Manufacturing Decline

Reynolds Farley, coauthor of Detroit Divided:
Manufacturing Decline convincingly argues that, while the disappearance of manufacturing jobs affected Rust Belt cities, their decline was not inevitable. Jason Hackworth provides a marvelous exposition of how this decline was largely produced by the rise of neoliberal policies emphasizing free markets while deliberately overlooking the region’s long history of racial disparities.

Michael Leo Owens, author of God and Government in the Ghetto: The Politics of Church-State Collaboration in Black America:
Manufacturing Decline implicates conservative thought leadership, anti-urban interests, and elite—and ordinary—laissez-faire racism in a deliberate, decades-long degradation of U.S. cities via privation, demolition, and desertion. It is a thoughtful, stimulating, and efficient read at the intersection of urban geography, planning, and the social sciences.

Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy:
Manufacturing Decline is a sobering yet essential read for anyone who is interested in the fate of America’s inner cities. This recovery of the politics behind—and, indeed, that created—the devastating decline of key cities such as Detroit is deeply unsettling but ultimately uplifting. As Jason Hackworth makes clear, just as America’s inner cities can be deliberately unmade to serve the political agenda of conservatives, so might they be remade in ways that could actually benefit all citizens equally.