TURB 312: Race and Class in U.S. Cities: Redlining & Racial Covenants

Saving the Neighborhood tells the charged, still controversial story of the rise and fall of racially restrictive covenants in America, and offers rare insight into the ways legal and social norms reinforce one another, acting with pernicious efficacy to codify and perpetuate intolerance.

The author explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation - that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, this book incontrovertibly makes it clear that it was de jure segregation - the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments - that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that have continued into the twenty-first century.

Elizabeth Korver-Glenn examines how housing market professionals - including housing developers, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, and appraisers - construct contemporary urban housing markets in ways that contribute to neighborhood inequality and racial segregation.