The Changing American Neighborhood

The Meaning of Place in the Twenty-First Century

Alan Mallach, Todd Swanstrom

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781501771132, 9781501770890
• eBook ISBN: 9781501770913
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: Social Sciences

The Changing American Neighborhood argues that the physical and social spaces created by neighborhoods matter more than ever for the health and well-being of twenty-first-century Americans and their communities. Taking a long historical view, this book explores the many dimensions of today's neighborhoods, the forms they take, the forces and factors influencing them, and the people and organizations trying to change them.

Challenging conventional interpretations of neighborhoods and neighborhood change, Alan Mallach and Todd Swanstrom adopt a broad, inter-disciplinary perspective that shows how neighborhoods are messy, complex systems, in which change is driven by constant feedback loops that link social, economic and physical conditions, each within distinct spatial and political contexts. The Changing American Neighborhood seeks to understand neighborhoods and neighborhood change not only for their own importance, but for the insights they offer to help guide peoples' efforts sustaining good neighborhoods and rebuilding struggling ones.

Table of contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Why Good Neighborhoods?
• 2. A Dynamic Systems Approach to Understanding Neighborhood Change
• 3. The Rise of the American Urban Neighborhood, 1860–1950
• 4. The American Urban Neighborhood under Siege, 1950–1990
• 5. The Polarization of the American Neighborhood, 1990–2020
• 6. Neighborhoods as Markets
• 7. Neighborhoods in an Era of Demographic Change and Economic Restructuring
• 8. The Continuing yet Changing Significance of Race
• 9. Agents of Neighborhood Change
• 10. Deconstructing Gentrification
• 11. The Crisis of the Urban Middle Neighborhood
• 12. The Persistence of Concentrated Poverty Neighborhoods
• 13. Neighborhood Change in the Suburbs
• 14. The Theory and Practice of Neighborhood Change
• Notes
• Index