Episode 671: Steve Penfield on the Decline of Urban America

Steve Penfield returns to Our Interesting Times to discuss his two-part essay “What Caused the Post-WW2 Decline of Urban America?”. In the essay Penfield challenges conventional explanations for the sharp postwar collapse of major U.S. cities such as Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, and others. He argues that three radical federal interventions of the 1930s and 1940s—nationalization of housing mortgages, nationalization of labor unions, and the Supreme Court’s 1948 Shelley v. Kraemer decision ending neighborhood freedom of association—undermined long-standing patterns of growth, work, saving, and community stability, triggering lasting urban decline and suburban flight