Cities and Inequality Since 1920: The United States

Catalog description

This lecture course takes up the relationship between cities and social and economic inequality—especially racial, but also other forms of social disadvantage along lines of class, gender, sexuality, indigeneity, and geography. Its focus is the urban history of American cities, suburbs, and towns and how urban development since the advent of the motor-car suburb in the 1920s shaped American social life. Students will learn about and explore topics such as zoning, racial redlining and other forms of segregation, real estate markets, the home building industry, urban public policy and law, urban leisure, transportation, and many others. At the center of the course is the question of how people live in dense connectivity and community and what the history of the modern American city can tell us about the nature and durability of social inequality.