Mapping Decline

Colin Gordon is Professor of History at The University of Iowa and author of Dead on Arrival: The Politics of Health Care in Twentieth- Century America and New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920-1935.

"Colin Gordon combines intellectual rigor, a compelling argument, and extensive archival research with the latest geographic information system digital mapping techniques. Dozens of color maps, together with numerous figures and tables, allow the reader to examine the data with fresh eyes. Gordon's focus on a single city, a single neighborhood (Greater Ville), and even a single house (4635 North Market Street) gives his comprehensive analysis an immediacy and power that it might otherwise lack. And the prose is so thoughtful, so well written, and so engaged with recent scholarship that scholars on the topic will be fascinated."-Kenneth Jackson, Political Science Quarterly "Knowledgeably argued, exhaustively researched, and accessibly written, Gordon's book also employs the latest in digital mapping technology... For brick-and-mortar urban specialists ... Mapping Decline is nothing short of monumental."-Urban History "A searing indictment of policymakers, realtors, and mortgage lenders for deliberate decisions that sacrificed their own city of St. Louis on the altar of race. Colin Gordon's use of cartography to visualize this painful pattern of injustice and bad sense is a forceful exemplar for a new kind of history: one told visually as well as textually; analyzed spatially as well as chronologically. Written with empathy, Mapping Decline is a new milestone on the road toward a necessary reckoning of the precise responsibility for the extended urban crises of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries."-Philip J. Ethington, University of Southern California "Colin Gordon has infused the 'old' story of urban decline with new energy and urgency. His mapping of St. Louis's evolution is a powerful indictment of the distorting, segregating, and wasteful effects of public policy over several generations. Yet the book is not just about history. Incredibly, as Gordon shows, current national and state policies and governmental fragmentation continue to undermine the recovery of American cities at the precise moment when they matter again-economically, environmentally, and socially."-Bruce Katz, Brookings Institution

• List of Maps, Figures, and TablesPrefaceIntroduction. Our House: The Twentieth Century at 4635 North Market StreetLocal Politics, Local Power: Governing Greater St. Louis, 1940-2000"The Steel Ring": Race and Realty in Greater St. LouisPatchwork Metropolis: Municipal Zoning in Greater St. LouisFighting Blight: Urban Renewal Policies and Programs, 1945-2000City of Blight: The Limits of Urban Renewal in Greater St. LouisConclusion. Our House Revisited: The Twenty-First Century at 4635 North Market StreetNotesIndex