The Roots of Urban Renaissance

Gentrification and the Struggle over Harlem, Expanded Edition

Brian D. Goldstein

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780691234755
• eBook ISBN: 9780691243474
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture générale

An acclaimed history of Harlem's journey from urban crisis to urban renaissance

With its gleaming shopping centers and refurbished row houses, today's Harlem bears little resemblance to the neighborhood of the midcentury urban crisis. Brian Goldstein traces Harlem's Second Renaissance to a surprising source: the radical social movements of the 1960s that resisted city officials and fought to give Harlemites control of their own destiny. Young Harlem activists, inspired by the civil rights movement, envisioned a Harlem built by and for its low-income, predominantly African American population. In the succeeding decades, however, the community-based organizations they founded came to pursue a very different goal: a neighborhood with national retailers and increasingly affluent residents. The Roots of Urban Renaissance demonstrates that gentrification was not imposed on an unwitting community by unscrupulous developers or opportunistic outsiders. Rather, it grew from the neighborhood's grassroots, producing a legacy that benefited some longtime residents and threatened others.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Reforming Renewal
• 2. Black Utopia
• 3. Own a Piece of the Block
• 4. The Urban Homestead in the Age of Fiscal Crisis
• 5. Managing Change
• 6. Making Markets Uptown
• Conclusion: Between the Two Harlems
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Appendix: Oral History Transcripts
• Illustration Credits
• Acknowledgments
• Index