Metropolitan Communities

Art and Joseph Bensman teamed up for yet another one of their collaborations to address urban planning and urban communities. The book addresses the types of communities that have developed since World War II - particularly during the sixties and seventies.

It focuses on the underlying causes of this development - ethnic changes in the composition of metropolitan areas, the decline of the inner city and the flight to the suburbs.

The editors see class, ethnic, political, racial and civic tensions as the basis for the recreation of older communities and the organization of new ones. The role of governments and private bodies in helping create these communities is explored in depth.

What makes this book a fascinating read is that all of the essays were written by New York Times journalists with "boots on the ground" insights about Metropolitan Communities.

Part one addresses Overall trends associated with new migrants to American cities, the growth of the "centerless" suburbia and the decline and decay of urban centers with the out migration of white middle class families. While this book was published over 40 years ago, its gripping stories of poverty and crime in America's central cities reveals how little progress urban planners have made in rectifying the  stark economic segregation created by zoning regulations and the massive federal investment in the interstate highway system.  The Intestate Highways are rightly portrayed as a federal massive investment that has contributed to the destruction of metropolitan communities and led to massive land speculation along interstate interchanges.

Part 2 of the book assembles ten New York Times articles on metropolitan sub communities and sub-cultures of the lower class, bohemians, intellectuals and artistic as well as the middle and lower middle class. Part 3 includes six articles on ethnic communities primarily located in New York City and Part 4 deals with tensions as a source of community conflict and integration which is addressed through ten excellent articles written by veteran journalists. Finally Part 5 presents nine articles that discuss new community forms including defensive and conflict communities, administrative communities and institutional and discretionary communities.

Published in 1975, this would be one of the last collaborations that Art would have with his dear friend Joseph Bensman.  Anyone concerned with the future of the American city and its wide range of communities and cultures, would benefit from reading this book - if only to recognize how little progress has been made in resolving economic and racial segregation in America.