The Existential Problem of Urban Studies

When I became director of the undergraduate Urban Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania in 1983, I was surprised to find that it lacked a multidisciplinary course that aimed to provide a coherent interpretation of contemporary urban America. What accounted for deindustrialized, segregated, financially strapped, often violent cities with their failed public institutions and surrounding white suburbs? I wanted to give the students a single book that explained it all. No such book existed. In the circumstances, I felt compelled to undertake the task of synthesis myself in a single, introductory-level course.

I called the course "Urban Crisis: American Cities Since World War II," and first taught it in 1984. The years since have witnessed extraordinary changes in cities, so great, in fact, that the first part of the title, "urban crisis," probably is an anachronism. But maybe not. There is a continuity that has made it possible to retain the intellectual framework of the course while updating the reading list to include, for instance, the surge in immigration and the recent decline in crime. But I had a problem in teaching the course. It tells a story of deindustrialization, population decline, racial segregation, failed public housing, and so on—all of it true and inescapable. And it leaves students depressed; indeed, it leaves me depressed. Wonderful young people, eager to help change the world, confront a tale of powerful structural forces abetted by ambitious politicians, by every level of government, by racism, greedy real estate and corporate interests, and academic researchers impotent to suggest realistic avenues for change. Is this the vision that I want to leave with our students?