| Abstract: | Ghettoization is increasingly of concern in countries around the world. The manifestation that causes the concern is known
primarily from the United States. But it is not a simple phenomenon there, and has gone through many changes over the past
several centuries. The article describes the ghetto of several historical periods: in the aftermath of slavery, during a period
of acceptance between the two World Wars, in pursuit of integration after World War II, and as today's quite different outcast
ghetto, a ghetto of exclusion, in a period during which for the first time it is perceived as a permanent component of urban
society. Whether the negative results of these developments can be overcome remains a contested question.
This paper expands a portion of a discussion that appeared in Marcuse (1997).
Peter Marcuse is Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia. A lawyer and planner and past President of the Los Angeles Planning Commission,
he is a member of Community Board 9 in Manhattan, and has written extensively on housing policy issues, the history of planning,
and problems of race and of globalization. He has researched these issues in the United States, Western Europe, Eastern Europe,
Australia, and South Africa. |
