Urban Lowlands

"Steven Moga offers an unprecedented and multidisciplinary tour of urban lowlands, bringing a fresh perspective to the history of urban development in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. Looking closely at the Harlem Flats in New York City; Black Bottom in Nashville; Swede Hollow in St. Paul; and The Flats in Los Angeles, Moga compares and contrasts patterns of land use, reactions to disease and public health, the treatment of waste, and social discrimination against immigrants, ethnic groups, and African Americans. He creates an alternative interpretive framework for studying poverty and the urban environment, with implications for the contemporary American city"--