Our Town: Race, Housing, and the Soul of Suburbia

by David L. Kirp, John P. Dwyer and Larry A. Rosenthal

Rutgers University Press, 1997
eISBN: 978-0-8135-6902-4 | Cloth: 978-0-8135-2253-1 | Paper: 978-0-8135-2456-6
Library of Congress Classification HD7288.76.U52M685 1995
Dewey Decimal Classification 363.550973

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

An account of the legal battle to open up New Jersey's suburbs to the poor, looking at the views of lawyers on both sides of the controversy. It is a case study of judicial activism and its consequences and an analysis of suburban attitudes regarding race, class and property.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

DAVID L. KIRP, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Just Schools: Race and Schooling in America, Gender Justice, and Learning by Heart: AIDS and Schoolchildren in America's Communities (Rutgers University Press), and a regular contributor to Harper's, The Nation, the Atlantic Monthly, and the New York Times.

JOHN P. DWYER , John H. Boalt professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, is a nationally recognized authority on environmental law and housing policy and law.

LARRY A. ROSENTHAL is an attorney and has served as a lecturer in the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and assistant editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

REVIEWS

A wellûwritten, exhaustively researched account of the legal battle to open New JerseyÆs suburbs to the poor . . . The authors actually took the time to talk to the lawyers and litigants on both sides of the controversy. Their chronicle of the legal developments is informed, and much improved, by the fleshûandûblood stories of those who actually lived the case. . . . a cautionary and inspiring tale.

— Philadelphia Inquirer

This book is both an inspiring account of public interest law at its best and a sobering assessment of how æthe soul of suburbiaÆ continues to resist social justice. . . . an unexpectedly moving account of hope, idealism, and intelligence.

— New York Times Book Review

The authors of Our Town in particular enable readers to see historical continuity and discontinuity in legal and popular discussions of race, racism, and housing patterns in American society. Our Town also explores the challenges to public policy raised by the existence of residential segregation patterns.

— Nation

[This book] is valuable both as a case study of judicial activism and its consequences and as a detailed analysis of suburban attitudes regarding race, class, and property.

— Urban Affairs Review

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