Introduction: Urban History, Arnold Hirsch, and the Second Ghetto Thesis Redux

Abstract

The death of American historian Arnold Hirsch, in 2018, generated multiple reexaminations of his profoundly influential “second ghetto thesis.” Hirsch’s landmark Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940 - 1960 (1983) is considered among the most important books on twentieth-century American history published in the past half century. In 2003, contributors to a special issue of the Journal of Urban History reflected on the twentieth anniversary of Hirsch’s second ghetto thesis. More recently, a new generation of urbanists have emerged who build upon and challenge Hirsch’s work. This forum highlights this new generation.

Money and the Ghetto, Money in the Ghetto

“…"The racial and economic balkanization that characterized contemporary American cities," Timothy Gilfoyle wrote in 2003, was "rooted in the private and public policies that created new and distinctive patterns of racial segregation." 20 Sixteen years later, many American cities are no longer synonymous with blackened, divested space. Many cities increasingly no longer offer upwardly mobile work opportunities to low-skilled workers.…”