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Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (Politics and Culture in Modern America) Paperback – October 8, 2009

by Colin Gordon (Author)
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Once a thriving metropolis on the banks of the Mississippi, St. Louis, Missouri, is now a ghostly landscape of vacant houses, boarded-up storefronts, and abandoned factories. The Gateway City is, by any measure, one of the most depopulated, deindustrialized, and deeply segregated examples of American urban decay. "Not a typical city," as one observer noted in the late 1970s, "but, like a Eugene O'Neill play, it shows a general condition in a stark and dramatic form."

Mapping Decline examines the causes and consequences of St. Louis's urban crisis. It traces the complicity of private real estate restrictions, local planning and zoning, and federal housing policies in the "white flight" of people and wealth from the central city. And it traces the inadequacy—and often sheer folly—of a generation of urban renewal, in which even programs and resources aimed at eradicating blight in the city ended up encouraging flight to the suburbs. The urban crisis, as this study of St. Louis makes clear, is not just a consequence of economic and demographic change; it is also the most profound political failure of our recent history.

Mapping Decline is the first history of a modern American city to combine extensive local archival research with the latest geographic information system (GIS) digital mapping techniques. More than 75 full-color maps—rendered from census data, archival sources, case law, and local planning and property records—illustrate, in often stark and dramatic ways, the still-unfolding political history of our neglected cities.

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  1. Part of series
    Politics and Culture in Modern America
  2. Print length
    304 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    University of Pennsylvania Press
  5. Publication date
    October 8, 2009
  6. Dimensions
    6.75 x 0.5 x 10 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    0812220943
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0812220940
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

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"Colin Gordon combines intellectual rigor, a compelling argument, and extensive archival research with the latest geographic information system digital mapping techniques. Dozens of color maps, together with numerous figures and tables, allow the reader to examine the data with fresh eyes. Gordon's focus on a single city, a single neighborhood (Greater Ville), and even a single house (4635 North Market Street) gives his comprehensive analysis an immediacy and power that it might otherwise lack. And the prose is so thoughtful, so well written, and so engaged with recent scholarship that scholars on the topic will be fascinated." ― Kenneth Jackson, Political Science Quarterly

"Knowledgeably argued, exhaustively researched, and accessibly written, Gordon's book also employs the latest in digital mapping technology. . . . For brick-and-mortar urban specialists . . . Mapping Decline is nothing short of monumental." ― Urban History

"A searing indictment of policymakers, realtors, and mortgage lenders for deliberate decisions that sacrificed their own city of St. Louis on the altar of race. Colin Gordon's use of cartography to visualize this painful pattern of injustice and bad sense is a forceful exemplar for a new kind of history: one told visually as well as textually; analyzed spatially as well as chronologically. Written with empathy, Mapping Decline is a new milestone on the road toward a necessary reckoning of the precise responsibility for the extended urban crises of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries." ― Philip J. Ethington, University of Southern California

"Colin Gordon has infused the 'old' story of urban decline with new energy and urgency. His mapping of St. Louis's evolution is a powerful indictment of the distorting, segregating, and wasteful effects of public policy over several generations. Yet the book is not just about history. Incredibly, as Gordon shows, current national and state policies and governmental fragmentation continue to undermine the recovery of American cities at the precise moment when they matter again-economically, environmentally, and socially." ― Bruce Katz, Brookings Institution

Book Description

Mapping Decline, illustrated with more than 75 full-color maps, traces the ways private real estate restrictions, local planning and zoning, federal housing policies, and urban renewal encouraged "white flight" and urban decline in St. Louis, Missouri.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Pennsylvania Press; Illustrated edition (October 8, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0812220943
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0812220940
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.65 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.75 x 0.5 x 10 inches
  • Customer Reviews:

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Colin Gordon

Colin Gordon

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Colin Gordon is Professor and Chair of History at the University of Iowa, where he has taught since 1994. He is the author of New Deals: Business, Labor and Politics, 1920-1935 (1994), Dead on Arrival: The Politics of Health in Twentieth Century America (2003), and Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (2008). He is also a senior research consultant to the Iowa Policy Project, where he writes on state labor, health, and economic development policies. Colin Gordon received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990.

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4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
47 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Worddancer Redux
5.0 out of 5 stars Clear and illuminating
Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2015
Verified Purchase
I have read a lot about the housing/zoning/financing mess that stemmed from the policies and practices of the mid- 20th century, ones that were engineered to make sure that whites could keep blacks out, and about their lingering and awful consequences. This book is another excellent addition to that literature. Because it also sheds light on how and why racial tensions and distrust flourish in St. Louis County, it also provides a valuable frame, and considerable insight, into the anger and outrage that linger in and around Ferguson.
5 people found this helpful
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Lamont Dakota
5.0 out of 5 stars The sad story of a once-great city in decline
Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2011
Verified Purchase
This book, though well-written and quite interesting, is as difficult and disturbing to read as your best friend's obituary, if, like me, you grew up in Saint Louis during the '40's and '50's, that city's last two decades of greatness - "First in booze, first in shoes, last in the American League" - before its decline into its current level of inconsequentiality. The population loss has been so great that, the last time that I was in my old neighborhood, the few houses still standing on my old block, though long-abandoned, still had the glass in their windows. The neighborhood is so deserted and empty that it lacks even vandals. I was surprised that I could see the Arch from in front of my former house. Then it struck me: there was not a single tree left standing anywhere, where once there was a virtual forest of London plane trees, spaced so tightly that nearly every house was shaded by its own tree.
The book tells how now-clearly-stupid decisions, some made back in the 19th C., almost inevitably led to to the death of the modern city. The decision to stick with the steamboat and block easy access to the city by railroads, the decision to make the city into a political entity separate from St. Louis County, yet forcing it to maintain the usual political entities needed by a county, but of no consequence to a city, e.g. there is a Sheriff of St. Louis County and a Sheriff of the City of Saint Louis, in addition to the expected Chief of Police usual in cities.
The book is centered around the history of a single house, located in my former neighborhood and once occupied by a family with whom I was personally acquainted.
Anyone interested in the history of a city and the social, political, and real-estate manipulations that brought it to its metaphorical knees and then killed it will find this book unputdownable.
24 people found this helpful
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Thomas K. Tiemann
5.0 out of 5 stars This rings too true
Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2009
Verified Purchase
Mapping Decline does that and much more, following and explaining how St. Louis fell from the fourth largest U.S. city in 1910 to the 48th largest in 2000 and how the population fell from a high of over 800,000 in the 1940s to about 350,000 in 2000. Gordon's history rings true. His tale of racism, lack of leadership, suburban distrust of the city, political fragmentation, and mis-use of federal and state policies led policy makers across metroploitan St. Louis to ignore deteriorating residential neighborhoods to chase after high income residents and commercial development, assist developers rather than residents, and become more concerned with capturing taxes and jobs from neighboring municipalities than the good of the metropolitan area or its less-than-upper-middle class residents.

I am a native of St. Louis and an urban economist. I knew much of what Gordon writes, but it was great to have it all in one place and nicely tied together. Except for the chapter on the ever-evolving post-WWII urban renewal programs, the book reads easily, though the message is painful. His maps are useful, though those not familar with St. Louis geography will probably want to have a road atlas or GIS website handy. The message is important to anyone interested in the modern American city.
18 people found this helpful
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C. Kick
4.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for all who seek to understand why STL—and ...
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2015
Verified Purchase
Essential reading for all who seek to understand why STL—and many—American cities started a downward spiral even before 1899, and how that slow spiral sped up with the 'development' of physical planning after the 1926 Euclid v. Ambler decision opened the door for the "haves" to segregate them selves from the "have-nots". And make it difficult for the latter to "have".
One person found this helpful
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The review
5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT BOOK
Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2021
Verified Purchase
A great book about st louis!
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George Geschwend
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book to understand one of the main factors in why the St. Louis area is so racially polarized.
Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2016
Verified Purchase
Awesome book. Backs the arguments with solid data. If you want to understand why St. Louis is so racially polorized, start here. It is a little too academic for my taste but it is readable for most folks.
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Missmouse
3.0 out of 5 stars Essential to understanding the dissent in Ferguson
Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2016
Verified Purchase
A very important subject matter, just a little difficult to understand, in my opinion.
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Yo Mama
5.0 out of 5 stars Everyone should read this book, especially if they live in St. Louis.
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2017
Verified Purchase
If you want to know why race relations are so bad in St. Louis and around the country, this book is a great place to start. Anyone interested in making this country a better place should read this book and heed the lessons of our very recent past.
2 people found this helpful
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