Inn at Penn, Living Room
Event Recap
Michael Katz, Penn IUR Faculty Fellow and the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, shared insights into the newest book in Penn IUR and Penn Press’s book series, “The City in the 21st Century.” Why Don’t American Cities Burn starts with the story of a horrific yet mundane murder of Robert Monroe who was killed in a dispute over five dollars. One of seven homicides to occur in the city that day and yet not make the major newspapers, for Katz, a juror on the murder trial, the incident exemplified the marginalization, social isolation, and indifference that plague American cities. Katz charts the emergence of the urban forms that underlie such events and explores the reasons American cities since the early 1970s have remained relatively free of collective violence while black men in bleak inner-city neighborhoods have turned their rage inward on one another rather than on the agents and symbols of a culture and political economy that exclude them. How, Katz asks, can we construct a new narrative that acknowledges the dark side of urban history even as it demonstrates the capacity of government to address the problems of cities and their residents? How can we create a politics of modest hope? Commentators included Thomas Sugrue, David Boies Professor of History and Sociology; Walter Licht, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History; and Jeremy Nowak, President, William Penn Foundation. Co-sponsored by Penn’s Department of History and Penn Press.
