Historical Studies of Urban America #: Nonprofit Neighborhoods

An Urban History of Inequality and the American State

Historical Studies of Urban America #: Nonprofit Neighborhoods
Claire Dunning
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Paperback
h229 x 152mm - 336pg
20 Jun 2022 US
International import eta 10-30 days
9780226819891
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An exploration of how and why American city governments delegated the responsibility for solving urban inequality to the nonprofit sector. American cities are rife with nonprofit organizations that provide services ranging from arts to parks, and health to housing. These organizations have become so ubiquitous, it can be difficult to envision a time when they were fewer, smaller, and more limited in their roles. Turning back the clock, however, uncovers both an eye-opening story of how the nonprofit sector became such a dominant force in American society, as well as a troubling one of why this growth occurred alongside persistent poverty and widening inequality. Claire Dunning' s book connects these two stories in histories of race, democracy, and capitalism, revealing an underexplored transformation in urban governance: how the federal government funded and deputized nonprofits to help individuals in need, and in so doing avoided addressing the structural inequities that necessitated such action in the first place. Nonprofit Neighborhoods begins in the decades after World War II, when a mix of suburbanization, segregation, and deindustrialization spelled disaster for urban areas and inaugurated a new era of policymaking that aimed to solve public problems with private solutions. From deep archival research, Dunning introduces readers to the activists, corporate executives, and politicians who advocated addressing poverty and racial exclusion through local organizations, while also raising provocative questions about the politics and possibilities of social change. The lessons of Nonprofit Neighborhoods exceed the municipal bounds of Boston, where much of the story unfolds, providing a timely history of the shift from urban crisis to urban renaissance for anyone concerned about American inequality-past, present, or future.

Beyond the Usual Beating
Building a Market: The Rise of the Home Improvement Industry, 1914-1960
Bulls Markets: Chicago's Basketball Business and the New Inequality
City of Dignity: Christianity, Liberalism, and the Making of Global Los Angeles
Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860
In the Watches of the Night: Life in the Nocturnal City, 1820-1930
Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification
Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960
Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State
Running the Numbers: Race, Police, and the History of Urban Gambling
Sun Ra's Chicago: Afrofuturism and the City
To Live Peaceably Together: The American Friends Service Committee's Campaign for Open Housing
Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal, The: Postwar Urbanism from New York to Berlin
Urban Lowlands: A History of Neighborhoods, Poverty, and Planning

"Nonprofit Neighborhoods takes us to the frontlines of the government and philanthropic grantsmanship, municipal power brokering, and street-level protest that brought an evolving, multi-layered infrastructure of "public-private partnership" to Boston' s working-class communities of color starting in the 1960s-promising to resolve problems of poverty with improved social services in the face of widening structural divides. Persuasively argued and analytically nuanced, it tracks the continuities as well as the gradually unfolding transformations in urban policy, politics, and governance that link the social democratic aspirations of Great Society liberalism to the social austerity of our neoliberal age. Dunning provides important insights to all engaged in struggles against inequality-as scholars, policy advocates, practitioners, and activists. " * Alice O' Connor, University of California, Santa Barbara * "Nonprofit Neighborhoods is a revelation. Through a rich archival study of urban renewal in Boston, Dunning elegantly reconstructs how public projects came to be organized around grants and funding competitions. Decentralization and community participation were enhanced, but key decisions remained in the hands of city officials, foundation officers, and increasingly private lenders. The result is an eye-opening analysis of how policy reform transformed democratic governance. " * Elisabeth S. Clemens, University of Chicago * "Nonprofit Neighborhoods is a timely and original account of how the federal government has delegated urban policymaking, social service provision, and anti-poverty efforts to the private sector. This eye-opening book explains the proliferation of urban nonprofits -a distinctive feature of the American welfare state-and offers a sobering critique of the limitations of neighborhood-based solutions to persistent urban inequality. " * Thomas J. Sugrue, New York University * "Nonprofit Neighborhoods makes a paradigm-shifting contribution to the urban and policy history of the second half of the twentieth century. In her important interrogation into the nature of public-private partnerships, Dunning provides important insight into the changing nature of state power and the persistence of structural inequality. Lucidly written and deeply researched, this is an excellent book, poised to recast several scholarly fields. " * Lily Geismer, Claremont McKenna College * "Among the many intesting questions about the history of America' s cities, there are a few democracy-consequential questions whose answers literally define the future. In Nonprofit Neighborhoods, Dunning asks and answers morally uneasy and politically impolite questions such as: Why has the concentration of nonprofits in Black communities perpetuated not alleviated inequality? and How have these nonprofit neighborhoods become ' spaces of inclusion and exclusion' ? With precision, clarity, and subtly, Dunning tells a story of government and private power exerted upon and even undermining nonprofit neighborhoods. This sweeping history is a compelling cartography of power, cities, and race as well as a hopeful map for what America might be-if we but learned from the past. " * Cornell William Brooks, Harvard University *
Claire Dunning is assistant professor of public policy and history at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780226819891
Published: 20 Jun 2022
Published In: United States
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Format: Paperback
Height: 229mm
Width: 152mm
Pages: 336

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