Immigration and Metropolitan Revitalization in the United States

Description

In less than a generation, the dominant image of American cities has transformed from one of crisis to revitalization. Poverty, violence, and distressed schools still make headlines, but central cities and older suburbs are attracting new residents and substantial capital investment. In most accounts, native-born empty nesters, their twentysomething children, and other educated professionals are credited as the agents of change. Yet in the past decade, policy makers and scholars across the United States have come to understand that immigrants are driving metropolitan revitalization at least as much and belong at the center of the story. Immigrants have repopulated central city neighborhoods and older suburbs, reopening shuttered storefronts and boosting housing and labor markets, in every region of the United States. Immigration and Metropolitan Revitalization in the United States is the first book to document immigrant-led revitalization, with contributions by leading scholars across the social sciences. Offering radically new perspectives on both immigration and urban revitalization and examining how immigrants have transformed big cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, as well as newer destinations such as Nashville and the suburbs of Boston and New Jersey, the volume's contributors challenge traditional notions of revitalization, often looking at working-class communities. They explore the politics of immigration and neighborhood change, demolishing simplistic assumptions that dominate popular debates about immigration. They also show how immigrants have remade cities and regions in Latin America, Africa, and other places from which they come, linking urbanization in the United States and other parts of the world. Contributors: Kenneth Ginsburg, Marilynn S. Johnson, Michael B. Katz, Gary Painter, Robert J. Sampson, Gerardo Francisco Sandoval, A.K. Sandoval-Strausz, Thomas J. Sugrue, Rachel Van Tosh, Jacob L. Vigdor, Domenic Vitiello, Jamie Winders. Cover Contents Introduction: Immigration and the New American Metropolis PART I. IMMIGRATION AND URBAN TRANSFORMATIONS Chapter 1. Immigration and the New Social Transformation of the American City Chapter 2. Estimating the Impact of Immigration on County-Level Economic Indicators Chapter 3. Immigrants, Housing Demand, and the Economic Cycle PART II. REVITALIZING DIVERSE DESTINATIONS Chapter 4. Revitalizing the Suburbs: Immigrants in Greater Boston Since the 1980s Chapter 5. Immigrant Cities as Reservations for Low-Wage Labor PART III. THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION AND REVITALIZATION Chapter 6. Old Maps and New Neighbors: The Spatial Politics of Immigrant Settlement Chapter 7. Transforming Transit-Oriented Development Projects via Immigrant-Led Revitalization: The MacArthur Park Case PART IV. URBAN REVITALIZATION IN TRANSNATIONAL CONTEXT Chapter 8. Migrantes, Barrios, and Infraestructura: Transnational Processes of Urban Revitalization in Chicago Chapter 9. Liberian Reconstruction, Transnational Development, and Pan-African Community Revitalization Notes List of Contributors Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Z Acknowledgments