Synopses & Reviews
Many people characterize urban renewal projects and the power of eminent domain as two of the most widely despised and often racist tools for reshaping American cities in the postwar period. In
A World More Concrete, N. D. B. Connolly uses the history of South Florida to unearth an older and far more complex story. Connolly captures nearly eighty years of political and land transactions to reveal how real estate and redevelopment created and preserved metropolitan growth and racial peace under white supremacy. Using a materialist approach, he offers a long view of capitalism and the color line, following much of the money that made land-taking and Jim Crow segregation profitable and preferred approaches to governing cities throughout the twentieth-century.
A World More Concrete argues that black and white landlords, entrepreneurs, and even liberal community leaders used tenements and repeated land dispossession to take advantage of the poor and generate remarkable wealth. Through a political culture built on real estate, South Floridas landlords and homeowners advanced property rights and white property rights, especially, at the expense of more inclusive visions of equality. For black people and many of their white allies, uses of eminent domain helped to harden class and color lines. Yet, for many reformers, confiscating certain kinds of real estate through eminent domain also promised to help improve housing conditions, to undermine the neighborhood influence of powerful slumlords, and to open new opportunities for suburban life for black Floridians.
Concerned more with winners and losers than with heroes and villains, A World More Concrete offers a sober assessment of money and power in Jim Crow America. It shows how negotiations between powerful real estate interests on both sides of the color line gave racial segregation a remarkable capacity to evolve, revealing property owners power to reshape American cities in ways that can still be seen and felt today.
Review
“In this bold and brilliant book, Connolly demolishes the conventional wisdom about the relationship of race and place in modern America. Rejecting a narrative that pits the black struggle for civil rights against a white defense of property rights, he shows how—and why—some African Americans embraced the logic and laws of real estate for their own ends. Deeply researched and elegantly written,
A World More Concrete does more than simply describe the landscape created by whites and blacks in a major city; it shows how contemporary America itself was constructed.”
Review
“A World More Concrete explodes easy assumptions about the relationship between property-holding and white political domination in segregated South Florida. Revealing the tangled connections between black and white landlords and their African American renters, Connolly argues that together, black and white landlords helped ensure Jim Crow's profitability, and its survival within state and society. His unsentimental conclusion that ‘people of every complexion made Jim Crow work will provoke spirited debate among anyone interested in African American history, racial justice, and the quest for equality in America.”
Review
“A World More Concrete marks the arrival of an exciting new voice in American political and social history. Through a fascinating history of Miami, Connolly brings together politics, culture, and economics in a riveting account of how shared understandings of property rights and real estate were central to the racial segregation that has plagued Americas cities. Connolly unpacks the complex dynamics of property transactions and urban development, meticulously analyzing all the various institutional actors who shape this market in order to understand the political economy of racism.”
Review
“There are no heroes in Connolly’s A World More Concrete except, perhaps, the long-suffering black masses. There are winners and losers, however, and the big winners were whites who controlled the land and real estate in Miami and Southeast Florida.”
About the Author
N. D. B. Connolly
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Americas Playground
Part I: Foundation
One: The Magic City
Two: Bargaining and Hoping
Part II: Construction
Three: Jim Crow Liberalism
Four: Pan-America
Five: Knocking on the Door
Six: A Little Insurance
Part III: Renovation
Seven: Bulldozing Jim Crow
Eight: Suburban Renewal
Conclusion: The Tragic City
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index