The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing

Description

[rear cover:] *You will see bloodshed and poisoning and have accusations of defendants, the slaughter of cities and genocide and the heads of leaders up for auction, torched houses and cities in flames and enormous spaces of territory blazing with hostile fire. Behold the scarcely traceable foundations of the most eminent cities: anger destroyed them. Behold wastelands empty for thousands of miles: anger emptied them.* -- Seneca, *De Ira* 1.21-2 E. Michael Jones’s *tour-de-force* indictment of urban renewal in the East and Midwest from the 1930s through the 1960s offers an entirely new interpretation of what all historians have seen as a program of abject failure. Instead of laying blame at the feet of misguided designs or good-hearted (though bad-headed) desires to rid cities of blight, Jones finds fault in the plans themselves, plans whose goals had little or nothing to do with civic improvement but all too much to do with ethnic cleansing. Jones does not shrink from naming names, citing the letters and memos whose authors never thought their words would see the light of day. His exhaustive research provides proof positive that urban renewal was not a benign policy gone sour but an intentional program meant to prop up a dying ruling class and rid the cities of inconvenient ethnics. “Incorporating all the details into his sweeping narrative... Jones makes gripping drama out of urban development. Unfortunately, the epic it recounts is tragic.” -- Ray Olson, *ALA Booklist* *This book tells the story of housing policy and social engineering in four large cities in the period during and following World War II. Since housing was just one focus of social engineering, this book tells other related stories as well all of which had an impact on these cities. There was a time when the Western World, and many Americans, believed in progress. As anyone who has seen the rebirth of cities in Europe after their destruction during the war can say, that progress is not a mark of American cities. This book is an attempt to explain why. The fundamental fact, however, is available to anyone who takes the time to go beyond the showcase buildings at the center of downtown Detroit or Philadelphia and look at the poverty and destruction that surround them in what were once thriving neighborhoods. If you require a monument to the folly of the social engineering that brought about that devastation, just look around.* -- From the Prologue