Overview

In Urban Lowlands, Steven T. Moga looks closely at the Harlem Flats in New York City, Black Bottom in Nashville, Swede Hollow in Saint Paul, and the Flats in Los Angeles, to interrogate the connections between a city’s actual landscape and the poverty and social problems that are often concentrated at its literal lowest points. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective on the history of US urban development from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, Moga reveals patterns of inequitable land use, economic dispossession, and social discrimination against immigrants and minorities. In attending to the landscapes of neighborhoods typically considered slums, Moga shows how physical and policy-driven containment has shaped the lives of the urban poor, while wealth and access to resources have been historically concentrated in elevated areas—truly “the heights.” Moga’s innovative framework expands our understanding of how planning and economic segregation alike have molded the American city.  

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9780226710532

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Moga makes an exceptionally persuasive case regarding the factors shaping the development of lowland areas. He clearly establishes the importance of disease theory and racial attitudes as critical to urban decision-making. What is most impressive about Urban Lowlands is that Moga seamlessly connects his story of bottomlands to larger developments in urban planning in the post-1930s period. --David Soll, author of Empire of Water: An Environmental and Political History of the New York Water

"""Moga makes an exceptionally persuasive case regarding the factors shaping the development of lowland areas. He clearly establishes the importance of disease theory and racial attitudes as critical to urban decision-making. What is most impressive about Urban Lowlands is that Moga seamlessly connects his story of bottomlands to larger developments in urban planning in the post-1930s period.""--David Soll, author of Empire of Water: An Environmental and Political History of the New York Water"

Author Information

Steven T. Moga is assistant professor of landscape studies at Smith College.

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