The Price of Paradise: The Costs of Inequality and a Vision for a More Equitable America - Hardcover

Troutt, David Dante

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814760554 ISBN 13: 9780814760550

Publisher: NYU Press, 2014

Synopsis

American communities are facing chronic problems: fiscal stress, urban decline, environmental sprawl, mass incarceration, political isolation, disproportionate foreclosures and severe public health risks. In The Price of Paradise, David Troutt argues that it is a lack of mutuality in our local decision making that has led to this looming crisis facing cities and local governments.

Arguing that there are structural flaws in the American dream, Troutt investigates the role that place plays in our thinking and how we have organized our communities to create or deny opportunity. Legal rules and policies that promoted mobility for most citizens simultaneously stifled and segregated a growing minority by race, class and—most importantly—place.

A conversation about America at the crossroads, The Price of Paradise is a multilayered exploration of the legal, economic and cultural forces that contribute to the squeeze on the middle class, the hidden dangers of growing income and wealth inequality and the literature on how growth and consumption patterns are environmentally unsustainable.

About this title

About the Author

David Dante Troutt is Professor of Law and Justice John J. Francis Scholar at the Rutgers University-Newark Law School. He also serves as Director of the Center on Law in Metropolitan Equity at Rutgers Law School. Troutt is a columnist, novelist, and the author of several works of nonfiction, most recently After the Storm: Black Intellectuals Explore the Meaning of Hurricane Katrina.

Edition details

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814760554
• ISBN 13: 9780814760550
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 282