Customer Reviews

The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In the opening chapter "WHAT WE LOST" the author sums up the relative soulnessness of suburban vs. urban living in the sentence "The automobile, that ultimate isolator, turned life into a TV show, a mediated set of images seen through the screen of our windshields" (p.20). After having lived for four years in Paris I understand exactly what Mr Suarez is bemoaning when he describes the community and sense of belonging people had in an urban environment, which was lost in the U.S during the "white flight" to the suburbs. In Paris I walked everywhere, knew my neighbours and was surrounded by small businesses, restaurants and cafes, a far cry from the neatly manicured lawns and people empty streets of suburbia, or to use the term coined by Mr Suarez "autosuburbanalia". This is a thought-provoking book that does an excellent job of exploring what was lost in the migration of European Americans and later middle class African Americans to the suburbs, it also contains an excellent analysis of what happened. Where the book failed was it's inability to fully explore the Why part of the equation. Mr Saurez puts the blame for white flight to the suburbs and the subsequent deterioration of inner cities squarely on the shoulders of European American intolerance and racism. The implied thesis of this book is that inner cities deteriorated because integration did not work due to the inability of European Americans to accept their new African American neighbours, in fact towards the end there are several pages devoted to examples of European American racism towards new neighbours of color. Legitimately held fears of African American crime are dismissed in the following manner; "Even if you take into account the statistic that a quarter of all black men are in the criminal justice system - either incarcerated or on parole, or on probation, which is an abnormally high number - that's still three-fourths who are not" (p.77) Mr Saurez paints a pretty damning picture of inner city African Americans despite his best efforts to portray them as innocent victims of economic change, bureaucratic neglect and European American aversion and racism. In fact the author goes one step further and implies that African Americans are justified in their violent attacks on other races: "Interestingly, there were Indians in this drugstore here when I visited just six months ago, now it seems they're gone. You're beginning to see more and more black solidarity, vis-à-vis the Asian and Indian business people, which sometimes spills over into real violence. How does a Kim's Market open, how does it survive in a place like this?"(p.70) Blatant violent racism on the part of African Americans towards other peoples is not condemned by the author, in fact it is referred to uncritically and without shame as an expression of "black solidarity", is it any wonder that non African American's choose to move out to the suburbs? Instead of looking for outside excuses Mr Suarez should show African Americans enough respect to acknowledge that they are responsible for their own destiny and thereby carry the blame for the deterioration and violence of the inner city environment they created and in which they live. Despite my difference of opinion with many of the conclusions in this work I highly recommend it to anyone interested in a stimulating, controversial and educational read.

I am a big fan of Ray Suarez' shows on NPR- but while he tells ain interesting story, it's a very incomplete one. He sees racism as the main factor motivating the move to the suburbs, but the emigration he's talking about long preceeded the riots of the 1960s, and the general climate of fear that accelerated the flight. The destitute, racially polarized inner cities that now help motiovate suburban flight were in large part created by the fiscal policies of the cities themselves.

The biggest factor has always been fiscal policy. The high tax rates of the cities, which were raised even higher as the tax base fled, served to give people a very good reason for leaving. Example: Here in Detroit, city residents pay a 3% income tax in addition to one of the highest property tax rates in the state. That's not uncommon.

Detroit's population has been falling for years, and in recent years the flight has been that of middle-class black residents, who leave for the same reasons as their white predecessors. As the surrounding communities have seen taxes go up with increased property values, flight continues out beyond the old suburbs to the new suburban communities.

Another reason has been the enginnered destruction of the stable neighborhoods in the central cities by government. In Detroit, neighborhoods were razed to create a block of empty land to sell cheaply to GM. In New York and elsewhere, stable neighborhoods were bulldozed by social engineers like Robert Moses to build horrible project housing. These further accelerated the decay of the city and the desire to leave.

No doubt racism has always been a factor, but the actual story has always been more complex that Suarez's simple tale.

Do not read this book as a cold analysis of what went wrong in our cities, although you will certainly gain some insight into the causes of urban decline. Saurez speaks with the voice of many of us who love much about cities: walking on city sidewalks and waving to neighbors we actually know as they sit on their porches, enjoying the architecture of older storefronts where unique non-chain shops still flourish, and feeling part of a real community.

Other reviewers say Saurez concentrates too much on racism as a cause of the loss of those communities. I think rather he simply reports what he saw and makes no apology for feeling city life offered so much more than living in the non-places of highways and strip malls and cul-de-sacs with no sidewalks that characterize America's suburbs.

Saurez has written a book that needed to be written.

As one with some fond memories of the old neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, and who now resides in a suburbia clotted with cars and cancerous sprawl, I applaud this book. Wouldn't it also be wornderful if we could declare a moratorium on reviews that insist on requiring a book present a program for "solving" any problems it delineates? Why? Because, first, it assumes that a good book that describes the problem has no other purpose than to help us scratch sores and, second, this sort of "standard" of merit is too often a dismissive gesture towards both the work and the reality of the "problem." Some of the commentary thus far strikes this pose; it's predictable and boring. Would that it were resisted. Go, Ray!

The book lacks real insight. Anyone who has ever thought about urban decay and white flight for more than five minutes can pretty much sum up the book. Guess what: white people fear that integration causes property values to drop, and that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sorry to put a spoiler in a review, but the book really is that obvious.

Ray Suarez fails to deliver on the promise of the title. He discusses only slightly what we lost through the mass migration from the cities. There is precious little text devoted to environmental damage, cultural decay, and a loss of social contact.

As far as I could find, there is no explanation of the deeper political phenomena leading to White Flight, such as the GI bill, transportation plans that subsidize suburban commutes over urban transportation, and enormous disparities in per capita education spending.

A lot of bootstraps, though. Big on the bootstraps.

If you know nothing about the decay of cities, and you've never wondered why your downtown is filled with empty buildings while there are industrial parks surrounding your kids' all-white school, then this book is for you.

I heard Ray speak recently about this subject and he offers a factual and personal insight into a real problem in our society. He confirms that the suburban landscape contributes to disconnectedness with others and lack of communal rapport. After reading this, I was even more sure that I could never leave the city for the banal, homogeneity of suburbia. Kudos to Ray for a timely book.

As a 15 year resident of Boston, I was hoping for an engaging, objective read on urban dynamics/dysfunctions but got rather more of a shrill diatribe. One page would contain thoughtful musings and compelling statistics (although just about any statistic can be manipulated to support a given viewpoint) followed by a page of politically correctisms (the one laugh-out-loud moment is when Suarez actually claims he is not PC!) Too many good questions are raised to easily dismiss what is presented here but its angry, insulting tone and over-emphasis on racism almost cancels this out and you are left with a near-wash.

An interesting treatise on how Americans migrated from urban settings to suburban life. The idea that this mass migration started in the mid 1960's puts the question out of date -- about 200 years out of date.

While our European ancestors sought out the urban and urbane life, the archetype of "American" life has been the lone individual on the frontier. Of course, that smacks against our longing for "community." Hence the American myth is schitzoid. We want it both ways. We want contact and community while we want independence and autonomy. Add a dash of racisim and a cup of financial worries and you have baked the current American cake.

Our laws, tax codes, and preferences all stem from the basic American myth of the independent settler depicted in most of our popular fiction. From Laura Ingles-Wilder to Zeyne Grey we love the frontier. Cities are anathema to that vision. As each ethnic group gets "assimilated" that group seeks to live that American dream.

We Americans may come to love the urban and urbane life at some time in the future. However, that will take a long time and require the end of a lot of myths. Sure, some Television shows vaunt the urban/urbane lifestyle but we really don't want that -- we want our own "Little House."

Groups will move into cities, become assimilated and move to the "burbs" and then on towards the "country" in search of the "frontier."

The book was fascinating and I read it from cover to cover in the span of two days. My only complaint was the way Suarez hammed it up regarding the beauties of the old neighborhood. I lived in the old neighborhood for 32 years and it wasn't that great! Maybe the reason we left the cities for the suburbs was the same reason people left the east to move west; new frontiers. At any rate, good book!

I started to read this book for a community service class. As I read I got more and more angry at the book. I understand that I don't really know what "city" is disappering as I came from a incrediably small town in Iowa. However, is it really all that bad that the old neighborhood city is disappearing? Maybe we all just need more room to breath! I also found this book incrediably racist. I'm sorry, I have "black" friends and "hispanic" friends living near me in Iowa and I don't even see their skin color. People, realize that we are living in the new age and that racist feelings are not really harbored in the small towns compaired to larger cities. The people who moved out did it for other reasons..I'm not saying that some didn't, I'm saying most did. And the author never ever says anything about those people moving back to the cities. If he wants to present an argument fully he has to see both sides. And he never did.