“There is tragedy on both sides of the layoffs:” Privatization and the Urban Crisis in Baltimore

Abstract

Abstract By the 1960s, the urban crisis in the United States was well underway. Structural trans-formations in the postwar economy and accelerating deindustrialization contributed to high rates of unemployment in many cities in the nation's old industrial core. During the 1970s and 1980s, the urban crisis worsened. This article argues that the macroeconomic policies of Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan fueled urban decline. Responding to the waning hegemony of the United States in the global economy as well as to a domestic corporate crisis of profitability, the presidents pursued macroeconomic agendas that prioritized the revitalization of American economic dominance. Macroeconomic policy decisions in combination with white-backlash pressures constrained the range of urban policies the presidents could pursue and often compelled privatization. The federal-level decisionmaking had devastating consequences in Baltimore, Maryland, the city discussed in this article. The macroeconomic and urban policies had racialized and gendered outcomes that plunged the city into the most acute phase of the urban crisis.

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