Urban Politics and History Review

Vocabulary flashcards reviewing core concepts, legislation, historical events, and urban policies from the urban politics lecture notes.

Metropolitan Fragmentation

The division of a single urban region into many separate local governments, school districts, special service districts, and tax jurisdictions.

Gentrification

An urban development process in which higher-income and higher-educated residents and businesses move into historically working-class or marginalized neighborhoods, leading to physical renovations, rising property values, and higher rents.

Eminent Domain

The legal power of a government (or its delegated agencies) to acquire private property for public use, provided the owner receives 'just compensation' under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Industrial Urbanization

The process where people move from rural, farm-based areas to cities because factories and manufacturing jobs require a large workforce living close to their work.

Political Machine

A highly organized political party in a city that controlled municipal government and operated through patronage, loyalty, and alliances with illicit business owners.

Patronage

A reciprocal relationship where a person of wealth, power, or political influence (the patron) provides jobs, money, protection, or artistic commissions to a supporter or dependent (the client) in exchange for loyalty, votes, or service.

Thomas Nast's Cartoons

Influential visual media critiques that played a key role in shaping public opinion and exposing the political corruption of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall.

Hazen Pingree

Detroit's mayor from 1890 to 1898 who built a broad reform coalition, campaigned for the ethnic vote, secured waterfront areas for the public, regulated streetcars, and lowered gas and telephone rates.

Muckrakers

Investigative journalists during the Progressive Era who exposed corruption and social problems.

Commission and City Management Systems

Progressive Era administrative structures designed to replace corrupt political machines by introducing professional management, merit-based hiring, and structural checks.

The Great Migration

The mass movement of approximately six million Black Americans who relocated from the rural American South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western cities.

First Great Migration (1910–1940)

The period when about 2 million Black Americans moved north from the rural South during and after World War I.

Second Great Migration (1940–1970)

The period when about 3 to 4 million Black Americans moved during and after World War II, expanding further into Western cities.

Prohibition (1920–1933)

A nationwide ban on alcohol championed by rural, middle-class Anglo-Saxon Protestants that proved politically and economically unsuccessful, leading to lost tax revenues and empowered organized crime syndicates.

Black Thursday

October 24, 1929, the day the New York Stock Exchange crashed into disorder, panic, and plunging prices, initiating the Great Depression.

Hoovervilles

Makeshift shantytowns that emerged during the Great Depression as symbols of severe poverty, foreclosures, and economic collapse.

GI Bill

Federal policy that assisted World War II veterans with housing and associated living costs.

Hart-Cellar Act

Immigration legislation that replaced the National Origins Act of 1924 by removing quotas and granting preferences to individuals with specialized labor skills or family ties in the U.S.

Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956

Federal transportation policy that funded highway expansion, fueling automobile dependence, suburban commuting, and urban sprawl.

Urban Renewal

A mid-twentieth-century urban policy that consisted of tearing down slums and building public housing, though much of the funding went straight to local private developers.

National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB)

An organization that actively opposed public housing in white neighborhoods, forcing projects into already poor and African American neighborhoods distant from central business districts.

Housing Act of 1968

Federal legislation making it illegal to discriminate in housing based on race, religion, or national origin, but which initially lacked an effective administrative enforcement mechanism.

Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974

Federal legislation passed in the 1970s as a proactive measure to help reverse historical racial discrimination in housing and lending practices.

Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975

A federal law from the 1970s designed to proactively reverse historical racial discrimination in mortgage lending.

Community Reinvestment Act of 1977

A 1970s federal act created to proactively combat and reverse the history of racial discrimination in housing credit and community investment.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

A New Deal agency established to regulate stock markets following the 1929 financial crash.

New Deal Coalition

A multi-decade voting bloc uniting Southern segregationist Democrats, northern Black voters, blue-collar labor unions, urban immigrants, and rural western farmers under Franklin D. Roosevelt's relief programs.