Abstract
In his book Saving Our Cities: A Progressive Plan to Transform Urban America, William Goldsmith proposes a restructuring of state and federal policies in four areas: austerity, schools, food, and drugs. While he could have written an entire book on each of these topics, he skillfully condenses a wealth of data, including popular media references, with the expressed goal of demonstrating “how yesterday’s events fit into recurring patterns and how they are interconnected” (p. 3). Goldsmith illustrates how these four issues profoundly affect the health, wealth, and prosperity of cities and how the health of cities is essential to the prosperity of the nation. He calls for planning and policymaking efforts to shift from traditional community and economic development approaches that can often “operate with biases toward helping those firms, residents, and neighborhoods that are least in need” (p. 17) to a national policy approach that addresses austerity, schools, food, and drugs. Austerity is the central theme of the book, unifying schools, foods, and drugs as national policy issues. Goldsmith presents a compelling argument to reject austerity and focus on national policy changes and provides a general direction for future policy reform.
In “Cities as Political Targets,” the first of seven chapters, Goldsmith provides an overview of the historical development of austerity in the context of the anti-urban culture of America. He chronicles the growth of federal investment in city centers, including government-backed planning efforts. In doing so, Goldsmith argues that “much of twentieth-century planning was anti-urban as it mainly served establishment rather than the majority needs, privilege rather than typical neighborhoods, and suburbs rather than city centers” (p. 29). By the 1970s, conservative ideologies, corporate lobbying, and political rhetoric all contributed to the growth of the right, and as a result, federal money “flowed away from the cities towards the suburbs” (p. 34). As state-sponsored segregation prohibited people of color from moving to the government-subsidized suburbs, the withdrawal of federal funding from cities mostly affected already marginalized communities.
In the next chapter, “Cities as Budget-Cutting Targets,” Goldsmith analyzes the role hostile rhetoric in the media, as a political tool, plays in paving the way for austerity policies in America in the twentieth century. Political and economic forces controlled the narrative of center cities, and “neoliberal policy initiatives to reduce government growth in cities” replaced social welfare policy (p. 51). Urban places were villainized as sites of the racialized poor, criminal, and undeserving, easily gaining popular support for hostile state and federal legislation toward cities. He takes his analysis a step further by linking historical patterns of hostile rhetoric to the present-day Black Lives Matter movement, recognizing that austerity withdrew resources while also inflicting violent punishment on populations that have been made vulnerable by the intentional production of inequality. Goldsmith’s progressive plan to address austerity involves reversing federal austerity politics and economy, yet he admits that these reductions are difficult to accomplish.
The chapters titled “Troubled City Schools” (Chapter 3) and “Options for City Schools” (Chapter 4) focus on city schools, associating school failure with austerity and inequality caused by residential segregation. Goldsmith suggests that “public school disparities mirror neighborhood disparities” (p. 89), and therefore improving schools requires building equity into city neighborhoods. The lack of government funding to implement education legislation and the inability of local efforts to be effective due to state and federal restrictions have created a cycle of inequality. In his analysis, Goldsmith compares inner-city to suburban schools to show how municipal fragmentation affects city schools and highlights programs that allow students to attend suburban schools and special schools within inner-city schools as two promising innovations for immediate improvements. For more progressive and long-term policy approaches, the author turns to Finland as a model for reducing inequalities and producing a quality education system. Essential elements of any national policy movement toward city schools should include teacher training, school autonomy, equal funding, and student well-being.
Goldsmith devotes “The Paradox of Plenty” (Chapter 5) to an analysis of the relationship between food systems and cities. Goldsmith describes a brief history of “limited” city food planning dating back to the City Beautiful movement. Similar to his analysis of schools, Goldsmith argues that nutritional inequalities, focusing on food security and food deserts, are rooted in geographic disparities. While food is mostly considered a private market commodity, Goldsmith links food systems to austerity by examining government programs that provide food, including school food programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and food banks. He also explains the political economy of food by examining the processes by which food corporations influence legislators to push for profit-driven policies rather than healthy and equal production of food. In his recommendations, Goldsmith highlights food policy councils, community gardens, and food justice movements as some of the most helpful intermediate solutions. However, for a progressive national policy plan, he argues that policymakers will have to address lobbying influence, advertising tactic, biased research produced by universities and funding by food corporations and affiliates.
In “Drugs, Prisons, and Neighborhoods” (Chapter 6) and “Drug-War Politics” (Chapter 7), Goldsmith provides an analysis of the drug trade, the drug war, and necessarily the prison industry. The drug war is the exception in the conversation of austerity; as many urban neighborhoods suffer from the decrease in funding for schools and food assistance, they also suffer from the increased drug war funding. As a result of the significant federal investment in the war of drugs, “America has the largest penal system in the world” (p. 159). While prisons are rarely located in urban neighborhoods, Goldsmith argues that drugs, specifically the drug war, has had an unequal effect on urban neighborhoods with a high percentage of blacks and Hispanics/Latinos. These neighborhoods are targeted as battlegrounds for the drug war, even though statistically non-Hispanic whites are the largest percentage of drug users. He distinguishes between the drug trade and the drug war, explaining how each affects every aspect of urban neighborhoods, including food and schools, differently.
Goldsmith’s analysis includes a comparison between drug (war), which has been racialized and urbanized, and alcohol (prohibition), an explanation of the drug economy, and a brief policy history of the war on drugs. The drug war operates as a tool of oppression in communities of color as biased arrest, convictions, sentences, and jail terms place a disproportionate number of Blacks and Hispanics/Latinos in confinement. He argues that the drug war damages neighborhoods already made vulnerable by austerity and anti-drug rhetoric and politics contributed to the emergence of a drug war industry, deepening the inequality gap as wealthy prison and defense corporations make a profit while the poor are imprisoned. Goldsmith recommends harm reduction, decriminalization, and legalization with regulation as central policy approaches to adequately addressing the drug issues in American cities. He argues that drug use will only decrease with the comprehensive rehabilitation of city neighborhoods, and that rehabilitation requires federal and state support.
Goldsmith’s historical analysis of policies around austerity, schools, food, and drugs seamlessly threaded together by themes of power and inequality provides the reader with a solid understanding of the issues. However, this book does not offer the “progressive plan” promised in the title. I believe that Goldsmith’s recommendations lack the complexity necessary to provide a robust framework for national policy objectives. American has a unique history of dispossession, colonialism, slavery, and oppression deeply embedded in present-day political, social, and economic structures and cultures. The election of President Donald Trump, a few months after the publication of this book, illuminated how entrenched these structures and cultures are in U.S. society as we have seen national leadership that vehemently opposes to any progressive urban policy. Goldsmith’s recommendations seem to lack a critical consideration of this culture of America and little efforts connect policy improvements to structural and cultural changes. For example, in the U.S. context, focusing on equality, and looking to Finland as a model, is not a sufficient solution to saving our cities, because of this distinct oppressive history. Developing equality in policies will not address generational gaps in health, wealth, and prosperity caused by intentional and strategic tactics to maintain white privilege gained in colonialism. Thus, inequality will persist. One way to remedy this is to consider reparations for past harm, and Goldsmith fails to adequately include these topics in his policy approaches.
While his advocacy for planners and policymakers to consider each topic in a comprehensive approach to improving American cities is motivating, I wished that Goldsmith would have engaged planning more in his analysis and recommendations. He does not clearly situate planning in the context of the school or drug conversations. Even though these are new topics in the field, it would be helpful to provide some examples of how planners could engage in these policy areas in meaningful ways. Even with these minor frustrations, Saving Our Cities provides an insightful analysis of austerity, schools, food, and drug as central policy areas afflicting American cities. While this book does not provide a progressive plan that fits the current political context, it can inspire planners to develop national policy frameworks for improving U.S. cities.