Brian D. Goldstein, an urban and architectural historian, is Assistant Professor of Art History at Swarthmore College.
[A] meticulously researched account of Harlemites' efforts to
exercise control over their area since the urban crisis of the
1960s... Full of telling details. [This] is not a popular history
but a work of rigorous scholarship. -- Benjamin George Friedman *
Times Literary Supplement *
Intensely detailed, this important historical analysis reads not
like a play-by-play account but rather like a drama, due to the
author's strong sense of narrative. The story is deeply relevant
today as the processes of gentrification and the resistance to
those processes continue to produce and reproduce urban spaces
across the U.S. and throughout New York City, including Harlem.
Goldstein investigates how structures of racism, paternalism, and
the creative destruction wrought by capitalism intersect in this
iconic 'underserved' neighborhood, and how residents fought-and
fight-to retain a degree of autonomy. The author skillfully links
events in Harlem to the broader black power and civil rights
movements, and to shifting political regimes. This volume covers a
considerable span, from the early 1960s during the heyday of
blanket 'urban revitalization,' which threatened to clear swaths of
'urban blight,' to the late 1990s. -- A. B. Audant * Choice *
The Roots of Urban Renaissance is a social and political
history of the built environment. In it, Goldstein tells the story
of Harlem's gentrification from the inside out: rather than
chronicle the experiences of migrants to the neighborhood, he
recovers the points of view of the people who were already
there...[It] is a pleasure to read and a major contribution to
urban studies, to the history of the black freedom struggle, and to
twentieth-century American social and political history writ large.
-- Tracy Neumann * American Historical Review *
The most fascinating question posed again and again by Harlem
residents, and echoed throughout Goldstein's book, is what the
streets of Harlem should look like, who should design them, and who
gets to inhabit them...His point, essentially, is to debunk the
idea that the gentrification of Harlem was solely imposed by
outside developers and investors...Goldstein illustrates well how
Harlemites not only asked, but thoroughly engaged. Although the
results were mixed, it's impossible to deny how the neighborhood
was radically shaped by the opinions, persistence, and ingenuity of
the people who actually lived there. -- Emily Nonko * Architects
Newspaper *
The metamorphosis of Harlem since the mid-twentieth century has
been remarkable. A symbol of urban crisis and a black power utopia,
it was reshaped both by advocates of community participation and by
the forces of global capitalism. With attention to the ironies of
urban renewal, community control, black power, and privatization,
Goldstein takes us on a surprising, unpredictable, and revelatory
tour of one of America's most famous neighborhoods. -- Thomas J.
Sugrue, author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis
A fascinating book that will make a major impact on our
understanding of Harlem and the life of the American city. The
Roots of Urban Renaissance is a must-read for those interested
in urban design and politics, the civil rights movement, and
African American history. -- Suleiman Osman, author of The
Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn
We've waited far too long for a book like Goldstein's. We see,
through his efforts, how debates over community control, modernist
and insurgent architecture, and public/private partnerships owe
much of their ongoing salience to the experience of redevelopment
in Harlem. Indeed, if the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s captures
a distinctive cultural flowering, the Harlem of the 1960s and
1970s, in Goldstein's able hands, similarly stands in for America.
-- N. D. B. Connolly, author of A World More Concrete
Goldstein shows us how the neighborhood that nurtured Malcolm X
also gave birth to one of the first community development
corporations in the United States, helping readers to understand
the multifarious and shifting forces-from self-determination and
radical democratization, to privatization and gentrification-that
ultimately created the Harlem we know today. By knowing Harlem,
Goldstein demonstrates, we can better understand the complex
histories of the inner city in the last decades of the twentieth
century. -- Dianne Harris, author of Little White Houses
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