Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of US Cities

Voices of Declineis a sweeping history of dominant representations of the American City in the twentieth century. Upon its initial publication in 1993, the book was hailed as a breakthrough book that introduced discourse analysis and an appreciation of the shaping power of representation into American urban studies. Beauregard has identified a pervasive discourse of decline about American cities, one that shaped the policy response to the perceived "urban crisis" of the postwar era. The discourse also had a powerful influence on how Americans viewed their cities. In chronologically organized chapters, he details the dominant features of this discourse as it shifted over time, simultaneously uncovering the deeper unease that lay beneath the surface of the discourse - fears of national decline and the decay of civilization itself. He also considers the absences in the discourse regarding race and poverty, and assesses their negative impact on both public policy and urban social life. This secondedition has been thoroughly rewritten and now includes an account of the boom years of the 1990s.

Robert A. Beauregard is Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Public and Urban Policy at the Milano School of Management and Urban Policy, New School University.