The politics of prosperity and crisis in an industrial suburb: Dundalk, Maryland, 1920--2005.

摘要

There has recently been a surge of interest in the older suburbs of the United States, although two major branches of enquiry are seldom in dialogue with one another. Geographers and historians have shown that much suburban development was led by industry, and that suburbs were far more diverse than the predominantly white and middle-class postwar places commonly described in mainstream narratives. Concurrently, policy-oriented sociologists, planners, and politicians have observed the growth of diversity and "urban problems" in the older suburbs; for some, the seeming convergence of the city and the older suburbs has suggested opportunities for joint problem-solving and political alliance. But an analysis of the relationship between the industrial suburb's past and present---particularly a complete political history---has thus far been lacking.;This dissertation begins to fill the gap with a case study of Dundalk, Maryland, an industrial suburb near Baltimore. Drawing from a year of interviews, participant observation, and archival research, I find continuities in the central role that industrial capital and the preservation of race and class privileges have played in the community's political life. Industrial suburbs like Dundalk rest upon key points of tension within much larger structures of racial formation and capital circulation. Even during periods of relative stability, prosperity and privilege were precarious and often strenuously defended by the local white working and middle classes. As de jure desegregation and deindustrialization progressed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the resultant social and economic crises fueled the growing dominance of conservative groups within local politics. This deep political history explains much about the failure of regional reforms during the 1990s and the current popularity of revitalization plans based upon urban gentrification. The same community history, however, also suggests ways to design more equitable approaches to redevelopment.