What do you think?
Rate this book
Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It
They called it progress. But for the people whose homes and districts were bulldozed, the urban renewal projects that swept America starting in 1949 were nothing short of assault. Vibrant city blocks—places rich in history—were reduced to garbage-strewn vacant lots. When a neighborhood is destroyed its inhabitants suffer “root shock”: a traumatic stress reaction related to the destruction of one’s emotional ecosystem. The ripple effects of root shock have an impact on entire communities that can last for decades. In this groundbreaking and ultimately hopeful book, Dr. Mindy Fullilove examines root shock through the story of urban renewal and its effect on the African American community. Between 1949 and 1973 this federal program, spearheaded by business and real estate interests, destroyed 1,600 African American neighborhoods in cities across the United States. But urban renewal didn’t just disrupt the black community. The anger it caused led to riots that sent whites fleeing for the suburbs, stripping them of their own sense of place. And it left big gashes in the centers of U.S. cities that are only now slowly being repaired. Focusing on three very different urban settings—the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the Central Ward in Newark, and the small Virginia city of Roanoke—Dr. Fullilove argues powerfully that the twenty-first century will be one of displacement and of continual demolition and reconstruction. Acknowledging the damage caused by root shock is crucial to coping with its human toll and building a road to recovery.Astonishing in its revelations, unsparing in its conclusions, Root Shock should be read by anyone who cares about the quality of life in American cities—and the dignity of those who reside there.From the Hardcover edition.
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 2004
73 people are currently reading
1431 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
June 22, 2014
The Urban Renewal movement of the middle of the 20th century sought to bulldoze blighted neighborhoods in the name of progress. Its residents were to be housed in dense skyscrapers with great communal lawns to serve as gathering spaces. The towers were new, the grass plans spacious, and gone was the old, crowded neighborhood and the vice that had grown into its masonry.
But blight is in the eye of the beholder. Where a rich, white suburbanite sees a dirty, struggling area, a black resident sees a thriving, trusting community. Moral corruption versus interconnection. A ghetto versus home. These neighborhoods that have been tilled into the soil, over 1600 of them in the US, are described as lively and warm, the kind of place that throws a party for a student departing for college or foots the bill for the funeral of a husband and father.
I'd heard of bulldozing homes for a highway, but the extent of the destruction shocked me. You dipshits blew through an entire community to build an interstate and a couple parking lots!? It seems too shortsighted and callous to believe, but it happened everywhere.
This book happens to focus on the urban renewal in Norfolk, Newark, and Pittsburgh, on which the most time is spent. I'm not sure why the 3 cities were chosen, but the author seems to have spent a significant chunk of time in each to interview residents and get a feel for the city. The story jumps from one city to the next with little warning though, so the narrative thread sometimes feels more like spaghetti.
Her thesis, that removal of a neighborhood causes trauma similar to the symptoms of shock, is intriguing. While the people were often housed nearby, the soul of the street was shattered. Despite the occasional use of medical terminology, the book is not very clinical. I'm glad she didn't overextend her metaphor, but I would have appreciated some data or research to back up the claim.
As it stands, the book tells a good story about the tragedy of urban renewal in the 50s and 60s. The dispossessed tell portions of their story using the stream of consciousness poetry of an interview on the old street corner.
This is Henry Street. This used to be jumping. We had neon.
There used to be houses here. These are just buildings.
We had neon; that detail hit me hard. It represents the pride in the old neighborhood, when a neon sign carried the weight that free wifi or local produce do today, and it being in the past tense tells that the pride was paved over with the houses. Pittsburgh used to have an incredible jazz scene, but the clubs were shuttered and that culture is all but invisible outside of New Orleans. I hope we've departed from that world, but my cynical mind flashes to hypothetical polls on foxnews.com and their ugly results:
Should rap music be criminalized? What about Skrillex? We can nail his ass too.
Agree Disagree
It's a good book with an interesting premise, but it feels caught between voices. It dabbles in data and memoir, but each feels incomplete and lacking focus. It humanizes the information though, and leaves me to wonder what acts from 2014 will make us clutch our heads in horror fifty years in the future.
But blight is in the eye of the beholder. Where a rich, white suburbanite sees a dirty, struggling area, a black resident sees a thriving, trusting community. Moral corruption versus interconnection. A ghetto versus home. These neighborhoods that have been tilled into the soil, over 1600 of them in the US, are described as lively and warm, the kind of place that throws a party for a student departing for college or foots the bill for the funeral of a husband and father.
I'd heard of bulldozing homes for a highway, but the extent of the destruction shocked me. You dipshits blew through an entire community to build an interstate and a couple parking lots!? It seems too shortsighted and callous to believe, but it happened everywhere.
This book happens to focus on the urban renewal in Norfolk, Newark, and Pittsburgh, on which the most time is spent. I'm not sure why the 3 cities were chosen, but the author seems to have spent a significant chunk of time in each to interview residents and get a feel for the city. The story jumps from one city to the next with little warning though, so the narrative thread sometimes feels more like spaghetti.
Her thesis, that removal of a neighborhood causes trauma similar to the symptoms of shock, is intriguing. While the people were often housed nearby, the soul of the street was shattered. Despite the occasional use of medical terminology, the book is not very clinical. I'm glad she didn't overextend her metaphor, but I would have appreciated some data or research to back up the claim.
As it stands, the book tells a good story about the tragedy of urban renewal in the 50s and 60s. The dispossessed tell portions of their story using the stream of consciousness poetry of an interview on the old street corner.
This is Henry Street. This used to be jumping. We had neon.
There used to be houses here. These are just buildings.
We had neon; that detail hit me hard. It represents the pride in the old neighborhood, when a neon sign carried the weight that free wifi or local produce do today, and it being in the past tense tells that the pride was paved over with the houses. Pittsburgh used to have an incredible jazz scene, but the clubs were shuttered and that culture is all but invisible outside of New Orleans. I hope we've departed from that world, but my cynical mind flashes to hypothetical polls on foxnews.com and their ugly results:
Should rap music be criminalized? What about Skrillex? We can nail his ass too.
Agree Disagree
It's a good book with an interesting premise, but it feels caught between voices. It dabbles in data and memoir, but each feels incomplete and lacking focus. It humanizes the information though, and leaves me to wonder what acts from 2014 will make us clutch our heads in horror fifty years in the future.
March 6, 2016
This is one of the few books that really tries to come to grips with the deep psychological trauma caused by mass displacement -- what it calls Root Shock. It does so through the prism of urban renewal and reminds us of the scale of it. The program ran from 1949 to 1973, and during this time the U.S. government bulldozed 2,500 neighborhoods in 993 cities, dispossessing an estimated million people. They were supposed to be slum clearances, they were supposed to create space for new housing. Few of these clearances did, and we are still coming to grips with what was lost. But there is a bitter truth behind the switch from 'urban' to 'Negro' removal -- it is the Black community that lost the most and that continues to be most impacted by it all.
What was it, then, that was lost?
I like this understanding of it. I also quite love that despite a clinician trying to deepen our understanding of the psychological impacts, she maintains a larger understanding of just what is happening.
And you know I love the spatial awareness that has to be part of this, because it is a physical loss of building, home, neighbourhood, as much as a loss of connection.
So how does Fullilove define Root Shock?
It is not something that is experienced right away and then disappears.
This book is interladen with quotes and stories from people Fullilove worked with, she cares like I do to let people speak for themselves about their experience. She quotes Carlos Peterson, on the bulldozing of his neighbourhood:
There is Sala Uddin, who remembered urban renewal first with approval -- the new homes they were getting, then:
Because she is able to listen, she is able to describe the ways that people are connected both to buildings, but also to each other. I love how from multiple angles, the human connections to the earth, to the built environment and to each other always emerge as key to lives well-lived, whether looking at permaculture or public space or psychology:
This brings a new look at Jane Jacob's street ballet, where
I am quite intrigued by this idea:
This feels particularly true of earlier periods when the colour lines were hard and fast and patrolled by white mobs and white gangs and the use of violence. When green books were necessary when travelling to know where to stay, what to eat safe from the oceans of white hatred (too far? Not in terms of the hatred, but maybe in terms of metaphor...) When the ghetto walls were high and strong and each brick legally protected, which is part of the story and the trauma of urban renewal's root shock. For so long people faced the choice: to fight to improve the ghetto or the fight to leave it. Regardless, she captures something of what the ghetto cost the city as a whole:
She writes later on:
The tragedy always was this inisght, again from Jane Jacobs (as summarised by Fullilove):
That was almost never allowed to happen. Instead neighbourhoods were bulldozed -- and again there is the comparison to rubble left by war, similar to Dybek, to Gbadamosi:
It was done in the most destructive way possible:
There is not enough on why I think, which limits the section thinking through what we can do to stop it. But there is this quote from Reginal Shereef, who studies the effects of urban renewal on African Americans in Roanoke:
Part 2 looks at some of the positive ways to think of community, ways that we can work to preserve and improve our neighourhoods. But I'll end this with one of the lovelier expressions of what home means to people, this from resident Dolores Rubillo:
What was it, then, that was lost?
...the collective loss. It was the loss of a massive web of connections--a way of being--that had been destroyed by urban renewal; it was as if thousands of people who seemed to be with me in sunlight, were at some deeper level of their being wandering lost in a dense fog, unable to find one another for the rest of their lives. It was a chorus of voices that rose in my head, with the cry, "We have lost one another." (4)
I like this understanding of it. I also quite love that despite a clinician trying to deepen our understanding of the psychological impacts, she maintains a larger understanding of just what is happening.
This process taught me a new respect for the story of upheaval. It is hard to hear, because it is a story filled with a large, multivoiced pain. it is not a pain that should be pigeonholed in a diagnostic category, but rather understood as a communication about human endurance in the face of bitter defeat. (5)
And you know I love the spatial awareness that has to be part of this, because it is a physical loss of building, home, neighbourhood, as much as a loss of connection.
Buildings and neighborhoods and nations are insinuated into us by life; we are not, as we like to think, independent of them. (10-11)
So how does Fullilove define Root Shock?
Root shock is the traumatic stress reaction to the destruction of all or part of one's emotional ecosystem. It has important parallels to the physiological shock experience by a person who, as a result of injury, suddenly loses massive amounts of fluids. Such a blow threatens the whole body's ability to function.... Just as the body has a system to maintain its internal balance, so, too, the individual has a way to maintain the external balance between himself and the world. This way of moving in the environment.... (11)
It is not something that is experienced right away and then disappears.
The experience of root shock--like the aftermath of a severe burn--does not end with emergency treatment, but will stay with the individual for a lifetime. In fact, the injury from root shock may be even more enduring than a burn, as it can affect generations and generations of people.
Root shock, at the level of the individual, is a profound emotional upheaval that destroys the working model of the world that had existed in the individual's head. (14)
This book is interladen with quotes and stories from people Fullilove worked with, she cares like I do to let people speak for themselves about their experience. She quotes Carlos Peterson, on the bulldozing of his neighbourhood:
'My impression was that we were like a bunch of nomads always fleeing, that was the feeling I had." (13)
There is Sala Uddin, who remembered urban renewal first with approval -- the new homes they were getting, then:
Critiquing his own earlier enthusiasm, he pointed out to me, "We didn't know what impact the amputation of the lower half of our body would have on the rest of our body until you look back twenty years later, and the rest of your body is really ill because of that amputation.
The sense of fragmentation is a new experience that we can now sense, that we didn't sense then. We were all in the same location before. Now we are scattered literally to the four corners of the city, and we are not only politically weak, we are not a political entity. We are also culturally weak. And I think that has something to do with the easiness of hurting each other. How easy it is to hurt each other, because we are not that close anymore. We are not family anymore. (175)
Because she is able to listen, she is able to describe the ways that people are connected both to buildings, but also to each other. I love how from multiple angles, the human connections to the earth, to the built environment and to each other always emerge as key to lives well-lived, whether looking at permaculture or public space or psychology:
This lesson of interconnectedness is as hard to learn as differential calculus or quantum mechanics. the principle is simple: we--that is to say, all people--live in an emotional ecosystem that attaches us yo the environment, not just as our individual selves, but as being caught in a single, universal net of consciousness anchored in small niches we call neighborhoods or hamlets or villages. Because of the interconnectedness of the net, if your place is destroyed today, I will feel it hereafter. (17)
This brings a new look at Jane Jacob's street ballet, where
you are observing the degree to which people can adapt to different settings, and not just adapt, but attach, connect. They are connecting not to the negatives or even the positives of the setting, but to their own mastery of the local players and their play. (19)
I am quite intrigued by this idea:
Instead, the geography created by dispersal-in-segregation created a group of islands of black life. "Archipelago" is the official geographic term for a group of islands. Black America is an archipelago state, a many-island nation within the American nation. The Creation of the archipelago nation had two consequences for African Americans. The first is that the ghettos became centers of black life; the second is that the walls of the ghetto, like other symbols of segregation, became objects of hatred. In this ambivalent, love/hate relationship, it was impossible to chose to dwell. Yet people did choose to make life as vibrant and happy as they possibly could. (27)
This feels particularly true of earlier periods when the colour lines were hard and fast and patrolled by white mobs and white gangs and the use of violence. When green books were necessary when travelling to know where to stay, what to eat safe from the oceans of white hatred (too far? Not in terms of the hatred, but maybe in terms of metaphor...) When the ghetto walls were high and strong and each brick legally protected, which is part of the story and the trauma of urban renewal's root shock. For so long people faced the choice: to fight to improve the ghetto or the fight to leave it. Regardless, she captures something of what the ghetto cost the city as a whole:
Segregation in a city inhibits the free interaction among citizens and invariably leads to a brutality and inequality, which themselves are antithetical to urbanity. When segregation disappears, freedom of movement becomes possible. that does not necessarily mean that people will want to leave the place where they have lived. The ghetto ceases to be a ghetto, it is true, but it does not stop being a neighborhood of history. Postsegregation, the African-American ghetto would have been a sight for imaginative re-creation , much like the ghetto in Rome. (45)
She writes later on:
The divided city is a subjugated city. (164)
The tragedy always was this inisght, again from Jane Jacobs (as summarised by Fullilove):
A slum would endure if residents left as quickly as they could. A neighborhood could transform itself, if people wanted to stay. It was the investment of time, money and love that would make the difference. (44)
That was almost never allowed to happen. Instead neighbourhoods were bulldozed -- and again there is the comparison to rubble left by war, similar to Dybek, to Gbadamosi:
Indeed, in looking at American urban renewal projects I am reminded more of wide-area bombing--the largely abandoned World War II tactic of bombing major parts of cities as we did in Wurzeburg, Germany and Hiroshima, Japan--than of elegant city design. (70)
It was done in the most destructive way possible:
Even though the basis for compensation was gradually extended, the payments continued to be linked to individual property rights. Collective assets -- the social capital created by a long-standing community--were not considered in the assessment of property values. (79)
There is not enough on why I think, which limits the section thinking through what we can do to stop it. But there is this quote from Reginal Shereef, who studies the effects of urban renewal on African Americans in Roanoke:
"But the reality of urban renewal was that cities wanted to improve their tax base. And that is my interest. I have always looked at the intersections between public policy and economics. And what happened in Roanoke was neighborhoods was torn down so that commercial developers could develop prperties and sell it to private interests..." (98)
Part 2 looks at some of the positive ways to think of community, ways that we can work to preserve and improve our neighourhoods. But I'll end this with one of the lovelier expressions of what home means to people, this from resident Dolores Rubillo:
"People know, you know where you are--" and, leaning in to me added, "you are safe in the dark." (127)
October 21, 2020
I'm glad I was able to find this book. A lot of the material is the kind of stuff that I think back on after reading/learning and realize how accurate is it, how logical, and wonder how I missed it. I was especially interested in the information about Roanoke and the Gainsboro area, although I'm a little disheartened to have to learn some of this from a book rather than from my life growing up here in the valley.
April 2, 2021
A couple ideas are slightly dated in the midst of a BLM world, but otherwise this book is incredible.
August 7, 2022
Really interesting examination of the effects of displacement in urban areas caused by ill-conceived urban renewal projects.
November 3, 2016
With its examination of place, community, and our interconnectedness, this book revealed the disastrous effects of urban renewal in ways I had never quite grasped. People often think of urban renewal as just the loss of homes but Fullilove shows displaced people lost so much more than that and that the cascading losses altered individuals and communities in ways we see today.
January 1, 2011
this book is fascinating. about the psychological and social effects of being uprooted from one's home (particularly from urban renewal, a federal policy that razed 1600 mostly african american neighborhoods in the 60s...). focuses on 3 cities in particular - newark, pittsburgh & roanoke.
March 6, 2008
A liberal take on urban planning - definitely not very left wing, but still i found it of interest.
October 28, 2019
Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What we Can Do About It by Mindy Thompson Fullilove is a book that raises many questions about urban renewal, which many people did come to see as Negro Removal. Yet, many people need to read it because it does push reader to think about communities and equality. It was suggested because one of the areas she studies is the Hill District in Pittsburgh which is a boundary of my own investigation of my mother’s upbringing. Yet, as she shows many intact communities were destroy as new housing is built, but often not new residences, but schools, hospitals, businesses and shopping areas. Not only does this practice deplete the number of moderate-income housing. In response people double and triple up, a practice documented by many, including Caro in his work on Robert Moses. Yet, Fullilove notes that people disperse and never reclaim the sense of community and connection that made their residences “homes” even if viewers are overwhelmed with the low quality of the housing. Seeing the community and respecting the lives that people build has to be part of the equation in thinking about renewal.
The book in innovative in thinking historical about urban changes, even the ways that we can link travel and community links in old structures. Often people do not want to see the way that areas are connected, as she demonstrates with Essex county and the towns around Newark, that are linked, but efforts are made to make the Black community invisible. Newark’s urban renewal, which she sites as a source of the urban disturbance in 1967 where people were powerless to shape their own community.
There are several phases of urban renewal, beginning with the Housing Act of 1949, where people were promised better housing. As people realized the devasting impact on their lives as they were separated from support networks and housed in more challenging communities, resistance did begin, and a few were able to challenge trends. Coalition are central, particularly when they include people who were not initially part of the planning. Yet, also other participants came to appreciate the fragility of neighborhoods, so that the College of Medicine and Dentistry in NJ realized it has a broader mission to serve the community.
Fullilove weaves together personal stories of how people are bound by communities and the ways that they have to reshape their lives to keep connections. Decision people make about schools for their children and also their own cultural lives can be about survival and maintain ties to community. Her own father’s story is about how people cannot survive without the ghetto. It is a community that migrants built when they moved from the south. It is more trustworthy than a commitment to a union, which in the end might not live up to the bargain.
Pittsburgh’s Hill district is a sad story. Not only did the initially building of the Civic Arena take a third of the community. Yes, housing was poor as it was some of the oldest housing in the city, but the project did not have to tear it apart and send people around to public and private housing in other communities in the city and suburbs. Yet, the separation also diluted the political power of the Black community.
The Bedford Dwelling and the Allequippa Terrace, housing projects on the Hill from that initial movement were later slated to be removed. Fillilove’s team plays a role in helping people anticipate the consequences and using the concept of a burn index, looking at how much of the tissues of a community is necessary for rebuilding. Teach-ins are part of getting people to see the communities and the hidden infrastructure that has been destroyed by renewal and neglect. She has a model, of course influenced by others, particularly Michel Cantal-Dupart, a French urbanist. The process involves people who have a commitment to the community, people who see the value of the history, the connections with others. They have to be part of the solution to urban changes. Yet, too frequently these voices are not heard as gentrification, restructuring for new uses, and other processes are what determine the shape of cities. Leaving people to find their own means of survival.
When I visit Pittsburgh, not only has the Hill changed, but many neighborhoods in the city are remade in the name of wealth and investment.
The book in innovative in thinking historical about urban changes, even the ways that we can link travel and community links in old structures. Often people do not want to see the way that areas are connected, as she demonstrates with Essex county and the towns around Newark, that are linked, but efforts are made to make the Black community invisible. Newark’s urban renewal, which she sites as a source of the urban disturbance in 1967 where people were powerless to shape their own community.
There are several phases of urban renewal, beginning with the Housing Act of 1949, where people were promised better housing. As people realized the devasting impact on their lives as they were separated from support networks and housed in more challenging communities, resistance did begin, and a few were able to challenge trends. Coalition are central, particularly when they include people who were not initially part of the planning. Yet, also other participants came to appreciate the fragility of neighborhoods, so that the College of Medicine and Dentistry in NJ realized it has a broader mission to serve the community.
Fullilove weaves together personal stories of how people are bound by communities and the ways that they have to reshape their lives to keep connections. Decision people make about schools for their children and also their own cultural lives can be about survival and maintain ties to community. Her own father’s story is about how people cannot survive without the ghetto. It is a community that migrants built when they moved from the south. It is more trustworthy than a commitment to a union, which in the end might not live up to the bargain.
Pittsburgh’s Hill district is a sad story. Not only did the initially building of the Civic Arena take a third of the community. Yes, housing was poor as it was some of the oldest housing in the city, but the project did not have to tear it apart and send people around to public and private housing in other communities in the city and suburbs. Yet, the separation also diluted the political power of the Black community.
The Bedford Dwelling and the Allequippa Terrace, housing projects on the Hill from that initial movement were later slated to be removed. Fillilove’s team plays a role in helping people anticipate the consequences and using the concept of a burn index, looking at how much of the tissues of a community is necessary for rebuilding. Teach-ins are part of getting people to see the communities and the hidden infrastructure that has been destroyed by renewal and neglect. She has a model, of course influenced by others, particularly Michel Cantal-Dupart, a French urbanist. The process involves people who have a commitment to the community, people who see the value of the history, the connections with others. They have to be part of the solution to urban changes. Yet, too frequently these voices are not heard as gentrification, restructuring for new uses, and other processes are what determine the shape of cities. Leaving people to find their own means of survival.
When I visit Pittsburgh, not only has the Hill changed, but many neighborhoods in the city are remade in the name of wealth and investment.
August 4, 2019
This is a deeply personal book, both because of the people who share their stories and the very personal touch of the author in the prose. It is an emotional book that addresses deep inequalities and a need to heal after what can only be called the tragedies of urban renewal. But while both emotional and personal, Mindy Fullilove is clear, rational, and thoughtful. She discusses solutions and steps that can help create more equitable urban spaces, more just neighborhoods, and spaces for dispossessed communities to feel that they belong, and in turn, 'possess' urban space again, instead of being perpetually unrooted.
My only wish is that she included more examples towards the end of forming connections in urban space and possibly expanded her examples of discussions around public involvement in Ground Zero (this seemed a little abrupt). Some of the quoted sections from community members ran a little long, but I appreciated the inclusion of other voices.
Reading this book today shows a clear parallel to the conversation around gentrification which continues to displace communities, and whether or not you are interested in the impact of urban renewal on American cities, is a valuable read for anyone interested in urbanism, community identity, and equity. Beautifully written.
My only wish is that she included more examples towards the end of forming connections in urban space and possibly expanded her examples of discussions around public involvement in Ground Zero (this seemed a little abrupt). Some of the quoted sections from community members ran a little long, but I appreciated the inclusion of other voices.
Reading this book today shows a clear parallel to the conversation around gentrification which continues to displace communities, and whether or not you are interested in the impact of urban renewal on American cities, is a valuable read for anyone interested in urbanism, community identity, and equity. Beautifully written.
February 18, 2021
An excellent introduction to its subject, a melding of psychology, history, and urban design philosophies, arguing against the destruction of neighborhoods. What a world, that this is a thing that needs arguing! One of my favorite moments is when a woman fighting a forced removal that will demolish a whole area for "development" says the developers told them they shouldn't be sentimental about their homes, and Fullilove tells her that of course they should! "Home," like "motherhood," is one of the revered American symbols, but their value is often disregarded in practice. The idea of wealthy outsiders coming in and telling people that their homes, and by extension their lives and families, are valueless, is pretty horrible, but as this book details, thousands and thousands of American neighborhoods have been destroyed this way, with very few resources for those displaced, leading to economic loss, emotional trauma, and social disorder.
I highly recommend this, although I'd maybe read it before "Urban Alchemy." I read the latter book first, and it expands on some of the material in this one, so a few sections here seemed to backtrack, introducing things that I'd already read more extended versions of. For the same reason, it wasn't quite so mind-blowing. But that's not this book's fault. Now I'm looking forward to her book on "Main Street."
I highly recommend this, although I'd maybe read it before "Urban Alchemy." I read the latter book first, and it expands on some of the material in this one, so a few sections here seemed to backtrack, introducing things that I'd already read more extended versions of. For the same reason, it wasn't quite so mind-blowing. But that's not this book's fault. Now I'm looking forward to her book on "Main Street."
August 20, 2021
I was excited by the premise of this book, which seemed decades ahead of its time and our newly emerging appreciation for trauma-informed practice in all the disciplines that focus on marginalized communities. At times it was prescient and insightful, e.g. "bulldozers happily eat 50-year-old buildings... We are sacrificing a major portion of our mental health to chase the carrot of a 'better life' at the end of the stick of impermanence, and it is important to understand our neurotic behavior."
But much of the time the author wavers from mini memoirs to narcissism to outright classism (in describing the lasting divisions in the "archipelago" of Black and African American communities). It is worth a read, but perhaps I expected a book written in 2004 to contribute directly to issues as understood in 2021. I will need to read Dr. Fullilove's newer pieces to follow her own evolution.
But much of the time the author wavers from mini memoirs to narcissism to outright classism (in describing the lasting divisions in the "archipelago" of Black and African American communities). It is worth a read, but perhaps I expected a book written in 2004 to contribute directly to issues as understood in 2021. I will need to read Dr. Fullilove's newer pieces to follow her own evolution.
March 10, 2018
This is such an important topic, no less so 14 years after this book was published. In most cities across the US urban displacement continues, and the effects of 50-year-old displacement continue to not be addressed. Fullilove grounds her analysis in first-person accounts and interviews, presenting a hard-hitting image of what was lost in so many cities during the urban renewal movement, and how all of our communities are still feeling those repercussions today. She also shares how her own research and work have evolved into community action and healing practices that have garnered real results. Anyone who is concerned with issues of equity in the urban landscape should read this book.
March 31, 2023
Interesting exploration of three cities whose residents were harmed by urban "renewal," or as I would call it, urban displacement. The book describes how this process was commonplace and created lasting trauma, resulting in "root shock." Ultimately, this harms everyone in society, not just the Black folks directly impacted. It's got a lot of food for thought but was a bit too meandering at times--a lot of this could be condensed. It switches between historical accounting, analysis, ethnography, and personal ruminations in a way that lost me sometimes. I liked the four urban planning principles of the aesthetics of equity though.
Read
November 30, 2023Dr. Johnson Fullilove tries to find new language to talk about urban decay, at one point catching herself talking "like an American planner" about abandoned neighborhoods. The root of the problem is that even neglected spaces are anchors for their residents. Sounds cheesy, but the psychiatrist calls us to fully love the people and surroundings left behind. She's correct in noting that inequity starts when money's tight and a neighborhood is closed off: Looking for the next great thing, something great is lost. Americans are all too ready to move on without looking over their shoulder, and sadly this book does not contend with such a deeply rooted impulse.
February 20, 2019
If you know about urban renewal already, this book may not teach you much more about the history, policy, and effects. But the author does interview different people who were affected by urban renewal, so you get a personal view of it. I got to learn what the Hill District in Pittsburgh was like. The author also explores other smaller towns, such as one in Virginia, as well as Newark. Not a riveting read but not a waste of time either if you are interested in the subject.
October 18, 2021
Valuable insight into what was lost through urban renewal. There was the economic cost, as black families were not reimbursed properly, but more than that, it was the loss of community and neighbors. The scope of the loss, both on a macro and micro level, is shared. I find the book to be a bit scattered, as the author weaves in first person accounts. As I live in Roanoke, one of the cities profiled, the book holds special importance to me.
November 26, 2021
Before reading this book, I had little understanding of the deep trauma that displacement, gentrification, and construction causes to societies, families, and individuals. I now see my own experiences and actions in a new light and have much more respect for the utter need to keep communities and geographies intact.
November 21, 2023
could have used more cohesive themes. very valuable case study analysis of urban renewal and how it disrupted Black communities and informal social networks. but interviews and narrative structure did feel somewhat chaotic.
February 27, 2024
What happens to people when their neighborhoods are destroyed & the lives literately uprooted. Root Shock looks at what the 'gentrification' of the inner-cities has done to the people who lived there.
April 14, 2018
This should be required reading.
June 13, 2025
Lots of very interesting psychological takes on the home, place, and community. However, it did seem rose-tinted when talking about the past.
August 1, 2020
10/10 this is was incredible. anyone who is interested in urban renewal and it’s effects should read this.
June 26, 2021
So good! Billed to me as a book about the psycho-social effects of displacement, Dr. Fullilove has written an exploration into urban renewal.
She provides an essential history to anytime wanting to know more about our country’s legacy of housing policy or governmentally-sanctioned racism, as well as insights that are foundational in our current struggle with gentrification.
Her writing is far more descriptive than I expected from an academic work, which I greatly appreciated. The care that she brings to her work and her collaborators is evident in the writing, reminding me of Wendell Berry’s principle that it must be rooted in affection.
She focuses on specific regions, writing extensively about Pittsburgh. I always want authors to talk more about houston, of course :) .
Her chapter on David felt a bit disconnected and could had thrown off someone less invested in the topics. In later chapters she spoke of what she learned from her French urbanist mentor, Michel Cantal-Dupart, which was fascinating.
Overall, i found this a very interesting and pertinent read.
She provides an essential history to anytime wanting to know more about our country’s legacy of housing policy or governmentally-sanctioned racism, as well as insights that are foundational in our current struggle with gentrification.
Her writing is far more descriptive than I expected from an academic work, which I greatly appreciated. The care that she brings to her work and her collaborators is evident in the writing, reminding me of Wendell Berry’s principle that it must be rooted in affection.
She focuses on specific regions, writing extensively about Pittsburgh. I always want authors to talk more about houston, of course :) .
Her chapter on David felt a bit disconnected and could had thrown off someone less invested in the topics. In later chapters she spoke of what she learned from her French urbanist mentor, Michel Cantal-Dupart, which was fascinating.
Overall, i found this a very interesting and pertinent read.
March 21, 2011
I heard the author, Dr. Mindy Fullilove, speak at a conference on the psycholgical and social consequences of displacement due to policies of urban renewal over the3 last 50=60 years in the U.S. In this book she reveals the stories and struggles of black people who were displaced by urban renewal projects in Pittsburgh, Roanoke, Newark and Philadelphia. Though the book is a bit haphazard and seems to jump aroudn here insights as to the ongoing impact of urban displacement is priceless and speak volumes to the need to think humanely about urban communities and what can be done in terms of planning and reinvestment to provide healthier, safer and saner living environments. While the book's writing is accessible, its organization is confusing. Even so, if one sticks with it, he/she will find many nuggets.
March 23, 2015
I read this book almost 10 years ago, and it provided such clear thinking, I've been recommending it since. The pattern of 'urban renewal' which may begin with positive intentions, and is often supported by people of faith hoping to 'do good', includes a dropping of commitment down the line, and those actions of the 1950s-60s live with us today in communities that are dysfunctional, marked by separation and rootlessness. I am grateful for Fullilove's continued concern for this issue.
February 17, 2013
This is a terrific book that brings together environmental issues, urban planning, racial issues, and trauma studies. The author uses the metaphor of root shock to represent the trauma inflicted on primarily African American communities during urban renewal programs that destroyed urban communities.
January 27, 2014
An eye-opening account of urban-renewal in the United States that delves into the heart of urban ecology. I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by Mindy Thompson Fullilove at the New School that left me saddened and speechless yet still motivated and empowered. This book left me with the same feeling.
June 16, 2013
Excellent med-anth oriented volume from a veteran physician who tackles the problems of gentrification, urban renewal and displacement by placing them in the most essential context there is: health. A great read, if maybe a bit obvious at times to those who have studied the problem before.
October 16, 2024
Excellent explanation of the damage wrought to Black neighborhoods in particular and hundreds of cities in general during civic improvements that grabbed private land from poor neighborhoods for somewhat dubious public use. Ends up with an excellent section on city planning and citizen involvement.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews