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.