Charles E. Connerly's The Most Segregated City in America": City Planning and PDF

One of Planetizen’s most sensible Ten Books of
2006

"But for Birmingham," Fred Shuttleworth recalled President John
F. Kennedy asserting in June 1963 whilst he invited black leaders to fulfill with him, "we would
now not be right here today." Birmingham is celebrated for its civil rights historical past, rather for
the violent white-on-black bombings that happened there within the Nineteen Sixties, leading to the
city’s nickname "Bombingham." what's much less renowned approximately Birmingham’s
racial background, notwithstanding, is the level to which early urban making plans judgements prompted and
caused the city’s civil rights protests. the 1st book-length paintings to investigate this
connection, "The so much Segregated urban in America": urban making plans and Civil Rights in
Birmingham, 1920–1980 uncovers the impression of Birmingham’s city planning
judgements on its black groups and divulges how those judgements led on to the civil
rights movement.

Spanning over sixty years, Charles E. Connerly’s study
starts off within the Twenties, whilst Birmingham used city making plans as an excuse to enforce racial zoning
legislation, pointedly sidestepping the 1917 U.S. superb court docket Buchanan v. Warley selection that had
struck down racial zoning. the results of this obstruction used to be the South’s longest-standing
racial zoning legislation, which lasted from 1926 to 1951, whilst it was once redeclared unconstitutional by
the U.S. very best courtroom. even though African americans constituted a minimum of 38 percent
of Birmingham’s citizens, they confronted drastic barriers to their freedom to settle on where
to stay. whilst in the1940s they rebelled by way of trying to buy houses in off-limit areas,
their efforts have been classified as a problem to urban making plans, leading to executive and court
interventions that grew to become violent. greater than fifty bombings ensued among 1947 and 1966,
turning into nationally publicized in basic terms in 1963, whilst 4 black women have been killed within the bombing of
the 16th road Baptist Church.

Connerly successfully uses
Birmingham’s historical past as an instance to argue the significance of spotting the hyperlink that
exists among urban making plans and civil rights. His demonstration of ways Birmingham’s
race-based making plans legacy ended in the confrontations that culminated within the city’s
fight for civil rights presents a clean lens at the heritage and way forward for city making plans, and
its relation to race.