Structuring Inequality: How Schooling, Housing, and Tax Policies Shaped Metropolitan Development and Education (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780226832265)

How inequality was forged, fought over, and forgotten through public policy in metropolitan Chicago.

As in many American metropolitan areas, inequality in Chicagoland is visible in its neighborhoods. These inequalities are not inevitable, however. They have been constructed and deepened by public policies around housing, schooling, taxation, and local governance, including hidden state government policies.

In Structuring Inequality, historian Tracy L. Steffes shows how metropolitan inequality in Chicagoland was structured, contested, and naturalized over time even as reformers tried to change it through school desegregation, affordable housing, and property tax reform. While these efforts had modest successes in the city and the suburbs, reformers faced significant resistance and counter-mobilization from affluent suburbanites, real estate developers, and other defenders of the status quo who defended inequality and reshaped the policy conversation about it. Grounded in comprehensive archival research and policy analysis, Structuring Inequality examines the history of Chicagoland's established systems of inequality and provides perspective on the inequality we live with today.


Author: Tracy L. Steffes
ISBN-10: 0226832260
ISBN-13: 9780226832265
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 04/02/2024
Pages: 416
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.90d