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The post-war American city, as we have seen, underwent
an epochal transformation, shaped in part by the forces of capitalism, modernity,
racism, and government intervention. At its very height (and in keeping with
the tenets of modernity), the fully-functioning capitalist city collapsed on
itself, morphing into something altogether different and still unsettled. It
is here, perhaps, that we see "the radical splitting-off of modernism from modernization,"(10)
for the contemporary American city is sorely lacking in humanistic qualities.
Fortified against the presence of the disenfranchised, facilitating capital
exodus via freeways and suburbs, and concentrating the poor in projects, ghettos,
and barrios, the contemporary city is none the better for its post-war
morphosis. As Marshall Berman wrote of his Bronx after its expressway-cleaving,
our modern American cities, refashioned as they were, can offer "no humanistic
triumph to offset the destruction."(11)
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