''The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit'' is the first book by historian and Detroit native Thomas J. Sugrue in which he examines the role race, housing, job discrimination, and capital flight played in the

decline of Detroit Detroit, the largest city in the state of Michigan, was settled in 1701 by French colonists. It is the first European settlement above tidewater in North America., p. 56. Founded as a New France fur trading post, it began to expand during the 19 ...

. Sugrue argues that the decline of Detroit began long before the 1967 race riot. Sugrue argues that institutionalized and often legalized racism resulted in sharply limited opportunities for

African Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

in Detroit for most of the 20th century. He also argues that the process of

deindustrialization Deindustrialization is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity or activity in a country or region, especially of heavy industry or manufacturing industry. There are different interpre ...

, the flight of investment and jobs from the city, began in the 1950s as employers moved to suburban areas and small towns and also introduced new labor-saving technologies. The book has won multiple awards including a

Bancroft Prize The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. It was established in 1948, with a bequest from Frederic Bancroft, in his memory and that of his brother, ...

in 1998.

Awards

''Origins of the Urban Crisis'' won the 1998

in American History, the 1996 Social Science History Association President's Book Award for a first work by a beginning scholar, the 1996

Philip Taft Philip Taft (1902–1976) was an American labor historian whose research focused on the labor history of the United States and the American Federation of Labor. Early life Taft was born on March 22, 1902, in Syracuse, New York. His father di ...

Prize in Labor History, and the 1997 Urban History Association Prize for Best Book in North American Labor History. In 2005, Princeton University Press selected ''Origins of the Urban Crisis'' as one of its 100 most influential books of the preceding century and issued it as a Princeton Classic. In 2014, Princeton published a new edition of the book, with a new preface discussing Detroit's bankruptcy.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Origins of the Urban Crisis 1996 non-fiction books 20th-century history books Sociology books Urban planning Books about urbanism 1950s in Detroit Bancroft Prize-winning works Princeton University Press books Books about Detroit