ABSTRACT
Neither those willing to abandon the city nor those holding to its central importance in American life had reckoned with the potential for an urban fiscal crisis to exacerbate “The Negro Problem.” At the same time, the fiscal crisis marginalized race within the discourse. Social issues dominated in the sixties and early seventies, but the fiscal crisis facing the large industrial cities during the mid-seventies’ recession pushed economic issues to center stage. Decline, along another dimension than race, became a problem of nationwide proportions. Despair deepened and resignation from the cities spread, though both were soon to be followed by an astonishing reversal of conditions. Out of racial unrest and fiscal crisis emerged the urban revival of the 1980s and 1990s; cities seemed once again to be places of prosperity and the good life. But only those commentators without any sense of irony, or any skepticism, viewed the renaissance as real and enduring.
