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The “Pittsburgh Renaissance,” an urban renewal effort launched in the late 1940s, transformed the smoky rust belt city’s downtown. Working-class residents and people of color saw their neighborhoods cleared and replaced with upscale, white residents and with large corporations housed in massive skyscrapers. Pittsburgh’s Renaissance’s apparent success quickly became a model for several struggling industrial cities, including St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia. 

In A Good Place to Do Business, Roger Biles and Mark Rose chronicle these urban “makeovers” which promised increased tourism and fashionable shopping as well as the development of sports stadiums, convention centers, downtown parks, and more. They examine the politics of these government-funded redevelopment programs and show how city politics (and policymakers) often dictated the level of success. 

As city officials and business elites determined to reorganize their downtowns, a deeply racialized politics sacrificed neighborhoods and the livelihoods of those pushed out. Yet, as A Good Place to Do Business demonstrates, more often than not, costly efforts to bring about the hoped-for improvements failed to revitalize those cities, or even their downtowns.

Once in office, African-American mayors faced vexing challenges. In large and small cities from the Sunbelt to the Rustbelt, black mayors assumed office during economic downturns and confronted the intractable problems of decaying inner cities, white flight, a dwindling tax base, violent crime, and diminishing federal support for social programs. Many encountered hostility from their own parties, city councils, and police departments; others worked against long-established power structures dominated by local business owners or politicians. Still others, while trying to respond to multiple demands from a diverse constituency, were viewed as traitors by blacks expecting special attention from a leader of their own race. All struggled with the contradictory mandate of meeting the increasing needs of poor inner-city residents while keeping white businesses from fleeing to the suburbs.

This is the first comprehensive treatment of the complex phenomenon of African-American mayors in the nation's major urban centers. Offering a diverse portrait of leadership, conflict, and almost insurmountable obstacles, this volume assesses the political alliances that brought black mayors to office as well as their accomplishments--notably, increased minority hiring and funding for minority businesses--and the challenges that marked their careers. Mayors profiled include Carl B. Stokes (Cleveland), Richard G. Hatcher (Gary), "Dutch" Morial (New Orleans), Harold Washington (Chicago), Tom Bradley (Los Angeles), Marion Barry (Washington, D.C.), David Dinkins (New York City), Coleman Young (Detroit), and a succession of black mayors in Atlanta (Maynard Jackson, Andrew Young, and Bill Campbell).Probing the elusive economic dimension of black power, African-American Mayors demonstrates how the same circumstances that set the stage for the victories of black mayors exaggerated the obstacles they faced.

The Calumet Region around Lake Michigan’s southern rim once housed massive steel mills, workshops, and railroads. Capitalists like Elbert Gary built factories and dominated local governments. During its heyday in the twentieth century, the Calumet Region was also a thriving district for immigrants who worked dangerous jobs.

But even before the area’s decline started in the 1970s, intense racial, ethnic, and political strife determined job and housing prospects. In the Heart of the Rustbelt details how people struggled as factory rules and local politics failed to protect residents from health hazards and sabotaged workers’ rights. 

Roger Biles and Mark Rose describe how workers organized (or didn’t), the ethnic neighborhoods where they lived, and the distinct foodstuffs, such as Hungarian goulash, that both bonded and excluded immigrants. The authors also showcase individuals including Gary, IN Mayor Richard G. Hatcher, who fought for equality. Chapters also explore the lives of steelworkers Eddie Sadlowski, who sought to democratize the union, and Mexican American Jesse Villalpando, who experienced union and management’s hostility in hiring and job assignments. 

In the Heart of the Rustbelt provides a fascinating history about industrial growth and why race and ethnicity mattered as the Calumet Region rose and fell.