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The Dilemma Of Old, Urban Neighborhoods, W Dennis Keating

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In his recounting of the suburban migration from America's cities, journalist and broadcaster Ray Suarez laments the loss of the "old neighborhood". He extols its virtues while explaining its decline. Suarez's nostalgic examples recall the virtues of the extended family kinship, neighborliness, and other features of the "urban village." These are often associated with those urban neighborhoods populated by recent immigratns. These urban villages were thought to have peaked in the decades between the American Civil War and the onset of the First World War, when many U.S. cities industrialized and grew very rapidly. However, a continuing movement of migrants …