Root Shock
How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, And What We Can Do About It
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Root Shock examines 3 different U.S. cities to unmask the crippling results of decades-old disinvestment in communities of color and the urban renewal practices that ultimately destroyed these neighborhoods for the advantage of developers and the elite.
Like a sequel to the prescient warnings of urbanist Jane Jacobs, Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove reveals the disturbing effects of decades of insensitive urban renewal projects on communities of color. For those whose homes and neighborhoods were bulldozed, the urban modernization projects that swept America starting in 1949 were nothing short of an assault. Vibrant city blocks - places rich in culture - were torn apart by freeways and other invasive development, devastating the lives of poor residents. Fullilove passionately describes the profound traumatic stress- the "root shock"that results when a neighborhood is demolished. She estimates that federal and state urban renewal programs, spearheaded by business and real estate interests, destroyed 1,600 African American districts in cities across the United States. But urban renewal didn't just disrupt black communities: it ruined their economic health and social cohesion, stripping displaced residents of their sense of place as well. It also left big gashes in the centers of cities that are only now slowly being repaired. Focusing on the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the Central Ward in Newark, and the small Virginia city of Roanoke, Dr. Fullilove argues powerfully against policies of displacement. Understanding the damage caused by root shock is crucial to coping with its human toll and helping cities become whole. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, is a research psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute and professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at Columbia University. She is the author of five books, including Urban Alchemy.
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Fullilove (The House of Joshua) looks at the effect of urban renewal on black neighborhoods across the country and finds a well of emotional pain in this engagingly written but uneven book. According to Fullilove, the federal Housing Act of 1949 and its bulldozing of neighborhoods to make room for malls, freeways and parking lots left African-Americans at an enormous social, economic and emotional disadvantage. The experience of losing one's roots, she notes, "does not end with emergency treatment, but will stay with the individual for a lifetime." To illustrate this point, Fullilove, a professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at Columbia University, travels to gutted neighborhoods in Philadelphia; Pittsburgh, Pa.; and Roanoke, Va., and intersperses her analysis with before and after photos and testimony from displaced residents. "What must be heard in these stories of urban renewal their emotional core is the howl of amputation, the anguish at calamity unassuaged," she writes. She laments the disappearance of the overlapping networks that once existed in small black communities: the corner stores, shared gardens and neighbors who "automatically came." Urban renewal may have allowed some black families to move to nicer homes or neighborhoods, she concludes, but "the buffering effect of the kindness was lost." Fullilove is at her best conveying the emotions of displaced residents and their mixed feelings about relocation, gentrification and the loss of community ties. She is less successful in bringing in citations from her own studies in health policy, as well as the work of historically various urban planners such as Michel Cantal-Dupart, Georges-Eugene Haussmann and Jane Addams. The result is a somewhat disjointed examination of a complicated subject that isn't quite for general readers and isn't quite for academics, either.
