucking Like Chicken Little” (LAT, July 3, 2005)

*Bluestone and Harrison, "Boomtown and Bust-town" (The Deindustrialization of America, 1982)

*Glionna, “Oakland’s In-Your-Face Ads Invade San Francisco” (LAT, July 9, 2001)

*Stewart, "Burbank May Woo Company with $250,000 Incentive" (LAT, Dec. 9, 1993)

*Curtiss and Watson, "Desperate Cities Court Developers" (LAT, Jan. 16, 1993)

*Zaretsky, “Should Cities Pay for Sports Facilities?” (The Regional Economist/Federal Reserve Bank of  St.Louis, April 2001)                

*Rosentraub, “Testimony before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on the Stadium Financing and Franchise Relocation Act of 1999,” June 15, 1999.

*Newton and Simers, “NFL Talks at Impasse Over Use of Public Funds” (LAT, Aug. 3, 1999)

High Road or Low Road?: The Debate Over Wal-Mart (Thursday, Feb. 16)

*Bianco and Zellner, “Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?” (Business Week, Oct. 6, 2003)

*Sowell, “Wal-Mart Growth is an Example of Free-Market Economics” (Pasadena Star-News, Dec. 15, 2003)

*Cleeland, Iritani, and Marshall, “Scouring the Globe to Give Shoppers an $8.63 Polo Shirt” (LAT, Nov. 25, 2003)

*Head, “Inside the Leviathan” (NY Review of Books, Dec. 16, 2004)

*Garten, “Wal-Mart Gives Globalism a Bad Name” (Business Week, March 8, 2004)

  *Cleeland and Goldman, “Grocery Unions Battle to Stop Invasion of Giant Stores” (LAT, Nov. 25, 2003)

  *Greene, “Thinking Outside the Big Box: Inglewood’s Obsession with Wal-Mart” (LA Weekly, March 12-18, 2004)

*Garrison, “LA Council Votes to Restrict Superstores” (LAT, Aug. 11, 2004)

*Holmes and Zellner, “The Costco Way” (Business Week, April 12, 2004)

Film: “David Beats Goliath: How Inglewood Defeated Wal-Mart” (10 minutes)

Housing: A Right or a Privilege?  (Tuesday, Feb. 21)

CQ Researcher, Urban Issues (Ch. 12, “Affordable Housing”)

*Salins, "Toward a Permanent Housing Problem" (The Public Interest, Fall 1986).

*Dreier and Atlas, “Housing Policy’s Moment of Truth” (American Prospect, Summer 1995)

*Nieves, "Homeless Defy Cities Drives to Move Them," (NYT, December 7, 1999)

*Loh, “Plans for Skid Row Raise Questions” (LAT, Aug. 24, 2002)

*DiMassa, “Crowded Out by Luxury Lofts, Poor Seek Relief” (LAT, Oct. 12, 2005)

*Rivera, “Downtown Isn’t Only Magnet for Homeless” (LAT, Jan. 12, 2006)

*DiMassa and Pfeifer, “2 Strategies on Policing Homeless” (LAT, Oct. 6, 2005)

*Rivera, “Outsourcing of Homeless Stirs Intercity Debate” (LAT, Nov. 27, 2004)

*Archibold, “Problem of Homelessness in Los Angeles and Its Environs Draws Renewed Calls for Attention”  (LAT, Jan. 15, 2006)

*Fausset, “Housing and Help - Under One Roof” (LAT, Jan. 16, 2005)

*Ramos,  “A Bitter Year for Victims of Collapse” (LAT, December 29, 2001)

*Fears,  “Angry Tenants Protest Lack of Enforcement of Slum Laws” (LAT, March 19, 1999)

*Stewart, “Crackdown on Unsafe Housing Has Downside for Many Tenants” (LAT, Dec. 19, 2001)

*Renwick, "Fed-Up Tenants Take Over" (LAT, August 15, 1994)

*Cleeland, "Rents Are Rising in L.A.'s Blue-Collar Neighborhoods" (LAT, Dec. 24, 1998)

 The Debate Over Inclusionary Zoning (Thursday, Feb. 23)

*ISHP, Housing and Poverty in Los Angeles (skim)

http://www.weingart.org/institute/research/facts/pdf/JusttheFactsHousingPovertyLA.pdf

*ISHP, Homelessness in Los Angeles (skim)

http://www.weingart.org/institute/research/facts/pdf/JusttheFactsHomelessnessLA.pdf

*Breidenbach, “LA Story” and “What We Won” (Shelterforce, March/April 2002)

*Hale, “Activists Protest Projects’ Lack of Low-Income Units” (LAT, Feb. 18, 2001)

*Hymon, “Activists Press Council for Affordable Housing Law” (LAT, June 5, 2005)

*Center for Community Change, Housing Organizing: Inclusionary Zoning

*Greene, “Rebel with a Plan” (LA Weekly, Nov. 19-25, 2004)

*”Getting Past `No’ on Housing” (LAT, May 11, 2004 - editorial)

*”Inclusionary Zoning: It’s Just Bad Planning” (LA City Councilman Greig Smith)

*”Stop the Assault on Single-Family Neighborhoods” (Southland Regional Assn. of Realtors)

*”Out of Reach in 2004" (SCANPH)

*”Myths and Facts about Inclusionary Zoning” (LA Inclusionary Zoning Coalition)

*”Help Make Los Angeles More Livable” (LA Inclusionary Zoning Coalition) 

 Major Challenges Facing Mayor Villaraigosa (Tuesday, Feb. 28)

A Tale of Two Cities (United Way of Greater Los Angeles, 2003) – handout

*Dreier, “America’s Urban Crisis a Decade After the Los Angeles Riots” (National Civic Review, Spring 2003)

              *Gottlieb, et al, “A Vision for the City: Progressive LA in the Twenty-First Century” (from Gottlieb, Vallianatos, Freer, and Dreier, The Next Los Angeles, 2005, Chapter 7)

*Dreier, “Can a City Be Progressive?” (The Nation, June 15, 2005)

*Fine, Bronstad and Greenberg, “Pay to Play Taints Political Scene” (LA Business Journal, Dec. 20, 2004)

*McGreevy, “Alleged Slumlords Donated to Delgadillo” (LAT, Oct.  26, 2005)

*McGreevy and Goldman, “LA Council Acts to Save Grocery Jobs” (LAT, Dec. 22, 2005)

*City of Los Angeles, Budget Summary 2005-2006: http://www.lacity.org/cao/BudgetSummary2005-06.pdf              

*Rohrlick, “Villaraigosa Asks Civic Leaders for Budget Priorities” (LAT, Oct. 2, 2005)

*McGreevy, “Mayor Doesn’t Rule Out New Taxes” (LAT, Jan. 5, 2006)

*Siegel, “NY to LA: Ya Gotta Love Bratton” (LAT, July 24, 2005)

*Lopez, “Now Comes the Heavy Lifting” (LAT, Oct. 23, 2005)

*Oldham and Garrison, “Political Scientist’s Complex Formula for LAX” (LAT, Dec. 7, 2004)

*Schoch, “Port Panel Chief Has Plenty to Unload” (LAT, Jan. 15, 2006)

*Gottlieb, “Let a Thousand Habaneros Bloom” (LAT, Oct. 2, 2005)

*Hayasaki, “Seeds of Dissension Linger” (LAT, Oct. 31, 2005)

Guest Speaker: Larry Frank, Deputy Mayor, City of Los Angeles (tentative)

Class, Race, and Power in Cities (Thursday, March 2)

*Nichols, “Urban Archipelago” (The Nation, June 20, 2005)

*Stern, “ACORN’s Nutty Regime for Cities” (City Journal, Spring 2003).

*Atlas and Dreier, “ACORN: Enraging the Right” (Shelterforce, May/June 2003)

*Swanstrom, “The Politics of Default” (from Swanstrom, The Crisis of Growth Politics)

*Kolbert, “Six Million Short: How Will the Mayor Make Ends Meet?” (New Yorker, Jan. 13, 2003)

              *Dreier, "Urban Politics and Progressive Housing Policy: Ray Flynn and Boston's Neighborhood Agenda" (Keating, Krumholz, and Star, eds., Revitalizing Urban Neighborhoods, 1996)

  *Dreier and Pitcoff, "I'm a Tenant and I Vote: New Yorkers Find Victory in Rent Struggle"  (Shelterforce, July/August 1997)

*Callahan, "Ballot Blocks: What Gets the Poor to the Polls? (American Prospect, July/August 1998)

*Fine, "Building Community Unions" (Nation, January 1, 2001)

*Munoz, "Mexican Americans and the Promise of Democracy: San Antonio Mayoral Elections" (from Peterson, ed., Big-City Politics, Governance, and Fiscal Constraints, 1994)

*Gurwitt, “Black, White and Blurred” (Governing, Sept. 2001)

 Community Organizing and Urban Politics  (Tuesday, March 7)

Medoff and Sklar,  Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood

What Does Hurricane Katrina Tell Us About Cities? (Thursday, March 9)

*Haygood, “Living Paycheck to Paycheck Made Leaving Impossible” (Washington Post, Sept. 4, 2005)

*Tanya Harris, “The Soul of New Orleans” (Multinational Monitor, Sept/Oct. 2005)

*Dreier, “Katrina & Power in America” (Urban Affairs Review, March 2006)

*Kotkin, “Ideological Hurricane” (American Enterprise Institute, Jan.  2006)

*DeParle, “Liberal Hopes Ebb in Post-Storm Poverty Debate” (NYT, Oct. 11, 2005)

*Crutcher, “How to Rebuild New Orleans: Diversity” (NYT, Sept. 10, 2005)

*Petroski, “How to Rebuild New Orleans: Raise the Ground” (NYT, Sept. 10, 2005)

*Babbit, “How to Rebuild New Orleans: Make It An Island” (NYT, Sept. 10, 2005)

*Colten, “How to Rebuild New Orleans: Restore the Marsh” (NYT, Sept. 10, 2005)

*Rivlin, “All Parts of the City in Rebuild Plan of New Orleans” (NYT, Jan. 8, 2006)

*Russell and Donze, “Rebuilding Proposal Gets Mixed Reception” (N.O. Times-Picayune, Jan. 12, 2005)

 IV. THREE MAJOR FACTORS SHAPING URBAN LIFE:

INEQUALITY, RACISM, AND SUBURBANIZATION

Inequality and Poverty

The Magnitude of Inequality and Poverty (Tuesday, March 21)

Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, Place Matters (Preface; Chapters 1 and 2)

*Mohan, “Though Far from Poor, A Family Struggles Daily” (LAT, May 18, 2004)

*Rivera, “Getting By Gets More Costly for Families” (LAT, Sept. 24, 2001)

*Sing, “Families Strain to Make Do, Study Finds” (LAT, Sept. 28, 2005)

              *Smeeding, Rainwater, and Burtless, "U.S. Poverty in Cross-National Perspective" (Focus,  Spring 2001)

*Krugman, “For Richer” (NYT Magazine, October 20 2002)

*Wolff, "The Rich Get Richer...And Why the Poor Don't" (American Prospect,  Feb. 12, 2001)

*Newfield, “How the Other Half Still Lives” (The Nation, March 17, 2003)

*Bhargava and Kurlansky, “Drawing the Line on Poverty” (Wash. Post Weekly, Sept 23, 2002)

*Colin and Bernstein, “Working and Poor” (Business Week, May 31, 2004)

*"Poverty Thresholds 2003" (table)

*”Number in Poverty and Poverty Rate: 1959 to 2003" (chart)

*”Poverty Rates by Age: 1959 to 2003" (chart)

*”People and Families in Poverty by Selected Characteristics: 2002 and 2003" (table)

The Spatial Concentration of Wealth and Poverty (Thursday, March 23)

              *Abramson, Tobin, and VanderGoot, "The Changing Geography of Metropolitan Opportunity: The  Segregation of the Poor in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 1970 to 1990," (Housing Policy Debate,  6/1, 1995) -- skim  the text, look closely at tables and figure out the basic points

*Kasarda, "Inner-City Concentrated Poverty and Neighborhood Distress: 1970-1990" (Housing Policy Debate,  4/3, 1993)

*Kingsley and Pettit, “Concentrated Poverty: A Change in Course” (Urban Institute, May 2003)

*Roberts, "Gap Between Rich and Poor in New York Grows Wider" (NYT, Dec. 26, 1994)

*Reich, "Secession of the Successful" (NYT Magazine, Jan. 20, 1991)

*Lu, “Hunger a Growing Problem in Suburbs” (NYT, March 23, 2004)

*Finder, “As Test Scores Jump, Raleigh Credits Integration by Income” (NYT, Sept. 25, 2005)

The Consequences of Inequality and Poverty (Tuesday, March 28)

Dreier, Mollenkopf and Swanstrom, Place Matters (Chapter 3)

*Rothstein, “Class and the Classroom” (American School Board Journal, October 2004)

*Nieves, “In Famously Tolerant City, Impatience with Homeless” (NYT, Jan. 18, 2002)

*Marquis, "1 in 3 in L.A. Lacks Health Coverage, Study Says" (LAT, Dec. 18, 1998)

*Barboza, "Rampant Obesity, a Debilitating Reality for the Urban Poor" (NYT, Dec. 26, 2000)

*Noble, "Study Shows a Big Asthma Risk for Children in Poor Neighborhoods" (NYT, July 27, 1999)

*Polakovic, “Latinos, Poor Live Closer to Sources of Air Pollution” (LAT, October 18, 2001)

*Hamilton, "325 Dreams Shattered by Plant Closing" (LAT, December 19, 1994)

*Buntin, “Murder Mystery” (Governing, June 2002)

*"Who Rides the Bus?" (LAT, October 1994)

Racism and Segregation

Racial Prejudice and Institutional Racism (Thurs., March 30)

CQ Researcher, Urban Issues (Ch. 2, “Race in America”)

              *Gilens, "Race and Poverty in America: Public Misperceptions and the American News Media" (Public Opinion Quarterly, Winter 1996)

*Shipler, "The White Niggers of Newark" (Harpers, August 1972)

*Brownstein and Simon, "Hospitality Turns into Hostility" (LAT, Nov. 14, 1993)

*Kelley, “Statistics Lend Support to Claims of Profiling” (LAT. Sept. 23, 2001)

*Nazario, "Hunger, High Food Costs Found in Inner-City Area" (LAT, June 11, 1993)

*Squires, "The Indelible Color Line" (American Prospect, Jan./Feb. 1999)

*Peterson, “Racial Gap in Loans is High in State” (LAT, Sept. 29, 2005)

*Rubin and Rubinger, “Don’t Let Banks Turn Their Backs on the Poor” (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004)

*Yinger, “Housing Discrimination is Still a Problem” (Housing Policy Debate, 9/4, 1998)

The Creation of the Ghetto (Tuesday, April 4)

Massey and Denton, American Apartheid (entire book except Chapter 6)

              *”Figure 8-1: Racial/Makeup of 100 Largest Cities and Rest of Nation, 1990 and 2000" (Katz and Lang, eds., Redefining Urban and Suburban America,, 2003) (graph)

*”Figure 2-1a: Distribution of Households Within One Hypothetical Metropolitan Area With High Segregation and One With Low Segregation” (U.S. Census Bureau, Residential and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States: 1980-2000, August 2002) (graph)

*”Sortable List of Dissimilarity Scores” (for 331 metropolitan areas, 2000) (table)

*”Los Angeles City: Date for the City in 1980, 1990, and 2000" (table)

*”Los Angeles-Long Beach PMSA: Data for the Metropolitan Area” (table)

Is Residential Racial Integration Desirable or Possible? (Thursday, April 6)

*Patterson, "The Paradox of Integration" (New Republic, November 6, 1995)

*Thernstrom and Thernstrom, "We Have Overcome" (New Republic, Oct. 13, 1997)

  *Cater, “Not Just Black and White: Oak Park, Ill. Grapples With Questions of Diversity” (In These Times, March 18, 2002)

  *Ramos, "Latino Middle Class Growing in Suburbia" (LAT, Nov. 30, 1997)

*Scott, “Rethinking Segregation Beyond Black and White” (NYT, July 29, 2001)

*Waldinger, “From Ellis Island to LAX: Immigrant Prospects” (Int’l Migration Review, 1996)

*Salant, “Census: Metro Areas More Integrated” (Pasadena Star-News, Nov. 28, 2002)

*Two Tables: Public Opinion of Whites on School and Neighborhood Integration

*Wilkerson, "One City's 30-Year Crusade for Integration" (NYT, Dec. 30, 1991) 

Suburbanization and Sprawl  

The Push for Suburbanization (Tuesday, April 11)

*Danielson, “Suburban Autonomy” (from The Politics of Exclusion, 1976)

*Hayden, “Planning Suburban-Style Development” (from Building Suburbia, 2003)

  Sprawl Hits the Wall: Confronting the Realities of Metropolitan Los Angeles (report) – read the Executive Summary and skim the rest http://www.usc.edu/geography/SC2/sg/pdf/USCcolor.pdf

*"Flee the City" (Cartoon)

*Gertner, “Chasing Ground: The House-Building Industrial Complex” (NYT Magazine, Oct. 16, 2005)

*Easterbrook, "The Suburban Myth: The Case for Sprawl" (New Republic, March 15, 1999)

*Kotkin, “The War Against Suburbia” (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 14, 2006)

*Kelley, "As Suburbs Change, They Still Satisfy" (LAT, Oct. 19, 1999)

*Wilson, “Developers Are Putting Southland’s Last Dairy Farmers Out to Pasture” (LAT, May 27, 2002)

*Kriz, “The Politics of Sprawl” (National Journal, Feb. 6, 1999) 

Who Pays for Sprawl? (Thursday, April 13)

  CQ Researcher, Urban Issues (Ch. 10, “Urban Sprawl in the West” and Ch. 11, “Environmental Justice”)

*Lyman, “Living Large, by Design, in Middle of Nowhere” (NY Times, Aug. 15, 2005)

*Fulton, "Welcome to Sales Tax Canyon" (from The Reluctant Metropolis, 1997)

*Gold, “Inland Empire Pays Price for Housing Crisis” (LAT, May 20, 2002)

*"San Marino: The Affluent Grapple with Low-Income Housing" (LAT, June 14, 1993)

*Tempest, "In Marin County Plenty, a Poverty of Service Workers" (LAT, Oct. 25, 1999)

*DeWitt, "Older Suburbs Struggle..." (NYT, Feb. 26, 1995)

*Gross, "Getting There the Hard Way, Every Day" (LAT, July 16, 1995)

*"Let Them Drive Cars" (New Republic, March 20, 2000)

*Mason, "The Buses Don't Stop Here Anymore" (American Prospect, March/April 1998)

Regionalism and “Smart Growth” (Tuesday, April 18)

Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, Place Matters (Chapter 6)

CQ Researcher, Urban Issues (Ch. 9, “Smart Growth”)

*Sheehan, "What Will It Take to Halt Sprawl?" (WorldWatch, Jan/Feb 2002)

*Walljasper, “A Fair Share in Suburbia” (The Nation, Jan. 25, 1999)

*Smothers, "City [Memphis] Seeks to Grow By Disappearing" (NYT, Oct. 18, 1993)

*Greenblatt, “Anatomy of a Merger” (Governing, December 2002)

*Swope, “After the Mall” (Governing, October 2002)

*Fulton and Shigley, “The Inland Empire Strikes Back” (Planning, February 2002)

*Gurwitt, "The State vs. Sprawl" (Governing, January 1999)

*"Two Views of the Commuter's Curse: Pataki (`Isn't It Obvious') and Fuchs (`The City Already Pays More than Its Fair Share')" (NYT, May 22, 1998)

*Cone, "Southland Smog Levels Are Lowest in 4 Decades" (LAT, October 21, 1995) 

V. FEDERALISM AND URBAN POLICY: HOW WHAT HAPPENS IN WASHINGTON INFLUENCES WHAT HAPPENS IN CITIES  

Does Revitalizing of Downtowns Improve Cities?  (Thursday, April 20)

*Teaford, "Urban Renewal and Its Aftermath" (Housing Policy Debate  11/2, 2000)

*Hines, "Housing, Baseball, and Creeping Socialism: The Battle of Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles" (Journal of Urban History, February 1982)

*Davis, "Fortress LA" (from City of Quartz)

*Schoenberger "Bringing the Life Back to City's Heart" (LAT , Dec. 14, 1993)

*Rivera, "Staples Center's Displaced Have New Homes and New Worries" (LAT, Oct. 9, 1999)

*Levey and Roug, “New York Developer Chosen to Make Grand Ave. Grander” (LAT, Aug. 10, 2004)

*Goldin, “Grand Illusions on Bunker Hills” (LAT, March 30, 2004)

*McGreevy, “City Oks Subsidies for Downtown Hotel” (LAT, Oct. 1, 2005)

*Kotkin, “Extreme Makeover: Los Angeles Edition” (Wall Street Journal, Aug. 25, 2004)

*Tabak, "Wild About Convention Centers" (Atlantic Monthly, April 1994)