The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999

by Ray Suarez

Book Overview

"Life in the city, for the millions who lived it, was once something less than the sum of their lifestyle choices: they woke up, they ate, they shoveled coal, loved, hated, prayed, mated, reproduced, died. For most, the home was not a display object but a place to keep the few things they had managed to hold on to from the surpluses produced by their labor. Their material life was made of the things they didn't have to eat, wear, or burn right...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684834022
• ISBN13: 9780684834023
• Release Date: May 1999
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

I LOVED THIS BOOK

Do not read this book as a cold analysis of what went wrong in our cities, although you will certainly gain some insight into the causes of urban decline. Saurez speaks with the voice of many of us who love much about cities: walking on city sidewalks and waving to neighbors we actually know as they sit on their porches, enjoying the architecture of older storefronts where unique non-chain shops still flourish, and feeling part of a real community. Other reviewers say Saurez concentrates too much on racism as a cause of the loss of those communities. I think rather he simply reports what he saw and makes no apology for feeling city life offered so much more than living in the non-places of highways and strip malls and cul-de-sacs with no sidewalks that characterize America's suburbs. Saurez has written a book that needed to be written.

Sidesteps key issue of African American crime and racism

In the opening chapter "WHAT WE LOST" the author sums up the relative soulnessness of suburban vs. urban living in the sentence "The automobile, that ultimate isolator, turned life into a TV show, a mediated set of images seen through the screen of our windshields" (p.20). After having lived for four years in Paris I understand exactly what Mr Suarez is bemoaning when he describes the community and sense of belonging people had in an urban environment, which was lost in the U.S during the "white flight" to the suburbs. In Paris I walked everywhere, knew my neighbours and was surrounded by small businesses, restaurants and cafes, a far cry from the neatly manicured lawns and people empty streets of suburbia, or to use the term coined by Mr Suarez "autosuburbanalia". This is a thought-provoking book that does an excellent job of exploring what was lost in the migration of European Americans and later middle class African Americans to the suburbs, it also contains an excellent analysis of what happened. Where the book failed was it's inability to fully explore the Why part of the equation. Mr Saurez puts the blame for white flight to the suburbs and the subsequent deterioration of inner cities squarely on the shoulders of European American intolerance and racism. The implied thesis of this book is that inner cities deteriorated because integration did not work due to the inability of European Americans to accept their new African American neighbours, in fact towards the end there are several pages devoted to examples of European American racism towards new neighbours of color. Legitimately held fears of African American crime are dismissed in the following manner; "Even if you take into account the statistic that a quarter of all black men are in the criminal justice system - either incarcerated or on parole, or on probation, which is an abnormally high number - that's still three-fourths who are not" (p.77) Mr Saurez paints a pretty damning picture of inner city African Americans despite his best efforts to portray them as innocent victims of economic change, bureaucratic neglect and European American aversion and racism. In fact the author goes one step further and implies that African Americans are justified in their violent attacks on other races: "Interestingly, there were Indians in this drugstore here when I visited just six months ago, now it seems they're gone. You're beginning to see more and more black solidarity, vis-à-vis the Asian and Indian business people, which sometimes spills over into real violence. How does a Kim's Market open, how does it survive in a place like this?"(p.70) Blatant violent racism on the part of African Americans towards other peoples is not condemned by the author, in fact it is referred to uncritically and without shame as an expression of "black solidarity", is it any wonder that non African American's choose to move out to the suburbs? Instead of looking for outside exc

The book is very good.

The book was fascinating and I read it from cover to cover in the span of two days. My only complaint was the way Suarez hammed it up regarding the beauties of the old neighborhood. I lived in the old neighborhood for 32 years and it wasn't that great! Maybe the reason we left the cities for the suburbs was the same reason people left the east to move west; new frontiers. At any rate, good book!

Sobering look at America's exodus to the 'burbs!

I heard Ray speak recently about this subject and he offers a factual and personal insight into a real problem in our society. He confirms that the suburban landscape contributes to disconnectedness with others and lack of communal rapport. After reading this, I was even more sure that I could never leave the city for the banal, homogeneity of suburbia. Kudos to Ray for a timely book.

A story that needs telling

As one with some fond memories of the old neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, and who now resides in a suburbia clotted with cars and cancerous sprawl, I applaud this book. Wouldn't it also be wornderful if we could declare a moratorium on reviews that insist on requiring a book present a program for "solving" any problems it delineates? Why? Because, first, it assumes that a good book that describes the problem has no other purpose than to help us scratch sores and, second, this sort of "standard" of merit is too often a dismissive gesture towards both the work and the reality of the "problem." Some of the commentary thus far strikes this pose; it's predictable and boring. Would that it were resisted. Go, Ray!